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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2014
This article proposes an analysis of two homiletic units in the Palestinian Midrash Leviticus Rabbah, which revolve around biblical chapters pertaining to sacrifices. A theme that pervades these units is that of eating as an animalistic activity that often entails moral depravity. In contrast, the act of sacrificing is constructed in these units as one in which one is willing to give up one's own nourishment, and in a sense one's own “soul,” in order to offer it to God. Many of the motifs used to vilify eating in the Midrash can be traced in moralistic Greek, Roman, and early Christian diatribes preaching for moderation in eating or for asceticism; the homilists in Leviticus Rabbah, however, utilize these popular motifs in order to present sacrifice as the spiritual contrary of eating, and thus to give the obsolete practice of sacrifice cultural cachet and compelling meanings.
1. Here I am following a very broad definition of the span of this period, which was proposed by Brown, Peter in his influential The World of Late Antiquity (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971)Google Scholar. For a survey of the history of the term “late antiquity” and the unique characteristics of this period, see Rousseau's, Philip introduction in Companion to Late Antiquity, ed. Rousseau, Philip (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), xviii–xxii.Google Scholar
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8. On this midrash, its time, and its place, see Albeck, Hanokh, “Midrash Vayikra Rabbah,” in The Louis Ginsberg Jubilee Volume (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1946)Google Scholar, Hebrew Section, 25–43; Margaliot, Mordecai, Midrash Vayikra Rabbah, vol. 5 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993)Google Scholar; Strack, H.L and Stemberger, G., Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. Bockmuehl, Marcus (Cambridge: T & T Clark, 1991)Google Scholar, 288–91.
9. A common view among scholars was that the homilies contained in the midrash originally emerged in the setting of the synagogue, and were used during public sermons adjacent to the weekly Torah reading. This theory was first proposed by Zunz, Leopold, Gottesdienstliche Vorträge der Juden (Berlin: A. Asher, 1832)Google Scholar, and was enthusiastically endorsed by Heinemann, Joseph in his Derashot be-ẓibbur bi-tkufat ha-talmud (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1970Google Scholar). This hypothesis has been widely challenged in more recent scholarship, most prominently by Sarason, Richard, “Toward a New Agendum for the Study of Midrashic Literature,” in Studies in Aggadah, Targum, and Jewish Liturgy in Memory of Joseph Heinemann, ed. Petuchowski, Jakob J. and Fleischer, Ezra (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1981), 55–73Google Scholar; Sarason, “The Petiḥot in Leviticus Rabba: Oral Homilies or Redactional Constructions?” Journal of Jewish Studies 33 (1982): 557–65Google Scholar. For a helpful survey of the state of the debate on this question see Visotzky, Burton, Golden Bells and Pomegranates: Studies in Midrash Leviticus Rabbah (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 10–11.Google Scholar
10. On the unique midrashic technique of Leviticus Rabbah see Neusner, Jacob, The Integrity of Leviticus Rabbah: The Problem of the Autonomy of a Rabbinic Document (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Visotzky, Golden Bells; more recently, see Tamar Jacobowitz, Leviticus Rabbah and the Spiritualization of the Laws of Impurity (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2011).
11. Vayikra Rabbah, Tazri‘a, par. 14, to Leviticus 12:1 (ed. Margaliot, 2:295–318).
12. Vayikra Rabbah, ’Emor, par. 31, to Leviticus 24:1–4 (ed. Margaliot, 4:714–33).
13. Stern, David, “Vayikra Rabbah and My Life in Midrash,” Prooftexts 21, no. 1 (2001): 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14. The Palestinian custom of weekly Torah readings, which was practiced at the time of the compilation of Leviticus Rabbah, was not based on an annual cycle in which the entire Pentateuch is read though the course of one year. Rather, as Shlomo Naeh showed, the Palestinian cycle was designed to take three and a half years, so that the Torah reading would be completed twice in the course of seven years. See Naeh, Shlomo, “Sidre kri'at ha-torah be-'ereẓ yisra'el: ‘iyyun meḥudash,” Tarbiz 67 (1998): 167–87Google Scholar.
15. Scheid, John, An Introduction to Roman Religion, trans. Lloyd, Janet (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003)Google Scholar, 93–6. See also Smith, Dennis E., From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Altmann, Peter, Festive Meals in Ancient Israel: Deuteronomy's Identity Politics in Their Ancient Near Eastern Context (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011)Google Scholar.
