The Flesh Profiteth Nothing: How Communion Turned the Passover Upside Down

Scripture is quoted from the 1599 Geneva Bible with modernized spelling (words and word order unchanged), with the names Yahweh and Yashua restored throughout.

Every Sunday, and in many churches every day, millions of people line up to receive Communion. In the Catholic Church they're taught that the wafer and the wine are no longer bread and wine at all, but the actual body and blood of Yashua. Most Protestant churches back away from that claim, but they still keep a ritual meal on a church schedule that Scripture never gave.

This article asks a plain question: is that what Yashua meant at his last Passover? We'll look at what Yahweh said about blood, what Yashua said in John 6, what the Last Supper actually was, and how a Passover memorial turned into a priest's sacrifice on an altar.

Yahweh's law on blood never changed

The ban on eating blood is older than Moses. Yahweh gave it to Noah, and through Noah to every nation on earth:

"But flesh with the life thereof, I mean, with the blood thereof, shall ye not eat." (Genesis 9:4)

At Sinai he repeated it, and he made it binding on Israel and on the outsider living among them:

"Likewise whosoever he be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that eateth any blood, I will even set my face against that person that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people." (Leviticus 17:10)

He also gave the reason:

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it unto you to offer upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls: for this blood shall make an atonement for the soul." (Leviticus 17:11)

"For the life of all flesh is his blood, it is joined with his life: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it, shall be cut off." (Leviticus 17:14)

Blood belongs to Yahweh. It goes on the altar or onto the ground: "Only ye shall not eat the blood, but pour it upon the earth as water" (Deuteronomy 12:16). It never goes into a man's mouth.

Now look at what the apostles did after the cross. When non-Jewish believers began coming in, the council at Jerusalem sent them a short list of starting rules. One of them was blood:

"But that we send unto them, that they abstain themselves from filthiness of idols, and fornication, and that that is strangled, and from blood." (Acts 15:20)

They put it in the letter itself: "That is, that ye abstain from things offered to idols, and blood, and that that is strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well" (Acts 15:29). And they explained why the list could be so short: "For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, seeing he is read in the Synagogues every Sabbath day" (Acts 15:21). The new believers would keep learning the Torah every Sabbath.

These were the same men who sat at the table with Yashua when he said, "This is my blood." If they had understood him to mean they must drink real blood, they would never have written "abstain from blood" to the churches. The Torah was never done away with. Yashua said so himself: "Think not that I am come to destroy the Law, or the Prophets. I am not come to destroy them, but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17).

John 6: the hard saying

The chapter churches use most to defend a literal Communion is John 6. Start with the setting: "Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near" (John 6:4). Yashua had just fed five thousand people, and the crowd followed him for more bread. He told them plainly that they wanted lunch, not him: "ye seek me not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye ate of the loaves, and were filled" (John 6:26).

Then he told them what the real bread was:

"And Yashua said unto them, I am that bread of life: he that cometh to me, shall not hunger, and he that believeth in me, shall never thirst." (John 6:35)

Coming to him is eating. Believing in him is drinking. He said it again so nobody could miss it: "Verily, verily I say unto you, he that believeth in me, hath everlasting life" (John 6:47).

The crowd took him literally, just as people took him literally all through John's Gospel:

"Then the Jews strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Yashua said unto them, Verily, verily I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." (John 6:52–53)

Even many of his own followers were offended:

"Many therefore of his disciples (when they heard this) said, This is an hard saying: who can hear it?" (John 6:60)

So Yashua explained himself. This is the key to the whole chapter:

"But Yashua knowing in himself, that his disciples murmured at this, said unto them, Doth this offend you? What then if ye should see that Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, are spirit and life." (John 6:61–63)

He was about to go back up to heaven, so his body wouldn't be on earth for anyone to chew. The flesh profits nothing. His words are the spirit and the life. That fits Moses: "man liveth not by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of Yahweh" (Deuteronomy 8:3).

