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“What you preach is height of absurdity, all to obfuscate the truth of the scripture.”

No, it connects the scripture before and after with the scripture in between...

“But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse.

“For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.”

[He starts his discussion of the Lord’s Supper by denying that the practice of the Corinthians even counts. There are divisions. Each goes ahead with his own meal. Some do so in such excess that they get drunk. he asks, “do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?]

“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

[In the previous 3 chapters, he talks about identifying ourselves with the body of Christ, rather than identifying with idols. Remember what is in Chapter 10: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.”]

[Having talked about what it wrong, he now talks about the right way to take the Eucharist.]

“In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

[When they take the Eucharist, they are to do so “In remembrance” and by doing so, they “proclaim the Lord’s death...]

“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.”

[Those who do what he describes in verses 18-22 should be doing what he describes in verses 23-26. If not, then verse 27 describes the result. Verse 27 doesn’t exist in a vacuum - it follows verses 17-26.]

“Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.”

{If they do it right, and discern the body of Christ, then...]

“So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another— if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home—so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come.”

Paul then spends the next 3 chapters discussing spiritual gifts, and how they are to build the body of Christ, the Church, saying, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”

CONTEXT! We must read each verse in context! Read Augustine, if you don’t like what I write - scripture is to be read in context. Verses don’t just fall like acorns from a tree and lie independent on the ground.

You write: “”this is my body, which shall be delivered for you”. Do you really think it is the Church that is delivered? Neither have I ever heard the Church referred to as the “blood of the Lord”.”

Have you never heard the Church described as the BODY OF CHRIST? And do you not know that His flesh and blood was shed for all of us? As he discusses in the previous chapter, just as eating food sacrificed to idols identifies one with idols and demons, taking the Eucharist identifies us with Christ. We are one body in Christ - discern it, or God will judge you for the actions you take in church - which is what Chapter 11 is discussing, and that he continues to discuss in Chapters 12-14.

Annalex: What you preach is height of absurdity, all to obfuscate the truth of the scripture.

Mr Rogers: No, it connects the scripture before and after with the scripture in between...

With all due respect to both of you, I think you are beating a dead horse. The problem, of course, is in the emperor's (nonexisting) clothes and the fact that no one will admit the emperor is naked but pretend that everything is hunky dory. In other words, even thought NT books are at times incompatible with each other, no one will admit it (for obvious reasons).

It doesn't take a rocket (or in this case a Bible) scientist to realize that, on closer analysis, the Church used bits and pieces of the NT to formulate the doctrine (just as the heretics did), taking a little bit from here and a little bit from there, and discarding or ignoring those parts that did not "fit in."

It is equally clear that the Church did not formulate the Eucharistic practices based on Pauline epistles but on the Gospels, and given the inherent difference between the two trying to marry them by pretending everything is hunky dory is a lost cause.

It is equally clear that the Gospels present Jesus' body as something real, physical, edible and nutritious in the "real" or literal sense. Jesus calls his flesh "real food" and his blood "real drink" [cf John 6:55]. I mean, how much more literal does it have to get? Nowhere do the Gospels even hint at a "spiritual body" or "spiritual food." Jesus never thaught that.

It is Apostle Paul, not Jesus of the Gospels, who introduces the term "spiritual body" and the concept of a symbolic Eucharist. That's right, "spiritual body" is not to be found anywhere except in Pauline Epistles. It is yet another one of his (in)famous innovations.

Being that he is a Pharisee, I would imagine the idea of eating Jesus' flesh would have been equally revolting as it was for most of Jesus' early followers. He heard of the Last Supper and probably of the bread and fish story, and decided that for his Hellenized Jewish audiences a literal interpretation presented in the Gospels probably would have doomed his presnetation to an automatic failure. It also smacked way too much of pagan practices associated with idolatry which would be another reason to reject them form the start.

So, he reached for some Platonic tools to help him "digest" this better, since much of the character he created named Jesus Christ (rather than Jesus the Christ) already had many Platonic characteristics to begin with!

One of the reasons why Gnostics (especially Marcion) loved Paul so much (to the exclusion of practically all other NT writers!), is precisely because he favored the spiritual over corporeal. He spoke their language! Basically they believed the body was a filthy, carnal, sinful prison to which we are sent (as spirit) as punishment. Jesus and his body is pure, and heavenly, and only that which is spiritual is pure.

That was the thinking that led so many early Christians to reject Christ's body as "real" insisting it was only an illusion [this heresy is otherwise known as Docetism]. If it was an illusion, then he must have been a pure spirit who made himself only look and feel like flesh. In that case, eating his body made sense only if it was treated as spiritual food, and it was done "in the spirit" of his memory. After all, if God is spirit than he must be worshiped in spirit...[cf John 4:24]

For whatever reason, it is clear from surviving documents across the board that already by the end of the first century and especially in the second, the Christians did not receive the Eucharist as "spiritual food" but as Jesus' flesh and blood in the literal sense.

Thus, we have Ignatius of Antioch, at the turn of the century, writing to Smyrneans (all emphasis being mine):

"Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead."

Similarly, Justin Martyr writes in his First Apology (Ch 66, c. 150 AD):

"God's Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus."

Irenaeus, bets know for his relentless struggle against Gnostics, writes in the "Five Books on the Unmasking and Refutation of the Falsely Named Gnosis". Book 5:2, 2-3, circa 180 A.D:

"So then, if the mixed cup and the manufactured bread receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, that is to say, the Blood and Body of Christ, which fortify and build up the substance of our flesh, how can these people claim that the flesh is incapable of receiving God's gift of eternal life, when it is nourished by Christ's Blood and Body and is His member? As the blessed apostle says in his letter to the Ephesians, 'For we are members of His Body, of His flesh and of His bones' [note: Eph. 5:30]. He is not talking about some kind of 'spiritual' and 'invisible' man, 'for a spirit does not have flesh an bones' [note: Lk. 24:39].

Clearly, Pauline teaching to the contrary (i.e. "spiritual body" and "spiritual food") was fully rejected or, better yet, ignored.

While we don't know the exact reason why, we do know that the ex-pagan crowds that made up the bulk of early Christians by that time would not have been revolted by it. We also know that the Church was doing everything to "de-Judaize" itself and, more importantly, because the Church was engaged full time in resisting Gnostic influence (in general, and Marcionism in particular).

So, you are beating a dead horse. The Church cherry-picked what was needed to defend its beliefs and the Protestants cherry-pick theirs to defend theirs. The Gnostics cherry-picked Pauline and Johannine writings to support their beliefs, and Arians cherry-picked Synoptic Gospels to "prove" that Jesus was a "lesser" God, just as any other Christian group cherry-picks the Bible to "prove" its own man-made doctrine.

Different Churches, such as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, add books to the canon (i.e. Book of Enoch) to support its own flavor "orthodoxy" just as the early Christians accepted the OT deutercnaonical books based on LXX while the Protestants rejected them based on the MS. Of course, then we have the LDS, the Oneness Christians, the Messianic "Jews," and so forth, all claiming their the discern the truth...

This is all a man-made circus, cooked up in man-made religious kitchens, serving their own recipes for the potion of salvation. But keep in mind that too much spice can sometimes lead to indigestion and worse... :)