Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Cosmos The In Lost

Home
Catholic
Daily Life in the Time of Jesus: Locust Eating 101

Daily Life in the Time of Jesus: Locust Eating 101

Last updated on: March 26, 2015 at 11:54 am by Artur Rosman

Daily Life in the Time of Jesus: Locust Eating 101 2015-03-26T11:54:23-07:00 Artur Rosman

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Grasshoppers/Locusts are a symbol of immortality and good luck, but they also make great snacks (Jacek Malczewski, Resurrection,

Biblical references frequently remain abstractions until they collide with our reality. After opening Henri-Daniel Rops’ Daily Life in the Time of Jesus and read ingabout locust eating I searched for (what else?) a youtube video (see below). That’s when I realized that locusts are merely grasshoppers in their swarming stage.

I’ve spent some time in Norway where they have unusual foods like reindeer salami (you feel a little like you’re eating Bambi’s mother) and whale steak. My paternal grandmother was one of the greatest Polish cooks I’ve ever known. She could and would cook anything; she lived to cook and eat. One of the strangest concoctions she made was cattle blood soup. Pig feet, tartare, and tripe soup were also common delicacies that don’t seem so unusual to me. When my parents and I were in a refugee camp in Italy the whole camp was given octopus. There was a mutiny. While in Nantes, France, real France (which is basically four cities and a farm), I had some frog legs, antelope, but not snails.

Back to Daily Life in the Time of Jesus and what it has to say about locust-eating:

Maybe the world of the Bible wasn’t as strange as Karl Barth would have it?

One of the most surprising forms of food [during the time of Jesus] was the locust: through indeed it is hard to see why this should surprise anyone who prizes the frogs and snails of the French cuisine. Everyone knows that John the Baptist lived in the desert upon “locusts and wild honey.” But he was not the only one to appreciate this delicacy. The tractate Taanith goes so far as to claim that there are eight hundred kinds of edible locust, all belonging to the migratory race; but it does not specify their names. But in any case there were four in current use. Sometimes they were cooked rapidly in salt water, and then they had a shrimp-like taste and some a shrimp-like color; and sometimes their heads and legs were taken off and they were dried in the sun. Once dry, they were either put up with honey or vinegar, ore else ground to powder. This locust powder, which tasted rather bitter, was mixed with wheat-flour to make a much esteemed kind of biscuit, rather like those which the Chinese cooks produce under the name of “shrimp-bread.”

The next paragraph of the book slides right into oil after talking about locust preparation:

Yet another book about the strange not but not entirely strange world of the New Testament.

This whole cuisine was of course based upon oil: butter was the rare exception. Palestine had a very great many olive-trees, so many that the excellent, strongly-flavored oil was exported. The olivers themselves were eaten, too, either in brine or in oil, as we eat them today. The oil was very often made in a little press at home, but there were also much larger concerns, real mills, in which men or asses turned and upright grinder in a tank. There were various qualities of oil; the best, the virgin oil, was kept for liturgical purpose and for the most delicate pastries. How could men have lived without oil? For it was not only used in cookery but also in pharmacy and medicine. It is not surprising that at least thirty passages of the Bible holds it up as a symbol of strength and health.

See how nicely eating dovetails into theology just as the human body does? You might want to look at my TOP10 list of books on the theology of eating.

Did you know you can literally eat crow (follow the link for recipes)?

What’s the weirdest food you’ve eaten?

Catholic

History

daily life in the time of Jesus

Previous Post

March 25, 2015

For Catholicism the Spirit is the Root of Evil not the Body!

Next Post

March 27, 2015 Hand? Mouth? What About the Third Way of Receiving Communion?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category #WhyRemainCatholic Abortion Advent Anti-Catholicism Arts Atheism Beauty Benedict XVI Bible Book Review Catholic Cinema Comedy Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey Czesław Miłosz Dariusz Karłowicz Devil Easter Eastern Orthodoxy Economics Environment Family Famous Atheists Who Weren't Atheists Guest Post Hans Urs von Balthasar HHS Mandate History Imagination Interview Islam Jean-Luc Marion John Paul II Judaism Just War Lent Literature Little Sisters of the Poor Liturgy Martyrdom Music News Paganism Patristics Phenomenology Philosophy Pierre Hadot Poetry Poland Pop Culture Pope Francis Poverty Prayer Protestantism Rabelais Race Remi Brague Rene Girard Russia Sam Rocha Science & Religion SCOTUS Secularization Sexual Abuse Sexuality Silence Solidarity Stratford Caldecott Synod14 Terrorism Top 10 Uncategorized Walker Percy War Weakened Edition World War II World Youth Day WYD Krakow

Select a Month July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who saw a vision of a valley full of dry bones?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Micah Amos Daniel Ezekiel