Vincent Word Studies - 1 Corinthians 11:20 - 11:20

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com

Vincent Word Studies - 1 Corinthians 11:20 - 11:20


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

This is not (οὐκ ἔστιν)

Rev., correctly, it is not possible.

The Lord's Supper (κυριακὸν δεῖπνον)

The emphasis is on Lord's. Δεῖπνον supper, represented the principal meal of the day, answering to the late dinner. The Eucharist proper was originally celebrated as a private expression of devotion, and in connection with a common, daily meal, an agape or love-feast. In the apostolic period it was celebrated daily. The social and festive character of the meal grew largely out of the gentile institution of clubs or fraternities, which served as savings-banks, mutual-help societies, insurance offices, and which expressed and fostered the spirit of good-fellowship by common festive meals, usually in gardens, round an altar of sacrifice. The communion-meal of the first and second centuries exhibited this character in being a feast of contribution, to which each brought his own provision. It also perpetuated the Jewish practice of the college of priests for the temple-service dining at a common table on festivals or Sabbaths, and of the schools of the Pharisees in their ordinary life.

Indications of the blending of the eucharistic celebration with a common meal are found here, Act 2:42; Act 20:7, and more obscurely, Act 27:35.