Some still walked away: "From that time, many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him" (John 6:66). Peter stayed, and look at what he said he was feeding on: "Master, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life" (John 6:68). Peter didn't say "you have the flesh we must eat." He said "you have the words."

A pattern all through John

John's Gospel keeps showing people who take Yashua's figures of speech literally and get them wrong:

• The temple. "Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up again" (John 2:19). The crowd thought he meant the building. John explains: "But he spake of the temple of his body" (John 2:21).
• Being born again. Nicodemus asked, "How can a man be born which is old? can he enter into his mother's womb again, and be born?" (John 3:4)
• Food. Yashua told his disciples, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of" (John 4:32). They asked each other, "Hath any man brought him meat?" (John 4:33). His answer: "My meat is that I may do the will of him that sent me, and finish his work" (John 4:34).

He did the same with bread in another Gospel. He warned, "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees" (Matthew 16:6). The disciples thought he was talking about bread, until it clicked: "Then understood they that he had not said that they should beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees, and Sadducees" (Matthew 16:12).

He also said "I am that door" (John 10:9) and "I am that true vine" (John 15:1). No church teaches that he's made of wood or grapevine.

An early church father agreed

This isn't just a modern Protestant reading. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo who died in 430, used John 6:53 as his example of how to spot a figure of speech. His rule: if a saying seems to command a crime, it's figurative. Of eating the Son's flesh and drinking his blood, he wrote: "This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure." He said it means sharing in Yashua's sufferings and keeping a grateful memory that his flesh was "wounded and crucified for us" (On Christian Doctrine 3.16.24).

Early in the 200s, Tertullian, writing against the heretic Marcion, explained the words at the Last Supper this way: "This is my body, that is, the figure of my body" (Against Marcion 4.40). Neither one settles the whole question alone, but each of them read these words as a figure.

In Scripture, eating someone's flesh is a curse

When Scripture uses the language of eating a man's flesh, it isn't communion. It's the language of enemies and judgment. David wrote: "When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes came upon me to eat up my flesh; they stumbled and fell" (Psalms 27:2). Micah charged Israel's rulers: "they eat also the flesh of my people" (Micah 3:3). And eating human flesh is one of the curses of the broken covenant: "And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye devour" (Leviticus 26:29).

The early believers knew how it sounded to outsiders. Around 177, Athenagoras wrote to the emperor that the Christians were accused of three things: "atheism, Thyestean feasts, Œdipodean intercourse" (A Plea for the Christians, ch. 3). In Greek myth, Thyestes was tricked into eating his own sons. Athenagoras was denying the charge, and nobody should believe the old slanders. But it shows that talk of eating flesh and drinking blood sounded to the ancient world like cannibalism, not worship of the Creator who banned blood.

The Last Supper was a Passover

What happened at the Last Supper? The Gospels say it plainly: it was a Passover meal.

"Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the Passover must be sacrificed. And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the Passover, that we may eat it." (Luke 22:7–8)

"Then he said unto them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you, before I suffer. For I say unto you, Henceforth I will not eat of it any more, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of Yahweh." (Luke 22:15–16)

Then, at that Passover table:

"And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you: do this in the remembrance of me. Likewise also after supper he took the cup, saying, This cup is that new Testament in my blood, which is shed for you." (Luke 22:19–20)

Look at his words closely. "This cup is that new Testament." Nobody thinks the cup was literally a covenant. It's a sign of the covenant, the same way the bread is a sign of his body. And in Matthew, right after "this is my blood," Yashua still calls what's in the cup wine:

"I say unto you, that I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day, when I shall drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." (Matthew 26:29)

Paul does the same. After giving the words of the Supper, he keeps calling it bread: "For as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye show Yashua's death till he come" (1 Corinthians 11:26).

