WAS JESUS VEGETARIAN?

8 Copyright 2018, John H. Davidson M.A. (Cantab)

John H. Davidson M.A. (Cantab)

Adapted from The Gospel of Jesus – In Search of His Original Teachings,

John Davidson, 2004.

Available from:
http://www.scienceofthesoul.org/product_p/en–176–0.htm

There is a great deal of evidence that John the Baptist, James the brother
of Jesus, the apostles, the desert fathers, the Christian communities in
Jesus’ own home territory of Palestine, and many more of the earliest
Christians were all vegetarian. The letters of St Paul indicate that he
himself was in dispute with such groups. It seems likely, therefore, that
Jesus himself taught abstention from animal foods, while Paul taught the
reverse.

Mystics and true holy men have generally had a predisposition towards vegetarianism and
abstinence from alcohol, while those of the highest order have always taught this as
prerequisites for following the mystic path. It is natural to ask, therefore, whether Jesus
also taught the same. Like the belief in reincarnation, these dietary restrictions were
common in early Christianity though they were later eradicated. But although there is
plenty of indirect evidence to demonstrate that Jesus was indeed vegetarian and drank no
alcohol, no direct, unequivocal statement from him on the subject has survived.

Spiritual practice, reincarnation and dietary restrictions are amongst the first casualties in
the steady decline of a mystic’s teachings into a religion and the reason is not hard to
find. It is the character of the human mind. It is the mind which gets involved in the
world. It does not want restrictions and without the personal guidance of a spiritual
teacher, it does not take long for uncomfortable doctrines and practices to be dropped.

The primary rationale which all mystics give for instructing their disciples to be
vegetarian is that of reincarnation and the law of karma. This gives us part of the reason
why reincarnation is one of the early casualties of mystic teachings. For wherever
reincarnation has been retained as a general belief, there too will you find a traditional
belief in vegetarianism. This has been true of the ancient Greek mystics and the
Pythagoreans, the gnostics, the Manichaeans, the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Buddhists and
the Jains. All these are or were traditional believers in both reincarnation and
vegetarianism.

Once the possibility of reincarnation is accepted, then the forces which drive rebirth are
also brought into focus and it becomes very easy to understand that whatever suffering is
caused in this world, must be paid for in this world. Get rid of reincarnation from your

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religion and it becomes very easy to eliminate vegetarianism, too. An understanding of
karma and reincarnation impresses on the mind the fact that everything has to be paid for
in the future.

Every thought and action leaves its impression upon the mind. All suffering caused to
other creatures, whether directly or indirectly, has its effect. Everything gets recorded in
the deep recesses of the mind and automatically bears fruit in future lives. If someone is
partially or totally responsible, during the course of their life, for the death a thousand
chickens, then they will have to pay for it in the future. They may not need to be killed by
each of those animals, individually and in separate births, but they will certainly have to
undergo the equivalent suffering, in one way or another. So the question becomes, what
creatures should we eat? – since all have life, even plants. The answer is: those forms
whose killing causes the least suffering – and that means plants and other species from
the vegetable kingdom.

From a study of Jesus’ teachings, it is quite evident that he taught the law of recompense
for sin. And if he also taught reincarnation as so many of the more mystically-minded,
early Christians believed, he would certainly have been vegetarian and taught this
practice to his disciples. What is also clear is that Jesus was of such a kind, loving,
forgiving, merciful and compassionate disposition that it is difficult to imagine him even
hurting another creature, let alone placing it on his plate and eating it.

Jesus’ philosophy of non-violence was as far advanced as that of any other teacher of this
subject, probably all of whom have also been vegetarian. How can one who advises
turning the other cheek, giving your cloak to one who has already taken your coat, and
walking two miles with one who has already coerced you into going one mile with them,
be thought to have happily eaten up the bodies of slaughtered animals? How can one who
is so far removed from thoughts of violence and revenge that he recommends extending
unlimited forgiveness to others, advises loving your enemies and doing good to those
who treat you badly, have been expected to have condoned the killing of other creatures
for his food?

