This prayer over the wine is clearly designed as a companion to the prayer on the bread and begins with the same invocation and citation of authority: “O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee, in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ.… ” Both elements (bread and wine) are associated in a single liturgical event. The close correlation of the two, yet obvious differences between them, is reflected in the formal prayers, which stress the sameness in parallel language and the differences in their alteration. Thus, both prayers begin with precisely the same language.
The next petition parallels the blessing on the bread except for substituting “wine… drink” for “bread… eat”: “to bless and sanctify this wine to the souls of all those who drink of it.” The parallelism emphasizes the similarity of the two prayers and, therefore, of the two symbols. The bread and the wine might be two different substances, but they are part of the same sacrament.
Also parallel is the following phrase: “that they may do it in remembrance of the blood of thy Son, which was shed for them.” The only changes are those that accommodate the substance: “blood… shed” for “body… broken.” The imagery of the shed blood is clearly sacrificial—outside the body. Old World listeners would unquestionably relate it to the sacrifice of the paschal lamb. Whether the Nephites also had an explicit Passover is not known, but they lived in a world suffused with the concept of blood sacrifices to benefit humanity.
In the Old World, the association of wine’s red color would also be associated with blood. While this is a pleasing correspondence, its nature as a liquid is probably more important. As the Savior had presented himself as the “bread of life” (see commentary accompanying Moroni 4:3), so he presents himself as living water:
Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.
The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?
Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?
Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:10–14)
This episode lacks explicit references to eating and drinking Christ’s symbolic body, but he had made that connection in so many words to his apostles:
Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:53–54)
John in Revelation 21:6 also makes an explicit association between Christ and the water of life: “And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.”
Thus, in Johannine language, Christ is symbolically both sacramental elements: the bread of life and the water of life. While there is a blood/wine correlation, the more important symbolism is the connection of Jesus to the water of life. Interestingly, modern research indicates that water was sometimes used instead of wine as part of early Christian practices; the fact that Iraneus, Clement, and other early Church Fathers argue against using water suggests that it was a widespread practice, although it fell into disuse to be replaced universally by wine.
Water would have been completely consistent with the Johannine symbolism of the water of life and, by extension, with the symbolism associated with the tree of life. The substance of the tree of life was certainly the fruit which was represented by bread, although manna was the more present symbol for the bread of life. Early symbolic associations included liquid as part of the tree of life complex of symbols, with both the fruit and the liquid bestowing life. Erwin B. Goodenough reminds us: “Whether in masculine or feminine terms, the palm tree was from early times a symbol and literal source of sacrament, in that the earliest wine was made from the dates, and was in Babylonia known as the ‘drink of life.’” Thus, the important association was not wine’s redness but the fact that it was a liquid. Wine began as a drink associated with the tree of life and became part of Israel’s iconography.
However, the use of grapes and wine’s intoxicating properties caused an interesting transformation in Hebrew legend. Ginzberg’s The Legends of the Jews records: “The oldest and most prevalent view identifies the forbidden fruit with the grape, which goes back to an old mythological idea that the wine is the beverage of the gods.” Thus, the drink that caused Adam’s fall reappears at the Last Supper or, as Ginzberg notes: “The fruit which brought sin into the world will become a ‘healing’ in the world to come.”
The symbolic association between wine and the tree of life must have carried over into the Old World understanding of the “living water” that Christ would provide. This symbol was not necessarily related to the liquid’s color, so it is not surprising that many early Christian communities used water for the sacrament rather than wine. The modern LDS practice of using water rather than water is not related to the living water symbolism (D&C 27:1–3).
The beginning of the covenant promise in the blessing on the wine parallels the language in the blessing on the bread: “that they may witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father.… ” So is the next phrase: “that they do always remember him.” There is no companion phrase about keeping his commandments, but this particular promise is simply subsumed in the covenant of remembrance. According to Louis Midgley, a political scientist and student of the Book of Mormon:
From the perspective of the Nephites, remembrance included active participation in some form. For them, it meant recalling not simply with the mind but also with the heart. To remember was to place the event upon the heart, or to turn the heart toward God—to repent or return to him and his ways as righteous forefathers had done. As in the Hebrew Bible, remembering often carries the meaning of acting in obedience to God’s commands. Remembering God and thereby prospering so as to be lifted up at the last day (as in 3 Ne. 15:1 and Alma 38:5) are contrasted with forgetting and then perishing, or being cut off from God’s presence (as at Alma 37:13 and 42:11). These opposites remind us of the grand law of opposition Lehi described in 2 Nephi 2.
The prayer closes: “that they may have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.” The only difference in the omission of “always,” which appears in the blessing on the bread. This change is not substantive and certainly should not be read as altering the fundamental meaning. These two sacrament prayers are intended to be publicly presented as a set. They complement each other and imply continuity in the covenants and blessings through their significant parallels.
Text: This is the end of a chapter in the 1830 edition.
Moroni 6