The Last Supper

Also called: Lord’s Supper, Institution of the Eucharist

A story told in religious scripture.

A story told in the Gospels and in a letter of Paul in the New Testament: on the night before his arrest Jesus shared a last meal with the Twelve in Jerusalem, breaking bread as “my body” and raising the cup as “the new covenant in my blood”.

This is the story told in Matthew, Mark and Luke and in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11. Having come to Jerusalem for Passover, Jesus ate with the twelve disciples on the night before his arrest. He broke bread and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is for you,” and took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this in remembrance of me.” He foretold that one of them would betray him and that Peter would deny him three times before the cock crowed. After the meal Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives, where he was seized by men brought by Judas Iscariot.

The meal became the origin of Christianity’s central rite, the Eucharist (Mass, Holy Communion). The Cenacle, the “Upper Room” on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, is venerated as the place, though the present building dates from the Crusader period (12th–14th centuries). Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (1495–1498), painted on the refectory wall of a convent in Milan, is the most famous image of it.

Paul’s letter was written around AD 54, so it is historically attested that within some twenty-five years of Jesus’ death churches were already sharing bread and cup in memory of this meal. The details of that night, however, come from the stories of the believing community and cannot be checked independently. Matthew, Mark and Luke make it a Passover meal, while John places it the day before Passover, a difference that also bears on the date of the crucifixion.