Continuity and Change in Early Eucharistic Practice: Shifting Scholarly Perspectives

Abstract

As a result of the great advances that have been made in liturgical scholarship in the last few decades, we now know much less about early eucharistic worship than we once thought that we did. Indeed, it sometimes appears that if things keep on at their present rate, it is possible that we shall soon find that we know absolutely nothing at all; for a large part of what current research has achieved has been to demolish theories that had been built on unreliable foundations. As this paper will demonstrate, the older consensus that there had existed a large measure of continuity between the eucharistic practices of the various early Christian communities is slowly giving way to the acceptance that there are considerable gaps in our knowledge of the period, and that what evidence there is points more towards variety than towards uniformity of practice.