Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MEALS

Meals are often mentioned in the Bible in secular as well as religious contexts. Meal customs depicted in both the OT and the NT should be interpreted in relation to their respective cultural contexts, the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world. In addition, there are customs specific to Jewish tradition, such as the dietary laws.

An early account of meal customs is the story of Abraham entertaining strangers at Mamre (Gen. 18:1-8; cf. 19:1-3). The story illustrates the ancient notion of hospitality, whereby one was expected to provide basic amenities for worthy strangers, including especially a meal. Here Abraham invited his guests to “stretch out” under a tree (i.e., recline) while he brought water for them to wash their feet, a custom regularly connected with meal etiquette wherever reclining was practiced. He then became both host and servant at the meal, while Sarah remained in the tent, following the widespread custom whereby a respectable woman was not to join men at the table, especially one at which guests from outside the family were present.

The Abraham story provides a snapshot of meal customs in an early period of Jewish history. Reclining can be traced as early as the 7th century b.c.e., as depicted on a relief showing the Assyrian king Assurbanipal reclining at a feast in a garden with his wife (who sits rather than reclines, indicating her station in life), eating and drinking while servants play music nearby.

The same customs are described in Amos 6:4-6. The reclining banquet is pictured here as a luxurious occasion which includes ceremonial drinking of wine, anointing with oil, and musical entertainment. Amos presents it in a negative light, as characteristic of the wealthy reprobates of Samaria, but the customs he represents were widespread in his world.

By the time of Ben Sira in the Second Temple period, the meal of luxury is something to be dealt with as part of the life of the sage. The rules of the banquet described in Sir. 31:12–32:13 present numerous parallels to the Greco-Roman banquet and illustrate the extent to which Jewish meal customs had now become intertwined with Greco-Roman meal customs, including such features as how to preside at the table (32:1-2), rules for speaking (31:31; 32:3-4, 7-9), the place of music (32:4-6), as well as injunctions to practice moderation in eating and drinking (31:12-18, 25-30).

These features are widely represented in Greco-Roman meal customs as evidenced, e.g., in Plato’s Symposium (4th century) or in the Table Talk of Plutarch (1st century c.e.). They are also echoed in NT meal descriptions. For example, whenever the posture at meals of Jesus is indicated, it is always reclining (e.g., Mark 2:15; 8:6; 14:18 par.). The various Greek terms which literally mean “recline” are often translated “sit at table” in modern English versions. Diners who reclined were arranged according to standard patterns, a common one being the triclinium arrangement, whereby a minimum of nine diners would be arranged on three couches placed in a U-shaped configuration around a table, three diners to a couch. They reclined on their left elbows, arranged at an oblique angle on the couch and roughly parallel to each other. Diners would also be arranged by rank, proceeding around the table from left to right. Thus in John 13:23, when the Beloved Disciple is described as “reclining next to Jesus” (NRSV; Gk. “reclining on his bosom”), he is therefore represented in a position of honor, just to the right of the Lord himself. Similarly, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), the position of Lazarus in the afterlife “in the bosom” of Abraham (v. 23) is best understood as a position of honor at the messianic banquet or the banquet of the afterlife (on “eating bread in the kingdom of God,” cf. 14:15).

To position guests by rank was the mark of a good host, but it could lead to tension, as in Luke 14:7-11 (cf. Plutarch Table Talk 1.2). Such social tension may underlie the conflict at the Lord’s Supper in Corinth (1 Cor. 11:17-34), where the divisions at the table are characterized as “show(ing) contempt for the church of God and humiliat(ing) those who have nothing” (v. 22). Women and slaves were marginalized even further by not being allowed to recline, if they were present at the table at all. However, this tradition was undergoing change in the 1st century, as respectable women were beginning to appear at banquets with more frequency. In the Gospels women are often present at Jesus’ meals, but these stories vary in how they depict the placement of women at the table, whether in a traditionally acceptable subservient role at the feet of Jesus (Luke 7:36-50; 10:38-42) or as possibly reclining along with men (Matt. 14:19-21; 15:35-38). By contrast, when Paul refers to women being present at the worship services in Corinth as prophets (1 Cor. 11:5), one must conclude that they were present at the table (mentioned next in Paul’s argument, vv. 17-34) and presumably were reclining along with the men.