Jesus also reiterated the commandment attributed to Moses, “thou shalt not kill”
(Deuteronomy 5:17), as we find it in the King James Version of Mark and Luke (Mark
10:19, Luke 18:20). In many modern translations, however, the key word has been
changed to “murder” in both the Old and New Testaments, though the meaning in
Deuteronomy is ambiguous and could mean either or both. “Murder” refers only to
human beings, killing to all life, and the translators must have been aware of the
implications of their change.

So although no explicit quotation from Jesus is recorded on the subject, the evidence of
the remainder of his teachings alone is more than suggestive. It would have been most
inconsistent of him if he had not abstained from killing animals and eating meat.

After all, bearing in mind the approach of the orthodox Christian authorities as well as
the attitude of the Roman Emperors who adopted Christianity, would one really expect
any references to vegetarianism to be present in the canonical gospels? The earliest extant
texts of the gospels are from the fourth and fifth centuries, so there were three or four
hundred years and ample opportunity for the adjustment of any ‘difficult’ passages. And
since everyone in those days changed texts willy-nilly to fit their own beliefs, the
‘orthodox’ could so easily have justified their editorial excursions in the name of
‘correcting earlier errors’.

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Locusts and Wild Honey

Definitive records of Jesus as a vegetarian may be absent, but with his predecessor, John
the Baptist, the situation is different. As we have them now, the gospel texts vary. John’s
gospel completely ignores the matter. Matthew follows Mark, speaking of “locusts and
wild honey” (Matthew 3:4, Mark 1:6), while Luke makes no mention of John the
Baptist’s food, but does introduce an angel who declares that John will abstain from all
alcoholic drinks:

He shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor
strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his
mother’s womb (Luke 1:15).

It is generally reckoned that Luke is referring to the Nazarite vow, an ancient Jewish rule
of asceticism which specifically mentions abstention from “wine and strong drink” and
who the fourth-century Christian, Epiphanius, tells us also “forbid all flesh-eating and do
not eat living things at all” (Panarion).

Locusts, one might observe, are not vegetarian food and advocates of vegetarianism have
tried to explain the term away by various means. Some say that it referred to the
evergreen locust tree or carob, so called because its pods, often curved, resemble locusts.
The tree is widely distributed from Spain to the eastern Mediterranean regions where its
flat, leathery pods, three to twelve inches long, with their sweet pulpy interior are eaten
by animals and also by man, in times of scarcity. Traditionally, the tree has also been
called ‘St John’s Bread’ indicating how widespread was the belief that John the Baptist’s
diet did indeed include the pods of the locust tree rather than insects.

One group of early Christians in Palestine, the Ebionites, who were undoubtedly
vegetarian, claimed that the correct Greek word was not locust (akris) at all, but enkris
(cake) and it would certainly have been easy enough for such a mistake to have occurred
during the transmission of early manuscripts. But whether or not the “locusts” were carob
pods or cakes, some explanation along these lines must be correct, for otherwise it is
difficult to comprehend how such a strange diet should have been imputed to John the
Baptist.

The Ebionites and another closely allied group, the Nazoraeans (Nazarenes), had their
own gospels, neither of which have survived in anything other than brief quotes and
citations among the writings of the Church fathers. Their interest to us in the present
context is that, according to Epiphanius, the Ebionites believed that both John the Baptist
and Jesus had been vegetarian and their Gospel of the Ebionites reflected this.

Outside the gospels, information on John the Baptist is scarce, but in the Slavonic edition
of the Jewish War, evidently writing from popular hearsay and legend, the first-century
Jewish historian, Josephus, relates that John stated “I am a man called by the Spirit of
God, and I live on stems, roots and fruit,” adding, “wine and other strong drink he would
not allow to be brought anywhere near him, and animal food he absolutely refused –
fruit was all that he needed.”

It is uncertain whether these passages in the Slavonic Jewish War – which are not present
in other versions – can be really be attributed to Josephus. But even if they were penned

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by some other hand and even if the details are somewhat fanciful and inaccurate, they
still indicate that the traditional account of John the Baptist had him as a vegetarian and
teetotaller. So if John really was the Master of Jesus, then – considering the high esteem
in which John was held by Jesus – it would be reasonable to suppose that Jesus followed
his predecessor’s example and was both vegetarian and teetotal, too.

