Jesus - The Bread and The Wine

It seems that this is an area where many Christians feel it is fine to deviate from scripture. I was at a house group meeting many years ago where it was suggested that it is perfectly acceptable to use a biscuit and a cup of tea rather than bread and wine. I have even heard of a person who used jelly babies instead of bread!

Jesus used bread and wine. They would have been products that were commonly available at the time.

I believe it is perfectly acceptable to use bread and wine that is commonly available today. However I do believe they should be products that are universally accepted as being bread and wine.

I do not agree with the practice of many churches that are using fruit juice instead of wine. Wine is fermented fruit juice. Putting anything other than fermented fruit juice into a bottle and labelling it "communion wine" does not change it into wine.

The bread that Jesus used was unleaven. Unleaven bread was used regularly through the Roman empire and was very similar to what we know as pitta bread. Pitta breads are the ready made product that is closest to the bread that was most likely used by Jesus. However, modern Pitta breads do contain yeast so are not unleaven. If you would like to break something more authentic you would have to make your own unleaven pitta breads. This is a very simple.

Here is one possible recipe;

Wholemeal Flour (one cup per standard sized pitta)
Water.
Olive oil (one tablespoon per standard sized pitta) - this is optional *
Salt (to taste) - this is optional

Put the flour into a large mixing bowl
Add the salt (if required)
Stir in the olive oil (if required)
Gradually add small amounts of water stiring until the ingredients form into a dough.
Stop adding water before the ingredients become sticky.
Shape the dough into flat ovals or circles.
Place onto a floured baking tray.
Put into the oven on a medium heat and cook until a crust forms.
Lightly brown under the grill if required.

* Olive oil was widely used at the time of Jesus and it is more than just possible that people would have added it to bread. Adding olive oil to this recipe makes the finished product less dry.

The wine that Jesus used would have been red (only the very rich could afford white wine). It was made from fermented grape mush. The wines that poor people used were made from the remnants of the first pressing. The wine would therefore be weak and full of tannings. Any bottle of wine that you buy today will be far superior to that used by Jesus. In roman times it was usual practice to water down even the best of wines. The wine that Jesus used would most likely have been watered down. In fact, it would probably have been too ghastly to drink had it not been watered down.

If you buy the cheapest bottle of red wine, and mix it with 1 part water to 1 part wine, you will have a wine far superior but probably as close as you can get to what Jesus used.

The other alternative is to make your own wine, but this is far beyond my area of knowledge.