Where scholars disagree: John's Gospel places the trial on the day before Passover. The leaders wouldn't enter the hall "that they might eat the Passover" (John 18:28), and the crucifixion falls on "the Preparation of the Passover" (John 19:14). Because of this, scholars still debate whether the Last Supper was the Passover meal itself or a meal the night before. Matthew, Mark and Luke call it the Passover, and Britannica describes it as "a traditional Passover seder" (Britannica, "Eucharist"). Either way, Yashua chose Passover week, and he died as the Passover Lamb: "for Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Corinthians 5:7).

"Do this in remembrance": the Passover was already a memorial

When Yashua said "do this in the remembrance of me," he wasn't inventing a new ritual. Passover was already Yahweh's appointed memorial:

"And this day shall be unto you a remembrance: and ye shall keep it an holy feast unto Yahweh, throughout your generations: ye shall keep it holy by an ordinance for ever." (Exodus 12:14)

It was a family meal in the home, not a priest's ceremony: "let every man take unto him a lamb, according to the house of the fathers, a lamb for an house" (Exodus 12:3). And the children were supposed to ask what it meant:

"And when your children ask you, What service is this ye keep? Then ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of Yahweh's Passover, which passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and preserved our houses." (Exodus 12:26–27)

Notice what happened to the lamb's blood in Egypt. Nobody drank it. It went on the door: "they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two posts, and on the upper door post of the houses where they shall eat it" (Exodus 12:7). Yahweh said, "when I see the blood, I will pass over you" (Exodus 12:13). The blood was a sign on the house. It was never a drink.

Yashua fulfilled Passover. He didn't cancel it. At that table he took the bread and the cup of a feast Yahweh called "an ordinance for ever," and he showed his disciples that it pointed to him.

How the memorial became a sacrifice

Here's how the inversion happened, step by step.

The 100s. Around 150, Justin Martyr wrote in Rome that "not as common bread and common drink do we receive these," and that the blessed food "is the flesh and blood of that Yashua who was made flesh" (First Apology, ch. 66). To be fair, that shows strong realistic language about the bread and cup very early. Justin didn't use the later word "transubstantiation," and Britannica notes that the presence has been "variously interpreted in actual, figurative, or symbolic senses" over the centuries (Britannica, "Eucharist"). Britannica also says the rite started as a real shared meal, the meal "became vestigial and was finally abandoned" in the late 2nd century, and by the 4th century it was celebrated daily (same source). That matches what Paul describes in Corinth, where believers still ate a full supper together (1 Corinthians 11:20–22, 33–34).

The 800s–1000s: the fight. In the 800s, two men of the same French abbey, Corbie, wrote opposite books. Abbot Paschasius Radbertus taught that the bread and wine became the real body and blood. Around 850, one of his own monks, Ratramnus, answered that they were "mystic symbols commemorative" of the body and blood, changed "only symbolically." His book was later ordered destroyed (1050), and from 1559 until 1900 it sat on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books (Britannica, "Ratramnus").

In the 1000s, Berengar of Tours took Ratramnus's side. He argued that the literal view was contrary to "the Scriptures, the Church Fathers, and reason." He was excommunicated, condemned at council after council, and jailed for a time (Britannica, "Berengar of Tours"). In 1059 he was forced to swear an oath that the bread and wine on the altar are "physically [sensualiter] touched and broken by the hands of the priests and crushed by the teeth of the faithful, not only in a sign [sacramento] but in truth." Even later Catholic theologians were embarrassed by how crude it was (Encyclopedia of Religion, "Berengar of Tours," via Encyclopedia.com).

1215: it becomes official. The Fourth Lateran Council, called by Pope Innocent III, declared that the body and blood "are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in substance, by Yahweh's power, into his body and blood." The Latin is transsubstantiatis, the word that became "transubstantiation." The same canon adds: "Nobody can effect this sacrament except a priest who has been properly ordained" (Lateran IV, Canon 1, Papal Encyclicals Online). Britannica says the doctrine was first called "transubstantiation" in the 12th century (Britannica, "transubstantiation").