Epiphanius also speaks of a group he calls the Nasarenes, probably no different from the
Nazoreans who, he says, “forbid all flesh-eating, and do not eat living things at all”
(Panarion). He also refers to a number of other Judaic sects who seem to have been very
closely associated with the early Christians in Palestine and were also vegetarian.

In fact, from a variety of ancient and reputable sources, such as Philo Judaeus, Josephus
and St Jerome, we learn that other sects of a similar character, including the Essenes of
Palestine and the Therapeutae of Egypt, were all vegetarian. It seems to have been
characteristic of the esoteric groups of those times – Christian or Judaic. It was also the
accepted practice among Hellenistic esoteric groups such as the Pythagoreans, and was
attributed to other Greek philosophers and mystics who had also taught transmigration of
the soul, such as Empedocles (c.490–430 BC). Indeed, it has always been the case that
those following a spiritual or mystic path have either been strictly vegetarian or have had
leanings in that direction. It is still true, even in modern times.

The vegetarianism of the Ebionites and the “Nazoraeans” or “Nazarenes” is significant

for these groups date back to the time of Jesus. Jesus himself was called the Nazarene and
in Acts, Paul was described as a “ring-leader of the sect of the Nazarenes”, though the
teachings that he took into the wider Roman Empire differed significantly from those of
the Judaic Nazoraeans. Being descended from the direct disciples of Jesus who had lived
in Palestine and the neighbouring area, the traditions they preserved are far more likely to
reflect Jesus’ real teachings than the groups that formed due to the evangelical activities
of Paul.

Apostolic Vegetarians

Supporting this point of view is the fact that many of Jesus’ well-known disciples are
depicted as vegetarian in the early apocryphal literature. Peter, for instance, was said by
the Ebionites to have abstained from meat and in the early Christian texts, the Clementine
Homilies and Clementine Recognitions (otherwise known as the Peregrinations of Peter
since they record the supposed travels of Peter), there are number of places where Peter
speaks out against the sacrificial slaughter of animals as offerings to idols and the
subsequent eating of their flesh. For instance:

When you partook of meat offered to idols, you became servants to the
Prince of Evil (Clementine Homilies).

And as regards his own habits, Peter says:

I live on bread alone, with olives, and seldom even with pot-herbs; and my
dress is what you see, a tunic with a pallium: and having these, I require
nothing more. This is sufficient for me, because my mind does not regard
things present, but things eternal, and therefore no present and visible
thing delights me (Clementine Recognitions).

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James the brother of Jesus, the first leader of the Judaic Christians at Jerusalem, was also
said to have been vegetarian and teetotal, and that must surely be significant. According
to the fourth-century Christian historian, Eusebius, a certain Hegesippus, who lived a
generation and a half after the martyrdom of James, described James as being vegetarian
and teetotal:

James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the Church
in conjunction with the Apostles. He has been called the Just (the
Righteous) by all, from the time of our Saviour to the present day; for
there were many that bore the name of James. He was holy from his
mother’s womb; and he drank no wine nor strong drink, nor did he eat
flesh (Church History).

Matthew and Thomas were also said to have been vegetarian. The late second-century
Clement of Alexandria, for instance, who is not given to fabrication, comments in a
discourse on not pandering to the palate that:

Happiness is found in the practice of virtue. Accordingly, the apostle

Matthew partook of seeds, and nuts, and vegetables, without flesh (The
Instructor).

Likewise, the apocryphal Acts of Thomas makes a number of references to Thomas as

both vegetarian and teetotal. His friends relate of him:

The simplicity and kindness of him and his faith do declare that he is a
righteous man (magus) or an apostle of the new God whom he preacheth;
for he fasteth continually and prayeth, and eateth bread only, with salt, and
his drink is water, and he weareth but one garment alike in fair weather
and in winter, and takes nothing for himself from any man, and that he
hath, he giveth unto others.

The stories in the Acts of Thomas are anecdotal and were never intended to be understood
historically, but the teaching and tradition they impart was certainly meant to be taken to
heart. Something similar is written concerning the apostle John in the History of John:

His sustenance was, from the ninth to the ninth hour once, when he had
finished his prayer, bread and herbs with a mess of boiled lentils, which he
bought for himself as he went from town to town, eating, and drinking
water only.

