Bible Books

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The Bible Cookbook

Daniel S. Cutler
(New York: William Morrow, 1985) 416 pp., $19.95

The cookery of the Bible is a subject that intrigues food historians, anthropologists and even ordinary cooks. By figuring out the roots of biblical cuisine, we can all better understand where our cuisine began.

Hunting and gathering societies of the ancient Middle East subsisted on berries, grains, insects and other foods found in the woods, fields and desert. The everyday diet of these nomads was rather sparse: bird’s eggs, yogurt, sheep or goat milk, wild-bee honey, wine, olive oil, lentils, fresh or dried dates and figs, pomegranates, wild melons, cucumbers, sesame seeds, garlic, onions and grain from barley and wheat, The nomads ate most of these foods as they found them. Some foods, such as oil, were pressed, and others, such as yogurt, were fermented. Only occasionally was a wild animal killed as a dietary supplement.

In ancient Palestine, the first grain planted and harvested or the felling of an, animal large enough to feed many people provided an occasion for jubilation and festivity among both Jews and gentiles. Both peoples offered sacrifices to God—sometimes in gratitude, sometimes in fear, and sometimes as an expression of penance for sin.

Ceremonial foods thus performed two major functions for the ancient Israelites: First, they expressed a relationship between nature and God. Second, ceremonial foods served as a bond between the tribe of Levi (priests) and the rest of the Israelite people for whom the priests were intermediaries empowered to receive the food offerings and to consecrate them to God.

What I found particularly valuable in Daniel S. Cutler’s very through Bible Cookbook was his documentation of the Jewish dietary customs through Old Testament and liturgical texts and of the Christian reaction to these customs as expressed in the New Testament and later Greek and Roman texts. Chapters are divided in an interesting manner for the food historian. Each chapter title comes from a biblical passage. For example, chapter VIII, “Is there any taste in the white of an egg?” (Job 6:6) discusses eggs in the biblical period starting with the foraged eggs from the nests of birds, then it explains 011biblical citations about eggs, and, finally, offers several egg recipes.

Cutler’s “time line of great biblical meals” is an extremely clever idea. Starting with Eve’s biting of the forbidden apple (which of course was not an apple at all, but may have been a quince or a pomegranate), Cutler sails through biblical history. Working chronologically to the period of the Arab conquest in 636 A.D., he puts in historical context Jacob serving Esau red lentil stew and bread in exchange for Esau’s birthright, Hillel inventing the first sandwich at Passover by putting bitter herbs between pieces of unleavened bread, and the menu of Jesus’ last supper. There are, however, interesting arguable details in Cutler’s text. Hillel’s original sandwich included a morsel of lamb and bitter herbs between the pieces of matzah. Samuel served the ritual thighbone, not the leg of lamb to Saul.

If Cutler should be faulted it would be for not streamlining his documentation; he includes too many details, sometimes losing the drift of his main point about food.

As meticulous as Cutler is in documenting the use of foods like lentils, fish, meat, fowl, camel, goat and sheep milk, dates, honey, grapes, etc., throughout the Old and New Testaments, he is embarrassingly inaccurate in the kinds of recipes he chooses to include in his cookbook.

Cutler accurately describes, for example, the red lentil pottage that Jacob served to Esau, but when he gives a recipe for red lentil pottage he includes fresh tomatoes and tomato juice. Now, any food scholar knows that tomatoes came from the Americas to Europe and the Middle East in the 17th century. Cutler would have done better to use a Mujeddra, which once was a soupy stew made with rice or barley, lentils, sauteed onions and olive oil; today Mujeddra is popular throughout the Middle East in a more deliciously refined, less soupy version.

Again, Cutler misleads us. Jerusalem artichoke, that native American tuber, does not belong in a biblical cookbook. Yes, it does grow today in the Old City of Jerusalem right near Damascus Gate, but I believe that the group of Americans who established a commune near there in the late 19th century, aptly called the American Colony, brought the tuber with them. Today Jerusalem artichoke is served stuffed, as are other vegetables, but it certainly was not served in the biblical period.

Cutler’s book is more fascinating for the historian than for the cook. Even without the recipes, which number almost 200, the book has great merit. If recipes are to be included they should be more historically accurate in order to measure up to the superb quality of the book’s text. I, for one, shall keep it up front on my cookbook shelf.

