Several years ago PETA sponsored a billboard campaign, featuring statements like, "Jesus was a vegetarian. Shouldn't you be, too?" (It is odd to think that PETA considers the life of Jesus to be morally normative, but we'll leave that aside for now.) They based their campaign on some actual historical research into Jesus' possible dietary habits.
The basic story goes like this: John the Baptist lived out in the desert with the Essenes, who we know were vegetarians. Jesus was a follower of John the Baptist, so we can assume he probably ate a similar diet. This assumption is further bolstered by the fact that several historical documents refer to James, Jesus' brother (or step-brother) as one who refrained from drinking alcohol or eating meat. James' community in Jerusalem may have been a vegetarian Christian community in fact (the story goes), as evidenced by the fact that after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, a vegetarian Christian community called the Ebionites appeared on the far side of the Jordan River, where John and the Essenes had lived originally. But the Pauline tradition represents an anti-vegetarian Christianity that became more prominent, and eventually edited the gospel accounts to make Jesus a wine-drinking, meat-eating glutton.
This theory is full of holes, of course, but the most damning one is this: vegetarianism was not a category in Jesus' culture. Neither the Essenes, nor John the Baptist, nor Jesus, nor James, nor the Ebionites were vegetarians, regardless of whether they ate meat or not. In the Jewish culture, meat didn't mean what meat does for us. It had meaning only in relation to the sacrificial system. The Essenes didn't eat meat, but it wasn't because they were vegetarians, it was because they considered the temple profaned and its sacrifices unacceptable. They weren't vegetarians; they were keeping kosher.
James and many of the early Christians did not eat meat, but it had nothing to do with the animals that meat came from. In Roman thought, food was divided into a number of binary poles: hot/cold, light/heavy, dry/wet, etc. Roman philosophers had long taught that balance was necessary for health, because the various poles related to various poles in human life: spicy foods made you act spicier, so to speak. For a variety of reasons, meat was associated with sexual virility. The early Christians, then, abstained from meat as a means of living pure lives.
What is more, fish was not considered meat, so any "vegetarian" living in Jesus' time would still eat fish as a matter of course. Likewise, John the Baptist ate locusts (which are a clean food according to Leviticus), because his concern wasn't vegetarianism, but living off of God's immediate providence: honey and locusts in the wilderness. On the other hand, abstention from alcohol universally accompanied abstention from meat-eating, whereas vegetarians and vegans today have no particular qualms about alcohol.
So was Jesus a vegetarian? The question is all wrong. It can't be answered, regardless of whether Jesus ever ate meat (besides fish) at all.* Jesus couldn't have been a vegetarian or non-vegetarian - the category simply didn't exist. And that's the point I've been building up to all along. We simply cannot determine our ethical norms based on the question, "Was Jesus a __________?"
The most common place I see this is in discussions about Christian commitments to nonviolence. Should a Christian be a pacifist, or support a just-war doctrine, or offer dual allegiances to Christ and to his nation, regardless of the relative justice of the conflict? Critics of Christian pacifism rely on the argument that "Jesus wasn't a pacifist," while Christian pacifists make the equal mistake of claiming that Jesus was a pacifist.
Jesus was not a pacifist. Such a category did not exist. Granted that Jesus never engaged in direct violence (the disruption of the temple services was not violent in any sense that a Christian pacifist would protest - if it had been, he'd have been arrested on the spot) or counseled violence, there still was no neat category of pacifism for him to fit into. For Christians today, the question isn't whether Jesus was a strictly defined pacifist (he also was not a just-war advocate or promoter of Lutheran dual allegiance), but how we translate his teachings about enemy-love and God-trust into our modern context.
Likewise, when we discuss whether or not Jesus was a Republican or Democrat, or Pro-life, we are being intellectually lazy and ethically irresponsible. Whether Jesus would have supported a Roman form of universal healthcare is a question so far outside of any plausible historical context that we can only shake our heads in response. To ask if Jesus would have supported enhanced interrogation techniques is an offense to his public torture and execution.
I don't know what to say, except to beg Christians to get to know Jesus. We have to stop trying to take him captive to our politics, stop trying to get his name on our agendas. I am a Christian pacifist who needs you to realize that Jesus was not a pacifist, but that if you follow him you should consider being one.
Do you agree? Am I making any sense?
-NDSR
*Did Jesus eat meat? It's possible he didn't. Lamb is conspicuously absent from his passover meal, but that could be for theological reasons. Jesus did judge the temple [or did he cleanse it?], so perhaps he considered its sacrifices unkosher and never ate the temple meat. On the other hand, Jesus frequently engaged in intentional table fellowship with all sorts of people. It seems unlikely that his refusal to accept whatever food they offered would go unrecorded. Jesus was also accused of being a glutton, of refusing to follow Jewish ceremonial law concerning dining, and taught that what goes into a person is not defiling, so it's probable Jesus was not opposed to the practice of eating meat.
What do you think?
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Comments (53)
I really liked this post because it gives some major insight to what I am sure a lot of Christians really don't think about.
I always wondered if it was a contradiction to be pro-life and a meat-eater at the same time.
Whew! Stellar post. Thoughtful, well researched, and great points. I too often get carried away with trying to get Jesus to fit in with my own moral agenda rather than deeply considering the meanings behind his methods.
All I know is that after Adam and Eve had sinned, God told them that they could eat meat as long as it was fully cooked.
great post, very thought provoking.
Here is a good video on why you should become a vegetarian: http://meat.org
That billboard picture is too weird. Is Jesus shown wearing a t-shirt?
