Did Jesus Have Good Table Manners?
mousethief
Shipmate
in Purgatory
According to your understanding and your faith tradition, did Jesus have good table manners? He was perfect, right? Or does that only mean morally? Is it immoral to offend your neighbors by eating with your feet? Or just gauche?
What do you think? Slob? or Miss(ter) Manners?
What do you think? Slob? or Miss(ter) Manners?
Comments
Luther would call this question a switch question. Someone once asked him what did God do before God created the earth. Luther answered God made switches to use on people who asked such questions.
We really cannot speak to the question because it is not addressed in any books of the Bible.
This is Purgatory on the Ship of Fools. If we only talked about things that mattered, we could shutter the board and move the rest to Ecclesiantics or Kerygmania. If you're not intersted in such questions, move on. Let the rest of us discuss it. Pace that your response is rude.
By that logic(*), yes, if Jesus was morally perfect, he would have avoided doing things at the dinner table which offended his companions.
(*) And I can see the point. First, rule-breaking at the table can kill the appetite of others, eg. a lot of us probably wouldn't wanna continue eating if someone else at the table started
Also, as with sexually explicit conversation, blatant flouting of etiquette can, depending on the context, often be interpreted, not without some logic, as a form of psychological aggression.
Jesus defended his disciples when they picked up food from the fields and offended the rule enforcers. So He would not have been regarded by them as having good eating manners.
In these sorts of circumstances, I am often inclined to invoke Postel's law.
From RFC761, "TCP implementations should follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others."
Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry?
There's a big difference between having good table manners yourself and complaining about poor table manners in your fellow diners.
I can mess around on the question, sure. Insofar as good table manners are a matter of charity ("Shut that mouth, please, I don't want to see you chewing!"), I'm sure he would keep to them. Unless, of course, there was something even greater overriding...
The issue of the disciples eating stuff on the road, harvested in the field--or eating without washing their hands--well, that was a case of "something greater." As in, forget the table manners, let's talk about how you're using your traditions to make God's own commandments void." (Matthew 15:3)
So if Jesus started chewing with his mouth open, I'd be totally suspicious, He's just about to trap you into a lecture the moment you comment...
But if you comment fast enough, he'll have to swallow before he can respond.
In some societies, burping after eating is a compliment on the food.
Eating Ramen should include slurping the noodles. Spaghetti should not be slurped. The film Tampopo attests to this. It also ends with a woman breastfeeding. Did Mary breastfeed Jesus in public, and if so, was Mary bad mannered and not Immaculate, as some cultures would hold.
He wasn't in all cultures. He was in one.
I was taught to eat with a knife and fork, fork never used like a spoon and never swapping hands. No elbows on the table. No talking with mouth full. No hats indoors, especially at the table.
Were you taught the same?
I'm sure Jesus broke the rules. He did in everything else.
Do you mean modern cultures? If so, which ones?
So he might not be considered "good" in some cultures?
Inadvertent rudeness, however, is possible. Though instinctively I would associate this more with John the Baptiser than with Jesus, given his rugged and wild demeanour.
I recall once working my white collar job amongst a group of building outfitters (not far from the builder/carpenter trade Jesus probably practised) and found them to be quite a rough and crude bunch, with lads mags and lewd calendars lying around. If Jesus grew up and worked around such people, then some manners would surely have rubbed off on him. Given the disdain for him for eating with "sinners" perhaps he was at ease with the lower classes and that he lacked the refinement that was equivalent of knowing that you never pass the port to your right.
It's got more to do with tradition than faith, and everything to do with the way that various authorities are invoked in the vexed issue of imposing social norms on children, aka "teaching good manners", and reinforcing social norms amongst adults.
I believe - and nothing more - that Jesus would have conformed to the absolute basic rules of good table manners. Probably an equivalent of actually eating with a knife and fork today - not necessarily much more. Using one knife and fork for everything.
The reason is, he was a carpenter - a skilled engineer, but still someone who worked with his hands. And his social manners would have been of that class of people. It is also the people he called and worked with more - fishermen more than tax collectors, although he included both. He was a real "man of the people", and so I think he would have had table manners of the working people.
I am absolutely sure that some of the posher people he ate with - and he did, because they wanted the kudos of having invited him - would have found him rather crude in his manners. I don't think he would have used the right set of cutlery for the right course. I don't think he would have cared.