John, like Thomas, was not only vegetarian but was very particular about living off his
own income and purchasing his own food. This is another fundamental spiritual principle
which all mystics have taught, that both they and their disciples should earn their own
living for themselves and their family by simple, honest means and should not be a
burden upon others.

Gnostic Vegetarians

Many of the gnostics of the early Christian period are also reported to have been
vegetarian. Marcion (fl.140–160), for example, a mid-second century Christian leader, is
described by a number of the Christian fathers as abstaining from meat. Hippolytus

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writes:

You, (Marcion, advise)... the abstaining from meats which God has
created for participation by the faithful, and those that know the truth
(Refutation of All Heresies).

Saturninus, too, and probably most of the gnostics and their followers were also
vegetarian, including Simon Magus, Valentinus, Basilides, Menander, Heracleon,
Ptolemy and many others from the first two or three centuries after Jesus. Most of them
taught escape from the domain of birth and death and the return to God by travelling the
inner path of gnosis – and abstention from meat and alcohol are a natural part of this
path. But so little is known of these great teachers for their writings were largely
destroyed by the later orthodoxy. Yet many of the early Christian desert fathers, revered
for their austerity, abstinence and wisdom, were also vegetarian, and they were largely
categorized as more or less ‘orthodox’ in their beliefs.

Moving forward into the third century, the great Iranian mystic, Mani, is a further reliable
witness to the abstinence from meat and alcohol so characteristic of the mystic path to
God. There is absolutely no doubt about the fact that he taught this to all his disciples,
though in later times, when his teachings too had become a religion, such abstinence was
sometimes reserved more for the elite or the ‘elect’ than others. Vegetarianism and
teetotalism remained an integral aspect of Manichaean practice among medieval
gnostics – the Cathars, the Albigensians and others – until the Catholic crusade of Pope
Innocent III in the thirteenth century all but wiped them out.

Mani stated that his teachings were the same as those of Jesus, Buddha and Zarathushtra,
which means that he too believed that Jesus had taught abstention from meat and alcohol,
and there are many references to this in the literature concerning Manichaeism.

Paul

No scholar who has studied the matter denies that there was very early controversy in
Christianity over the question of vegetarianism, and it seems that at the centre of this
controversy was the self-appointed apostle, Paul. In his letters, he writes specifically of
his disagreements with Peter and James the brother of Jesus. In their view, Paul would
have been a maverick who had not been appointed by Jesus and was not even one of
Jesus’ disciples. There are also a number of places in his letters where he is clearly
responding to opposition from other Christians, and among his controversial doctrines
was the belief that they could eat meat. But whatever the reasons, there seems little doubt
that Paul was responsible for the first major division within the Christian community.
Coming at a time in the AD 50s when there must have been many of Jesus’ original
disciples still alive, this division would have been between the initiated disciples of Jesus
and his own converts.

Paul believed in freedom from all Judaic observances and constraints. He often speaks of
the “freedom we have in Jesus Christ”, referring specifically to non-observance of Jewish
religious laws. There was no need, he said, for his Gentile converts in Asia Minor and
Europe to adopt them. No doubt he was correct, but at the same time he also threw out
vegetarianism – one of the primary and cardinal tenets of mystic teaching.

Dispensing with vegetarianism had the advantage of making his version of Christianity

6 Was Jesus Vegetarian?

more appealing to the majority. Nevertheless, the communities of converts formed by
him, came into contact with initiated disciples of Jesus or those who had heard of Jesus’
teachings through these disciples. And since they taught both vegetarianism and
abstention from alcohol, Paul’s converts would have begun to wonder whether or not
they were being given the correct teachings. Though we do not have a record of the
communications that came from these communities to Paul, we can follow something of
what was going on from Paul’s replies. In Romans, for example, Paul writes specifically
of vegetarianism, describing the eating of “herbs” (ie. food from the plant kingdom) as
weakness:

For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth
herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him
which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him
(Romans 14:2–3).

Clearly, some – if not all – of the Christians he was writing to were vegetarian and he is
trying to forestall any quarrelling about it. At the time of writing, Paul had not yet visited
Rome.