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Recipes from The Bible Cookbook

In the chapter “A Calf, Tender and Good” are many recipes for veal. Cutler tells us that the slaughtering of a calf was the supreme compliment to a guest because it meant depriving a family of the hundreds of pounds of meat a mature animal would bring later. Veal was served at the first Biblical banquet. When the three visitors came to see Abraham, Sarah quickly made bread. “And Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it” (Genesis 18:7).

Veal and Almond Meatballs

(Serves 4–6)
2 pounds ground veal
1 1/2 cups ground almonds
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 egg
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups chicken stock
Combine veal, almonds, lemon juice and egg with salt and pepper. Knead well and form into balls.
Heat olive oil in a deep skillet and brown meatballs.
Add chicken broth. Cover, bring to a boil, reduce heat and summer 45 minutes. Serve over rice.

In the vegetable chapter, entitled “A Dinner of Herbs,” Cutler introduces several recipes for leeks, a Biblical vegetable par excellence. Leeks were food for the enslaved Israelites in Egypt and, apparently, were sorely missed after the Israelites had traveled some time on their Exodus journey. “We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic” (Numbers 11:5).

Marinated Leeks

(Serves 4)
8 medium leeks
1/3 cup olive oil
2 lemons, juiced
1/2 teaspon fennel seed
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
Wash, trim and cut leeks into bite-size pieces. Steam in a little salted water 15 minutes or until just tender. Drain. Mix all other ingredients and use to dress cooked leeks. Chill overnight and serve.

The Good Book Cookbook

Naomi Goodman, Robert Marcus and Susan Woolhandler
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986) 225 pp., $16.95

Rebekah’s savory stew made with figs and wine, Sarah’s cakes made from fine wheat flour (not the everyday barley of antiquity), Egyptian beer bread, roast ham sweetened with anise sauce for a Roman banquet—mouthwatering recipes like these take the reader through Old Testament and New Testament culinary history. Presented are more than 140 ancient recipes for modern tastes, using mostly ancient ingredients that are still available.

The authors introduce the recipes with biblical quotations and chatty, yet probably accurate, historic commentaries.

Menus include an Egyptian banquet with whole baked garlic—remember the garlic the Jews missed when they fled from Egypt—and a Roman banquet with an impressive appetizer of 200 peacock tongues (the authors omit that recipe but include grilled fish with garlic and anchovy and hard-boiled eggs with horseradish walnut cream). This is a cookbook from which to learn and to cook. What fun it must have been for the three authors, longtime friends, to research and to test their imaginative recipes!

Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

Lawrence Boadt
(New York: Paulist Press, 1984) 569 pp., $6.95

This thick paperback by Paulist Father Lawrence Boadt is a comprehensive introductory text for seminarians, college students and interested lay persons. The author, who received his doctorate from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, currently teaches sacred scripture at the Washington Theological Union in Washington, D.C. In addition to publications on various Old Testament topics, he has edited Biblical Studies: Meeting Ground of Jews and Christians (Paulist Press, 1980) with Helga Croner and Rabbi Leon Klenicki. Even though the present volume is written from a Roman Catholic perspective, it will be helpful to Protestant readers generally. Jewish readers should find the book a valuable example of contemporary Roman Catholic thought about the Old Testament, but some may be uncomfortable with the occasional use of Christian parallels or analogies to explain specific points. However, they will welcome Boadt’s insistence that God’s covenant with Israel and its inspired texts remain valid today for both Jews and Christians, albeit in different ways.

There are 26 chapters in the book, and each concludes with a list of study questions. The first four chapters deal with preliminary matters (terms and, concepts, lands and peoples of Israel’s milieu, archaeology and the Old Testament, and literary tools for Old Testament study); the next 20 chapters treat sections of the Old Testament or topics of particular importance for Old Testament study (such as Canaanite religion and culture, daily life in ancient Israel, and the cultivation of wisdom) and the final two chapters discuss successively the closing of the Old Testament and themes of Old Testament theology.

The sweep of the book is so broad that a detailed summary of its contents would be tedious, but we can illustrate its approach by a closer look at a few individual chapters.

Chapter 8, “The Exodus from Egypt,” lists Exodus 1–6 and 14–18 as suggested readings. Ten successive sections, 1–3 pages in length, bear such titles as “Egypt in the Period of the Exodus,” “Pharaoh Akhenaton and Monotheism,” “Moses and the Struggle for Freedom (Exodus 1–4)” and “Desert Escape.” Boxed illustrations include two small drawings (the great pyramid and sphinx at Giza and Pharaoh Akhenaton and his wife Nefertiti in their royal chariot), an excerpt from an Amarna letter and a sketch map of the traditional route of the Exodus. An error occurred on page 160 in the excerpt from an Amarna letter; it is said to be “from the prince of Jerusalem, Abdu-Heba,” but it is from Shuwardata (Abdu-Heba’s ally against the Apiru).