16. Smith, Jonathan Z., “The Domestication of Sacrifice,” reprinted in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004)Google Scholar, 145–59.
17. Detienne, Marcel and Vernant, Jean-Pierre, eds., The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks, trans. Wissing, Paula (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar.
18. The book of Leviticus prohibits any slaughter of cattle or flock not preceded by ritual sacrifice (Leviticus 17:1–10); see Schwartz, Baruch J., “Profane Slaughter and the Integrity of the Priestly Code,” Hebrew Union College Annual 67 (1996): 15–42Google Scholar. In contrast, the book of Deuteronomy permits such nonritual slaughter and the consumption of unconsecrated meat, but makes the point that it is primarily intended for people who cannot make it to the chosen place of worship (Deuteronomy 12:20–29). See Levinson, Bernard, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 23–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. This view is reflected in a rabbinic tradition regarding some of the more extreme reactions to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, which included a refusal to eat meat since sacrifices are no longer offered at the altar; see T. Sotah 15:10–11 and B. Bava Batra 60a; cf. 2 Baruch 10:9–10, B. Pesaḥim 109a.
20. The thematic unity of the parashot in Leviticus Rabbah was especially emphasized by Heinemann, Joseph, “‘Omanut ha-kompoziẓiah be-midrash vayikra rabbah,” Ha-sifrut 2 (1971)Google Scholar: 808–34.
21. Stern, David, “Anthology and Polysemy in Classical Midrash,” in The Anthology in Jewish Literature, ed. Stern, David (New York: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar, 108–40; Visotzky, Golden Bells, 10–22.
22. All citations and references are according to Mordecai Margaliot's edition. I have also consulted Chaim Milikowsky's online synoptic edition at http://www.biu.ac.il/js/midrash/VR/. All translations are mine.
23. Koehler, Ludwig and Baumgartner, Walter, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 3rd ed., vol.1 (Leiden: Brill, 2001)Google Scholar, 711–13; see also Gruber, Mayer, “Hebrew ‘da'abôn nepes,’ ‘Dryness of Throat’: From Symptom to Literary Convention,” Vetus Testamentum 37, no. 3 (1987)Google Scholar: 365–69. A similar range of meanings, from the physical throat to a living being or self, can be traced in the Akkadian usages of the word napishtu; see The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD) N 296a–303b. See also Tawil, Hayim ben Yosef, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew (Jersey City: Ktav, 2009)Google Scholar, 244–46.
24. On the rabbinic concept of nefesh or “soul” see Urbach, Ephraim E., Ḥazal: ’Emunot ve-de‘ot (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1969), 190–226Google Scholar; more recently, see Rosen-Zvi, Ishay, Guf ve-nefesh ba-hagut ha-yehudit ha-kedumah (Ben-Shemen: Modan, 2012), 59–67.Google Scholar
25. It is difficult to find rabbinic usage of the word nefesh itself that unequivocally refers to gullet: although there are quite a few places in which this is most plausibly the meaning of the word (as I will suggest in my reading of Leviticus Rabbah below), a metaphorical understanding of “life” or “soul” is usually also plausible (see, for example, Y. Terumot 8:1, 45c, in which disgusting foodstuffs are referred to as things that “make one's nefesh recoil.”). However, we do find several rabbinic references to the physical throat that use the construction bet nefesh. For example, bird carrion is said to convey impurity to the one who eats it when it reaches one's bet nefesh (Sifra, ’Aḥarei mot, par.8, per. 11.2, to Leviticus 17:15). Similarly, the biblical ordinance “And you shall afflict your souls/gullets (ve-‘innitem ’et nafshotekhem)” is explained in the Sifra as follows: “let this affliction be in the place of your soul/gullet (be-bet nafshotekhem), and which [affliction] is that? [Refraining from] eating and drinking” (Sifra, 'Aḥarei mot, par. 5, per. 7.3, to Leviticus 16:31; See also Y. Yoma, 8:1 [44d]; B. Yoma 74a; B. Nedarim 81b). In a similar vein, in the Palestinian Talmud an adornment that is placed on a woman's neck is referred to as “that which is placed on bet ha-nefesh” (Y. Shabbat 6:4 [8b]).