From his other comments in Romans, it is clear that Paul reckons peace and harmony to
be higher realities than “eating and drinking” to the extent that he advises people to
change their diet to mollify others, if it helps. As he says elsewhere, “I am all things to all
men” (1 Corinthians 9:22). Indeed, in a letter to the Corinthians, Paul himself declares
that he will no longer eat “meat” (meaning flesh) if it continues to upset people – though
whether or not he stuck to his promise is unknown:

Food, of course, cannot bring us in touch with God: we lose nothing if we

refuse to eat, we gain nothing if we eat. Only be careful that you do not
make use of this liberty of yours in a way that proves a pitfall for the
weak.... That is why, since food can be the occasion of my brother’s
downfall, I shall never eat meat again in case I am the cause of a brother’s
downfall (1 Corinthians 8:8–9,13).

Paul asserts his belief that it makes no difference so far as God is concerned whether or
not a person eats meat. This he calls “this freedom” – a freedom from constraint which
others Christians did not ‘enjoy’. But there are many aspects to this discussion and
although there is no space to discuss the details here, the evidence of Paul’s letter
demonstrates that there were still many vegetarians among the Christians, twenty years or
so after Jesus’ death.

Fishy Stories

Among the evidence of the early Pauline controversy are 1 and 2 Peter, as well as Titus
and 1 and 2 Timothy, which are commonly considered by scholars to be fraudulent early
second-century compositions, written to bolster the Pauline point of view and to suggest
that Peter eventually came around to Paul’s way of thinking. It is likely that the gospel
accounts of Jesus eating fish are also later insertions stemming from the same
controversy. Though the spurious nature of the stories does not in itself prove that Jesus
was vegetarian, if it could be shown that the motivation behind their inclusion was to
demonstrate that he ate fish, it would actually help to prove the converse.

7 Was Jesus Vegetarian?

Based upon the evidence of the text itself (its style is quite different from the rest of the
gospel, for instance), the last chapter of St John, chapter twenty-one, is generally
considered by scholars to be a later addition. Nowhere else in John’s gospel is there any
mention of Jesus or his disciples being fishermen. Yet the first half of this chapter
concerns a post-resurrectional miracle story devoted almost entirely to the subject of
Jesus and his disciples catching, killing, cooking and eating fish. The disciples are even
recorded as counting “one hundred and fifty-three fishes” on the shoreline, by firelight.
But can one really imagine the disciples, having just met the risen form of Jesus, and
having netted such a miraculous catch, then possessing the presence of mind or even the
inclination to start counting live fish in the dark while the risen Jesus looked on?

A similar incident is related in one of Luke’s post-resurrection narratives, where Jesus is

made to ask pointedly for “meat” and is given some “broiled fish... which he did eat
before them”. The writer clearly wanted to make a point of it (Luke 24:41–43).

Whenever the question of Jesus being vegetarian is discussed, people always ask, “What
about the miracles of the loaves and the fishes?” It is probable that the origin of this story
lies in the externalization and literalization of a mystic metaphor. Indeed, in John’s
gospel the bread is taken as the “Bread of Life” or the Creative Word, the spiritual food
that Jesus would have given to his disciples. Moreover, in the earliest references of this
miracle story, Jesus feeds the disciples with five loaves only. No fish are ever mentioned.
The Acts of Thomas, the History of John and, even more significantly the avowedly anti-
vegetarian, second-century Irenaeus, all omit the fish when speaking of this miracle story.
Yet Irenaeus is hardly likely to have let slip a chance to prove his point if “fish” had been
in the gospel text with which he was familiar – but which is no longer extant.

It is clear, then, that there is considerable evidence that Jesus taught and practised
vegetarianism and abstention from alcohol. John the Baptist, James the brother of Jesus,
Peter and the apostles, the Judaic Christians, the gnostics, the ascetics, some of the desert
fathers, Mani – in fact, practically everyone except Paul and the branch of Christianity
that based itself on Paul’s teachings – all seem to have been vegetarian and to have
abstained from alcohol. Jesus’ own teachings also support the idea that he was, too, and
that he taught the practice to his disciples. And if he taught the path of the Creative Word
or Logos, as John’s gospel states, then – like all the other mystics of the world who have
taught this path – it is certain that he would have been.

8 Was Jesus Vegetarian?