Collegia, symposium, - eucharist

The various collegia and symposia of the Greco-Roman world has received great attention among New Testament scholars in recent years. Philo has something to say about such gatherings too, as I have tried to demonstrate in an article still available in a preliminary form on the Ioudaios list server (it was printed in the S.G. Wilson/John S. Kloppenborg, Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (Routledge, London, 1996), pp.110-127).
Now a major volume has been published, and has received a threefold review on the Review of Biblical Literature website:
Dennis E.Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), pp. xi + 411.).
It contains the following chapters:
The Banquet as Social Institution; The Greco-Roman Banquet;
The Philosophical Banquet; The Sacrificial Banquet; The Jewish Banquet; The Banquet in the Churches of Paul; The Banquet in the Gospels; The Banquet and Christian Theology.
On the back cover it says (from Chapter One):
"If we are to understand properly any individual instance of formalized meals in the Greco-Roman world, such as Greek philosophical banquets, or Jewish festival meals, or early Christian community meals, we must first understand the larger phenomenon of the banquet as a social institution. This perspective, that the banquet was one social institution that cut across ethnic, religious, and social lines, has not been given its due in scholarship. Instead, scholars have concentrated on comparing individual types of meals. This study seeks to define the banquet as a social institution in its own right in the ancient world and thereby provide a common model that can be utilized for the study of all data on formal meals from the Greco-Roman world."
This is a comprehensive thesis, which I look forward to have a closer look at, and especially how he treats the Philonic material. In my reading Philo was sceptical of joining associations and symposia; though he did so himself, it was not for everyone to do so as they could represent settings of apostasy. But I have to read this one. Tolle lege!