“Scripture has it, 'Not by bread alone shall man live.'”--Luke 4:6 (Jesus to Satan). Well, Jesus was right about that, because in The Bible there are many references to what He ate, and it was a lot more than bread. It's really a good eating habit to follow, because the food is simple and nutritious. Jesus and His Apostles should have been trim out of necessity because of their lifestyle. Jesus was a carpenter, but not in the sense of making tables and chairs. Back in the First Century a “carpenter” was more like today's private contractor. He repaired roofs, built walls and fences, and worked in stone and concrete, which required heavy lifting. Likewise, the Apostles (some of them anyway) were fishermen by profession, which means they did not simply throw a line into the water and wait for a nibble. They hauled nets filled with heavy fish into their boats to sell at the local market. This was not light work! And besides all that, Scripture says that Jesus and the Apostles walked everywhere, with no means of transportation other than their feet. We know that walking is good exercise, and almost constant walking would certainly have kept all of them fit. So what did Jesus eat? Certainly fish, and plenty of it. Living in the fishing town of Capernaum,, He probably had fish dinners coming out of His ears! There was fresh fish, dried fish, broiled fish and baked fish. The Bible mentions that Jesus knew how to broil fish over a charcoal fire, and it also mentions that at the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes He used some dried fish from a young boy's packed lunch to feed a hungry crowd of more than five thousand people. Then there's bread. This was very simple to make, and although it was considered “women's work” the men would have been able to do it too. Just take some flour, add water, and bake it in an oven for a good flatbread. Or add yeast and you have the common bread known as pita, still popular in the Middle East. We know Jesus had lamb because that was a traditional Passover dinner, and we know from Scripture that He celebrated Passover. But of course the staple was fish. After His resurrection Jesus appeared to the Apostles and asked if there was anything around to eat, because He had not eaten since the Last Supper. They gave Him a piece of fish, and for dessert a slab of honeycomb. Jesus would have chewed the honeycomb wax and extruded the pure honey.
Speaking of honey, Jesus' cousin John the Baptist lived on wild honey, which was very nutritious. He also ate grasshoppers—the big juicy kind found in the desert. There was more protein in grasshoppers than there was in beef, which was not popular in either the Middle East or in the Roman Empire. It is not generally known, but there are five types of grasshoppers in that region, and being a practicing Jew (John’s father was a High Priest), John knew that three were kosher and two were not! Fruit trees abounded in that part of the world, and fig trees in particular. All you had to do was reach up and pick one from the tree. There was an incident in which Jesus wanted a fig, but when He reached up He found that this particular tree did not bear fruit—and Jesus became visibly angry. To anyone who has experienced a nice fresh fig right off the tree would hardly blame Jesus for His disappointment. The people of both Rome and the Middle East were very fond of oatmeal, which they had for both breakfast and dinner. Unfortunately there was no refrigeration. In the Cookbook of Apicius, who was the Julia Child of ancient Rome, there is a recipe for making oatmeal gone bad into a pleasant-tasting dish by adding spices so the porridge would no longer stink and gag the eater! Apparently Apicius had no remedy for food poisoning. There was also cheese made from the milk of available animals, especially goats. For vegetables there was a variety of home-grown crops, as well as beans. Bean soup, or Egyptian fool mudammas, is still very popular in that region, and is made with brown beans, oil and bean broth, with hard-boiled eggs added to it and eaten with flatbread as a scoop. Then there was drink. Ordinarily the people drank water to quench their thirst, but at dinner they would have had wine. In the Roman Empire the type of wine readily available was mulsum, or a wine concentrate. You poured a bit of this concentrate into a cup and then added water. This method controlled the potency of the wine. The more mulsum you used, the greater the kick. Of course drunkenness was frowned upon in that society, so the usual ratio of wine to water was very light. Scripture says that while on the cross Jesus asked for a drink. The soldiers soaked a sponge in vinegar, stuck the sponge on a spear, and held it up to Jesus. Some people think that this was a cruel gesture, but it's not really so. The soldiers used a watered-down vinegar drink called posca, and they simply gave Jesus what they were drinking. The Amish also have a vinegar drink, watered-down and sugared, to refresh themselves during hard work in the field. So drinking vinegar is not uncommon even today. So the food was simple and very nutritious. Of course Jesus mentions the food of the rich, which was heavy and probably fattening, and so abundant that poor beggars (remember Lazarus?) would sit nearby and wait for a morsel to fall from the table! But the fare of the commoners was much more simple and healthy. We might do well to follow this lifestyle.
Those were some good ideas except for the grasshoppers.....I don't care how much protein they have...I'll pass. I was under the impression that the reason they drank so much wine even if it was very weak is because the water was bad or unpredictable. The fermented wine killed any bacteria in the water. And the pig that someone (I forget who) saw in the sky as a symbol to not eat .....pork is not good for you. It can raise your blood pressure a few minutes after eating it.
But there are some excellent ideas for healthy living in the Bible.
It was Peter who saw the vision in the sky, because he wanted Christians to keep kosher, whereas Paul did not. So after the vision Peter relented, and now Christians can eat anything. Grasshoppers, as well as other crawly things including tarantulas and silkworms, are normal fare in some countries. So it's all what you're used to. I don't know how the local water was 2000 years ago, but I do know that you can't drink Italian water--which is why everyone drinks wine including the kids. As I don't care too much for wine I drank mostly soda when I was in Italy.
I think wine was about 2,3 percent alcohol, pretty lite as far as wine goes.
What do you think of The Last Supper? Do you think that Leonardo Da Vinci encoded all the symbolism into the painting that was attributed to him? It seems that people may be attributing too much to him, but the man was a genius and it's not beyond his potential. But it also leads me to wonder if his ideas were conjecture or if he received some guidance from above.
@DallasCowboysFan: Naw! That's definitely the Apostle John, portrayed in the painting as a beardless youth(which of course might be mistaken for a girl!). Those are not breasts, but the folds of his tunic. One thing DaVinci did get wrong was that Jesus and the Apostles did not sit at table on dining chairs. They reclined on special couches, on their bellies, at a dining table called a triclinium--which means "lying down on three sides" in latin--leaving the fourth side open for serving. Apparently Dan Brown grew rich writing about this absurd notion--which, as people forget--is a novel, not a fact book! By the way, Opus Dei still exists, and is a legitimate group, not a secret society.
Another fabulous post, Miss BP! I love reading your essays. You should consider doing a column at Huff Post or something similar.
My family continues to eat foods from it's ancestry in Ireland. We are big on oatmeal and oatmeal cakes for instance. We add other items to boost the protein and vitamin values such as flax and hemp seed, crushed nuts. A bowl of this can keep a girl chuggin' along for an entire day. A small portion is great to eat before a workout as well....the complex carbs slowly release the sugars for sustained energy.
I bought some hemp powder to add to my food...it looks nasty in the frying pan...all black. Is there any value to it as a cancer fighter and an aid to nutrition or is that just marketing from the hemp people?
