How did the earliest Christians experience “church”? This is something I’ve recently been interested in studying. After all, while the intellectual history and development of doctrine in the early Church is certainly important and interesting, that would have been above the pay grade of the average believer. For most Christians – as well as for the theologians and bishops who formulated doctrine – their faith was primarily encountered in the gathering as a community of faith to offer prayers and commune together. In this series of posts, I’ll do my best to reconstruct what this gathering would have looked like in the first through fourth centuries. [1]
As a disclaimer: even if we can know what “church” looked like in the first century, that doesn’t mean it’s an ideal to which we should return today. Just because something is more ancient does not mean that it’s more valid. Some aspects of early Church practice were accidental, prompted by the historical circumstances of the period, while others are indeed essential to the Church; it’s not possible to tell them apart without looking from the vantage point of a certain tradition. I strongly suspect that believers from every Christian tradition today would find both familiarity and foreignness if they walked into a first-century church gathering.
The Lord’s Banquet
St. Paul is our earliest witness to what Christian gatherings looked like. In his first letter to the church at Corinth, he writes that when they “come together as a church” it’s supposed to be to eat something called “the Lord’s banquet” (kyriakon deipnon; 1 Cor 11:18-20). From this very early stage, believers in Jesus connected their gatherings to a particular historical event in the life of Jesus of Nazareth: the banquet that he held “on the night he was betrayed” (1 Cor 11:23). Paul claims to have received this tradition from the Lord himself and handed it on to the Corinthians.
Each of the gospel accounts records Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. However, St. Luke is the only one to explicitly connect it with an ongoing practice. Here is his account:
Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover meal for us that we may eat it.” They asked him, “Where do you want us to make preparations for it?” “Listen,” he said to them, “when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him into the house he enters and say to the owner of the house, ‘The teacher asks you, “Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”’ He will show you a large room upstairs, already furnished. Make preparations for us there.” So they went and found everything as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover meal.
When the hour came, he took his place at the table, and the apostles with him. He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves, for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:7-20)
The fact that St. Luke (unlike St. Mark or St. Matthew) presents Jesus as saying, “Do this in remembrance of me,” implies that he is consciously modeling his account of the supper after the practices of his own community. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the other gospel writers didn’t have the same practice; Paul’s comments imply that this was universal among apostolic-era Christians. Therefore, the other accounts are also useful for our purposes. There are only a handful of differences between the synoptic gospels.
- Matthew only says that Jesus and the disciples will have the Passover meal at the (unnamed) man’s house, while Mark and Luke specify that they will be in the upstairs room for guests.
- Mark and Matthew place the discourse about the one who will betray Jesus before the blessing of the bread and the cup, whereas Luke places it after the blessing.
- Mark and Matthew describe the blessing of the bread followed by the cup, whereas Luke describes the blessing of a cup followed by the bread, then another cup “after the banquet.”
- Mark and Matthew both state that they sang “the hymn” after eating, which Luke does not record.
I don’t think that we can know whether these differences actually reflect differences in the practice of the gospel writers’ communities. However, as I’ll show below, there was a diversity of custom in the earliest church gatherings which seems to at least partially correspond to the differences between gospel accounts. There is a broad similarity between the synoptic accounts of the last supper: (1) it took place within a house (2) on the evening of Passover, (3) involving a blessing of the bread and cup (4) in which Jesus declared them to be “my body” and “my blood,” (5) with a discourse either preceding or following the blessing and (6) a hymn at the end (albeit not reported by Luke).
The Greco-Roman Supper
Let’s be clear: it would be completely wrong to look for “the Eucharist” in the first century, if we mean the ritual eating of a small piece of bread and sip of wine. Every single source from this period describes a full meal taking place when gathered together, which was in no way distinguished from the sacrament itself. St. Jude refers to this meal as the “love feast” (Jude 1:12), which was still used as a synonym for the Eucharist by St. Ignatius of Antioch in the early second century (Smyrn 8.2). When Luke-Acts refers to “breaking bread,” it likely indicates the same corporate meal (Luke 24:30; Acts 2:42, 46; 20:7, 11).
However, it would be just as much of a mistake to think that there was no ritual involved at all in the earliest church gatherings. In fact, banquets in the ancient Jewish and wider Greco-Roman world were very ritualized affairs. The ideal evening meal in classical Greece comprised two parts: a banquet (deipnon) followed by drinking and discourse (symposion). [2] The second stage was initiated by various rituals including a libation, pouring out a small amount of wine accompanied by prayer to a deity. [3] The host would arrange the guests, who reclined around a U-shaped table, according to their social rank; women and slaves were not invited. Although actual suppers often deviated from this structure, it was considered the ideal for several centuries. [4]
Jewish suppers were also ritualized in the ancient world, at least partially due to Hellenistic influence. In the early 2nd century BC, the book of Sirach (31:12-32:13) provides banquet etiquette along the lines of the classical Greek practice, including the invitations, the singular host/president, ranking guests according to social status, music, and the deipnon followed by symposion, although he warns against excessive luxury. [5]
The Greco-Roman supper also influenced later rabbinic practice, although with clear differences: the ideal meal consisted of three courses, each including a mixed cup of wine and water, with the ritual washing of hands (by servants) and benediction between each course; the prayer might be said by the host or by all of the participants, depending on the circumstance. [6] The rabbinic Passover liturgy, which crystallized in the late 3rd century AD, involves a first course (the deipnon) with the mixed cup, benediction, and meal, then a second course (the symposion) with another mixed cup, designated readings from Deuteronomy, Exodus, and the Psalms, followed by prayers of praise (and a third and fourth mixed cup). [7]
The evidence for Jewish meal practices in the first century is somewhat scantier. We know that the Pharisee sect advocated ritual hand washing before meals, which Christians apparently rejected (Matt 15:1-20; Mark 7:1-23). Our best evidence comes from the Essene sect at Qumran, which left us the Dead Sea Scrolls. Josephus reports that twice per day the members of the community would wash themselves ritually and put on linen garments, then come together to the dining room of an apartment and eat together. Both before and after the meal, the priest would recite a blessing, and the participants would praise God together (Wars II.129-133). The Community Rule at Qumran provides a similar description:
Wherever there are ten men of the Council of the Community there shall not lack a Priest among them. And they shall all sit before him according to their rank and shall be asked their counsel in all things in that order. And when the table has been prepared for eating, and the new wine for drinking, the Priest shall be the first to stretch out his hand to bless the first-fruits of the bread and new wine.
