This is a vast collection of essays collected in three volumes, and is the outcome of two conferences held at the University of Kiel in 2012, and the University of Agder's study centre at Metouchi in 2013. A large number of scholars have thus been involved in this project, many of them from Scandinavian institutions, and they span a good number of the disciplines deemed relevant to the project's title.

The result is a mixed bag, almost as if throwing sufficient material over a broad spectrum will yield something. This reviewer's opinion is that the result is incoherent. Some of the contributions squeeze as much mileage as possible from little material, simply taking up unnecessary pages; for example, Håkan Ulfgard's survey of meals as metaphors in the Apocalypse sifts the material and could safely have been summed up in five pages, and Joseph Verheyden's discussion of the eucharists in the Apocryphal Acts is so minute as to be total overkill. Clemens Leonhard, a very thorough scholar, examines the rabbinical and other Jewish material on the Passover, only to show – as was already widely known – that most of the material is too late to shed much light at all on the origins of the Christian eucharist. The essays on the Gospel material and 1 Corinthians xi show considerable overlap, and some of the essays give summaries of the views of previous New Testament scholars.

The second volume does contain some fine essays which actually engage with theology and liturgy: the essays by Juliette Day (‘Cyril’ of Jerusalem), Michael Lattke (Aphrahat), Allan Fitzgerald (Ambrose and Augustine) are prime examples. However, most of the essays avoid any serious engagement with liturgy and even less with theology. Andes Ekenberg gives a useful overview of the relevant material in the church orders. The essay by Kees den Biesen on Ephrem is one of the best in the collection. Other essays give useful information on meal practices amongst other religious groups such as the Mandeans. All the essays have bibliographies that many will find useful, though some are too selective and dated.

The resulting collection is uneven, unwieldy and lacks overall cohesion. An editorial introduction offering some summary and systemisation was needed, and would certainly have helped students encountering these essays. The question arises as to how far these weighty volumes actually address the subject of the title. A good number of the essays give a broad context for viewing the Christian eucharist, but the origin(s) remains elusive. However much the Gospel institution narratives have been given theological colouring from Old Testament covenant and sacrifice ideas, and however much the Graeco-Roman Symposium is invoked as the context, no good argument is ever made as to why, by the time of the Synoptic Gospels, there was a tradition that the Supper as celebrated in many early ecclesial groups was associated with a Passover context and derived from something that Jesus did that was different from both the normal Passover ritual and from other meals that he and his followers had shared. The implications of this – historical, theological and liturgical – is a missing piece in these three volumes.