By Luke Lancaster
Many non-Catholics do not recognize the Eucharist as a sacrifice. It is just a remembrance to them, like how shooting off fireworks on the Fourth of July is a remembrance of the American Revolution. One helpful way to correct this misunderstanding is to connect the Tamid sacrifice from the Old Testament to the Eucharist, along with Jesus’ ascension.
The Tamid sacrifice is briefly described in Exodus 29:38-43. That part of Scripture says that the high priest would sacrifice a lamb, some wine, and some bread on a fiery altar. Brant Pitre says the flour was baked into the shape of unleavened circular cakes, which already gives eucharistic overtones.
This Tamid sacrifice was considered the baseline and pinnacle of Jewish sacrificial worship. Gary Anderson says, “In the calendar of Israel’s festivals (Num. 28-29), the tamid is the baseline sacrifice to which all the additional festival sacrifices are added.” L. Michael Morales says, “All other offerings throughout the day were placed upon and constituted additions to the tamid ascension offering” (134). This was no random sacrifice, but one intimately familiar to the Jews.
There’s a rabbinic text from the Mishnah, “m. Tamid,” that gives a fuller description of how Jews offered the Tamid sacrifice (1.1-7.4, 582-589). Among the elements I want to highlight is how, during the Tamid, there was prostration, a priestly hand raising, a priestly blessing, a sacrifice, and a time for singing. Besides already giving eucharistic overtones, these elements connect to the Book of Sirach from the second century B.C., which provides us with an instance of the Tamid sacrifice helpful for this discussion.
Sirach describes the great and famous high priest Simon raising his hands and giving a blessing. The people bow down in worship and joy, or gladness (Sir. 50:20-21, 23). This implicitly refers to the Tamid sacrifice. Numerous arguments can be made for it, but due to space considerations, check out the works of biblical scholars like Fearghus Fearghail, M. Dennis Hamm, Curtis Mitch, and Scott Hahn.
Now, with Exodus 29, m. Tamid, and Sirach 50 in mind, let’s look at the Gospels. When Jesus ascends into heaven, he does so like the high priest during the Tamid sacrifice, per Dennis Hamm (215-231). Luke 24:50-53 says that Jesus lifts up his hands, blesses the apostles, and ascends into heaven. The apostles then worship him and return to Jerusalem with great joy, often visiting the temple. This language is comparable to the high priest in m. Tamid and Sirach 50.
Besides the obvious connection of Jesus raising his hands in blessing like the high priest in both texts, the theme of prostration is present. The apostles “worshiped” Christ (Luke 24:52), which probably involved prostration, like how either the priests (per m. Tamid) or the people (per Sir. 50) would prostrate themselves during the Tamid. The apostles are filled with “joy,” like how the Levites sang hymns (per m. Tamid) and the high priest prayed for gladness (per Sir. 50) during the Tamid. All of these things connect to Sirach 50, as Hamm notes, and commentators like “Deube, van Stempvoort, and Brown” do as well (218).
Now let’s look at the Last Supper discourse in Luke 22. The Tamid offered bread, wine, and a lamb. What does Jesus, the high priest of Luke 24, offer? Himself, the “lamb of God” (John 1:29). He is like the Tamid’s whole burnt offering of a lamb to God that ascends into heaven (Luke 24:51). Not only that, but at the Last Supper, Jesus “took bread, and . . . gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And likewise the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’” Jesus the priest turns bread and wine, which the priest of the Tamid sacrifice offered, into the Lamb, which the priest of the Tamid also offered. In fact, when Jesus took the bread, he “blessed” it (Matt. 26:26), which John Bergsma notes is a priestly action. Jesus’s body is “given” like a sacrifice. His blood is “poured out” like a sacrifice. The Last Supper of Jesus connects to the Tamid sacrifice.
Hamm brings out a lexical connection between the Tamid and the Eucharist. He points out how, when Jesus offers the Eucharist and says to do this in “remembrance” or “memorial of me,” that “this is temple-talk, cultic language” (227). The Tamid was a “memorial.” Exodus 30:16 uses that exact Greek word to describe it. That word is a cultic word for the temple, which was where the Tamid was celebrated. However, what sets the Tamid apart is the fact that it involved bread, wine, and a lamb, just like the Eucharist in the New Covenant. This leads Hamm to say,
Within Luke’s narrative, these words present Jesus as establishing a new ritual parallel to (and contrasting with?) other cultic memorials such as the Passover sacrifice (Luke’s immediate framework) and the daily Tamid service. Thus, Jesus’ death by crucifixion, a literal giving of his body and pouring out of his blood, is here interpreted as an act of worship, a new memorial (227).
The Tamid sacrifice memorial of bread, wine, and a lamb are mirrored with Jesus the Lamb’s memorial of bread, wine, and the bloody sacrifice on Calvary (Luke 23), which ultimately ends with Jesus’s priestly blessing and ascension into heaven (Luke 24).
There are four more connections to make between the Tamid and the Eucharist. The temple liturgy of a high priest offering the lamb sacrifice mirrors the terms utilized in the early Christian conception of the Eucharist. The first connection is how the Jewish priest would give wine to the lamb to be slaughtered from a golden chalice (m. Tamid, 3.4, 584). That sounds like Christ the Lamb of God drinking wine while on the cross of his sacrifice (Luke 23), or when Jesus offers his blood to drink under the appearance of wine at the Last Supper (Luke 22).
The second connection is how the Jewish priest would sacrifice the lamb while facing the east (4.1, 585), and the early Church, as St. Basil the Great in the 300s says, worshiped God in the Eucharist while facing east, called ad orientem (66).
The third connection is where m. Tamid says that, after the prostration, the Levites would sing (7.3, 589). This connects to the Last supper, where Jesus and the apostles “sang a hymn” (Matt. 26:30).
Finally, the fourth connection is that there are three priests who assist the high priest during the Tamid service (7.1, 588). This is similar to how Jesus chose 3 disciples, Peter, James, and John, to be his inner circle (i.e. Lk. 9:28, Matt. 26:37, etc.).
There are numerous connections between Jesus and the Tamid sacrifice. The high priest in m. Tamid raised his hands in blessing amid the joy of worship, just like Simon in Sirach 50 and Jesus in Luke 24. The Tamid sacrifice per Exodus 29 contained bread, wine, and a lamb, just like Jesus’ Last Supper meal in Luke 22. Both the Eucharist and the Tamid sacrifice were considered “memorials.” The numerous connections between the Tamid and Jesus point toward the conclusion that the Eucharist is a sacrifice.
Luke Lancaster received his B.A. in theology at Ave Maria University and is working on his M.A. in theology at the Augustine Institute.
"This supernatural bread and this consecrated chalice are for the health and salvation of mankind."
- St. Cyprian -