Food, sacrifice and how we can tell the writer of Galatians was not Judean

-->

Food was an important part of cultic function in the ancient world, and not just for Judeans.  Devotees of a cult sacrificed an animal for expiation of sin, as means of obtaining auguries, as a propitiation of the god to whom the cult was devoted.  The priest’s function was, essentially, that of a butcher.  The animal was killed.  Those parts of it which were necessary to the specific of temple worship were reserved for that purpose.  The rest of the animal was the property of the priest and members of the cult (assuming the cult’s guidelines included the right to eat sacrificed meat that was the property of the priest).

This explains a lot of seems otherwise incomprehensible in the New Testament:  the story of the Samaritan in John seems to create a Good Samaritan/Bad Jew polarity.  TaNaKh tells us that the Cohenim and Levi’im were prohibited from being around dead bodies (tameh met=corpse impurity).  The reason for the prohibition was simple:  contact with a dead (or dying) body might expose the Cohen (whose job, after all, was butcher in the Temple) to pathogens.

The narrative of Jesus overturning tables in the Temple seems to uphold the image of the “bad Jew” whose sole concern is on making money in the Temple.  That isn’t exactly what is occurring:  sacrifices were stipulated according to what the sacrifice was intended for, and also according to the means of the person making the sacrifice.  Doves were at the lower end of the scale for sacrificeable animals.  It has been suggested that the money-changers were in the Temple because there was a coinage for use in the Temple only.  There is nothing to substantiate this suggestion.  What is known is that Temple sacrifice was a requirement of participation in in Judean praxis (until it was destroyed and rededicate to Jupiter by Hadrian).  It is also known that Judeans travelled Perek Gimel of Moed Katan begins “elu meglachin ba Moed?  H Ba mimdinat ha’yan u mi’bet haShivyah”=who is permitted to shave during the intermediate days of a festival  the one who is returning from overseas or the one who has been in prison.”  While we cannot accept Talmud as a historical source in terms of having an exact date for when it was written, we can assume that since a provision was made for praxis during the period when the Talmud was in development, those provisons for praxis were, to some extent, already recognized in the community.)

It is therefore likely that the money-changers were in the Temple (assuming that story has any validity) for the purpose of changing foreign coinage into money that would be accepted by those who sole animals for sacrifice.  It would also be likely that someone returning from afar might not have a bull or an ass on hand to sacrifice, and would therefore need to buy and sacrifice a dove instead.

Temple sacrifice was a component of Judean as well as Greco-Roman, praxis.  Eating is a necessity of life.  The distinction between the two was that Judean praxis included specifications on what could and could not be eaten, regardless of sacrifice.  

These provisions were recognized in Judean culture and praxis, not necessarily in Greco-Roman culture and praxis.  From this we can deduce that Galatians was not written by Paul, but was a Greco-Roman concoction intended to reinforce local construction of doctrine, and attach it to a “Judean” authority.

* Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—

(“Paul” calls himself an “apostle,” a departure from Philemon, Philippians and 1 Thess)

* Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age

(this is intended to indicate attachment to earlier documents from Paul, by showing relation to Hadrian/bar Cochba)

* For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.

From a non-Judean standpoint, it is assumed that the issue was kosher/nonkosher meat, as indicated in my translation and commentary.  However, we know from Mesekhet Chullin that kashruth as it is practiced today is somewhat different from kashruth as it was practiced 2000 years ago (and even then, we should assume that there was a difference between actual praxis and the praxis described in Talmud).  In Chullin, we are told that it is acceptable to eat meat and dairy  at the same time as long as both are cold.  It is not permissible to mix the two if they are hot and their “properties” can mix.  This is consistent with the command not to “seethe the kid in the milk of the mother.”  It is not exactly the same as that which is accepted as kashruth today.

Similarly, we can infer that, from the Judean perspective, there was nothing inherently wrong with eating with non-Jews, as long as the food meets the requirements of kashruth set forth in Lev.  Where Greco-Romans understood eating with members of a cult signified intent to be accepted into the cult, the same was not true of Judeans, to whom other rules applied.

We know from the proliferation of Greco-Roman divine images which are combined with Judean images in mosaics found in Israel that the issue was not whether the image was Greco-Roman, but whether the intent was to use the image as an object of worship.  If the image was not used as an object of worship, it was permitted.  It was, in a sense, a form of ancient-world Divine hostage-taking, the logic being, “If you are gong to attack my god, I’ll put an image of your god next to the image relating to my praxis.  That will prevent you from attacking.”  This was almost certainly the attitude to food as well—as long as what was eaten conformed to requirements set forth as permissible for eating, the source of the food was irrelevant.

However, to Greco-Romans, eating with initiates of a cult meant that one had joined that cult, because it would be presumed that the meat consumed would have been meat given for sacrifice by a cult member, sacrificed by a cult priest and eaten by members of the cult. The later, longer discussions of eating meat sacrificed to idols reinforces this:  what would not be an issue to Judeans is of paramount importance to Greco-Romans. 

This tells us that the writer of Galatians was someone who was acquainted with bits of Judean praxis from an outsider’s perspective.