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'With a vibrant narrative, recipes, and menus, this absorbing volume will be of interest to readers of Christian history and those interested in cookery and Mediterranean diets.'-Booklist The Food and Feasts of the Apostle Paul takes readers inside the world of the early Christian church through a new lens—what people ate (and didn't eat). The early church encompassed diverse communities and people, and understanding its food helps us understand both the worship and culture of these people, as well as their sources of conflict. Each chapter introduces readers to a different community or church Paul visited or started, explores one or two key foods, and offers recipes that reflect each community. Recipes range from simple to complex, from snack to feast. This book will help readers more fully experience the diverse cultures of the early Christian church to better understand the teachings of Jesus, Paul, and early Christian leaders.

In this monograph, Hryhoriy Lozinskyy studies five feasts contained in Num 28:16-30:1. Each of them is first treated in the light of biblical calendars and other related texts. The calendar in Numbers is later than an earlier version of Leviticus 23; yet the final form of Lev 23:1-44 is also a result of some later additions that took place after Num 28:1-30:1 had been composed. The author also focuses on the history of interpretation: he examines several pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Jewish writers from 200 BCE to 100 CE. He shows how these ancient sources reworked the biblical texts by expansions, clarifications, and omissions. In sum, the calendar in Numbers employs several previous traditions that dealt with the feasts, sacrifices, and calendars in order to compose the detailed list of the offerings for the appointed times. Moreover, it is a text that has been used by many ancient sources, especially in the matter of the sacrifices.

The New Testament is filled with stories of Jesus eating with people—from extravagant wedding banquets to simple meals of loaves and fishes. The Food and Feasts of Jesus offers a new perspective on life in biblical times by taking readers inside these meals. Food production and distribution impacted all aspects of ancient life, including the teachings of Jesus. From elaborate holiday feasts to a simple farmer's lunch, the book explores the significance of various meals, discusses key ingredients, places food within the socioeconomic conditions of the time, and offers accessible recipes for readers to make their own tastes of the first century. Ideal for individual reading or group study, this book opens a window into the tumultuous world of the first century and invites readers to smell, touch, and taste the era's food.

The festival calendars in the Pentateuch have made up the heart of critical biblical research from the beginning. Each of the calendars was thought to have taken shape against its own specific historical background and to accurately reflect a distinct stage in the development of Israel's cultic and social institutions. Classical hypotheses used them to distinguish the different legal codes in the Pentateuch from each other, to define the original compositions, and to arrange them relative to each other in an historical, chronological sequence. Shimon Gesundheit challenges the classical historical reconstructions and the methodology driving them. He presents an alternate point of view, according to which the festival laws do not simplistically reflect the specific cultic or social realities of actual historical periods. Rather, through their legal discourse, they shape and promote new ideas by textual revision and redaction, in the lemmatic style of midrash, and they represent a process of progressive literary development.

The Hebrew/Christian Scriptures include many allusions to pilgrimage customs and practices, yet the information is scattered and requires a considerable amount of reconstruction. It is posited that the pilgrimage paradigm, including the journey motif, has influenced the thought patterns of the writers of both the Old and New Testaments. To follow Jesus'journey to Jerusalem on the three feasts of pilgrimage in Luke-Acts and John, and their relevance to the way he revealed himself and taught his disciples, this work begins with the creation and patriarchal narratives, examining how the pilgrimage paradigm relates to discipleship. Reviewing the history of the people of God including the Exodus, the Exile, and restoration, this book establishes the significance of pilgrimage as a paradigm for Israel that eventually shapes Judaism. Seung Y Lee points us to a neglected fact that the three feasts of pilgrimage have developed their own characters and meanings for the momentous events in the history of Israel, and both Luke-Acts and John reflect the significance of the pilgrimage paradigm for Jesus'self-understanding and his teaching.

Commemorative Identities represents a significantly new approach to the issue of replacement/abrogation vs. continuation of Jewish thought patterns and practices among Jewish Christ-followers as they are addressed by the Johannine author. Previous studies have been unable to elucidate a comprehensible argument to support continuation of commemoration in the face of explicit Temple replacement terminology in the Gospel. This study provides that argument based upon known sociological observations and models, and direct comparative analysis with Jewish practices pre- and post-70. Mary Spaulding's study will further invigorate scholarly debate concerning identity issues in the Fourth Gospel, a topic of significant interest among Johannine scholars today. More generally, the origins of Christianity as portrayed in the Gospel of John are understood as a gradual unfolding of and differentiation among various Jewish groups post-Second Temple rather than as an abrupt break from an established, normative Judaism.

In this work Michael A. Daise broaches the question of the rationale lying behind the six feasts mentioned in the Gospel of John. He argues that, in an earlier recension of the Fourth Gospel, those feasts were sequenced into a single, liturgical year and, as such, furnished temporal momentum for the concurrent motif of Jesus''hour'. After reviewing the feasts as they appear in the narrative, then critiquing the major theories proposed for their purpose, the author presents his key premise that the Passover at John 6:4 is to be read not as a regular Passover, observed on 14 Nisan (first month of the Jewish calendar), but as the'Second Passover'of Numbers 9:9-14, observed on 14 Iyyar (second month of the Jewish calendar). The law of'hadash'for barley (6:9) requires a date for chapter 6 after the regular Passover; the Exodus manna episode (Exodus 16), on which John 6 largely turns, dates to 15 Iyyar; the contingent character of the Second Passover explains Jesus'absence from Jerusalem in John 6; and, with John 5 and 6 reversed, the chronology of John 2:13-6:71 coheres. On such a reading, the feasts of the entire Fourth Gospel unfold within a single, liturgical year: Passover (2:13), Second Passover (6:4), the unnamed feast/Pentecost? (5:1), Tabernacles (7:2), the Dedication (10:22-23) and Passover (11:55). Inasmuch as this scheme brings chronological design to chapters 2-12, and inasmuch as those same chapters also chronicle the imminent arrival of Jesus''hour'(2:4; 12:23), an overarching purpose for the feasts emerges; namely, to serve the motif of Jesus''hour'by marking the movement of time toward its arrival.

In the first part of the book, Karl William Weyde analyses the festival calendar in Leviticus 23 and compares it with other festival calendars in the Hebrew Bible. On this basis, characteristic features of the Leviticus calendar appear, leading to the conclusion that Leviticus 23 presents the latest of the calendars and presupposes them. This holds good also vis-à-vis the priestly legal material in Numbers 28-29. Thus, the legislation for Passover and the festival of unleavened bread in Lev 23:5-8 is short because it builds on the detailed stipulations related in Exodus 12-13 and Deuteronomy 16. But it is also demonstrated that, for the sake of precision, the legislation for the grain festival in Leviticus 23 is more detailed than in other texts. Moreover, it is shown that the sukkôt festival is predominant in this calendar, together with other festivals in the seventh month. Without denying the possibility that the legislation was revised during the process of transmission, the author contends that some of the arguments used by recent researchers for such contention are not tenable. However, the Sabbath command (v. 3) and the sukkôt legislation in vv. 39ff are later additions inserted during the exile in Babylon. The second part of the book deals with texts related to the sukkôt festival in the Hebrew Bible. It gives examples of the significance of this festival in exilic and post-exilic times. Particular attention is paid to the question of whether it is possible to identify sukkôt psalms in the Psalter.