The Anachronism of Jesus inviting the Jewish to drink the blood of the Son of Man

Abstract

Within the scene that contains an extended commentary on the Bread of Life (Jn 6.22-58) there is an obvious interpolation, which includes the invitation given by Jesus to the Jewish leaders to drink the blood of the Son of Man (6.53b-56a). At the point when the latter are deliberating how he could give them his flesh to eat (6.52), the four-fold reference to the blood is quite out of place in the Jewish context of this scene. And yet this interpolation must have arisen at an early date, having left its trace not only in the early papyri 66 (ca. 200) and 75 (3^rd cent.), but also in the uncial codices Vaticanus (4^th cent.) and Bezae (end of 4^th cent.). How the mention of the blood was introduced into the text can be deduced by comparing the variant readings of John 6. In the text in Codex Bezae and some Old Latin manuscripts (d a ff²), there is a repetition in v. 56b of Jesus’ saying concerning the bread, which follows almost word for word the saying of v. 53b but without any reference to the blood. This short logion of v. 56b (without vv. 53b-56a) can be supposed to represent the original text of John. At an early point in the development of the Church, when the Eucharistic celebration had been instituted and included the blood as well as the body of Jesus, the text would have been expanded to develop the saying by combining the mention of the body of Jesus with a reference to the blood. This expansion of vv. 53b-56a is attested by all known witnesses of John’s Gospel. At a later stage, because the repetitious short saying of v. 56b was redundant it would have been removed, leaving evidence of it only in Codex Bezae and the Vetus Latina witnesses listed above.