The Exodus is presented as the real start of Israel’s history as a people (p. 155); it called for a response (the covenant), needed to be completed in the eventual conquest of the promised land, and gave new meaning to ancient traditions (about sons and land promised to patriarchs and clans). After mentioning problems in dating the 012Exodus, Boadt concludes that sometime around 1300–1280 B.C. (in the reign of Ramesses II) is most likely the correct date (pp. 162–163). The Book of Exodus is divided into five “episodes” (p. 164), but the rebellion at Sinai is not included. About “Yahweh,” Boadt remarks that the “Book of Exodus presents the name … as new to Moses” (p. 167), but he does not mention that one major literary tradition (J) assumes it was known since earliest times. In spite of these and other minor points about which I would quibble, the chapter is a good first treatment of an extremely complex topic.

Chapter 21, “The Struggle to Restore the Land (540–500 B.C.),” lists Isaiah 60–63 and Zechariah 1–4, 9–10 as suggested readings. Section headings include “Persian Political Policy,” “Persian Religion: Zoroaster” and “The Prophet Zechariah.” Three boxes contain a list of Persian kings, a chart of Haggai’s four oracles and a table comparing First and Second Zechariah. The author takes care to show how the experience of Exile led to a creative rethinking of older traditions and to a decisive shift in the nature of prophecy. These, in turn, led to a new “way of life” for the post-Exilic community.

Chapter 25, “The Closing of the Old Testament,” lists Psalms 2, 110, Isaiah 9, 11and Zechariah 9 as suggested readings. Section headings include “The End of Jewish Independence and the Rule of Rome,” “Herod the Great (40 to 4 B.C.), “The Religious Movements of the First Century B.C. ” (i.e., the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes) and “The Value of the Old Testament for Christians.” Useful boxes contain a genealogical tree of the Hasmonean dynasty, a small map of the Roman world, a diagram of Jerusalem, a chart listing the 63 tractates of the Babylonian Talmud and a diagram of the plan of the Qumran monastery with a map showing its location. Boadt does a good job with each theme, even though several deserve complete chapters of their own. He surveys Christian efforts to explain the connection between New and Old Testaments in terms of promise/fulfillment, discontinuity, typology and faith in Yahweh the God of Israel as identical with the Father proclaimed by Jesus. While finding value in each view, Boadt stresses the historical continuity for Christians from ancient Israel’s religious experience to their own.

Finally, chapter 26, “Themes of Old Testament Theology,” includes sections entitled “Discovering the Central Focus of the Bible,” “The Only God,” “God Active in History,” “Personal Response in Prayer,” “Covenant and Tradition,” “The Prophets and Justice,” “Hope and the Future” and “The Mystery of God’s Ways.” These discussions draw together and focus the inevitably somewhat disparate chapters that have gone before.

In general, the book is well written and packed with helpful information. It has over 90 boxes that present excerpts from documents, drawings of ancient artifacts, maps, charts, lists, tables and outlines of Old Testament books. Many of the boxes probably began as teaching aids for the author, and readers will find them helpful. Unfortunately, none are in color, and few are discussed or even mentioned in the adjacent text. The boxes are not numbered, but they are listed in a three-page “Index of Maps, Charts, Illustrations, & Supplemental Texts” that is inconveniently located at the back of the book (after a seven-page reading list and study guide and before six pages of other indexes).

The book covers so much that it sometimes makes condensed or superficial statements, and they can be inadequate or misleading. In general, however, I was impressed by the author’s ability to summarize complex issues and to treat opposing points of view helpfully. If there is a major criticism of this book, it is that frequently too much is compressed into a single chapter—and yet how could a comprehensive introduction responsibly omit anything significant? The beginning student may be overwhelmed at times, but perseverance will lead to a grasp of the broad picture as well as of many individual details; readers with some background in Old Testament studies will find the book interesting and helpful. As for its value as a class text, I can only say that I am likely to use it the next time I teach Old Testament Introduction to undergraduates.

