Showing posts with label Upper Room. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Upper Room. Show all posts

Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Minor, Trivial Biblical Stuff, Part 4: The Upper-Room

And He said to them, "Behold, when you have entered into the city, there shall meet you a man, carrying a jar of water. Follow him to the house that he enters, and you shall say to the householder of the house, 'The Teacher says to you, "Where is the guest-room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?"' And he shall show you a large upper-room, furnished; there make ready."

-Luke 22:10-12
The Last Supper, one of the most important events in the life of Christ wherein He instituted the Eucharist, was held in an anagaion (anything that is above ground; traditionally rendered and understood as "upper-'room'"). Now we wonder: what could this upper-room be? First, let's check how houses looked like in the 1st century.

First and foremost, we must remember that one traditional candidate for the site, known as the Cenacle, as it stands today, only reached its present form around the medieval period (there is still some debate as to exactly when), after experiencing numerous cycles of destruction and reconstruction. So, it's rather unlikely that Jesus and His disciples held their last meal in a wide, spacious Gothic room such as this - supposing that this is the actual site. The area would have looked totally different in the 1st century AD.