The Last Supper Traditions of the New Testament in the Ancient Church

该项目考察了从二世纪到四世纪的古代教会文献中对新约最后晚餐传统的接受，特别是所谓的“制度之词”。指导性的启发式假设是，古代教会对“最后的晚餐”传统的接受，绝不局限于圣餐的参考：并不是每一个对这些文本的求助，都在功能上指向膳食神学或圣餐仪式。除了“圣餐”的使用，我们还发现了无数其他的主题综合体，这些主题综合体利用了“最后的晚餐”的传统，并以不同的方式改编了这些文本，例如教会和基督论的话语，伦理和父母的背景，反异端或护教的辩论，等等。在众多的来源，“圣体”的背景已经预设，要么没有足够的理由或在一个无差别的方式。这阻碍了我们对构成古代教会接受最后的晚餐传统的各种语义潜力的看法。因此，这个项目的目标是打开接待的多样性，并系统地绘制它。在这样的背景下，该项目打算书写古代教堂中最后的晚餐传统的语义潜力发展的历史，特别是关于它们与圣餐仪式的关系。因此，项目设计有两个方面：(1)通过数字文本语料库“挖掘”研究数据，并使用纯词汇启发式方法，可以以广泛而精确的方式访问源材料。作为收集和系统组织资源的工具，该项目使用数字数据库，允许在数据收集和理论发展之间的递归来回有效地评估和处理数据。研究数据库将供以后使用。(2)该项目的核心是对古代教堂中最后的晚餐传统的语义潜力的接受史研究，该研究建立在(1)中描述的广泛研究数据的基础上。本研究旨在通过对古代教会不同话语的关联和系统化，全面了解各种语义势及其形成。由于比教条主义或仪式历史的问题要广泛得多，这种接受有望涵盖尚未在其多元性和深度上得到承认的主题领域。因此，从综合的角度来看，该研究提出了最后的晚餐传统在2世纪和4世纪之间的神学地位问题。在古代晚期礼拜仪式形成之前，因此试图克服新约和古代晚期膳食神学之间的中心愿望。

The project examines the reception of the New Testament Last Supper traditions, particularly of the so called “words of institution”, in the literature of the ancient church from the second up into the fourth century.The guiding heuristic assumption is that the ancient church’s reception of the Last Supper traditions was in no way restricted to references to the Eucharist: not every recourse to these texts is functionally oriented towards meal theology or the ritual of the Eucharist. Besides “eucharistic” uses, we find countless other thematic complexes that make use of the Last Supper traditions and to which these texts are adapted in different ways, e. g. ecclesiological and Christological discourses, ethical and parenetic contexts, antiheretical or apologetical debates, and many others. In numerous sources, the “eucharistic” backdrop has been presupposed either without sufficient reasoning or in an undifferentiated manner. This has obstructed our view of the diverse semantic potentials that is constitutive of the reception of the Last Supper tradition in the ancient church. Hence, the objective of this project is to lay open the diversity of the reception and to chart it systematically. Against this backdrop, the project intends to write a history of the development of the semantic potential of the Last Supper traditions in the ancient church especially regarding their relation to the ritual of the Eucharist. The project design, therefore, has two aspects:(1) The research data is “mined” via digital text corpora and by using a purely lexical heuristic approach that can access the source material in a broad yet precise way. As a tool for collecting and systematically organizing the sources, the project uses a digital database that allows for the efficient evaluation and processing of the data in a recursive back and forth between data collection and theory development. The research database will be available for subsequent use.(2) The project’s centerpiece is a history of reception study on the semantic potentials of the Last Supper traditions in the ancient church that is building upon the broad collection of research data described under (1). This study aims at a comprehensive understanding of the various semantic potentials and their formation by correlating them with different discourses in the ancient church and systematizing them. Being much broader than questions of dogmatic or ritual history, the reception is expected to cover thematic fields that have not yet been recognized in their plurality and depth. From a synthetic perspective, the study poses, thus, the question of the theological place of the Last Supper tradition between the 2nd and 4th centuries—i.e. before the formation of the liturgies of Late antiquity—and so tries to overcome a central desideratum between New Testament and Late ancient meal theology.