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Why do you insist on skipping the Scriptural sequence comprising the conversation?

Shrug. I cannot afford to spend time on an argument to which you will provide no responsive analysis. Possibly you feel you have answered me. I don't think you have. My points before were simple enough:

1. How well the Jews understood Jesus in John 6 is controversial. We know they were thinking of literal food. But they couldn't even agree among themselves exactly how that applied to Jesus' body and blood. You can take it to the bank that not one of them imagined it was anything like Aquinas' transubstantiation.

2. Even if one of them had been Aquinas, and laid out the doctrine of transubstantiation perfectly, it could still be a misunderstanding, because Jesus had no duty to correct any such misunderstanding.

The combination of these two is effectively an argument from silence, according to the following syllogism: :

Premise 1: If the Jews misunderstood Jesus, he had a duty to correct them.
Premise 2: They understood him in the Catholic way of understanding, and He did not correct them,
Conclusion: Therefore the Catholic way of understanding this passage must be correct.

My response has been, as stated above, that your premises are flawed. That has not required a comprehensive analysis of the entire passage. Only a demonstration of specific errors, which I have provided, as follows:

As to Premise 2, The Jews were so far from understanding Jesus they could not even agree among themselves what He meant. If they appear to be united about anything, it was that they hoped the food in question would satisfy their physical hunger, just as the miracle of the loaves and fishes had done.

As to Premise 1, we have shown there was no duty to correct any misunderstanding. However, we will agree that Jesus could offer a correction as a matter of grace and mercy, and He does so. But it is not the correction looked for by the transubstantiationist, and so it is passed over as if it was never said. Jesus makes it clear that the eating of his body and the drinking of His blood has nothing to do with the flesh, but with believing in Him, coming to Him in faith, as Peter demonstrates at the end of the passage, "You have the words of eternal life." The transubstatiationist overlays this entire passage, and particularly verses 53 through 58, with a pseudo-Aristotilian theory that would not appear until over 800 years later in the teaching of Radbertus. The raw text of the passage offers no support for such a fantasy. It is much more straightforward to see the 'eating' of the passage as an ordinary teaching metaphor for putting one's faith in Jesus, who was soon to offer His body and blood for the life of the world.

Due to the defects in the above premises, your logic provides no justification for concluding that the typical Catholic understanding of this passage is correct. Your point remains unproven. If you feel I am being too selective in the passages I am addressing, the burden is on you to demonstrate how my analysis contradicts something specific in the text. Up to this point, you haven't done that. Quoting vast blocks of Scripture and proclaiming Aha! doesn't constitute an argument. It's arm-waving. Man shall live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Each word is important. Make your argument from the words themselves. Show how 'eating' can't possibly be a metaphor for faith in this passage. Show how this passage teaches the Aquinan distinction between accidents and substance in the bread and the wine. Show that the Jews really all agreed on the same transubstantive understanding of Jesus' words. Find somewhere, anywhere, where Jesus is said to be duty-bound to make sure every student came away from His lectures with a fully Christian understanding of what He was teaching. If you can't do these things, you do not have a case.

Peace,

SR

How well the Jews understood Jesus in John 6 is controversial.

There's a LOT in the sixth chapter of John that folks miss!

Jesus was asked a DIRECT question; and He gave a DIRECT answer:

John 6:28-29

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

It appears that later on, a similar question must have been asked, for John writes again...

1 John 3:21-24

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

You can take it to the bank that not one of them imagined it was anything like Aquinas' transubstantiation.

Indeed. And as said, if literal they would have believed that "my body which is broken for you," "blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.." meant they would be consuming the actual manifestly bloody flesh of Christ, not a crucified body of Christ which looked, tasted, smelled, and would scientifically test as a mere inanimate object. That would be no more real than that of some Gnostics versus the Christ whom "we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life." (1 John 1:1)

The transubstatiationist overlays this entire passage, and particularly verses 53 through 58, with a pseudo-Aristotilian theory that would not appear until over 800 years later in the teaching of Radbertus.

But while it can and is argued that a basic belief in transubstantiation is evidenced much earlier, yet Rome requires such precise belief in her theory than it makes professors of theories heretics. Such was the case with John of Paris

This was a Dominican theological whom the Catholic Encyclopedia says was "endowed with great ability, was the most subtle dialectician of the age, possessed great literary and linguistic attainments, and was considered one of the best theologians of the university." However, in treatise on the Blessed Sacrament, in which he tentatively advanced the propositions that "the Body of Christ is, or might be, present by assumption (I. e. by the body of Christ assuming the bread and wine), and that the doctrine of transubstantiation was not of faith." resulted in him being "deprived him of the offices of lecturing, preaching, and hearing confessions." http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08475b.htm; http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08475b.htm

That the original hearers of the words at issue on the "real presence" would not have naturally assumed that, if literal, the Lord was speaking of giving them some of His actual manifestly bloody flesh to eat, but that they instead held to orthodox transubstantiation theology is absurd.

And of course, the Elephant in the Room is that the record and teachings of NT church in Scripture simply does not evidence that it held the Lord's supper as the central exalted formal liturgical priestly sacrifice for sins, which is consumed in order to obtain spiritual life and nourishment, as the Catholic Eucharist. But instead, the word of God is presented as this, and the preaching of it being the primary active function of pastors.

Quoting vast blocks of Scripture and proclaiming Aha! doesn't constitute an argument.

Indeed, but which question-begging arguments by assertion is typical of many Catholics.

The combination of these two is effectively an argument from silence, according to the following syllogism: : Premise 1: If the Jews misunderstood Jesus, he had a duty to correct them. Premise 2: They understood him in the Catholic way of understanding, and He did not correct them, Conclusion: Therefore the Catholic way of understanding this passage must be correct.

And yet what the Lord did explain that they flesh profits nothing, as indeed nowhere does Scripture teach that literally physically eating anything provides spiritual nourishment, which the word of God does. And that He would not even be around soon in the flesh, which corrected basic misunderstanding that the Lord was going to give them some of His body to eat, as in endocannibalism, which people consumed some of the deceased body of a beloved person in order to obtain spiritual properties.