I did say that postings might be less frequent… Apart from the hassle of moving the library and myself from one country to another I have been busy re-learning the dark arts of New Testament criticism, re-remembering the intricacies of fifth-century christology, and figuring out the wonders of moodles and powerpoints (unknown when last I taught, but certainly helpful, if time-consuming, developments.)
However, conversations with a graduate student looking to write on trauma and the Gospel led me to read this review from RBECS.org which floated into my inbox this week: Sébastien Doane on Sarah Emanuel, Trauma Theory, Trauma Story: A Narration of Biblical Studies and the World of Trauma (Research Perspectives in Biblical Interpretation; Leiden: Brill, 2021).
I won’t be spending my precious post-colonial library budget on enriching a European publisher but particularly note the following from the review:
Dr. Emanuel offers an external, queer perspective on the intersection of trauma and the Eucharist (pp. 34–45), posing a crucial question: “How did the sacrament transition so drastically from trauma food to divine nourishment?” (p. 36). It rightly points out that much of Eucharistic theology has become disembodied, disconnected from the traumatic death of Jesus. The Eucharist, symbolizing the broken body of Jesus, bears the potential to address the brokenness within the body of Christ—the Church. This perspective challenges the prevalent notion of the “real presence” of the resurrected Christ in the Catholic Church, shedding light on Jesus’s own trauma and the trauma of those who partake in communion.
I do not have my copies of Breaking bread yet (there is no copy on the island) (Eerdmans please note) but memory, and a post below, perhaps suffice to suggest that the only eucharistic reference I can think of to broken bread in a liturgical context (before the fourth century, when the eucharist is becoming paschalized) is in Didache 9.4, where the broken and scattered bread is united. The Eucharist never, to my knowledge, symbolized the broken body of Jesus; indeed John 19:36 would suggest the contrary. I am aware of the hymn “Broken for me, broken for you, the body of Jesus broken…” but am not aware that it has entered the canon (indeed, I would, were I still a parish priest, tear out any page from a hymn book containing such a travesty.)
Admittedly there is a connection between paschal eucharistic meals (such as those represented in Mark 14 and Melito’s Peri Pascha) and the death of Jesus, but these are a) Annual eucharistic events, b) not disconnected from the resurrection and c) unconnected from the broken nature of the bread. And how the eucharistic event can be described as disembodied in the light of Ignatius Smyrn. 2 and Ignatius Smyrn. 7 (those who reject the eucharist are those who are disembodied) defeats me utterly. But then again perhaps a “queer perspective” has it’s old (OED) meaning of “strange, odd, peculiar… dubious.”