What Did Jesus Eat?

 What did Jesus eat? Well, he was poor and he ate what was available. There was very little meat and no real refrigeration other than storing food in cooler places like caves.

Like everyone else, he ate what he could get and what was allowed under the Jewish definition of clean and unclean foods. Foods which were available included fish, birds, lamb, lentils, whole grains, vegetables, dates,  pomegranates, honey, olives and olive oil, grapes, wine, vinegar, figs, bread, cumin, barley, raisins, apples, almonds, pistachios, dates, dill, mint, cinnamon, cumin, and eggs. The only meat he is specifically mentioned as eating was fish, but he also ate lamb since he participated in Passover celebrations where lamb was the required meat. 

Vegetarianism and veganism are acceptable lifestyles for practicing Christians but Jesus did eat meat.

Exodus 12:8; Matthew 26:17-30; Mark 7:19; Luke 1:12, 2:41, 22:7-15, 24:41-43; John 2:13, 5:1, 21:9-14; Acts 10; Romans 14; 1 Timothy 4:1-5; Colossians 2:16-17

Trout Ice Cream

 If you enjoy making homemade ice cream, why not be adventurous? Try ice creams made with uncommon ingredients: pickles, corn, carrots, tofu, bacon, ham, avocados, butterbeans, etc.  Some of them sound as if they might be quite good. 

Japanese Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai is known to have made cod roe ice cream. In 2019, on Iron Chef America, chef Morimoto Masaharu, a fish expert, made trout ice cream. The judges unanimously told him to never make it again. 

A Christian understanding which can be taken from this event is that, in our Christian freedom, just because you can do something, that does not mean that you should or even that you must do it.

Surprisingly to me, the Google AI function expressed this very well. "Christian freedom does not mean a license to indulge in sinful desires or do whatever one pleases, but rather a freedom from the bondage of sin and an opportunity for serving others through love, as well as doing what is good, true, and beautiful in obedience to God's will. It is freedom to live a holy life, act in love, and serve others, not freedom to pursue fleeting desires or self-indulgence."

Hallelujah for These Children!

(Some videos will not play properly when you click on the triangle.  Instead,  click on the title line in the picture and the video will begin.  When the video is completed, close the You Tube pop-up window to return to this blog.)

I had to post this wonderful video from the Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat 5th Grade students in Quinhagak (Kuinerraq in the Yup'ik language), Alaska (USA).  These are Yup'ik people (you probably would call them Eskimos, but they do not like that word).  There are about 16,900 speakers of Yup'ik, which is as different from its sister language,Yupik, as Spanish is from French.  The word Yup'ik comes from "yuk" = "person" plus "Pik" = "real."

Quinhagak is a fishing and canning village and had a permanent population of 555 as of the 2000 census.  The name means "new river channel."  The village has been proven to have existed since at least 1000 AD/CE.

These are poor but proud, hard-working people.  From the video, it looks like almost the entire village helped in the production of this wonderful statement.  I especially love the girls spinning at 2:04 and the very cold girl at 2:32.

The Sign of the Fish

The Sign of the Fish?  Didn't I mean The Sign of the Cross?  The sign of the fish was one of the very early symbols used by Christians.  The obvious reference is to the biblical stories recorded in Matthew 14:13-21, 15:32-39, Mark 6:31-44, 8:1-9, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:5-15 where Jesus fed thousands using only a few fish and loaves of bread.  Also, several of Jesus' first disciples were fishermen and He promised them that they would become "fishers of men." (Matthew 4:19, Mark 1:17)

The fish symbol was often safer to use than a cross because the Romans knew the cross symbol but most of them would totally miss the significance of a fish.  The symbol became a sort of secret code so Christians could safely recognize others whom they had not yet met.  Also, a house with a fish over the door was a "safe house," an indirect reference to the Passover. (Exodus 12:12-14)

This was not the only meaning of the fish; it was also an anagram from the first letters of the phrase Ιησούς Χριστός Θεού Υιός Σωτήρ (Greek meaning "Jesus Christ God Son Savior).  The first letters of the five words spell out ΙΧΘΥΣ (Icthys, Greek for "fish,'" from which we derive the English word "ichthyology," the study of fish.)