passion traditions reinterpreted Finally, if Luke had been the original composer of the shorter text,
would he have ended verse a as abruptly as it is now in D and others?
Is it not more probable that the abrupt ending in verse is due to a later
deletion where the narrative has not been reworked to the extent that
Luke did when he edited Mark’s gospel?
The longer reading (Luke :–) as it now stands in Sinaiticus, Vat-
icanus and others, is perfectly understandable as a balanced composition
where Luke has first (inspired by Mark :?), in verses :–, pre-
sented two identically formulated sayings about Jesus’ abstaining from
eating (7 μ2 1%γω)anddrinking(7 μ2 πω) before the arrival of the
kingdom of God. After this, Luke has presented the institution of the
Eucharistic bread and cup, both phrased mainly according to Pauline tra-
dition but slightly adjusted to fit in the Markan narrative. Notably, even
the beginning of the last verse of the shorter reading, the institution of
the bread in Luke :, echoes the Pauline tradition.^8 The shorter read-
ing leaves the institution of the Eucharistic cup orphaned, with no par-
allel to its key phrase of institution “this is” (ττ! στιν). The reader of
the shorter reading is tempted to look for the “institution” of the cup in
the preceding verses where Jesus—in conjunction with his words about
abstaining from wine—passes on the cup to his disciples. However, this
forms a poor pair with the institution of the bread since nothing of the
parallelism typical of all other liturgical traditions of the institution of the
Eucharist appears.^9 There is no “this is” sentence in connection with the
first cup because this section is actually phrased to pair with Jesus’ words
about refraining from eating. The clumsy construction of the shorter
reading is unlikely to have served any liturgical purpose. It is understand-
able only as a scribal correction which has not had any direct bearing on
liturgical practice.
However, it has not been very easy for the defenders of the longer
reading of Luke :– to find an explanation for the omission of
verses :b–. A scribe’s attempt to avoid unnecessary repetition
with the description of the cups is not convincing as an explanation
because repetition could have been avoided much more eloquently by
removing the first cup. Furthermore, assuming the deletion aims at
avoiding repetition, there seems to be no reason whatsoever to remove
(^8) ε76αριστ8σαςinstead ofε7λγ8σας,andλ%*ετεomitted.
(^9) Notably, evenDidache:–, which represents a totally different theological inter-
pretation of the Eucharist (more on this below), uses many identical phrases in the insti-
tution of its cup and bread.