The Hospitality of Abraham, Ravenna [Image courtesy of Flickr] — *The Hospitality of Abraham,* Ravenna [Image courtesy of Flickr]

Taste is more than a physical sense of perception. Since antiquity, food as well as its taste can be used as a metaphor in order to express evaluations and aesthetic judgments. As an ability to discern pleasure and displeasure, taste “has been applied figuratively to perception, judgment, speech, and conduct.”[1] Moreover, as Meredith Warren states in the beginning of her innovative volume:

In certain cases, eating brings about unexpected results, such as the transformation of the eater or the opening of windows into another realm.[2]

At the beginning of her lucid study, Warren identifies a narrative pattern she calls “hierophagy,” which, in her words, is:

part of the literary toolbox used by ancient authors to transmit a certain understanding of the relationship between God and mortals, heaven and earth.[3]

By ingesting some items from an otherworldly realm – food or non-food items, such as book scrolls or rosaries and the like – a human eater is physically and ontologically transformed. “Hierophagy,” as Warren summarizes, “binds the eater to the place of origin, transforms her or him, and transmits knowledge.”[4] She proves the existence of this narrative pattern or motif by a close reading of five texts from Jewish, Christian, and Roman contexts and from one mythological tradition represented by the Hymn to Demeter and Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

Warren calls the pattern a genre in order to underline that she restricts the scope of her question to the literary level.[5] For her, “hierophagy” is not a key or window to any ritual or cultic practice that might or might not have been practiced by those who wrote the respective stories. However, as Warren likewise notes, genre is a slippery term in scholarship. In Brill’s New Pauly, Richard Hunter summarizes the discussion in the following way:

Literary genres are the result of literature being divided into groups. Poetry and/or prose are classified by a culture or its interpreters, based on the principle of similarity – the occasion on which they are presented, audience, topic, musical style, etc. The concept of ‘genre’ has been culturally determined since the dawn of history, because the meaning of a work depends not least on the extent to which the audience perceives it as similar to or different from earlier works. Within a given culture, different groupings may be preferred at different times. Moreover, genre categories that may appear logical to modern-day scholars may not necessarily correspond to those of ancient times.[6]

In other words, genre is more than a sample of features in a given text. Genre rests on the notion of a given audience that uses the text for specific purposes. Former German scholars coined for this social function of text the expression Sitz im Leben.

Many different Sitze im Leben can be assumed for the texts examined here. For instance, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter might want to publicize as well as harmonize by writing the cultic drama celebrated in the mysteries at Eleusis, while Ovid’s version incorporates Greek myth into Roman tradition. Fourth Ezra’s final vision might legitimize seventy-two new sacred books as inspired Scriptures, while Revelation may comfort a suppressed group of endangered martyrs in the struggle against Emperor Cult. Most texts might have more than one Sitz im Leben, a phenomenon that can be proven for Joseph and Aseneth. Some readers of Joseph and Aseneth studied this ancient Jewish novel about Josephs Egyptian wife for entertainment. Or, in their interest in the biblical story of Joseph, others might have looked for a religious version of an ancient novel, while others might have argued with this text for an incorporation of non-Jews into Israel, while still others tried to convince non-Christian (women) that salvation rests in Joseph-Christ alone. In the case of Joseph and Aseneth, we actually know of readers who interpreted this text in such different ways in the history of its reception.[7] In short, I would not call hierophagy a genre but a motif or pattern that can embellish different genres of texts.