But would he have deliberately offended people with his table manners? Would he have passed the port the wrong way? I don't think so. Because there was no point. He only offended people in ways and for reasons that pointed them in the right way. But almost all of the "manners" in his time would have been just normal, what he grew up doing. Rinsing his hands before eating. Using the appropriate hand. To not have done these would have been jarring to him - and to most of the people listening to him.
But then surely the question can't be answered, unless anyone here is an expert in Roman Palestine's table etiquette? I don't know if Jesus had good table manners for the culture Jesus lived in, because the Bible doesn't tell us and I don't know what good table manners for that culture looked like.
That said, I’m reminded that my grandmother always said it was obvious that Jesus had a great sense of humor, because if he didn’t he wouldn’t have gotten so many dinner invitations. By that same line of thought, I guess he might not have gotten so many dinner invitations if he had horrible table manners.
A little more seriously (but maybe only a little), it seems to me that manners and etiquette can have (at least) two facets. At the root of manners, at least in theory, is hospitality and putting people at ease by making sure everyone knows what’s expected. I suspect Jesus would be on board with that.
But we all know that manners can become ossified, with some people insisting that manners require a certain thing be done a certain way, even though no one remembers why. And manners too often are used as a cudgel to establish class-based superiority over others. I suspect Jesus would not have been at all on board with that.
On the other hand, he did suggest that, as a guest, it was good manners to sit in the lowest place available and wait for the host to ask you to come up closer. He did have views as to what constituted proper behavior.
I did read somewhere that the rule about not putting your elbows on the table dates back to mediaeval times, when there was a practical reason for it: many dining tables were trestle tables and if you leaned on them in the wrong place you were liable to catapult everyone's dinner onto the floor. If true, this might be an example of an ossified rule.
And the story about Victoria drinking out of her finger bowl is an example of ignoring etiquette to put a guest at ease, thus following the greater rules of hospitality. Even if it never happened.
I think it's safe to say from scripture and Tradition / tradition that if Christ did flout social conventions and rules it was for a deeper theological or moral purpose rather than simply for thr sake of it.
The issue of the disciples picking and nibbling at the crops on the Sabbath isn't avoid table-manners but a proper understanding that the 'Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'
Generally speaking it would seem that Christ observed the expected rules and customs unless he had good reason not to do so in order to make a deeper point.
Well, smell is not universally a matter of personal choice. So the question is more like asking if Jesus followed the hygiene practices used to produce a cultually acceptable bodily smell.
Yes. And I meant to type 'about' rather than 'avoid' but that's predictive text for you ...
@Lamb Chopped - I sometimes post things I think will be of wider interest and find I'm the only 'taker'.
Perhaps I ought to take up 'journalling' instead.
But yes, you're right @mousethief has got us talking.
Per 2 Corinthians 2:15 Christ has a "sweet aroma".
A metaphor.
I took the post as a joke.
Missed that.
I'm not sure it is that simple. Cultural norms tend to be localised. What is normal for one group is offensive to another.
I think that the things we are familiar with tend to be the things that we lack critical skills to evaluate. So in the above discussion, Jesus arguing with the Jews, then it is obviously Jesus who is right and the Jews who are being obnoxious.
It seems highly likely to me that a sophisticated urbanised Pompeii citizen might have considered small town fishermen from the extremity of the Roman empire to be uncouth and smelly.
One person smells of onions, another has a father who smells of elderberries.
I think this is important. I don't think it is a silly topic. I mean, getting to an answer is not going to happen - we don't know. But it is also about was Jesus someone who conformed to social norms. And to what extent.
Quakers were criticised for many reasons, including the fact that we didn't doff our caps to the gentry, and refused to remove them in places like court. Today, this would be considered quirky but not a big deal, but in its day, people were put in jail for refusal to remove hats. It was considered intolerably rude.
So I think the slightly broader topic - how conformist was Jesus - is a vital and important question. It is really helpful (IMO - and thank you @Lamb Chopped) to discuss this. Not least, because we so often ignore these questions, and assume that Jesus would have the same social conventions as we would.
About 20 years ago I was asking my daughter yet again to sit upright while eating, when she said very firmly, “Mummy, God does not want you to spend your life telling people to sit up at the table!”
I was a bit taken aback and my immediate response was “How do you know what God wants?”
“Because it was in that book about when Jesus died. There was a picture of Jesus and the disciples all lying round the table like this [returns to slouch mode]. So if Jesus didn’t have to sit up at the table God doesn’t want us to either, does he?”