26. Heinemann, “‘Omanut ha-kompoziẓiah”; Cohen, Norman J., “Leviticus Rabbah, Parashah 3: An Example of a Classic Rabbinic Homily,” Jewish Quarterly Review 72, no. 1 (1981): 18–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27. For a helpful explanation of the genre of petiḥta, see Stern, “Anthology and Polysemy,” 129–32. Cf. Heinemann, Joseph, “The Proem in the Aggadic Midrashim,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 22 (1971)Google Scholar: 100–22.
28. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 3, to Leviticus 2:1 (ed. Margaliot, 1:59). The entire petiḥta appears, with slight changes, in Kohelet Rabbah 4.6.
29. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 3, to Leviticus 2:1 (ed. Margaliot, 1:61).
30. This unit does not cohere with the overarching theme of the poor person's sacrifice, and was apparently incorporated into this parashah because it presents yet another perspective on cereal offerings. See Margaliot's comments, Vayikra Rabbah, 1:63.
31. A bird offering is explicitly mentioned as a substitute for animal offerings, available for destitute persons, in Leviticus 5:7–10, 12:8, and 14:21–23. In Leviticus 5:11–13, the cereal offering is mentioned as a substitute for those who cannot even afford a bird offering.
32. “With its feathers” seems to be the more literal translation of the Hebrew be-noẓatah (cf. LXX: sun tois pterois). In contrast, Onkelos translates “he shall remove the crop with its contents” (ya‘ade yat zafkei be-’okhlei).
33. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 3, to Leviticus 2:1 (ed. Margaliot, 1:64).
34. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 3, to Leviticus 2:1 (ed. Margaliot, 1:64–65). Cf. Kohelet Rabbah 7.19.
35. See, for example, M. Ḥullin 3.1–2.
36. In Leviticus Rabbah, however, the term mesisa/meses is also used in accounts of human anatomy; see Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 4, to Leviticus 4:2 (ed. Margaliot, 1:86); Vayikra Rabbah, Meẓor‘a, par. 18, to Leviticus 15:2 (ed. Margaliot, 2:392).
37. Katzenelson, Yehuda Leib, Ha-talmud ve-ḥokhmat ha-refu'ah (Berlin: Hayim, 1928), 186–89Google Scholar; Steinberg, Avraham, Perakim be-patologiah shel ha-talmud ve-nos'ei kelav (Jerusalem: Schlesinger Institution, 1975)Google Scholar; accessed at http://www.medethics.org.il/articles/ASSIA/ASSIA6/R0061226.asp.
38. One could also argue that reading the description of the digestive process as relating to animals is incommensurate with the statement that immediately precedes this passage, which excludes domestic animals as creatures whose consumption of food does not involve theft and robbery. However, it is not uncommon for adjacent midrashic passages to contradict one another without any comment on the incongruity at hand.
39. Indeed, in Kohelet Rabbah 7.19 the same list of organs appears (albeit in a somewhat different order) in a context that unmistakably refers to the human body.
40. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 3, to Leviticus 2:1 (ed. Margaliot, 1:65–66).
41. Cohen (“Leviticus Rabbah 3,” 29) dismissed this entire subunit as an example of “divergencies and superfluities” in the otherwise neatly compiled parashah.
42. On the Greco-Roman cultic context of this story, see Lieberman, Saul, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962), 159Google Scholar.
43. In Genizah Fragment New York, JTSA ENA 2699.23–24, and in MS Toronto (Friedberg, Sasson 920), the priest's concern regarding the portion he will get to eat does not appear. This could be a result of scribal error, or of an intentional attempt to minimize the implicit criticism of the priest's behavior.
44. Mark 12:43–44 (NRSV translation).
45. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 3, to Leviticus 2:1 (ed. Margaliot, 1:67–68). Cf. B. Menaḥot 104b.
46. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 3, to Leviticus 2:1 (ed. Margaliot, 1:68). This entire passage is missing in MSS London (British Library Add. 27,169) and Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek heb. 117).
47. Margaliot (Vayikra Rabbah, 68) and Cohen (“Leviticus Rabbah 3,” 27) interpret the phrase “one who does bring a nefesh” as pertaining to fast and repentance. However, this reading seems to be a forced attempt to make the passage cohere with the rest of the unit.
