reconstruction of the words spoken,8 is the method that has yielded the

most fruit, especially through comparison with Jewish usages.

3) Not only are anaphoral texts compared with the Jewish sources;
they are also, and above all, compared among themselves, both in
order to determine the original form of the text and in order to draw
a kind of map or genealogical tree that shows the development of the
texts and their influences on one another. In this context I must men-
tion the names of Engberding, Botte, Lanne, and others.9
4) The application of the historico-critical method, instead of a pre-
dominantly theological method, has made it possible to achieve un-
expected results; in fact, this method, which has already been used to
good effect in biblical studies, makes it possible to demonstrate de-
tailed relationships between anaphoral texts seemingly remote from
each other. The historico-critical method should show whence a text
derives and what other texts it generates.10 It should also explain the
textual content of a Eucharistic Prayer, that is, whether it looks upon
the celebration as an act of obedience to Christ’s command, “Do this
in remembrance of me.”
This method is simply a particular application of a well-known
general principle: the interpretation of sources, including the theo-
logical interpretation, comes after the historico-critical study of these
sources. It seems right that theology should profit from the strict his-
torical method as applied to the liturgy, just as in the recent past it
profited from its application to biblical studies.

THE JEWISH SETTING OF THE CHRISTIAN EUCHARIST

In shedding light on the Christian Eucharist the Old Testament can be
used in several ways that are reducible to two different methods: the
typological method and the historical method. The typological method

  8
Cuming, “The Early Eucharistic Liturgies,” 65.
  9
For the works of these authors and for other studies space does not allow me
to cite, see my L’anafora eucaristica, 7–17, 363–87.
10
According to Jungmann, for example, the eucharist in the Didache cannot be
regarded as a sacrament because it lacks the formula of consecration; this is a theo-
logical approach to a historical problem, namely, whether the Didache has a place
in the historical genesis of the Eucharist that originated at the Last Supper. See
J. A. Jungmann, The Early Liturgy to the Time of Gregory the Great, trans. F. A. Brunner
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959) 35–6. For the various opin-
ions on the eucharist of the Didache see J. Ayán Calvo (ed.), Didaché, Doctrina apos-
tolorum. Epístola del Pseudo-Bernabé (Fuentes patrísticas 3; Madrid, 1992) 41–58.

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