As Warren notices, the motif or pattern of hierophagy applies to more texts than she is able to analyze in her book.[8] Greek infant Gods are nourished by nectar and ambrosia. Human beings who come in contact with these heavenly substances become immortal.[9] One can find an early and famous example for this idea in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter as well. The Goddess in the guise of a wet-nurse nourishes and anoints the son of Metaneira, queen of Eleusis, with ambrosia and would have turned him into a god, if his curious and worried mother had not stepped in and interrupted his transformation.[10]

The idea is also known and shared by Jewish thinkers.[11] Jewish wisdom correlates ambrosia with manna.[12] And manna is the same as the food of angels.[13] Nectar, ambrosia, and manna can be expected in the paradise to come at the end of time.[14] Nectar and ambrosia fill the promised land just as much as eschatological paradise.[15]

The effect of tasting manna, however, might surpass the divine immortality promised ny ambrosia and nectar. Philo allegorizes Moses’s pledge to the king of Edom in Numbers 20 – that Israel will not “drink water from any well” while passing through Edom – with the rhetorical question:

shall we on whom God pours as in snow or rain-shower the fountains of His blessings from above, drink of a well and seek for the scanty springs that lie beneath the earth, when heaven rains upon us ceaselessly the nourishment which is better than the nectar and ambrosia of the myths?[16]

In Philo’s view, manna definitely surpasses nectar. However, to philosophers like Philo, Greek and biblical mythology causes some logical problems. Aristotle, an important figure for Philo’s thought, makes the critique explicit:

There is a difficulty, as serious as any, which has been left out of account both by present thinkers and by their predecessors: whether the first principles of perishable and imperishable things are the same or different. For it they are the same, how is it that some things are perishable and others imperishable, and for what cause? The school of Hesiod, and all the cosmologists, considered only what was convincing to themselves, and gave no consideration to us. For they make the first principles Gods or generated from Gods, and say that whatever did not taste of the nectar and ambrosia became mortal – clearly using these terms in a sense significant to themselves; but as regards the actual application of these causes their statements are beyond our comprehension. For if it is for pleasure that the Gods partake of them, the nectar and ambrosia are in no sense causes of their existence; but if it is to support life, how can Gods who require nourishment be eternal?[17]

By their very nature Gods cannot depend on nourishment. Therefore, as Aristotle states, any eatable item cannot mark the borderline between the earthly and heavenly realm. Many Jewish writers agree and argue that angels do not eat.[18]

Yet two biblical texts contradict this assumption. The first text is Genesis 18–19. The heavenly guests appearing at Mamre eat from the curds, milk, and the calf that Abraham and Sara offer them and later also take part in Lot’s drinking party, eating the unleavened bread Lot served them.[19] Yet those who belong to the heavenly realm cannot consume food or drink in a corporeal way.[20] Therefore, those who later interpret Gen 18–19 regularly argue that these angels only seem to eat and drink. In Josephus’s renarration, the visitors made Abraham believe that they did eat.[21] For Philo, in contrast:

“they ate” symbolically [symbolikōs συμβολικώς] and not of food, for these happy and blessed natures do not eat food or drink red wine, but it is (an indication) of their readiness in understanding and assenting to those who appeal to them and put their trust in them.[22]

The second problematic verse for ancient interpreters is Exod 24:11. While angels appearing on earth are easily able to disguise their nature and origin and to manipulate the reception of their appearance, humans cannot. Therefore, human beings who transcend into heaven – in theory – cannot consume any food or liquids there. As the Bible states repeatedly: Moses did not eat and drink during the forty days and nights he stayed with God on Mount Sinai.[23] Moses does eat and drink with Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel, however, when God made his covenant with his people at Sinai.[24] Why?

Regarding this passage, Philo answers the question (“What is the meaning of the words, ‘They appeared to God in the place and they ate and drank’” [Exod 24:11]) in the following way:

Having attained to the face of the Father, they do not remain in any mortal place at all, for all such (places) are profane and polluted, but they send and make a migration to a holy and divine place, which is called by another name, Logos. Being in this (place) through the steward they see the Master in a lofty and clear manner, envisioning God with the keen-sighted eyes of the mind. But this vision is the food of the soul, and true partaking is the cause of a life of immortality. Wherefore, indeed, is it said, “they ate and drank.”[25]

Because the earth is profane and polluted, the soul has to transcend this world and to migrate to the immediate vicinity of God’s logos. There, the soul is nourished by a clear-sighted and true vision of God. In Philo’s allegorical reading, the shared food served by the Logos is the opportunity to envision God. The Apocalypse of Abraham refers to the same idea when Abraham states on his journey into heaven:

