Endnote 2 – Let this Cup Pass!

This is not the place to get embroiled in the details of the controversy about whether these words are more than symbolic. Suffice it to say (1) The words about the bread of haste and the bitter herbs and the like in the Passover meal were clearly seen as symbolic, not as literal. (2) The original Aramaic of Jesus’ words cannot be understood to mean “This becomes my body, this becomes my blood,” as if the ritual was magically transforming the elements into something they had not been previously. Had an early Jewish audience such as Jesus’ thought he was talking about his actual physical body and blood they would have run out of the room screaming about cannibalism. (3) The Aramaic probably was “This … my body” “This … my blood” since the verb “to be” would have been lacking in that language in such a saying. (4) It is interesting that we get the phrase “hocus pocus” from the Latin form of Jesus’ words Hoc est meus corpus (“This is my body”).