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Galatians describes an early dispute about whether Jewish believers could share meals with Gentiles. Some opposed this, following traditions that banned eating with Gentiles, based on interpretations of the Hebrew Bible and later texts like Jubilees.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Jubilees 22:16
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
13 May the Most High God give you all the blessings With which He has blessed me And with which He blessed Noah and Adam; May they rest on the sacred head of your descendants from generation to generation forever. 14 And may He cleanse you from all unrighteousness and impurity, That you may be forgiven all the transgressions which you have committed ignorantly. And may He strengthen you, And bless you. And may you inherit the whole earth, 15 And may He renew His covenant with you. That you may be to Him a nation for His inheritance for all the ages, And that He may be to you and to your descendants a God in truth and righteousness throughout all the days of the earth. 16 And you, my son Jacob, remember my words, And observe the commandments of Abraham, your father: Separate yourself from the nations, And do not eat with them: And do not act according to their works, And do not become their associate; For their works are unclean, And all their ways are a Pollution and an abomination and impurity. 17 They offer their sacrifices to the dead And they worship evil spirits, And they eat over the graves, And all their works are worthless and empty. 18 They have no mind to understand And their eyes do not see what their works are, And how they err in saying to a piece of wood: 'You are my God,' And to a stone: 'You are my Lord and you are the one who rescues me.' [And they have no understanding.]
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Galatians 2:12
New Testament
11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he had clearly done wrong. 12 Until certain people came from James, he had been eating with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he stopped doing this and separated himself because he was afraid of those who were pro-circumcision. 13 And the rest of the Jews also joined with him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray with them by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that they were not behaving consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “If you, although you are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you try to force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Date: 54–55 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The significance attaching meals in the ancient world in general, as among Jews in particular, made sharing a meal the most intimate form of association between people other than sexual relations.'" This is why Jubilees, which so strongly opposes intermarriage, also says ... This makes clear that the reason sharing meals is forbidden is because the Torah requires "separation" from the Gentiles and from their corrupting influence (Leviticus 20:22-26; compare Nehemiah 9:2; 10:28). This general concern is not, as we have seen, by any means limited to Jubilees. As others have documented, sharing a meal with Gentiles, especially if provided by Gentiles in their own home, entailed serious risks of ipso facto committing idolatry: the meat might well have been sacrificed to idols in the pagan temple, the wine would have been put to idolatrous use by pouring a libation from it, and oil could also be tainted with idolatry." It is these dangers, as well as forbidden animals and blood, that the literary examples of Daniel (Daniel 1:3-17), Judith (Judith 12:1-4, 19) and Esther (Esther 14:17) avoid by not taking pagan meat and wine ..."
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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