Skip to content
Home/ Breaking Bread: The Emergence of Eucharist and Agape in Early Christian Communities
Breaking Bread: The Emergence of Eucharist and Agape in Early Christian Communities

Breaking Bread: The Emergence of Eucharist and Agape in Early Christian Communities

by Stewart, Alistair C
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9780802883025

What's the difference between eucharist and agape? And how did each come to be?

The liturgies of early Christians are often obscure and variegated in the historical record. This is especially true of the eucharist, where the basic practice of communal eating is difficult to disentangle from other contemporary meals, whether Greco-Roman or Jewish practices--or the ill-defined agape meal.

In Breaking Bread, Alistair C. Stewart cuts through scholarly confusion about early Christian eating. Stewart pinpoints the split in agape and eucharist to the shift in celebrating the eucharist on Sunday morning, leading to the inception of agape as an evening meal. The former sought divine union, the latter, communal harmony. In the final chapter he explores a breadth of Syriac, Greek, and Latin primary sources on a variety of local eucharistic traditions, tracing their development into the familiar prayers and distribution of token amounts of bread and wine, which emerged in the third century.

Nuanced and well-researched, Breaking Bread clarifies the development of the blessed sacrament and its lesser-known counterpart. Theologians and historians of early Christianity will find Stewart's work foundational in approaching a topic of enduring scholarly interest but elusive consensus.

About the author

Product details

Pub dateJun 27, 2023
ISBN-100802883028
ISBN-139780802883025
LanguageEnglish
Last updated 2025-07-16 03:41
$34.95 $49.99 30% off
You save $15.04 · list price $49.99
In stock soon — order now to reserve your copy
Delivery by Monday, September 14, 2026
Qty
Sign in to Add to Saved list
Free delivery on orders over $35.
15-day returns. Any reason.
Secure checkout. We never store card details.

Readers who bought this also bought

More from Religion | Christian Rituals & Practice | Sacraments
See all
Biblical Doctrine of Infant Baptism: Sacrament of the Covenant of Grace (Revised)
Marcel, Pierre-Charles
$33.22
Biblical Doctrine of Infant Baptism: Sacrament of the Covenant of Grace
Marcel, Pierre-Charles
$142.95
Eucharistic Memorial, PT 1: Part I: The Old Testament
Thurian, Max
$131.97
Worship of the Reformed Church (Revised)
Barkley, John M
$38.71
Worship of the Reformed Church
Barkley, John M
$131.97
Water and the Word, Volume I: Baptism and the Education of the Clergy in the Carolingian Empire: A S
<p><em>Water and the Word</em> focuses on a genre of literature written for the education of the Carolingian clergy: Carolingian baptismal instructions. This literature has never been brought together and studied collectively in the context of the books in which it circulated. As a corpus, read in comparison to one another, the baptismal tracts tell how baptism was celebrated and interpreted across Carolingian Europe. At the same time, in their manuscript context, they are an important new source of information regarding the nature and the success of the Carolingian Reform to educate the clergy.</p><p>This comprehensive study has three major objectives. One is to describe the codices in which the baptismal instructions are found, in order to show what other kinds of material the baptismal tracts were associated with and to show where, how, and by whom these codices were intended to be used. Another is to bring together the baptismal texts and study them systematically. Finally, a third objective is to interpret the Carolingian Reform in light of the baptismal instructions and the manuscripts in which they were copied.</p><p>Volume 1 of this two-volume set is devoted to analysis and interpretation of the material in volume 2. It is divided into three parts. The first part is concerned with the manuscript context of the baptismal instructions. In the second, the baptismal expositions themselves are analyzed. Part 3 of volume 1 offers some conclusions about the Carolingian Reform. Volume 2 contains the Latin text of sixty-six manuscripts, as well as descriptions, introductions, and a topical survey of the contents of these manuscripts. In its broadest context this study is about the Christianization of Europe--not the superficial conversion of conquered peoples, but the slow replacement of one mindset with another that came about through the education of the people under the care of pastors.</p>
$57.36