The New Testament in Its Social Environment

Library of Early Christianity Volume 2
John E. Stambaugh and David L. Balch
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986) 194 pp., $18.95

The happy combination of a New Testament scholar and a classicist historian has produced this helpful volume in the new Library of Early Christianity series, under the general editorship of Wayne A. Meeks. Meeks’s competence in early Christian social history is widely recognized by readers of his recent book The First Urban Christians. The stated aim of The New Testament in Its Social Environment is to “synthesize the results of recent scholarly work, to help the reader understand the relationship between the earliest Christians and the world around them.”

To accomplish this purpose, the authors first explore the history of the eastern Mediterranean world from Alexander to Hadrian, that is, from the beginning of the Hellenistic era in the fourth century B.C. through the close of the New Testament period in the early second century A.D. They offer a sketch of legal and political structures as they are known from the sources. The second chapter is devoted to means of communication: travel, writing, the spread of religious and cultural movements, including the Christian mission. The third chapter focuses on economic factors: their effects on the social structure, agriculture and commerce, municipal and imperial finance, and coinage.

Chapter four examines the social life of Palestine: demography, daily life, languages and culture, rural-urban tensions, and the particular characteristics of the region that would affect the Jesus movement in its earliest beginnings. The same attention is extended in chapter five to the wider Greco-Roman urban world, with its modern city layouts, stratified society, opportunities for education and leisure, and religious and social organizations. Finally, chapter six centers entirely on Christian life where it developed—in the cosmopolitan atmospheres of the empire’s great cities; how it was part of its environment and in what ways it remained distinctive.

This is an enlightening book for anyone interested in the social history of early Christianity. The historical summary in chapter one is more detailed than those usually found in introductory surveys of “New Testament background.” It provides clear information about political structures that is not easily available to the nonspecialist. Particular attention is given in every instance to Judaism and its place in the social world. Where helpful, New Testament references are included in such a way that light is thrown on them from the historical perspective, for example, the description of Roman colony illustrated by allusion to Philippi (Acts 16:12) and Corinth (Acts 18:4–8).

Here is a rather complete yet brief and straightforward social description of life in the world in which Christianity developed. 060Details about finances, towns and houses, recreation and foreign religious cults are especially helpful. The material about the collegia, or social clubs organized along the lines of professional associations, about religious devotion to a particular god and about burial associations of the poor, synthesizes the results of an enormous amount of research in recent decades. There are some marvelous summaries of indicators that convey a whole dimension of social experience, such as the Romans’ list of ethnic slurs for the Greeks (“effete, glib and unreliable”), countered by the Greeks’ list for the Romans (“brutal, dull and haughty”).

In the final chapter, the portraits of the first major Christian centers—Antioch, Ephesus, Macedonia (Philippi and Thessalonica), Achaia (Corinth), Rome and Alexandria—bring together a great deal of information that would otherwise have to be garnered from a number of sources. The bibliographical information provided for each chapter is exceptional, more complete than in any other book of this kind. It is simply a gold mine of possibilities for the general reader who wants to pursue special areas of interest.

Those who expect something of the other half of the social study of early Christianity, namely, the use of social science method, will be disappointed. Here is social history, description and organization only, but that is quite adequate, and is clearly stated in the foreword as the common perspective of the whole series. It was unnecessary for the editor to follow the statement of purpose with the seemingly defensive disclaimer that “the aim is to understand those communities as they believed, thought, and acted then and there—not to ‘explain’ them by some supposedly universal laws of social behavior.”

There are, of course, the occasional questionable statements, such as the suggestion that patriarchy was an urban, as distinct from rural, phenomenon; or that Jewish synagogues had the legal status of collegia. Sometimes statements seem to be thrown in without adequate explanation, for example, that an Aramaic document from Qumran refers to “the Son of God” and to “the Son of the Most High.” Occasionally redactional assertions made about biblical texts are dropped haphazardly. For example, the author says that the Lukan description of Jesus’ group and the Jerusalem church as lacking possessions is “a Lukan redactional emphasis,” while other biblical texts are taken at face value as historically reliable. While there are good exegetical reasons for making such statements, those reasons are not given, nor should they be, since this is not a book about redaction criticism. The reader is left bewildered, however, since the historical reliability of some texts is selectively questioned without adequate explanation.

These weaknesses are small ones, however, and this is the best book to emerge for the general reader. Here, in a rather substantial nutshell, is most of the material that has been gathered in recent years about the social matrix of the New Testament and early Christianity.

The Bible Cookbook
Daniel S. Cutler
(New York: William Morrow, 1985) 416 pp., $19.95