A few weeks back I had the dubious pleasure of sitting across a family with a strident female vegetarian. Her case was that Jesus was himself a vegetarian. As far as I knew that is untrue; Jewish Galileans ate fish and also herded flocks, and (especially) made use of animal parchment. Of all the misdeeds our Lord imputed upon Herod's Temple, the sacrifices were not among them. But.
There is a tradition in Christianity of red-meat-avoidance, especially during Lent, but also some ascetics did without meat all their lives. Some were in the Ebionite sect. These were - famously - in the tradition of saints James and Peter and not of Paul. These were Jewish Christians. Dr Yitzhaq Feder is now reporting that Judaism, also, had a ... mixed understanding of eating meat. The Second Temple take, which is the Sadducean and Essenian take I understand, is to eat only the meat as comes from the Levite Priests. Essenes weren't part of this Temple so didn't eat it.
So I am - retroactively - glad I did not pipe up; notwithstanding it'd be rude, and just tag myself as yet another annoying mansplainer.
Although, now equipped with TheTorah: to argue for Christ's vegetarianism would would be to read the Cross as the abolition of the Temple Sacrifice - which it is, in our tradition. Like the Essenes, we'd not have a substitute until the Messianic Banquet. So - if we in this Goyisch Israel be using leather and vellum, what do we do with the meat?
No comments:
Post a Comment