1551 and 1562: Trent locks it in with curses. Answering the Reformers, the Council of Trent declared on October 11, 1551 that the consecration makes "a conversion ... of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body," and "of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood," which the Church "suitably and properly" calls Transubstantiation. Then it cursed anyone who reads Yashua's words the way John 6:63 does:

• "If any one saith, that Christ, given in the Eucharist, is eaten spiritually only, and not also sacramentally and really; let him be anathema." (Session XIII, Canon VIII)
• Canon VI says the sacrament is to be adored "with the worship, even external of latria," the worship owed to the Creator alone, and it pronounces anathema on anyone who says "that the adorers thereof are idolators."

On September 17, 1562, Trent added that the Mass is a "propitiatory sacrifice," a real sacrifice for sins to be offered "for the living and the dead," and cursed anyone who says it is "a bare commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross" (Session XXII, Canon III). All of these come from the Waterworth translation of Session XIII and Session XXII, Hanover Historical Texts Project.

Today. The official Catechism of the Catholic Church still quotes Trent's definition of transubstantiation (§1376). It teaches that the sacrifice on the cross and the Eucharist "are one single sacrifice" (§1367), and that the Church offers the consecrated hosts "the cult of adoration," "exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession" (§1378) (vatican.va).

The inversion, side by side

Put Scripture next to the council decrees and you can see how much got turned around:

• Blood. Yahweh said blood goes on the altar or the ground and must never be eaten (Leviticus 17:10–14), and the apostles told the churches to "abstain themselves ... from blood" (Acts 15:20). The Mass teaches people that they drink real blood.
• Once, or every day. Scripture says Yashua's sacrifice was finished once for all. He "needeth not daily as those high Priests to offer up sacrifice ... for that did he once, when he offered up himself" (Hebrews 7:27). "We are sanctified, even by the offering of the body of Yashua Christ once made" (Hebrews 10:10). "And every Priest standeth daily ministering, and oft times offereth one manner of offering, which can never take away sins: But this man after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, sitteth for ever at the right hand of Yahweh" (Hebrews 10:11–12). "Now where remission of these things is, there is no more offering for sin" (Hebrews 10:18). Trent made a daily sacrifice on an altar, called it "propitiatory," and cursed anyone who calls it just a memorial.
• Home, or a priest. Passover was "a lamb for an house" (Exodus 12:3), led by the father. Lateran IV says nobody can perform the sacrament "except a priest."
• Yahweh's calendar, or the church's. Passover is "the fourteenth day of the month at evening" (Leviticus 23:5), once a year, "by an ordinance for ever" (Exodus 12:14). The church's rite moved to Sundays, then to every day.
• Remembering, or worshipping an object. "Do this in the remembrance of me" became bowing down to bread and carrying it in processions. The second commandment says of any made thing: "Thou shalt not bow down to them, neither serve them" (Exodus 20:5). Trent cursed anyone who calls that idolatry.

Yashua warned the religious leaders of his day: "Well, ye reject the commandment of Yahweh, that ye may observe your own tradition" (Mark 7:9).

What about Mithras?

People online often say Communion was copied from pagan mystery religions. The real record is more careful than that, so here it is straight.

The church fathers themselves noticed a resemblance. Right after describing the Christian rite, Justin Martyr wrote that "the wicked devils have imitated" it "in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn" (First Apology, ch. 66). Around 200, Tertullian said that Mithras "celebrates also the oblation of bread" (Prescription Against Heretics, ch. 40).

Mithraism was a Roman cult popular with soldiers and imperial officials. It flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and faded after Constantine (Britannica, "Mithraism"). Mithraists did hold regular ritual meals on benches in their underground temples. Their meal reenacted a feast of Mithras and the Sun god after the killing of a bull (Roger Beck, "Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras," Journal of Roman Studies 90, 2000).

