Did Jesus eat meat?

In the Christmas season, many of us turn our thoughts to the birth of Jesus and what he came to do. After all, it is his birthday we are celebrating! I wanted to use this opportunity to answer a question many have had and have posed to me – did Jesus eat meat?

To be quite honest, I don’t think it really matters to us whether Jesus ate meat or not. In the same way that it does not matter that:

• he did not wear blue jeans,
• drive a car or
• use a mobile phone. It also does not matter that
• he did not eat tomatoes (they hadn’t reached the Middle East at that stage – imagine tabouli without tomatoes!) or that
• locusts are likely to have been something he had at least tried.

Jesus’ purpose was much bigger than the incremental surface details of His day to day life. But what he ate is still interesting for us to think about.

What do the Bible accounts say about Jesus’ diet?

Let’s take a look at the evidence for the eating habits of the Son of God.

Firstly I am not a theologian and this will not be an exhaustive list of every incident when Jesus ate.

We do know he ate bread because He talked about it. He called himself the “bread of life”. That’s how important bread was. People often chewed on grain heads as they walked. These are likely to have been barley grains and the bread was barley bread, the poor man’s grain. Both leavened bread (as in barley loaves) and unleavened flatbread (as at the Passover meals) were eaten.

Jesus would have eaten fruit. He cursed a fig tree for not having figs on it when he wanted one.

At the Last Supper, he served wine, and at a wedding, he turned water into wine. He was not averse to alcohol.

Did Jesus eat meat though? Jesus ate fish from the Sea of Galilee and cooked it himself after the resurrection.

It appears he ate lamb at the Passover (although it seems noticeably absent at the Last Supper). I see no indication of him eating it regularly, although this does not mean he did not do so.

Historical evidence for Jesus’ food

Let’s look at what we know people of Jesus’ day, in his socio-economic situation and geographical location, typically ate.

Firstly, it is clear that the Jews were poor. They were a poor nation ruled by the Roman Empire. Only those in the pay of the Roman Empire, such as King Herod and the tax-collectors, were wealthier. This meant Jesus would have eaten like the poor people of his region.

Plant foods

We know then that the typical fare would have been legumes (lentils or beans) as the primary protein source. People typically cooked lentils into a congealed mass – unlike how we prepare them today. This were easily scooped up by hand if families did not own eating utensils. Additional flavourings and vegetables were:

• garlic
• cabbage
• mustard (as shown in Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed).
• herbs like dill, cumin and mint (the Pharisees (one of the Jewish sub-groups) apparently tithed them, giving a percentage of what they grew to the temple priests.

These plant foods would have all been organic – no chemicals!

Did Jesus eat Meat?

Jews ate lamb at Passover, wedding feasts and other special celebrations.

However, we should remember that Jesus’ family was poor as were the vast majority of Israelites. They would not have had a huge flock of chickens from which they could have roast meat every night. It is very likely they did not own any sheep at all.

As a result, it is most likely that special occasions were the only time meat was eaten, the same as with most people in the developing world today.

Eggs

People ate eggs, both from wild bird nests as well as domesticated fowl.

Dairy

Goat and sheep milk and their products were available. The quantity would likely depend on whether Jesus’ family owned any animals. Because of the heat, they would be eaten as a simple cheese or yoghurt.

Insects

Even though eating “creeping things” was prohibited in Jewish law, locusts were allowed because they destroyed crops. Jesus may have eaten these.

Fish

We know Jesus ate fish as an adult. However, it is not very likely he ate it often as a child in Nazareth. Nazareth is about 30km from the Sea of Galilee. A healthy man could walk this in a day, in 6 – 8 hours. As he walked in the heat, the fish would be heating up and starting to go off. Refrigerated trucks had not been invented! Fresh fish would not have been daily fare in Nazareth as a result.

There was a fish salting industry by the Sea of Galilee in Jesus’ time so this may have been a part of Jesus’ diet. All fish would have been uncontaminated from heavy metals.

Water

Because of the common problem of water contamination in the cisterns Jesus’ people used for their water supply, wine was often added to it to kill germs. A clean water supply was a real problem, even back then. The Romans had piped water to their towns, but the pipes were made of lead which posed more problems.

We know people used vinegar and made their own alcohol.

If Jesus ate meat, why do I advocate not eating much meat?

This is the real crux of why people ask me about this, isn’t it! If it was good enough for the Son of God, isn’t it good enough for us?

Firstly, we know that eating meat brings about changes in the body that can shorten life if not eaten with a lot of vegetables. By the time most people start to think about their health, their bodies are already breaking down with diseases, so more effort is needed than just off-setting the meat eaten currently with vegetables – we need a lot more plant foods to undo the damage already done.

I would anticipate that Jesus was healthy –

• we can be sure that he lived in an unpolluted environment
• No gluttony! He would not have over-eaten as his family were poor
• high level of fitness: he walked every day; he was a carpenter who had no heavy lifting equipment except his own arms
• his food was uncontaminated (even if water may have sometimes posed a problem), and
• he would have eaten a largely plant-based whole food diet – because this is what poor people the world over eat

Eating a small amount of meat and animal foods poses no problem within the context of such a diet and lifestyle.

Jesus knew what he was on Earth for, at least by early on in his ministry. He was not going to live past 33. We know that heart disease does not usually cause problems before the age of 33, and not in a lean, fit person. So did Jesus eat much meat? Even if he had eaten loads of meat (which it should be clear he didn’t), it would likely have not posed any serious problem with his lifestyle by age 33. This is very different from us today, who mostly live way beyond 33 years old. As a result, we must consider what will cause better health at older ages, and we know that countries who eat LESS meat live longer without chronic disease.

Jesus lived in a different time and place

The question we must ask ourselves is not what caused health for people in the past living in hugely different circumstances, but what do we KNOW causes better health TODAY in our own environments.

We live now in the Western world – not in first-century Palestine.

Were we to return to a poor environment and live like Jesus, perhaps that sort of diet would work for us.

So now we can see that, yes, Jesus did eat meat – a little meat. It was unlikely to be have been something eaten every day and even then, not in quantity for all the reasons listed above. And it was a different quality of meat to what we have available today in terms of fat levels and contamination.

This should not affect our decision to eat or not eat meat – in our hugely different place and time in history.