The Lord’s Table, Gillian Feely-Harnik
New books are happiness. New food books are even greater happiness. An anthropological study of the meaning of food in Early Judaism and Christianity is sheer joy. And yes, that’s what arrived in the mail yesterday.
It begins with a quick look at anthropology and Biblical scholarship and the anthropology of food. From there it works systematically through a few big background issues (”Who Is the True Israelite?” is my favourite) and then into key notions such as water and wine, gluttony and food symbolism. It seems a little weighted on the Christian side from the table of contents and it’s only a little book (I’ve just been reading young adult books that are six hundred pages long, and now I’m faced with a scholarly book of less than two hundred!) but I am very happy to have this on my shelves. Even the bits I disagree with will be interesting, I suspect.




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