What gives substance to this peculiar doctrinal structure is the imposing body of rites and ordinances that goes with it.77 Ritual and doctrinal elements are inextricably interwoven in a complex in which everything is oddly literal and all fit solidly together: The kerygma, whether above or below, is real and must have a “seal,” which is baptism, though the word is also used to designate rites of washing and anointing that go with it;78 after such rites the initiate receives a symbolic but real and tangible garment, 79 and then sits down to a sacral meal, a real repast celebrating the perfect unity of the participants with each other and with the Lord, who is present in spirit.
Recent findings indicate unusual emphasis placed on a perfect unity of the sexes in marriage ordinances which were real enough and secret enough to excite the scandalized speculations of outsiders and the fantastic imitation of the Gnostics.82 After all allowances have been made, there remains a definite residue of early Christian ritual that goes far beyond anything known to later Christianity, which admittedly got its liturgy from the synagogue and the Hellenistic world, while the rites just mentioned all look to the temple and belong to the instructions of the 40 days.
While the schools have their methods for dealing with unwelcome doctrines and traditions, the populace also has ways of absorbing and adapting teachings it does not understand, and the 40-day tradition left a bold imprint on vulgar Christianity. The fact that the Christian liturgy has always allowed a 40-day interval, and an important one, between the Resurrection and the Ascension is not to be lightly explained away,84 but it is the popular literature of the pseudo-Acts of the Apostles and the legends of the martyrs that most clearly indicate what was paramount in the teachings embraced by the newly converted masses of the age of Constantine.85 Here we have the monotonous repetition as one standard miracle, the raising of the dead, performed to demonstrate to a skeptical world the reality of the resurrection of Jesus.86 As the saint performs this miracle, or has it performed on him, Jesus himself stands by, now in his own person, now in that of the apostle, who is but his double or understudy.
Preparation; Washing the Disciples’ Feet
On the last night he has, he gets up from the table, takes off his outer clothes, ties a towel round himself and does the work of the lowest servant in the house, and then tells them that unless he does it, they have no part with him.
Note. The Joseph Smith Translation changes Peter’s objection from a refusal into a protest of modesty, and adds a line explaining the washing as an observance of the law.
? How to read this edition
The reading is the Joseph Smith Translation, in the text of the Covenant Christian Edition, carried beside each Gospel and set against the King James baseline. Headers give both numbering systems: the CCE chapter and verse, and the traditional KJV reference.
1Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end. 2And supper being ended, the Devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, 3Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and went to God, 4he rose from supper, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself.
5After he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded, 6then comes he to Simon Peter. And Peter says unto him, Lord, do you wash my feet? 7Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do, you do not know now, but you shall know hereafter. 8Peter says unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. You do not need to wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash you not, you have no part with me. 9Simon Peter says unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. 10Jesus says to him, He that is washed has washed his hands and his head needs not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. And you are clean, but not all. Now this was the custom of the Jews under their law; wherefore, Jesus did this that the law might be fulfilled, 11for he knew who should betray him. Therefore said he, you are not all clean.
12So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was seated again, he said unto them, Do you know what I have done to you? 13You call me Master, and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. 14If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet; 15for I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. 16Truly, truly I say unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord, neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. 17If you know these things, happy are you if you do them. 18I speak not of you all. I know whom I have chosen, but that the scripture may be fulfilled — He that eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me — 19now I tell you before it come, that when it has come to pass, you may believe that I am he the Christ. 20Truly, truly I say unto you, he that receives whomever I send receives me, and he that receives me receives him that sent me.
This We Have Not Done As Yet
The Ordinance of Washing of Feet
In November 1835, speaking to nine of the Twelve in Kirtland, Joseph Smith named one thing standing between the church and the blessings it was asking for, and it was this passage, treated not as a lesson in humility but as an instruction that had not yet been obeyed. The remarks are canonized in the Covenant Christian Edition as T&C 117.
Remarks of Joseph Smith to nine members of the Council of the Twelve, Kirtland, Ohio, 12 November 1835 · Joseph Smith, Journal, 1835–1836, pp. 31–33, in the handwriting of Warren Parrish · canonized as Teachings & Commandments 117 · Joseph Smith Papers ↗Also recorded in Teachings and Commandments 117:2–4, the Covenant Christian Edition’s text.