And where the ten are, there shall never lack a man among them who shall study the Law continually, day and night concerning the right conduct of a man with his companion. And Congratulation shall watch in community for a third of every night of the year, to read the book and to study Law and to pray together. (1QS 6.3-8)
This seems to correspond to the deipnon-symposion structure (meal followed by discourse), with seating “according to their rank” (cf. 6.8-9) and a blessing pronounced by a priest. It looks like there was also a discourse preceding the meal, however (they “shall be asked their counsel in all things in that order”), to which Josephus also alludes (Wars II.132). The rules governing this discourse are given in 1QS 6.9-13. The communal meal of the Essenes could only be participated after one year of being a member, and the communal drink after two years (6.16-23); certain infractions were punished by exclusion from the meal, from ten days to lifelong (6.24-7.24; cf. Wars II.143-145).
Philo of Alexandria (mid-1st century) describes the communal meals of the Therapeutae, another Jewish sect, contrasting them with both the Essenes and Greek banquets (Vit Cont 30-37, 64-89). According to his account, members of this sect would assemble once per week, especially every seven weeks, for their communal feast. They would begin by standing and praying with hands outstretched. Then both men and women would recline (on the right and left, respectively) on wooden boards and be served, not by slaves (because they had none), but by voluntary attendants. The “president” of the gathering would offer remarks, interpreting the Scriptures allegorically and/or answering a question posed by another. Then the members, beginning with the president, would sing hymns (all together chanting the refrains). After this, the attendants would bring in the meal itself, which was “all-holy” (panagestaton) leavened bread and pure water. Finally, the members would rise and form two choirs (male and female) to sing antiphonal (i.e., two-part) hymns throughout the night.
The basic structure of this feast, prayer → discourse → hymnody → bread and cup → hymnody, should be familiar to most Christians. This is the basic shape of the liturgy that is found in every Christian rite, both Eastern and Western. In fact, Christians in the fourth century and later found such familiarity here that they equated the Therapeutae with the earliest Christian ascetics (Eusebius, Church History II.17; Epiphanius, Panarion 29.5; Ps.-Dionysius, Church Hierarchy 6.1.3). If this is correct, then Philo is an incredibly valuable witness to the basic shape of the Christian liturgy before AD 50! However, there are chronological difficulties with equating the Therapeutae and early Christians. [8] Even so, this shows what a ritual meal looked like in another first-century Jewish sect.
Originally I had intended to reconstruct the details of a first-century church gathering in this post, but it started to get way too long! I will continue this study in my next post, and we'll look at when and where this gathering took place, who was there, what would have happened there, and why the earliest Christians felt it was important to gather for a meal in this way.
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[1] In studying this topic, there were a few books that I found very helpful (among other sources): Marcel Metzger, History of the Liturgy: The Major Stages (Liturgical Press, 1997); Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2002); Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Augsburg Fortress, 2003); Valeriy A. Aliykin, The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries (Brill, 2010); Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson, The Eucharistic Liturgies: Their Evolution and Interpretation (Liturgical Press, 2012).
I was inspired to try my hand at reconstructing an early Christian gathering, from an Orthodox perspective, by these reconstructions from Christians of other traditions: Steven Alspach and Daniel Alspach, “A First Century Liturgy,” posted 1 Feb 2021, by The Catholic Brothers, YouTube, 27:39, https://youtu.be/hect5BG02gU; Gavin Ortlund, “What Church Was Like in 150 AD,” posted 30 Mar 2026, by Truth Unites, YouTube, 38:01, https://youtu.be/6h9mkybHep0.
[2] Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, 1-46; Dennis E. Smith, “The Greco-Roman Banquet as Social Institution,” in Meals in the Early Christian World (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), 23-33.
[3] Although this exact structure was not always, or even typically, followed: Charles H. Cosgrove, “Banquet Ceremonies Involving Wine in the Greco-Roman World and Early Christianity,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 79, no. 2 (2017): 299-316.
[4] Smith, “The Greco-Roman Banquet as Social Institution,” 31-32.
[5] Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, 134-144.
[6] Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, 144-147, citing t. Ber. 4, 8, 98.
[7] Siegfried Stein, “The Influence of Symposia Literature on the Literary Form of the Pesaḥ Haggadah,” Journal of Jewish Studies 8, no. 1-2 (1957): 13-44; Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, 147-150.
[8] Philo died in ca. AD 50 or earlier, while the traditional date for the arrival of Christianity in Alexandria is in the early 40s or later. Even if we allow the maximum range, there would only have been a few years for the Christian community to become established and for Philo to take notice and write about them. This seems rather unlikely to me.
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