And I ate not bread and drank no water, because (my) food was to see the angel who was with me, and his discourse was my drink.[26]

Both authors agree that food and drink in heaven is a clear-sighted envisioning of God’s angels and her forces. In this way, Philo and the Apocalypse of Abraham do not only solve the logical and theological problems that an ingestion of food would have caused to their imagination of heaven. Rather, these allegorical readings accord with the philosophical notion of the hierarchy of senses. For Plato, Aristotle, and Philo, among many others, gustation occupies the lowest stratum of their taxonomy of sense perception.[27] As Carolyn Korsmeyer shows,

Taste is . . . placed on the margins of the perceptual means by which knowledge is archived; its indulgence must be avoided in the development of moral character, and it perceives neither objects of beauty nor works of art. . . . In virtually all analysis of senses in Western philosophy [and especially Plato and Aristotle] the distance between object and perceiver has been seen as a cognitive, moral, and aesthetic advantage. The bodily senses [i.e., the sense of smell, touch, and taste] are “lower” in part because of the necessary closeness of the object of perception to the physical body of the percipient.[28]

For Plato, eternal souls have to separate themselves from the body in order to ascend to the apprehension of the ideal world of permanence, where truth may be glimpsed mainly by envisioning or hearing. Aristotle discriminates against smelling, touching, and tasting because humans share those senses with animals. Sight, to the contrary, ascends the other sense perceptions, because it permits apprehension of the most information about the world. Second is hearing, because of the importance of learning. Philo reflects both traditions.

For touch and taste descend to the lowest recesses of the body and transmit to its inward parts what may properly be dealt with by them; but eyes and ears and smell for the most part pass outside and escape enslavement by the body.[29]

To me, the most important outcome of Warren’s survey of the hierophagic pattern of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian narratives is exactly this – her observation that myths and narratives indeed remove taste from the margins of the philosophical hierarchy of sense perception. Instead, in the texts she has examined, eating and tasting have become a vital part of the fictive characters’ appreciation of their world.[30] Contrary to leading philosophical traditions and their reception by Philo and other Jewish and Christian writers, in these six texts and traditions the corporeal act of eating as well as the corporeal sense of tasting mediates and conveys contact with the transcendent realm. By tasting food or other heavenly items, a given character is indeed transformed and acts with heavenly knowledge.

So why is it that some texts value taste, a sense relegated to the bottom of the sensory hierarchy by most ancient thinkers, as a sense that enables humans to gain spiritual knowledge? In my view, it is for the same reason that taste will become, soon after these writings, the most prominent sense perception in mystical literature in many religions.[31] Food as well as taste create a symbiosis between the subject and object of sense perception. In gustation, there is no distance or boundary between subject and object, immanence and transcendence, humans and God(s). With the hierophagic patterns or motif, the texts examined by Warren prove themselves to take part in a literary movement that will become – after some more specific literary developments – a branch of Jewish and Christian mysticism.

However, the specific application of the mystical motif of gaining and perceiving knowledge and experiencing transformation through ingesting and tasting heavenly food or other items differs, in my view, from text to text. Persephone remains a god, but change takes place by ingesting the wrong, that is non-divine, kind of food. When Ezra and John of Patmos indulge on the heavenly scroll, it indicates (as it does in the literary prototype of this scene [Ezek 2:8–3:4]) that the following speech is no longer a human word but completely inspired by God.[32] Yet eating, rather than reading or writing a scroll, transgresses a normal or appropriate use of a modern communication medium of that time. Perhaps one can read this as a protest against media technological developments. At least, the incorporation of God’s wisdom by consuming her fruits channels God’s word more directly than reading or writing ever can.[33] The symbolic action expands a combination of metaphors into a new symbolic act. The rosary, on the other hand, eaten by luckless Lucius in Apuleius’s Metamorphosis is the antidote to the magic that earlier had transformed him into an ass. Finally, the taste of cheese or milk, which the steadfast and therefore winning triumphant martyr Perpetua receives from the heavenly shepherd, marks the climax of her climb up the ladder into heaven, an image metaphorically symbolized by her successful fight in the arena of her martyrdom. The depiction of the garden, painted through and in her vision, comes closer to the classical locus amoenus than to the paradise of the Bible.[34]

