Origin of the Eucharist Origin of the Eucharist Church teaching places the origin of the Eucharist in the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples, at which he is believed to have taken bread and given it to his disciples, telling them to eat of it, because it was his body, and to have taken a cup and given it to his disciples, telling them to drink of it because it was the cup of the covenant in his blood. The earliest extant written account of a Christian "eucharistia" (Greek: thanksgiving) is that in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (around AD 55), in
Origin of the Eucharist and beliefs regarding the Eucharist took definitive shape as central to Christian worship. At first, they spread through word of mouth, but within a generation Christians had begun writing about Jesus and about Christian practice, the Eucharist included. The theology of the Eucharist and its role as a sacrament developed during this period. Basing himself on the "First Apology" and the "Dialogue with Trypho" of Justin Martyr writing around 150 AD, K.W. Noakes deduces the following liturgical structure was in use at that time: This corresponds in general outline to the structure of the rite as used today and is