you want to know many things that are before you, that you may know how to prepare your selves for the great things that God is about to bring to pass; but there is on[e] great deficiency or obstruction, in the way that deprives us of the greater blessings, and in order to make the foundation of this church complete and permanent, we must remove this obstruction, which is to attend to certain duties that we have not as yet attended to; I supposed I had established this church on a permanent foundation when I went to the Missourie and indeed I did so, for if I had been taken away it would have been enough, but I yet live, and therefore God requires more at my hands:—
The item to which I wish the more particularly to call your attention to night is the ordinance of washing of feet, this we have not done as yet but it is necessary now as much as it was in the days of the Saviour, and we must have a place prepared, that we may attend to this ordinance, aside from the world; …
… we must have all things prepared and call our solem assembly as the Lord has commanded us, that we may be able to accomplish his great work: and it must be done in Gods own way, the house of the Lord must be prepared, and the solem assembly called and organized in it according to the order of the house of God and in it we must attend to the ordinance of washing of feet; it was never intended for any but official members, it is calculated to unite our hearts, that we may be one in feeling and sentiment and that our faith may be strong, so that satan cannot over throw us, nor have any power over us,—
the endowment you are so anxious about you cannot comprehend now, nor could Gabriel explain it to the understanding of your dark minds, but strive to be prepared in your hearts, be faithful in all things that when we meet in the solem assembly that is such as God shall name out of all the official members, will meet, and we must be clean evry whit, let us be faithful and silent brethren, and if God gives you a manifestation, keep it to yourselves, …
Washing, Anointing, a Garment, a Meal
Nibley’s survey of the earliest post-resurrection literature turns up the same short sequence again and again, in the same order, described as the substance of what was taught. Read it against this chapter: the washing is the first item on a list, not a gesture on its own.
Nobody would willingly invent such a depressing message or accept it without the highest credentials. The picture, though full of familiar elements from the earlier Jewish apocalypses, is not derived from them. The actors are not prophets and kings of other ages but the very men sitting before the Master; the predictions are not for distant ages but limited to a scope of two generations; 46 and what is described is not the fate of the world or even of Israel, nor titanic upheavals of nature, but the undoing of the Christian society by perverters and corrupters in its midst.47 The more grandiose imagery is not missing, but it is kept distinct from the story of the church, which is concrete, specific, and utterly gloomy.
All the 40-day teaching is described as very secret, delivered to a closed cult group.49 There is no desire to intrigue and mystify, however, as with the Gnostics, but rather the clearly stated policy that knowledge should be given always but only to those who ask for it,50 with the corollary that the higher and holier a teaching the more carefully it should be guarded. 51 As “the last and highest revelation,” the teaching of the 40 days was top secret, and has not come down to us.52 Since Irenaeus, churchmen have strenuously denied that there ever was a secret teaching or that anything really important has ever been lost.53 To profess otherwise would be perilously close to an admission of bankruptcy; yet Christian scholars do concede that the Apostles had information that we do not have,54 allow the existence of an unwritten Apostolic tradition in the church,55 and grant that there was a policy of secrecy in the early church—though insisting that it began with the catechetical schools.56 The catechists, however, appeal to a much earlier tradition of secrecy,57 and when the Fathers attempt to reproduce the unwritten tradition which they claim for the church they have nothing to offer but the commonplaces of the schools.58 Plainly things have been lost.
Nibley is describing the forty days after the resurrection, not this evening before it: the sequence he found is the risen Lord’s, and this is the last night of the mortal ministry. The order is what is worth noticing: washing first, and a meal at the end of it. That is also the order of this chapter and the next.
Thy Servant Jesus: The Didache and John’s Supper
The oldest Eucharistic prayer that survives outside the New Testament, in the Didache, has no words of institution and no Passover imagery at all. What it does have is the title John uses on this night: Jesus the Servant. Barker reads that prayer as evidence that John’s account of the supper, this chapter, was the formative one.
The same prayer appears elsewhere as the closing lines of a letter which give no indication of how it was understood (1 Cor.16.22 [1 Cor. 1:75]), but also at the close of an early Eucharistic prayer, possibly the earliest known outside the New Testament, a very significant context (Didache 10). This links the return of the LORD to the Eucharist. Other lines of the prayer are ambiguous: “Let this present world pass away”, for example, could imply either a literal understanding of the LORD’s return or the present transforming effect of the Eucharist. Maranatha in the Eucharist, however, must be the original epiklesis, praying for the coming of the LORD. The Didache prayer has no reference to the words of institution at the Last Supper and no Passover imagery. As implied in John’s account of the Last Supper (John 13.1-20 [John 9:1-3]), Jesus is “Thy Servant Jesus”, and thanks are offered for the knowledge, faith and everlasting life made known through him. The bread and wine are spiritual meat and drink (cf. John 6.25-58 [John 5:12-17]) which cause the Name to dwell in the hearts of those who have been fed. This could indicate that John’s understanding of the Eucharist was the formative influence here, and that it was his new understanding of Maranatha which led to its transformation into the Eucharistic epiklesis.
Barker’s reference to “John’s account of the Last Supper (John 13.1-20)” is this passage exactly: the washing, not the bread and cup. It is worth noticing what that implies: the earliest surviving prayer of the church is closer to the chapter where he washes their feet than to the chapter where he breaks the bread.