The most enigmatic text, however, remains Joseph and Aseneth. One reason for the many layers of meaning is most likely a constantly reworking of the text by Jewish and Christian readers and narrators alike.[35] Unlike all the other texts that Warren has examined, eating in Joseph and Aseneth takes place neither in this world nor in another. Rather, the heavenly Anthropos and Aseneth share the honeycomb somewhere in between both realms. Furthermore, Joseph and Aseneth belongs to a group of texts in which the eating of heavenly food does not lead directly to a transformation of the eating character.[36] Aseneth gains her knowledge, called τὰ ἄρρητα μυστήρια τοῦ ὑψίστου (“ineffable mysteries from the most high God”), not by tasting or eating from the honeycomb but by finding it in her storeroom. Directly after, she explains the appearance of the honeycomb to her heavenly visitor (Jos. Asen. 16:14B/7Ph). By tasting from the honeycomb, the short text transforms Aseneth into a prophet who expands the nonretaliation formula “do not repay evil with evil” to one’s direct enemy (28:4Ph).[37] The longer versions of the text embellish the scene with more figurative symbols, like an expansion on the food in paradise (Jos. Asen. 16:16B), allusions to the Song of Songs (Jos. Asen. 16:19–20Ph; cf. Song 4:11; 5:1), and death and resurrection (Jos. Asen. 16:22–26). Neither the short nor the long text explains exactly when Aseneth’s transformation happens.[38] The lack of exactness is, in my view, also a result of the many reworkings of the text by its Jewish and later Christian readers.

Yet different applications of a given pattern can only be observed after the pattern is established. I am thankful to Warren for disclosing its existence. By hierophagy, not only do literary characters get a sense of the gustation of divine presence, but also this mystical experience indeed transforms its readers as well.

[1] Birgit Recki, “Taste,” in Religion Past and Present. Website: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/religion-past-and-present/*-SIM_08539. Consulted online on 30 August 2019.

[2] Meredith J. C. Warren, Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature (WGRWSup 14; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2019) 1.

[3] Warren, Food, 2.

[4] Cf. Warren, Food, 3.

[5] Cf. Warren, Food, 4-9.

[6] See Richard Hunter (Cambridge) and Philip R. Hardie (Cambridge), “Literary Genre,” in Brill’s New Pauly. Website: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/*-e706400 Consulted online on 25 August 2019.

[7] Standhartinger, “Zur Wirkungsgeschichte von Joseph und Aseneth,” in Joseph und Aseneth, ed. Eckart Reinmuth (Sapere 15; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 219–34.

[8] Warren, Food, 2.

[9] Cf. Fritz Graf (Columbus, OH), “Ambrosia,” Brill’s New Pauly. Website: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/*-e117560. Consulted online on 28 August 2019 . See also Wilhelm H. Roschner, Nektar und Ambrosia mit einem Anhang über die Grundbedeutung der Aphrodite und Athene (Leipzig: Teubner, 1883), 51–55.

[10] Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 231–50. See further Hesiod, Catalogue of Women frag. 20a.21 (Mos, LCL = frag. 23a21 Merkelbach); Homer, Il. 5.242; Ovid, Metam. 4.239–51 et al. For more evidence see N. J. Richardson, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), 237–38.

[11] Philo argues in Spec. 1.303 that virtues confer even more immortality than nectar.

[12] Wis 19:21. Warren, Food, 11, points also to Hist. Rech. 7:2; 11:4; 12:4; and Prot. Jas. 8:2.

[13] See Ps 77:25 (LXX); Wis 16:20.

[14] Such different texts, like 1 En. 31.1 (2nd c. BCE) and Acts Thom. 6f; 25; 36 (2nd c. CE), agree on this fact.

[15] Sib 5.281–83; Rev 2:17.

[16] Philo, Deus 155.

