You can be descended from Zeus and speak greek like it was 3000 years ago, but if you aren’t aware of the cultural implications, it doesn’t matter how many times you cross-translate, you will never get it.
When Jesus said to eat his body, he meant it LITERALLY, why? Because if he meant it symbolically, to eat someone’s flesh at the time would have meant to hate someone or hurt them. Taking this symbolical approach, this is what Christ would have meant:
“Christ had promised to everyone eternal life and a glorious resurrection in compensation for people beating him up, injuring him and persecuting him”
So yea…‘eat of my flesh’ - ‘beat me up and get everlasting life please’
Makes lots of sense
I summarized it, from newadvent, just a few lines of the whole proof.
So as you can see, there is a slang significance too. It’s like these days, it’s not too uncommon to hear someone say ’ so eat me’ after arguing with someone.
This is also why Christ said, Truly, Truly I say to you unless you…etc. he made it a firm point. And that’s why many left him, because they finally understood He meant it literally. And one of the disciples said ‘who can hear this, it’s hard’ or something like that.
If it really was symbolic, then we can kiss our religion good bye. But it’s not, because if Christ meant it symbolically it would be ridiculous.
It was literal.