FOOD. Under this head we shall consider— I. The materials of food mentioned in the Bible ; and H. The methods of preparing them for use ; referring for the customs connected with the con sumpt of them to the article BAgQUETS.
I. 'Fhe origina/ grant of the Creator made over to man the use of the vegetable world for food (Gen. i. 29), with the exception of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. ii. 17), and apparently also the tree of life (iii. 22). So long as man continued in Paradise, he doubtless re stricted his choice of food within the limits thus defined ; but whether, as is commonly stated, we are to regard this as characteristic of the entire period between the creation of Adam and the grant of animal food to Noah after the flood (Gen. ix. 3), admits of doubt. It is doing no violence to the passage last cited to view it rather in the light of an ordinance intended to regulate a practice already in use, than as containing the first permis sion of that practice ; and when we consider that man is by his original constitution omnivorous, that there are special adaptations in his frame, as made by God, for the use of animal food, that from the beginning he was acquainted with the use of fire, that from the beginning there was a distinction known to him between clean and unclean animals (Gen. vii. 2, 8), corresponding apparently to a dis tinction between animals good for food and ani mals not so, and that the pastoral was as early as the agricultural occupation among men ; it seems more probable than otherwise that the use of ani mal food was not unknown to the antediluvians Perhaps some fierce or cruel custom connected with the use of raw flesh, such as Brace found in his day among the Abyssinians, and such as Moses glances at (Exod. xii. 9), may have prevailed among the more barbarous and ferocious of the antediluvians ; and it may have been in order to check this that the communication recorded Gen. ix. 2 -5 was made to Noah. It is not, however, to be over looked that, in the traditions of antiquity, the early age of the world was represented as one in which men did not use animal food (Diod. Sic. 43 ;
ii. 33 ; Ovid, Aletam. WI, ff. ; xv. 96, ff, ; Fast.
iv- 395, ff.) In the Patriarchal age the food of the ancestors of the Hebrews comprised the flesh of animals both tame and wild, as well as the cereals. We read of their using not only cakes of fine meal, but also milk and butter, and the flesh of the calf, the kid, and game taken by hunting (Gen. xviii. 6-8 ; xxvii. 3, 4). They used also leguminous food, and a prepartion of lentiles [AoAstum] seems to have been a customary and favourite dish with them (Gen. xxv. 34). They made use also of honey (L"1-1, either honey of bees or syrup of grapes), spices, nuts [BarNim], and almonds [SHAKED], (Gen. xliii.
During their residence in Egypt the Israelites shared in the abundance of that land ; there they sat by the flesh-pots, and did eat bread to the full' (FoZod. xvi. 3) ; and amid the privations of the wilderness they remembered with regret and mur muring the fish which they did eat in Egypt freely ;* the cucumbers and the melons, and the leeks and the onions, and the garlic' (Num. xi. 5). These vegetable products have always formed an important part of the food of the people of Egypt ; and tbe abundant use also of animal food by them is sufficiently attested by the monuments (Wilkin son., Ant. Egypt, ii. 367-374).
In their passage through the wilderness, the want of the ordinary materials of food was miracu lously supplied to the Israelites by tbe manna. [MAN, 2.] As it was of importance that their flocks and herds should not be wholly consumed or even greatly reduced before their entering on the promised land, they seem to have been placed under restrictions in the use of animal food, though this was not forbidden (Lev. xvii. 3, ff.); and when their longing for this food broke out into rebellious murmurs, a supply was sent to them by means of large flocks of a species of partridge ESELav] very much in use in the East (Exod. xvi. I-13 ; Num. xi. 31 ; comp. Diod. Sic. i. 60).