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What is Food?
        FOOD
     Gen 3:6. We may form some judgment of the ancient diet from what we know of that of the modern Orientals. Vegetable food is much more common than animal. Instead of butter, lard, and suet, they use olive oil. A soup, or rather pottage, of beans and lentiles, seasoned with garlic and oil, is still, as it was of old, a favorite dish. The "red pottage of lentiles" for which Esau sold his birthright was something of this kind. Eggs, honey, milk (especially sour milk), and garden productions of every kind afford the principal materials of Eastern diet. The most common dish at this day in the East is the pilan, which consists of rice cooked with meat so as to make a sort of broth, seasoned variously and colored blue, red, or yellow. We do not find the use of animal food often occurring, except upon the occasion of entertainments, or the exhibition of hospitality to a friend, Gen 18:7; Luke 15:23, or upon the tables of the rich. The animals used for this purpose, especially neat cattle, were often "stalled" and "fattened." 1 Sam 16:20; 1 Sam 28:24; 1 Kgs 4:23; Neh 5:18; Isa 1:11; Isa 11:6; Jer 46:21; Eze 39:18; Am 6:4; Mal 4:2. Wild game, lambs, and kids constituted the favorite viands in the East. At this day beef is not much used, though from some texts above and other similar authorities we learn that the flesh of young bullocks and stall-fed oxen was highly prized. Prov 15:17; Matt 22:4. In very ancient times it was always the master of the house, whether he were rich or poor, who slew the animal. Jud 6:19. Grecian and Roman writers mention a like custom of later times. The preparation of the food by cooking was the business of the mistress. The shoulder was probably the choicest part. 1 Sam 9:24. It is customary for the Arabs to serve up at one meal the whole of any animal which they have killed. This is occasioned in some measure by the difficulty of preserving fresh meat in the Eastern climate. Gen 18:7:Luke 15:23. The people of the East are particularly fond of fish, and in Egypt this constitutes a very important part of their subsistence. Num 11:5. See Fish.


Bibliography Information
Schaff, Philip, Dr. "Biblical Definition for 'food' in Schaffs Bible Dictionary".
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