48. Such incongruities within a single parashah are not uncommon, as shown by Heinemann, “‘Omanut ha-kompoziẓiah,” 814. Heinemann sees such inherent contradictions as reflecting a “dialectical approach” on the side of the editor. See also Cohen, “Leviticus Rabbah 3.”
49. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 3, to Leviticus 2:1 (ed. Margaliot, 1:68).
50. The theme of the gluttonous priest appears elsewhere in rabbinic literature (most notably, B. Pesaḥim 57a), and the unflattering depiction of the priests here echoes a certain animosity between priests and rabbis, which is discernible in various traditions from and about the Second Temple period. On the competition and enmity between priests and rabbis, see Cohen, Stuart A., The Three Crowns: Structures of Communal Politics in Early Rabbinic Jewry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, 147–78; for a more refined argument, see Himmelfarb, Martha, A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006Google Scholar), 165–70. However, the motif of the voracious priest is also familiar from Greek and Roman literature; see for example, Apuleius's Metamorphoses, book 8, esp. 8:29.
51. On Leviticus Rabbah 4, see Visotzky, Burton L., “The Priest's Daughter and the Thief in the Orchard: The Soul of Midrash Leviticus Rabbah,” in Putting Body and Soul Together: Essays in Honor of Robin Scroggs, eds. Wiles, Virginia, Brown, Alexandra, and Snyder, Graydon (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press, 1997)Google Scholar, 165–71; Stern, “Vayikra Rabbah.”
52. The words “and steals and robs” (ve-gozelet ve-ḥomeset) are missing in the printed edition, and in MSS St. Petersburg (Firkovich I 241), Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale héb. 149), and Oxford (Bodleian Opp. Add. fol. 51). The omission of these words might stem from a misunderstanding of the connection between eating of blood and theft and robbery, which Margaliot (Vayikra Rabbah, 80) also found perplexing. In Genizah Fragment Cambridge T-S K27.23, the entire reference to the eating of blood is missing.
53. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 4, to Leviticus 4:2 (ed. Margaliot, 1:80).
54. Deuteronomy 12:20, 24.
55. On the biblical notion that “the blood is the life” see Gilders, William K., Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 12–32.Google Scholar
56. Cf. Kohelet Rabbah 6.6–7.
57. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 4, to Leviticus 4:2 (ed. Margaliot, 1:82). In the printed edition, as well as in MSS St. Petersburg (Firkovich I 241) and Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale héb. 149), the version is “and not to foul smell.” See Margaliot's comments in Vayikra Rabbah, 1:83. In Kohelet Rabbah 6.6–7 the entire reference to “foul smell” is missing.
58. The word nefesh actually appears in Leviticus 4–5 eight times (Leviticus 4:2, 4:27, 5:1, 5:2, 5:4, 5:15, 5:17, 5:20). According to Margaliot (Vayikra Rabbah, 1:84), verses 5:2 and 5:4 are not meant to be included in the list, since they do not address the issue of sin.
59. The words “and steals and robs” (ve-gozelet ve-ḥomeset) are missing in the printed edition, as well as in MSS St. Petersburg (Firkovich I 241), Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale héb. 149), and Oxford (Bodleian Opp. Add. fol. 51).
60. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 4, to Leviticus 4:2 (ed. Margaliot, 1:84).
61. The manuscripts vary regarding the exact wording here, and some of the versions are clearly errors; however, the root sh-t-i (to drink) does appear in all the versions, making it plausible to explain the lung's function in terms of hydration (cf. B. Berakhot 61b: “the lung absorbs all kinds of liquids”). See Rosner, FredEncyclopedia of Medicine in the Bible and in the Talmud (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 2000), 195Google Scholar.
62. Almost identical lists appear in B. Berakhot 61a–b and in Kohelet Rabbah 7.19 (without mentioning the nefesh at the end).
63. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 4, to Leviticus 4:2 (ed. Margaliot, 1:86–87).
64. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 4, to Leviticus 4:2 (ed. Margaliot, 1:97).
