Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament

by Nathan MacDonald

In ancient Israel the production of food was a basic concern of almost every Israelite. Consequently, there are few pages in the Old Testament that do not mention food, and food provides some of the most important social, political and religious symbols in the biblical text. Not Bread Alone is the first detailed and wide-ranging examination of food and its symbolism in the Old Testament and the world of ancient Israel. Many of these symbols are very well-known, such as the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, the abominable pig and the land flowing with milk and honey. Nathan MacDonald demonstrates that the breadth biblical symbolism associated with food reaches beyond these celebrated examples, providing a collection of interrelated studies that draw on work on food in anthropology or other historical disciplines. The studies maintain sensitivity to the literary nature of the text as well as the many historical-critical questions that arise when studying it. Topics examined
the nature and healthiness of the ancient Israelite diet; the relationship between food and memory in Deuteronomy; the confusion of food, sex and warfare in Judges; the place of feasting in the Israelite monarchy; the literary motif of divine judgement at the table; the use of food in articulating Israelite identity in the post-exilic period. The concluding chapter shows how some of these Old Testament concerns find resonance in the New Testament.

278 pages, Hardcover

First published September 25, 2008

About the author

Nathan MacDonald is a Scottish biblical scholar who currently serves as reader in Hebrew Bible at Cambridge University and fellow and college lecturer in theology at St John's College, Cambridge. Much of his work has concentrated on the historical conception of monotheism in ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible.

MacDonald studied theology and Hebrew at Cambridge before going to Durham to complete a doctorate on the book of Deuteronomy. He taught Old Testament at the University of St Andrews from 2001–12. In 2007 he spent 8 months as a Humboldt research fellow at the Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München. In 2008 he was awarded a Sofja-Kovalevskaja Prize which enabled him to lead a research team on Early Jewish Monotheisms at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen from 2009–14. In 2013 he took up an appointment at the University of Cambridge.

Reviews

[Jonathon Crump · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was good but it was a little more superficial than I would have liked. It felt like a survey of scholarship of the OT and food. That was helpful but it seemed to arbitrarily jump from one section of the OT to the next. When MacDonald did offer his own scholarship it was often great but he never gave any one passage or topic a full treatment. I’m still giving it four stars because this book was very helpful when it came to numerous topics. His chapter on Deuteronomy and memory was fantastic, his thoughts on communion were great, the work on Judges and its food puns and confusion between human and animal sacrifice was fascinating.