According to ancient customs, when someone hosted a meal at his home, as Levi/Matthew does for Jesus (Mark 2:15 par.), invitations were normally extended to the guests (cf. Plato Symp. 174E). Jesus refers to this custom in a symbolic sense when he speaks of “inviting” (“calling”) not the righteous but sinners to the table, i.e., the kingdom (Mark 2:17; cf. the reference to invitations at Luke 14:10, 12, 16). Upon their arrival at the meal, guests would have their feet washed by a household servant before they took their positions upon the couches (Symp. 175A). This custom is referred to in Luke 7:34, where Jesus’ Pharisaic host is criticized for not providing this basic act of hospitality for Jesus, and in John 13:1-16, where Jesus takes the role of servant to wash the feet of the disciples, a practice continued in some circles in the early Church (1 Tim. 5:10). Washing the hands at the table before the meal was a common practice of pagans as well as Jews (Athenaeus Deip. 14.641d; m. µag. 2:5), but it had been given special religious significance in Pharisaic Judaism. Jesus, as part of his critique of the Pharisees, ignored this custom (Mark 7:1-8 par.). Guests were also routinely anointed on the head with perfumes (Josephus Ant. 19.238), a practice which is given symbolic significance in the Jesus tradition (Mark 14:3-9).

The ancient banquet had two primary courses, the eating course, or deípnon (“dinner”), followed by the drinking course, or sympósion (symposium). Each course began with a benediction or libation over the food and wine, a custom adapted in different ways by Greeks, Romans, and Jews (Symp. 176A; m. Ber. 6), and which is reflected in Jesus’ benedictions at various meals (e.g., Mark 8:6). The Last Supper traditions refer to the two courses of the meal by indicating separate benedictions over the bread and wine (Mark 14:22-25 par.). In the Pauline and Lukan versions, these benedictions are explicitly separated by the phrase “after supper” (“after the deípnon”; 1 Cor. 11:23-25; Luke 22:19-20).

The symposium course was intended to last long into the evening and was expected to include entertainment. While some Greeks and Romans tended toward prurient entertainment, philosophical Greeks and Romans often offered enlightened conversation on a philosophical topic as their symposium entertainment (e.g., Symp. 176E). Similarly, Jewish tradition preferred discourse on the law at the table (as in Sir. 9:15-16) and Jesus often taught at the table (e.g., Luke 14). In the early Church, it is quite likely that the worship service which began with the communal meal (or Lord’s Supper) continued at the table, since “coming together as a church” (1 Cor. 11:18) included both “coming together to eat” (v. 20) and “coming together [in which] each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation” (14:26a).

Meals also functioned as boundary markers, helping to define who was in the community and who was not. Jewish dietary laws especially functioned to define boundaries, for those who strictly followed these laws usually could not dine at a gentile table (Dan. 1:8; Tob. 1:10). This created a problem in the early Church as its gentile membership began to grow more prominent. The issue came to a head in Antioch, in an incident described by Paul in Galatians, where Jewish Christians refused to eat at the same table with Gentile Christians (Gal. 2:11-14). Paul argued vociferously that the Church can no more have two tables than it can have two paths to salvation, for in Christ “there is no longer Jew or Greek” (Gal. 3:28). The tension over dietary laws was resolved differently according to another tradition represented in Acts 15, , where Gentile Christians were enjoined to follow a modified form of Jewish dietary laws (“abstain . . . from blood and from what is strangled,” v. 29), thus allowing Gentile and Jewish Christians to eat at the same table. But Mark, like Paul, envisioned no compromise on this issue, reporting that Jesus “declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19). The table of Jesus, as related by the Gospels, was one in which inclusion of the marginalized was the rule, symbolized by his preference for eating with such impure outcasts as “tax collectors and sinners” (Mark 2:15-17 par.).

Bibliography. K. E. Corley, Private Women, Public Meals: Social Conflict in the Synoptic Tradition (Peabody, 1993); P. J. King, Amos, Hosea, Micah: An Archaeological Commentary (Philadelphia, 1988); D. E. Smith, “Table Fellowship as a Literary Motif in the Gospel of Luke,” JBL 106 (1987): 613-38; Smith and H. Taussig, Many Tables: The Eucharist in the New Testament and Liturgy Today (Philadelphia, 1990).

Dennis E. Smith