Where scholars disagree: Most specialists today don't think either religion copied the other. Beck agrees with the scholar J. P. Kane that the bread and water Justin mentions was a rite of initiation, separate from the cult meal (same article). Gary Lease concluded that the surviving evidence does "not bear out a direct influence of one religion upon the other" (Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II, p. 1328, quoted at tertullian.org). And Roman Mithraism barely shows up in the record before the 2nd century, around the same time as the church (Britannica). So nobody can honestly say "Communion came from Mithras."

The fair conclusion is narrower, and still damning. By the 2nd century, the church's sacred meal looked enough like a pagan mystery rite that its own defenders had to explain the resemblance. They blamed demons for copying it. Passover, the feast Yashua actually kept, never needed that explanation.

The strongest case on the other side

To be fair, here's the best argument for a literal reading: Yashua said "this is my body" and "this is my blood," and he didn't add "this represents." The earliest writers after the apostles, like Justin, used strong realistic language too.

But Yashua talked this way all the time: "I am that door," "I am that true vine," "This cup is that new Testament." He spoke at a Passover table, where every item stood for something else. The unleavened bread was "the bread of tribulation" (Deuteronomy 16:3), and the lamb stood for the deliverance from Egypt. He had just finished saying "the flesh profiteth nothing" in John 6. He still called the cup "this fruit of the vine" after blessing it. And his own apostles went on to forbid blood to every believer. A literal reading has to argue against all of that.

So what should we do?

Yashua didn't hand his followers a new sacrament to replace his Father's feast. He kept the Passover, fulfilled it, and told us to remember him when we keep it.

"Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened: for Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither in the leaven of maliciousness and wickedness: but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." (1 Corinthians 5:7–8)

"Let us keep the feast." Paul wrote that to a mostly non-Jewish church.

• Keep Passover on Yahweh's date, the 14th of the first month at evening. (Our feasts article has the 2027 dates.)
• Keep it at home, with your family. Read Exodus 12 and Luke 22 aloud. Let the kids ask, "What service is this ye keep?"
• Eat unleavened bread and share the fruit of the vine, the way Yashua did, as a remembrance and not as a sacrifice. His sacrifice was "once made" and it is finished.
• Feed on his words. "The words that I speak unto you, are spirit and life" (John 6:63).
• Don't let anyone put a priest between you and him. No one else has to make him present for you. He's at the right hand of Yahweh, and he's coming back.

Councils voted and pronounced curses, and bread got lifted up and worshipped. But Yahweh's Passover is "an ordinance for ever," and the Lamb was offered once. What Rome added to the Passover table is not final.

Sources

Early church writers - Justin Martyr, First Apology, ch. 66 (c. 150): newadvent.org - Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, ch. 3 (c. 177): newadvent.org - Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.40: newadvent.org - Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics, ch. 40: newadvent.org - Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 3.16.24: newadvent.org

Councils and catechism - Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Canon 1, tr. Norman Tanner: papalencyclicals.net - Council of Trent, Session XIII (Oct. 11, 1551), tr. J. Waterworth (1848): Hanover Historical Texts Project - Council of Trent, Session XXII (Sept. 17, 1562), tr. J. Waterworth (1848): Hanover Historical Texts Project - Catechism of the Catholic Church §§1367, 1374–1378: vatican.va - Oath imposed on Berengar of Tours, Roman synod of 1059, quoted in Encyclopedia of Religion, "Berengar of Tours": encyclopedia.com

Reference and scholarship - Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Eucharist", "transubstantiation", "Ratramnus", "Berengar of Tours", "Mithraism" (Reinhold Merkelbach) - Roger Beck, "Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel," Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000): doi.org/10.2307/300205 - Gary Lease, "Mithraism and Christianity," ANRW II, p. 1328, quoted in Roger Pearse, "Mithras and Christianity": tertullian.org