Gospel by Wilton Barnhardt Page A

hell!”
    Sister Marie-Berthe consoled him, “Yes, Father, but there’s still drink on the table.”
    Father Keegan, before taking off his coat, grabbed the decanter of port to the amusement of all and poured himself a glass prior to claiming his seat. “Aye, the bounty of God before us here. What’s in that bottle beside you, Paddy?”
    â€œBeaumes de Venise, Father,” said O’Hanrahan.
    â€œEy, scoot it over here, m’boy, and be quick about it!”
    The discussion recommenced after the father’s jolly display. If only the men in her family, thought Lucy, had an ounce of a sense of humor about their drinking. Often, Lucy had theorized, the sense of humor was the first thing to go in an Irish person once he or she got to America. The drinking and the religionizing certainly crossed the Atlantic undiminished, that’s for sure.
    â€œI’m telling you, Paul was not antiwomen until the Early Fathers of the Church made him so,” said Sister Marie-Berthe, still arguing. “And I’m sure Miss Dantan here would agree with me!”
    Lucy noticed O’Hanrahan was looking askance at her, sizing her up. “Excuse me, Dr. O’Hanrahan,” she mumbled, “I wasn’t listening. What was being discussed then?”
    â€œThe place of women in the Early Church,” he whispered back, stifling a yawn. “What has been discussed for the past hour, it seems. Damn feminism.”
    â€œWell, it could be argued,” began Dr. Abdullah, “that Paul knew next to nothing of Christ’s teaching or opinions. He celebrates a conceptual messiah rather than the Jesus that existed. He says himself he went away for three years to think it all over, and purposefully didn’t go to Jerusalem to talk to those who knew Jesus. Somewhere in the Romans Letter, We do not know how to pray as we ought —”
    â€œEight … 8:26,” said the archimandrite.
    â€œThink of it!” Dr. Abdullah continued politely. “Paul had not even heard of the Lord’s Prayer.”
    â€œIt is true that there are few direct quotes of Jesus in Paul,” conceded Dr. Gribbles, who had been quiet this evening since annoying Sister Marie-Berthe, and who, having demolished all breadscraps, seemed not to be able to eat enough crackers, having begged everyone else’s. “However, the gospels had not been written yet so what could Paul have read about Jesus? And in 1 Corinthians 11:24, he quotes Jesus at the Eucharist.”
    â€œThat’s open to a lot of questions,” said O’Hanrahan. “Paul quotes Jesus, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ Professor Jeremias back in the ’30s proved, quite convincingly, the words in this passage were too modern for Paul. And of course, none of the gospels includes ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’”
    A number of clerics, including Dr. Gribbles, scurried to their Bibles, momentarily unsure that the most familiar sentence of the Last Supper, the centerpiece of the Christian ceremony, was indeed absent in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
    â€œNow we know,” said O’Hanrahan, pleased with himself, “‘Do this in remembrance of me’ was inserted into some Lucan manuscripts, once the Church increasingly fell in love with the symbols of communion, which, like confession, made their way from Persia. So in the 100s, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ was inserted in some Lukes. But that suggests to me that it was also inserted at the same time into Paul, Dr. Whitestone. I’m not so sure Paul really knew about the Eucharist. I’m not even sure what Jesus may have thought of it, being principally antiritual.”
    The rabbi smiled. “ This is my body, which is for you, says Jesus except there is no Hebrew or Aramaic equivalent of ‘which is for you.’ Which means it was originally Greek, and not spoken at any rate by