The Aphikoman
The original Passover was a fairly simple process with no formal process to follow. Through the centuries that followed, traditions molded it into the seder—the order of events—we have today in Jewish homes. We don’t know how much of today’s process was in place in Jesus’s day. The only datable item is what is called Hillel’s sandwich. Hillel—an influential rabbi who lived about a hundred years before Jesus, mandated that the minimum celebration had to include bread, meat, and bitter herb. Wrapped together, this may have been the morsel that Jesus gave Judas.
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The Passover celebration today can be broken into three segments. The first is the symbolic meal remembering the events of the Exodus. The second is the actual meal and is basically whatever the family enjoys. It is ended with a third portion called the Aphikoman, which is Greek for "that which comes after."
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When asked about the source of the Aphikoman, rabbinic teachers and historians are silent. The best they can give is that it began in the turmoil of the first century rebellions and that its source and meaning are unknown. That response is a bit ingenuine. Some of the Sephardic groups of Jews celebrate it as representing the Messiah, though they don’t identify it with Jesus.
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Earlier, in the symbolic portion of the Passover, the center matzoh of the three representing the unleavened bread is removed. (The trinitarian aspect of this unity of bread is overlooked.) The matzoh is broken and a portion of it hidden. Later, it is recovered and shared as the bread of the Aphikoman. Any symbolism in its brokenness, burial, and restoration is missed as well.
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Jewish history minimizes the impact on Jewish culture that the original Jewish followers of Jesus had. The easy answer, which the Jewish thinkers avoid, is that the Aphikoman was the practice of remembering Jesus’s last ministry act in the Lord’s Supper by early Jewish Christians. If so, they were a far greater influence on first century Jewish culture than is admitted.
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