[17] Aristotle, Metaph. 3.4.11–13 (1000a5–18). Translation LCL.

[18] David Goodman, “Do Angels Eat?,” JJS 37 (1986), 160–75; Tobias Nicklas, “‘Food of Angels’ (Wis 16:20),” in Studies in the Book of Wisdom, ed. Géza G. Xeravits and József Zsengellér (JSJSup 142; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 83–100), 84–86.

[19] Gen 18:8; 19:3.

[20] See Judg 6:21–22; 13:1; L.A.B 42:8; Josephus, Ant. 282–84. In T. Ab. A 4, the archangel Michael states explicitly: Κύριε, πάντα τὰ ἐπουράνια πνεύματα ὑπάρχουσιν ἀσώματα, καὶ οὔτε ἐσθίουσιν οὔτε πίνουσιν (All heavenly spirits are bodiless, and they neither eat nor drink). Cf. Philo, Abr. 118 below.

[21] Josephus, Ant. 197: οἱ δὲ δόξαν αὐτῷ παρέσχον ἐσθιόντων. Cf. Philo, Abr. 118: “It is a marvel indeed that though they neither ate nor drank they gave the appearance of both eating and drinking. But that is a secondary matter; the first and greatest wonder is that, though incorporeal, they assumed human form to do kindness to the man of worth. For why was this miracle worked save to cause the Sage to perceive with clearer vision that the Father did not fail to recognize his wisdom?” (LCL; τεράστιον δὲ καὶ τὸ μὴ πίνοντας πινόντων καὶ τὸ μὴ ἐσθίοντας ἐσθιόντων παρέχειν φαντασίαν. ἀλλὰ ταυτί γε ὡς ἀκόλουθα· τὸ δὲ πρῶτον ἐκεῖνο τερατωδέστατον, ἀσωμάτους ὄντας [τοῦδε σώματος] εἰς ἰδέαν ἀνθρώπων μεμορφῶσθαι χάριτι τῇ πρὸς τὸν ἀστεῖον· τίνος γὰρ ἕνεκα ταῦτα ἐθαυματουργεῖτο ἢ τοῦ παρασχεῖν αἴσθησιν τῷ σοφῷ διὰ τρανοτέρας ὄψεως, ὅτι οὐ λέληθε τὸν πατέρα τοιοῦτος ὤν). T. Abr. A 4–5 has a humoristic account of this idea. Rabbis agree; see Pesiqta Rabbati 42 Bl 179 b; Tg. Yer. I at Gen 18:8; B. Mes 86b; Rab. Gen. 48:16. See also Warren, Food, 9–10. The same concept is used in Tob 12:19.

[22] Philo, QG 4.9 (Gen 18:8) LCL.

[23] Exod 34:28; Deut 9:9, 19.

[24] Exod 24:9–11. On this tradition, see also Andrea Lieber, “‘I Set a Table before You’: The Jewish Eschatological Character of Aseneth’s Conversion Meal,” in JSPE 14 (2004), 63–77; and Andrea Lieber, “Jewish and Christian Heavenly Meal Traditions,” in Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism, ed. April D. DeConick (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 313–39.

[25] Philo, QE 2.39. Translation LCL. Rabbinical literature reflects this tradition as well. See Gen. Rab. 2.2; Lev. Rab. 20.10; and Lieber “Jewish and Christian Heavenly Meal Traditions,” 326–29.

[26] Apoc. Ab. 12:1–2.

[27] For some different ideas of Epicurus, see Kelli C. Rudolph, “Introduction: On the Tip of the Tongue: Making Sense of Ancient Taste,” in Taste and the Ancient Senses, ed. Kelli C. Rudolph (New York: Routledge; London: Taylor & Francis), 1–21, esp. 10–11.

[28] Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste: Food & Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 11–12. Pace Warren, Food, 15–16, who notes this but argues that taste is “the most intimate of the traditional senses” anyway.

[29] See Philo, Abr. 149, 241; Spec. 4.100.

