Yes, letting the Bible speak is better than reliance upon tradition, however widespread. Although in the next breath you appear to negate Scripture in favor of ecclesiastical authority.
I’ll stick with Scripture, while allowing for other “supra-Scriptural” practices. (As long as they aren’t ANTI-scriptural.)
The weight that one would need to place upon a specific interpretation of the Greek verbs in question inorder to use them in this argument is too much for them to carry without a solid accompanying analysis. Matt 26:26, Mark and Luke 22:19 both employ a form of didwmi to describe what are Lord did in to transfer (aorist participle in Matt., aorist 3S in Lk) The form Mark employed is not clear as there are some variations in manuscript. This verb is typically translated as equivalent to “give” but it is capable of many interpretations, and occurs over 400 times in the New Testament and around 2000 times in the Greek translation of the OT—where it is used to translate over 40 different Hebrew verbs (which gives you an idea of the various ways that it might be interpreted). With such a vast field to work with, I suspect that one could cherry-pick one’s way to whatever conclusion one wanted to, within reason, if no one was checking one’s scholarship.
The Shem-Tob Greek Matthew uses a form of ntn, commonly translated as give, which occurs about 2000 times in the OT and is translated in the septuagint using no fewer than 80 different Greek verbs.
On the reception end, Mark and Matthew in the Greek both use the same form of lambanw, which is commonly translated as either take or receive, but also is open to other possibilities. It occurs over 250 times in the NT and and about 1200 times in the Septuagint—it is used to translate 30 different Hebrew verbs. The verb in the Matthean Hebrew has just shy of a 1000 OT occurrences and has about 60 different Greek verbs that are used to translate it.
Luke doesn’t use a verb on the reception end and St. Paul, in I Cor. 11:24, doesn’t use verbs on either the giving or receiving end. There are no helpful nouns anywhere. If one accepts the likely proto-texts of Matthew and Mark (i.e. the Matthean Hebrew and St. Peter’s speeches) as earlier than Luke and I Corinthians, the relative silence of Luke and complete silence of St. Paul might be read as choosing to not draw attention to an area where Church discipline had developed as the Church recognized that in something surpassing the OT passover, passover ritual did not suffice. That seems to me the strongest argument that might be made without a tremendous amount of work. It does not seem to rise above the realm of probable, and that is arguably being generous. I also am doubtful that even after a tremendous amount of work one could draw any conclusion other than “the text doesn’t say in any clear way how they received.”
Ecclesiastical authority has not spoken defining how the Blessed Sacrament was received at the Last Supper—it has spoken at various times about what might show appropriate reverence in receiving at a particular time and culture. Given the vagueness of the text to begin with and that nothing in it indicates that it is meant to be normative in the manner of reception, I do not see how anyone on anyside of this discussion can be said to be negating scripture.
, Mark 14:22
So then we stick with the common sense position that accompanies most hosted meals. The people fed themselves. Thanks.