This Is My Body

(Please start with the lead post in this series.)

The night in which he was delivered up as a sacrifice for our sins, the Lord Jesus instituted a simple ceremony that almost all groups who claim to be Christian follow in some form. His words in instituting this ceremony are preserved in Matt 26:26-28, Mark 14:22-24, Luke 22:19-20, and 1Cor 11:23-25. First he breaks bread and shares it with the disciples, saying, “this is my body, which is given for you.” Then, after a delay recorded in Luke and 1 Corinthians, he passes them a cup of wine, saying, “this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many.”

These expressions have been the object of disagreement for centuries. For some, they demonstrate that the bread and wine are in reality the body and blood of Christ. For others, they simply claim that the elements are symbols that represent the Lord’s body and blood.

This note looks at the semantics of “this is that” statements in the Bible, in the light of the difference between Indo-European idioms (including Greek, Latin, and English) and Semitic idioms (specifically, Hebrew).

While many traditions preserve the ceremony, they differ in how they understand the clauses “this is my body” and “this is my blood.” The western philosophical tradition, going back to Aristotle, understands clauses with the verb “to be” most naturally as expressing identity. “This is my hat” claims that the object to which I am pointing is indeed my hat. “George Washington was the first president of the United States” claims that there was a first president, and that it was, identically, George Washington. Given the strong scholastic orientation of early Christian theologians, and the languages (Greek and Latin) that they spoke and in which they worked, it is not that surprising many Christians came to understand the Lord to be saying that the bread and the wine were changed to be his actual body and blood. This belief in the “transubstantiation” of the elements is a cornerstone of the “Catholic” and “orthodox” beliefs. An advocate of this position might urge,

“The Lord said, ‘This IS my body.’ What part of ‘IS’ do you not understand?”

But another reading is possible, and arguably superior. The Bible, at least through the gospels, is the product of eastern rather than western thought, and even in its Greek portions reflects Hebrew rather than Greek usage. Most statements of the form “this is A” or “A is B” do not even use a verb at all, but use one of two constructions. The first simply places two nouns, or a noun and a pronoun, or two pronouns, alongside each other to express some kind of relation between them. When Joseph introduces himself to his brothers, an English or Greek translation must say something like “I am Joseph” (Gen 45:3), but the Hebrew simply says, “I: Joseph.” The second construction adds a pronoun. When Joseph tells Pharaoh in Gen 41:26,”The seven good cows are seven years,” the Hebrew says literally, “Seven good cows: seven years, they.”

In speaking to his disciples in Hebrew or perhaps Aramaic (a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew), the Lord would have said something like “This: my body” and “this: my blood,” with no verb. The precise relation between the subject and predicate is not specified. To the question, “What part of ‘IS’ do you not understand?” one might respond, “The Lord never said ‘IS.’”

Sometimes this Hebrew construction does claim identity. In Gen 45:3, Joseph is claiming that he, the speaker, is the missing son of Jacob. When Samuel went to seek a king among the sons of Jesse, and David appeared, the Lord said to him, “This [is] he” (1 Sam 16:12). That is, the young man David is identically the one whom Lord sent him to seek.

But often the relation is looser: When Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dream, he says,

Gen 41:26 The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one. 27 And the seven thin and ill favoured kine that came up after them are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine.

Cows or ears of grain are not periods of time. They are symbols, representing those periods.

In another example, the Lord shows Ezekiel a valley full of dead bones, such as might be left after a massive battle when the birds of prey have stripped the flesh from the bodies of the slain. The Lord tells him,

Ezk 37:11 Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.

The bones are not identical with the house of Israel. Israel’s members are living breathing people, not dry bones. The bones are a picture of Israel’s spiritual condition.

The Lord Jesus, speaking in Hebrew or Aramaic, naturally uses this idiom in his teaching, particularly in explaining parables. He describes a field in which a farmer is sowing wheat but an enemy is sowing tares (weeds), and then explains,

Matt. 13:38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;

He is not claiming that the field is identically the world, but that it represents the world. Grains of wheat are not believers, but represent them in the picture. The tares are not really unbelievers, but a picture of them.

Those who understand “this is my body” to mean “this represents my body” are not abusing language. They are understanding the statement as a Hebrew would, using an idiom that the Lord himself often used.