65. For surveys of various classical and early Christian diatribes against gluttony, see Grimm, Veronika E., From Feasting to Fasting: The Evolution of a Sin (London: Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar; Sandnes, Karl Olav, Belly and Body in the Pauline Epistles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 24–135.Google Scholar
66. While it is difficult to find elaborate diatribes against gluttony in rabbinic literature, various rabbinic narratives and aphorisms present both overt and implicit condemnations of gluttony as unacceptable social behavior, associated with rudeness, obtrusiveness, and impiety. For various examples, see Weiss, Ruhama, ’Okhlim la-da‘at: tafkidan ha-tarbuti shel ha-se‘udot be-sifrut ḥazal (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibbutz Ha-me'uḥad, 2010)Google Scholar, 120–47.
67. The scholarly literature that explores rabbinic culture as deeply situated in the Greco-Roman and early Christian world, pioneered by Lieberman's, SaulHellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: JTS Press, 1962)Google Scholar, is copious. For but a few notable examples, see Levine, Lee I., Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Schaefer, Peter and Hezser, Catherine, eds., The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, 3 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2002)Google Scholar; Kalmin, Richard and Schwartz, Seth, eds., Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire (Peeters: Leuven, 2006)Google Scholar; Lapin, Hayim, Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100–400 C.E. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
68. Timaeus 73a, quoted from Lamb's, W. R. M. translation, Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 9 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925)Google Scholar. Similarly, Musonius Rufus points that gluttonous people are turned into animals since they lose their rational faculty (fragment 18b), Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings, ed. Irvine, William B. and trans. King, Cynthia (CreateSpace, 2011)Google Scholar, 74; see also van Geytenbeek, Anton C., Musonius Rufus and Greek Diatribe (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1962), 96–111.Google Scholar
69. This theme is highly prominent in the compilation known as Apophthegmata Patrum (“The Sayings of the Fathers,” henceforth AP) which contains traditions and statements of and about the early monastic communities in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine from approximately the fifth century CE. On the history and formation of this compilation see Burton-Christie, Douglas, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 76–104Google Scholar. On the monastic literature's resonance with and impact on rabbinic literature, see Hezser, Catherine, “Apophthegmata Patrum and Apophthegmata of the Rabbis,” La Narrativa Cristiana Antica (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1995)Google Scholar, 453–64; Siegal, Michal Bar-Asher, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
70. Evagrius of Pontus, Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons, trans. Brakke, David (Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications, 2009), 53.Google Scholar
71. AP Poemen 181 (Patrologia Graeca 65:365). Cf. B. Berakhot 10b: “Whoever eats and drinks and only then prays, to him refers the verse ‘you have cast me behind your back’ (2 Kings 14:9).”
72. See, for example, AP Silvanus 5 (Patrologia Graeca 65:409), in which a truly spiritual man is recognized as one who has no need for food.
73. Republic IX 571c. Plato, Republic, Books 6–10, trans. Emlyn-Jones, Chris and Preddy, William (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.
74. Phaedo 81e. Plato, , Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, trans. Fowler, Harold North (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914)Google Scholar.
75. Cf. 1 Corinthians 11:17–34. Sandnes summarizes this motif as follows: “It is the nature of such persons [=gluttonous] to demand ever more … these demands cannot be satisfied by just methods” (Belly and Body, 49). See also Grimm, From Feasting to Fasting, 55.
76. Fragment 20; see Irvine and King, Musonius Rufus, 80.
77. On Flight and Finding, 31. Philo, The Works of Philo, trans. Yonge, Charles (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006)Google Scholar.
78. Sifre Devarim, Re'eh, pis. 220, to Deuteronomy 21:18 (ed. Finkelstein, p. 253); B. Sanhedrin 71a.
79. AP Zeno 6 (Patrologia Graeca 65:178).
80. This idea appears already in Plato's Timaeus 73a. According to Evagrius of Pontus (De diversis malignis cognitationibus, 1= Patrologia Graeca 79:1200-1201), the demons that incite gluttony are also the ones that incite greed; on gluttony as “the mother of all vices” in the works of Evagrius and his disciples, see Shaw, Teresa M., The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998)Google Scholar, 131–60. For a similar view on the connection between gluttony and greed, see John Chrysostom, Epistolam ad Ephesios, Homily 13.3–4 (Patrologia Graeca 62:93-97). Sandnes (Belly and Body, 224–47) demonstrates that many early Christian interpreters read Paul's reference to people who “have their belly as a god” (Philippians 3:14) as associating the worship of the belly with the love of money, since gluttony and greed were seen as inextricably linked.
