I would argue that the Jews understood the bread of life as the bread that came down from heaven and fed them in the desert..manna.
What was the complaint in the
desert? They were hungry and thirsty.They thought they were going to die in the desert , what did Jesus say?
Jhn 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
Jhn 6:33 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.
Jesus identifes himself with the manna...and in effect says He is the manna Jhn 6:51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
Peter saw the3 analogy and the spiritual truth that Jesus was teaching ...He understood that Jesus was the manna and jesus was the rock from wich life giving waters flowed..
1Pe 2:4 To whom coming, [as unto] a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, [and] precious,
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Jesus spoke it very plainly to the Jews
Read it as they heard it
Jhn 6:31 Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.
Jhn 6:32 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.
Jhn 6:33 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.
Jhn 6:34 Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.
Jhn 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
Jhn 6:36 But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not.
Jhn 6:37 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
Jhn 6:38 For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
Jhn 6:39 And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.
Jhn 6:40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Jhn 6:41 The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven.
They understood that Jesus was comparing Himself to the manna..How could that be?
Melchizedek was a type of Christ A man, called and he offered sacrifices. He was a prophetic look at Christ.
How could Christ have "instituted" the "mass" at the last supper when your own liturture calls it the "unbloody "sacrifice of Calvery"
There was no Calvery at that time..there was no Bloody sacrifice at that time..
An unbloody sacrifice is not pleasing to God..ask Cain!
Yes, He did.
Twelve times he said he was the bread that came down from heaven; four times he said they would have "to eat my flesh and drink my blood." John 6 was an extended promise of what would be instituted at the Last Supper—and it was a promise that could not be more explicit.
Protestants say that in John 6 Jesus was not talking about physical food and drink, but about spiritual food and drink. You quote John 6:35: "Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.’" You claim that coming to him is bread, having faith in him is drink. Thus, eating his flesh and blood merely means believing in Christ.
But there is a problem with that interpretation. As Fr. John A. O’Brien explains, "The phrase ‘to eat the flesh and drink the blood,’ when used figuratively among the Jews, as among the Arabs of today, meant to inflict upon a person some serious injury, especially by calumny or by false accusation. To interpret the phrase figuratively then would be to make our Lord promise life everlasting to the culprit for slandering and hating him, which would reduce the whole passage to utter nonsense" (O’Brien, The Faith of Millions, 215). For an example of this use, see Micah 3:3.
For Fundamentalist writers, the scriptural argument is capped by an appeal to John 6:63: "It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." They say this means that eating real flesh is a waste. But does this make sense?
Are we to understand that Christ had just commanded his disciples to eat his flesh, then said their doing so would be pointless? Is that what "the flesh is of no avail" means? "Eat my flesh, but you’ll find it’s a waste of time"—is that what He was saying? Hardly. The fact is that Christ’s flesh avails much! If it were of no avail, then the Son of God incarnated for no reason, he died for no reason, and he rose from the dead for no reason. Christ’s flesh profits us more than anyone else’s in the world. If it profits us nothing, so that the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ are of no avail, then "your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished" (1 Cor. 15:17b–18).
In John 6:63 "flesh profits nothing" refers to mankind’s inclination to think using only what their natural human reason would tell them rather than what God would tell them. Thus in John 8:15–16 Jesus tells his opponents: "You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone that judge, but I and he who sent me." So natural human judgment, unaided by God’s grace, is unreliable; but God’s judgment is always true.
And were the disciples to understand the line "The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life" as nothing but a circumlocution (and a very clumsy one at that) for "symbolic"? No one can come up with such interpretations unless he first holds to the Fundamentalist position and thinks it necessary to find a rationale, no matter how forced, for evading the Catholic interpretation. In John 6:63 "flesh" does not refer to Christ’s own flesh—the context makes this clear—but to mankind’s inclination to think on a natural, human level. "The words I have spoken to you are spirit" does not mean "What I have just said is symbolic." The word "spirit" is never used that way in the Bible. The line means that what Christ has said will be understood only through faith; only by the power of the Spirit and the drawing of the Father (cf. John 6:37, 44–45, 65).