"Last meal Jesus partook of with the Twelve Disciples during...

"Last meal Jesus partook of with the Twelve Disciples during which he instituted the Eucharist. It is described in the Synoptic Gospels" (references to Matthew, Mark and Luke) . ". . . and the fourth Gospel gives us further details" (references to John). In his entry on the Eucharist (Eucharistie), the same author writes the following.

"The institution of the Eucharist is briefly related in the first three Gospels: it was an extremely important part of the Apostolic system of religious instruction. Saint John has added an indispensable complement to these brief descriptions in his account of Jesus's speech on the bread of life (6, 32-58)." The commentator consequently fails to mention that John does not describe Jesus's intitution of the Eucharist.

The author speaks of 'complementary details', but they are not complementary to the institution of the Eucharist (he basically describes the ceremony of the washing of the Apostles' feet). The commentator speaks of the 'bread of life', but it is Jesus's reference (quite separate from the Last Supper) to God's daily gift of manna in the wilderness at the time of the Jews' exodus led by Moses. John is the only one of the evangelists who records this allusion.

In the following passage of his Gospel, John does, of course, mention Jesus's reference to the Eucharist in the form of a digression on the bread, but no other evangelist speaks of this episode. One is surprised therefore both by John's silence on what the other three evangelists relate and their silence on what, according to John, Jesus is said to have predicted. The commentators of the Ecumenical Translation of the Bible, New Testament, do actually acknowledge this omission in John's Gospel.

This is the explanation they come up with to account for the fact that the description of the institution of the Eucharist is missing: "In general, John is not very interested in the traditions and institutions of a bygone Israel. This may have dissuaded him from showing the establishment of the Eucharist in the Passover liturgy". Are we seriously to believe that it was a lack of interest in the Jewish Passover liturgy that led John not to describe the institution of the most fundamental act.

in the liturgy of the new religion? The experts in exegesis are so embarrassed by the problem that theologians rack their brains to find prefigurations or equivalents of the Eucharist in episodes of Jesus's life recorded by John. O.