81. Gowers, Emily, The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 188–219.Google Scholar
82. Gowers, Loaded Table, 30, 121.
83. Satire 2.7, 111. Horace, Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica, trans. Fairclaugh, Henry Rushton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978)Google Scholar. Equally prominent, however, is the notion that gluttony is tantamount to “serving one's belly” as Sandnes (Belly and Body, 35–60, 97–107, 165–80) shows in detail.
84. See, for instance, Musonius Rufus, Fragment 18b (Irvine and King, Musonius Rufus, 75).
85. AP Poemen 178 (Patrologia Graeca, 65:365).
86. Tertullian, De Ieiunio, 3.
87. Epistle 95.19. Seneca, Lucius Annaeius, Ad Lucilium Epistolae Morales, trans. Reynolds, L.D. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).Google Scholar
88. Epistle 29.8. Rotelle, John E. (ed.), The Works of Saint Augustine: Letters 1-99, trans. Teske, Roland (New York, New City Press, 2001).Google Scholar
89. Satire 11.38–4. Juvenal and Perseus, trans. Henderson, Jeffrey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. See Gowers, Loaded Table, 201.
90. Vayikra Rabbah, Meẓor‘a, par. 18, to Leviticus 15:2 (ed. Margaliot, 2:397).
91. Vayikra Rabbah, Meẓor‘a, par. 18, to Leviticus 15:2 (ed. Margaliot, 2:398). Cf. Kohelet Rabbah 12.6. See also, in slightly different versions, Y. Yevamot 16:3, 15c; Y. Mo‘ed Katan 3:5, 82b; B. Shabbat 151b.
92. Cf. Mark 7:18 (=Matthew 15:17): “whatever enters the body goes into the stomach and then out of the body.”
93. Resonating with the homily in Leviticus Rabbah 3.4 on the pains through which one goes until the digestion process is complete, Seneca (Moral Epistles 47.2) mentions that the more one eats, the more protracted and agonizing the process of the disposal of waste. For examples of uses of the motif of excrement in patristic tirades against gluttony, see Tertullian, De Ieiunio 6.1; John Chrysostom, Epistolam I ad Timotheum, Homily 13.3–4 (Patrologia Graeca 62:569-570); Chrysostom, Mattheum, Homily 70.4 (Patrologia Graeca 58:660).
94. Grimm, From Feasting to Fasting, 34–59; Sandnes, Belly and Body, 35–160; see also Coveney, John, Food, Morals, and Meaning: The Pleasure and Anxiety of Eating (London: Routledge, 2000), 30–55Google Scholar; Wilkins, John M. and Hill, Shaun, Food in the Ancient World (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 187–210.Google Scholar
95. Grimm, From Feasting to Fasting, 114–90; Shaw, Burden of the Flesh, 79–60.
96. Diamond, Eliezer, Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, 121–32.
97. Vayikra Rabbah, Vayikra, par. 5, to Leviticus 4:3 (ed. Margaliot, 1:105–106).
98. Of course, some sacrificial practices (most notably the Passover sacrifice) include eating as an inseparable part of the cultic process. Interestingly, however, we can trace a sustained rhetorical effort to distance the Passover sacrifice from gluttonous consumption of food as early as in Philo of Alexandria's comments on Passover, in which he emphasizes that the paschal meal is meant to create reverence and gratitude and not to “gratify the belly” (On the Special Laws 2.148), and a very similar effort to distinguish between “pious” consumption of the paschal meat and voracious consumption (’akhilah gasah) appears in B. Horayot 10b. In a somewhat different vein, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews utilizes the fact the ordinary temple sacrifices ultimately serve as food for the priests in order to denigrate those sacrifices (Hebrews 9:10), and to contrast them with the self-sacrifice of Christ, “which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat” (Hebrews 13:10). For this author, then, a sacrifice that can be eaten by humans is by definition an inefficacious sacrifice.
99. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 33–69Google Scholar; Grimm, From Feasting to Fasting, 116–17; Diamond, Holy Men, 101–6. The more general notion of suffering as sacrifice already appears in Second Temple literature, as shown by Kraemer, David, Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
100. On the “supersessionist” model in the explanation of sacrifice and its problems, see Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 3–13, 247–54; Ullucci, Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice, 31–64.
