Ten Theses Concerning Meals and Early Judaism

Abstract

The three of us began to study meals because we understood we could not address our questions concerning Early Judaism without such a perspective.1 We have now been writing on meals for quite some time and have experienced some very substantial breakthroughs in our accumulated work. The study of Jewish meals as a subdiscipline of Biblical Studies, Jewish Studies, or the emergent field of Food Studies existed, but scholarly attention to ancient Jewish meals tended to be incidental to “silo-ed” disciplinary focuses, with scholars interested in the origins of the Eucharist, the Last Supper, or the Passover Seder in a much less interdisciplinary age.2 The question of whether these iconic meals were more “Jewish” or “Greek” or an innovation of Jesus often dominated the discussion. Our work sought to take this foundational scholarship forward by employing more theory and engaging in a more interdisciplinary conversation.