Paul's critique of belly-worship in an ancient setting

At the beginning of our study we noted the uncertainty among New Testament scholars as to the precise meaning of ‘belly’ in Phil. 3:19 and Rom. 16:18. Owing to the brevity of the two dicta, I claimed that an adequate understanding was accessible only through uncovering the cultural competence of Paul's readers. This has taken us down the path of ancient moral philosophy as well as to the agenda of banquets. It has led us to abandon the common view that Paul had in mind Christians who continued to observe Jewish dietary laws. This view fails to account for the analogies with Paul's expression of ‘having the belly as god’, whether these analogies are Graeco-Roman or Jewish. A closer look at the Patristic evidence demonstrated that to many writers of the Early Church, Jews were seen as gluttonous, as preoccupied with food. This allegation looked beyond dietary laws, and belonged to a polemic of ascetics.

Plato's anthropology was the basis for the thinking of most moral philosophers. Reason and mind represented a divine element or kinship in human beings, while desires were located in the stomach and the organs below it, i.e. the genitals. These parts of the human body were marks of an earthly identity. The desires of the unruly belly had therefore to be mastered. Mastery of desires became a philosophical commonplace in antiquity, designed to keep the desires of the belly, such as eating, drinking and copulating, under control.