Arguably the best known prayer in the world is the Lord’s Prayer, given in slightly different forms in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. But in this prayer are the intriguing words, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
What actually constitutes this bread is a matter of considerable debate. Perhaps it refers to Jesus himself, because in John’s Gospel, Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life.” Perhaps it refers to actual bread, which had been the staple food of the Middle East since the dawn of civilization. Or perhaps bread refers to food in general, which would have been a significant matter in the poor growing climate of ancient Judea.
Perhaps all of these interpretations are true, but if it is the latter, what did Jesus actually eat on a regular basis?
We can begin to answer this question by looking first at the things we know from the Bible that Jesus actually ate. Bread made from wheat certainly, although Jewish law also permitted barley, oats, rye and spelt. Wine and water was a staple of the period, and wine is explicitly mentioned along with bread at the Last Supper. The Hebrew word for wine is yayin, which comes from the word for ferment, and the New Testament Greek word is oinos, which is rendered into Latin as vinum.
I may be stepping into controversy by noting that these terms refer explicitly to fermented grape matter. One scholar has suggested that the average man drank about a litre of wine in the course of a day in the Middle East, but the New Testament several times warns against drinking too much.
Jesus also ate fish. In one of his resurrection appearances to the disciples, he is described eating fish to show that he was real and not a ghost. A variant text, which does not appear in the Bible, says that Jesus bit into a honeycomb and the disciples examined the teeth marks to ascertain that he was no spirit.
Jesus ate figs, which we know from the fact that on his way to Jerusalem, he reached for a fig tree but it was not the season for figs. At the Last Supper in John’s Gospel, Jesus gives Judas a morsel dipped in a dish, which almost certainly was a dish of olive oil.
We can also be reasonably sure that Jesus observed the dietary laws of ancient Israel, and so we know what he would not have eaten, such as pork, shellfish, reptiles or carrion-eating animals. We can also rule out foods that had yet to be introduced to the Middle East, such as tea, coffee or sugars derived from sugar beets or cane.
Anything indigenous to the New World would have been impossible for Jesus to eat, such as maize corn, pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes or chocolate. To me, a life without coffee or chocolate would have been asceticism indeed.
Although beer was well known to the ancient Near East from earliest times, and is almost always associated with bread production, archeology has found almost no examples of it being produced or consumed by the Jews of Jesus’ day. The closest Hebrew comes to even a word for beer is sekhar, which can refer to beer or a number of other strong drinks.
The 16th century reformer Martin Luther liked to drink a beer after preaching, “while the Holy Spirit finished” his work. But Jesus almost certainly did not have that treat after the Sermon the Mount.
Our knowledge of the ancient world gives us a few other clues as to Jesus’ diet. Most of the foods consumed by the people of the ancient Near East were plant-based rather than meats. We can reasonably assume that the staples of agriculture from the period would have been in Jesus’ diet, such as radishes, onions, squash, leeks, garlic, kale, pine nuts, lentils, chickpeas, fava beans and peas. Various grains were often mashed and boiled to make a kind of porridge. Watermelon was a kind of treat but would not have been
uncommon.
In the period following the post-exilic rebuilding of the Jewish temple in the fifth century B.C., rice was introduced to the people of Judea by the Persians. There are Talmudic references to rice being eaten, although it is not in the Bible. Various nuts, which provided a protein, are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, such as almonds, walnuts and pistachios, and it is probable that Jesus knew them well.
Fruits were a little more problematic to the ancient Near East because, unlike peas or beans, they would not be stored as easily. Dried fruits such as raisins or dates were certainly part of Jesus’ diet but these do not have a particularly long shelf life. Fruits were normally eaten as they became ripe. Along with the olive and fig, apricots, dates and the quince were cultivated in Jesus’ day.
There is some debate on whether Jesus would have eaten apples, since there is no word for them in ancient Hebrew, although there is in modern Hebrew. Pomegranates were also were known to the people of Jesus’ day, and fourth-century mosaics depict Jesus holding them, although possibly as a symbol of the church rather than a snack. Fruits also had the advantage that they could be boiled down to make a syrup, which assisted in storage.
Jesus’ consumption of meats is a matter of some debate between Christian denominations as well as modern vegetarian and animal rights groups. At the very least we can say that Jesus probably ate very little of meat because it was a more expensive commodity. Chicken and red meats, such as lamb, goat and cows, if slaughtered properly, could be consumed in Jewish law.
It is commonly assumed today that Jesus’ Last Supper must have included lamb, since a lamb shank was part of the ritual and the Passover lambs were slaughtered at the same time. The Torah mentions how the lamb should be roasted for the Passover. I find it hard to believe that lamb meat was not part of Jesus’ Passover, although the New Testament does not
explicitly mention it.
The Jews of Jesus’ day also kept birds, not only the chicken but also the dove, turtledoves, ducks, and geese. Hunted birds such as the quail and the partridge were popular as well. But it has been suggested by archaeologists that people of that period and place might have been able to eat meat only three or four times a year, and these only on festive occasions.
Stews are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and in a practical sense, a little meat in stew goes a long way, so this might have been Jesus’ ordinary experience of meat.
Food was scare for many people in Jesus’ day. We take for granted the profusion of foods available to us modern people in an ordinary grocery store. Were the original 12 disciples to see our modern stores, packed with food, they might have thought they had died and gone to heaven.
Jesus, however, would have had no such illusions.