[brief pause while I contemplate whether I’ve given birth to a theologian or a lawyer, and try to remember if there are any more clean school polo shirts upstairs]
In the old days your daughter's remark would have resulted in a clip round the earole.
One quickly learned not to be a 'clever dick'......
Happy days?
Not really.
But, depending upon the circumstances, God would want you to behave in a way that does not cause unwarranted insult to the people you're with.
Unwarranted insult being something that Jesus and his layabout disciples might have experienced if someone else had come into the room, pulled over a stool, and tried to have friendly interaction while perched upon it.
The reason they were eating while reclining was because this was how rich people ate. Working folks would sit--the position basically says "I might need to dash back to work at any moment." But reclining is not only, ah, lazier, if you know what I mean, but if you do it as a regular thing (and not just at Passover), then you're going to need to have a dining couch or four, around a central table--and that means permanent furniture taking up space in your house! I've seen a set of these made of Roman concrete--you're not likely to rearrange the furniture very often! And that means you own a house big enough that you can waste space on nothing but dining.
So to get back to the guy who comes in while they're all lolling about, and sits on a stool--culturally, he might be saying, "I've got to get back to work in a moment, wish I could join you, but the boss won't let me."
Weird, isn't it?
This says something about manners. I'll let others form their own views on this.
Of course, if we move our discussion of table manners from dining to a more general approach, Jesus had a problematic relationship with tables.
The tables were just tools of commerce.
Rome had notorious slums.
Judea would have been seen as something of a backwater but there'd have been urbanised parts there which wouldn't have been a great deal different to what might have been found in Spain or North Africa or other parts of the Roman Empire.
Material culture in rural Britain or Romania or other Roman provinces didn't change a great deal during Roman occupation.
The only bits and bobs that help archaeologists distinguish between pre-Roman Iron Age farmsteads and Romano-British or immediate post-Roman ones are coins and pottery.
There wouldn't have been a great deal of material difference between people living in rural Italy or rural Idumea.
The Jews would have considered the Gentiles to be pretty manky in their personal habits.
So even if he were Miss Mannersîm in his culture, his table manners might not be considered "good" in some cultures. Is this in doubt?
We're talking a priori here. Does being the perfect man imply perfect table manners?
Maybe. Maybe trying to understand the relationship between morality and cultural expectations, which is what this thread is about, is silly. I think trying to see what decisions do and do not fall under the umbrella of morality is an interesting and possibly necessary distinction to draw. Clearly not everyone agrees. Those who don't clearly are unaccustomed to just scrolling past something they aren't interested in. Maybe we need Erin's claws.
egg-fucking-zackly.
And it interests me that he kept his mouth strictly shut until the moment Simon the Pharisee started mentally criticizing the woman who knelt at Jesus' feet crying. It's as if insults to himself don't matter, but insults to others... well. From Luke 7:
The gospel writers have him in Roman and Samaritan cultures as well as Israelite. Probably also class cultures. Shepherds were low class. Zealots and tax collectors would have antagonistic cultures. Pharisees and Sadducees.......
Etc.
Mark 14:20refers to Jesus identifying who will betray him saying
"The one who was dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me."
At a Passover meal, people shared food from common dishes placed on the table. Diners would take pieces of bread and dip them into sauces, stews, or mixtures of fruit and herbs from the same bowl. Since Jesus and the Twelve were reclining close together around a low table, several disciples could easily have been dipping into the same dish at roughly the same time.
Note: Jesus did not specifically identify who would betray him with that statement, but seems to be saying any one of the disciples eating from the same bowl could be the betrayer. Anyone of his closest friends would be doing it.
Now, when I was introduced to this specific custom by my son who lived in Palestine for a year, I had to say I was a little leery of it. Germs and all.
And that, dear children, is why the Church uses incense.
[Miss Amanda will fetch her thurible and whoosh out of here.]
An addendum: it is only when Judas asks if it is he that is going to be the one to betray Jesus, Jesus says it is Judas and tells him to go, do his dirty deed.
In any case, Jesus doesn't tell Judas to betray him ("do the dirty deed") at all. He simply says, "What you do, do quickly." That leaves Judas with all his options still wide open. Even at this point, he could decide not to betray Jesus--could, for instance, decide to go and return the money. But whatever choice he makes, Jesus wants him to hurry.