[30] Cf. Thomas Arentzen, “Struggling with Romanos’s Dagger of Taste,” in Sense Perception in Byzantium, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and Margaret Mullet (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2017), 160–82, esp. 170. Arentzen observes that Christian influence changes the view on taste until late antiquity.

[31] See Svevo D’Onofrio, “Savouring the Ineffable: Metaphors of Taste in Mystical Experience across Religions,” in Religion für die Sinne – Religion for the Senses, ed. Philipp Reichling and Meret Strothmann (Oberhausen: ATHENA, 2016), 237–49.

[32] Karina M. Hogan, Theologies in Conflict in 4 Ezra: Wisdom Debate and Apocalyptic Solution (JSJSup 130; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 214–17. David E. Aune, “John’s Prophetic Commission and the People of the World (Rev 10:8–11),” in The Church and Its Mission in the New Testament and Early Christianity [FS Hans Kvalbein] , ed. David E. Aune and Reidar Hvalvik (WUNT 404; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 211–25, esp. 215–20.

[33] See, e.g., Sir 1:16; 24:19–21. For food as a metaphor of teaching, see Seven Muir and Frederick S. Tappenden, “Edible Media: The Confluence of Food and Learning in the Ancient Mediterranean,” Lexington Theological Quarterly (Online) 47 (2017), 123–47.

[34] The paradise scene is only the end of her longer vision, in which she climbs up the golden ladder, attacked by a dragon. It is also paralleled by the vision about her brother Dionocrates, whom she is able to move to from an inhuman to a more pleasant place with a golden bowl of water to drink (Mart. Perpet. 7–8).

[35] For the history of interpretation, see Standhartinger, “Recent Scholarship on Joseph and Aseneth (1988–2013),” Currents in Biblical Research 12 (2014), 353–406. Some more recent interpreters no longer start with texts but with narrative patterns. See recently, Jill Hicks-Keeton, Arguing with Aseneth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

[36] The other text of this tradition is 1 Cor 10:1–14, where Paul denies that the wilderness generation was transformed by heavenly food and drink because, immediately after they had been nourished, they transgress all of God’s commands.

[37] See Standhartinger, “Joseph and Aseneth: Perfect Bride or Heavenly Prophetess,” in Feminist Biblical Interpretation: A Compendium of Critical Commentary on the Books of the Bible and Related Literature, ed. Luise Schottroff and Marie-Theres Wacker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 578–85.

[38] Some manuscripts with a longer text place the transformation in the act of recognizing her bridal appearance in a water basin – that is, through their changing in chapter 18B.

Angela Standhartinger, Prof. Dr., is Professor for New Testament Studies at the Philipps-University Marburg, Germany. Her research focuses on Jewish Hellenistic Literature, Greco-Roman Meals and the Origin of the Eucharist, Gender studies, Pauline and Deutero-pauline Letter Writing. Her most recent publications include: “Performing Salvation: The Therapeutrides and Job’s Daughters in Context, in: Re-Making the World: Christianity and Categories, Essays in Honor of Karen L. King, edited by Taylor G. Petrey (WUNT 434; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), Pages 211–223; “Meals in Joseph and Aseneth” in: T&T Clark Handbook to Early Christian Meals in the Greco-Roman World, edited by Soham Al_Suadi and Peter-Ben Smit (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2019) Pages 211–223; “‘… und sie saß zu Füßen des Herrn‘ (Lk 10:39). Geschlechterdiskurse in antiker und frühchristlicher Mahlkultur,” in Gender and Social Norms in Ancient Israel, Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Texts and Material Culture. Edited Michaela Bauks, Katharina Galor und Judith Hartenstein (JAJ.S 28, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019) 119–141, “Weisheitliche Idealbiografie und Ethik in Phil 3,” Novum Testamentum 61,2 (2019) 156–175; “Member of Abraham's Family? Hagar's Gender, Status, Ethnos, and Religion in Early Jewish and Christian Texts,” in: Abraham's Family. A Network of Meaning in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Edited by in Lukas Bormann (WUNT 415, Tübingen 2018) 235–259.