Jesus a follower of John? As in chronologically speaking? Or as in John was Jesus' teacher and mentor? The later being completely and obviously wrong.
The thing I agree with about this post is that the arguements are full of holes.
How come PETA didn't run an 'Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, shouldn't you be too?" campaign?
An altogether to hip, free-and-easy, trite, friendly vision of Jesus Christ has been being pushed for a while now, and it actually has a lot of negative consequences.
@sarahzthoughts@xanga - I think so. That is why I am a pro-life vegetarian. ;)
Isn't the key question, What diet would Jesus have today?" As president of Jewish Vegetarians of North America, I think that Jesus would avoid a diet that involved the massive mistreatment and slaughter of billions of animals annually, the causing of many diseases, the pollution and despoilation of the environment, wasteful use of water, land, energy and other resources and the feeding of over 40 percent of the grain produced worldwide while over a billion of the world's people are chronically hungry. For more information, please visit JewishVeg.com/schwartz, where I have over 140 articles and 25 podcasts of talks and interviews and please visit ASacredDuty.com to see our acclaimed (by Jews and non-Jews) documentary "A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World."
Why are religious groups ignoring the many moral issues related to animal-based diets, and the fact that animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases than all the means of transportation worldwide combined, causing global climate change that is leading the world raoidly to an unprecedented catastrophe?
Jesus came to Earth shortly after man domesticated animals and wheat. This was the begining of the end, and why I believe God sent the Son of Man to Earth to provide a way of life superior to flawed and fallen one that was spreading across the globe.
Fast forward to today where our industrial way of life is centered upon exponentially greater agresssive control and manipulations of natural systems. We have domesticated the process of cell division and now creaae a panoply of genetically modified organisms "fit to eat".
Jesus would have nothing of the world we see today, and as we all know in our heart of hearts His return will be nothing like the first.
How could it be that the Lamb of God who was sacrificed for the sins of many, the Passover, Himself, would not eat the passover? At least one major account of Jesus presiding over a passover meal is clearly documented. The main course? Lamb.
@AngelBeast777@xanga - I'm not saying Jesus did not partake of lamb rather he would not partake of a system that sees us as "Lords over own food supply" whose Genesis was with the domestication of animals and wild grasses and has evolved over the centuries to us using synthetic chemicals to make soil fertile and genetic engineering to enhance yields and profits at the expense of our health and souls
Okay first. read 1 Corinthians 8. Secondly, just because lamb is not mentioned in the Passover scene in John etc certainly doesn't mean it wasn't there. It is a given that it was, since it was an intregal part of the feast. The only Jewish veg. was Daniel because of his special circumstances. Thirdly: Jesus was hardly a follower of John the Baptist. WHERE do people get this stuff!
You know the bottom line is this. NONE of this matters. In the large scale of things. None of this matters a whit compared to, do you believe that Jesus is who He said He was (Messiah, and the Savior of the World) and what are you doing about it? Are you carrying out the commands of Matthew 28:18-20? (Sorry, I know this sounds mean but) Or are we just sitting around asking stupid questions. (1 Tim. 3:6-5)
My guess is since the priests in the OT ate the sacrifices and since Jesus came to fullfill the law as High Priest then he did eat meat.
really like this post :)
He was the Lamb!
@roseteacup@xanga - converting people and baptizing them in the name of the Holy Father is a start but if that led to greater sanctification on the basis of our sheer numbers and the cumulative affects of a true renewed mind and spirit the world ought to look different than it does; in fact it looks pretty much the same in the church today as it does in the world...the sad thing is the world has a hold on us Christians far deeper than we are willing to admit...one area raised by this blog is our diet and the way we produce our foods
hmm wow.. i always thought that jesus ate fish.. i didn't know he was a vegetarian.. haha there is a lot
that i am still learning about jesus
@sarahzthoughts@xanga - It's entirely logical to reject the killing of human beings while allowing the killing of (non-human) animals for food, leather, etc.. The inverse is what's not consistent: allowing human beings to be killed, while being vehemently opposed to the killing of animals. It's the same moral inconsistency as opposing the killing of admitted, convicted criminals, but allowing the killing of innocents whose only "crime" is that they haven't yet made it out of their mother's womb. (This should not to be taken to indicate that I personally support the death penalty, only to demonstrate that it is a morally consistent position, whereas supporting killing the innocent but sparing the guilty is not.)
@jdarrow001@xanga - Well I am anti-death penalty and pro-life. I eat meat (though not that much because I don't care for the taste or texture) but I don't think it's inconsistent to acknowledge the fact that God made animals for our consumption. However, I am very much opposed to treating them cruelly and using them for fashion purposes which are not at all necessary. This is why I prefer kosher meat, because kosher killing is quick and for the most part, painless for the animal. They are well cared for and aren't subjected to growing up in tiny, filthy cages like a lot of meat industries do.
I don't have an opinion either as far as eating meat, PETA, and Jesus relate to each other. I did read the Essene Gospel of Peace some years ago and found it interesting. Did the book represent the way things truly were? Was it buried by a more popular Christianity that followed? I don't know. Consider this though. If you were an Eskimo living in the frozen tundra of Alaska 100 years ago, you couldn't have been a vegetarian because there's really no vegetation. Does that mean that at some point you couldn't become a Christian? I don't think so.
But, wait! There's clear record of Jesus eating Sea Kittens! (Peta's new name for fish, no joke.)
Like when He ate the piece of broiled fish, I mean, broiled Sea Kitten, after His resurrection.
(For those who say "Fish isn't meat," what is it? Plant fiber? I know it's got some different qualities as far as nutrition goes, but it's still the body of what was once an animal, a vertebrate at that.)