Genesis question

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nmorton

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I teach a high school religion class and we are studying Genesis. There is a verse that refers to eating green leafy things. The reference to eating meat is not until after Noah and the ark landed and God told man to eat meat etc. They want to know why God waited so long to give man permission to eat meat. Help!!! If anyone can come up with a good answer I would appreciate it.
 
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nmorton:
I teach a high school religion class and we are studying Genesis. There is a verse that refers to eating green leafy things. The reference to eating meat is not until after Noah and the ark landed and God told man to eat meat etc. They want to know why God waited so long to give man permission to eat meat. Help!!! If anyone can come up with a good answer I would appreciate it.
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I’m currently taking an Old Testament Literature class, and this exact question came up this week. The person teaching the class didn’t know why. Someone said they had heard it was as a punishment, since so many health problems are caused by eating meat. I don’t know that you’re going to find a definitive answer.

I do know this, the human body is better suited to eat vegetables than meat. We have a relatively long intestinal tract, and most carnivors have short intestinal tracts. I know some herbivors have multiple stomachs. Some people think the apendix was formerly an extra stomachs. Taking the long intestinal tract and the extra stomach into account, it would make sense that we were originally made to be herbivores. I love meat, so I’m glad we’re not herbivoers anymore.
 
Steve M:
I do know this, the human body is better suited to eat vegetables than meat. We have a relatively long intestinal tract, and most carnivors have short intestinal tracts. I know some herbivors have multiple stomachs. Some people think the apendix was formerly an extra stomachs. Taking the long intestinal tract and the extra stomach into account, it would make sense that we were originally made to be herbivores. I love meat, so I’m glad we’re not herbivoers anymore.
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If a biologist may refine that a bit, our digestive tract is much like our forepaws – unspecialized. We are neither herbivores nor carnivores; we are omnivores, made to eat a bit of everything. The most obvious sign of that is our teeth.

Blessings,

Gerry
 
Gerry Hunter:
If a biologist may refine that a bit, our digestive tract is much like our forepaws – unspecialized. We are neither herbivores nor carnivores; we are omnivores, made to eat a bit of everything. The most obvious sign of that is our teeth.

Blessings,

Gerry
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I stand corrected. :o
 
Thanks for the replies. The first answer that I came up with is that after Adam and Eve’s sin, God’s plans were altered and in order for Christ to come and save us, we had to have this change to include meat to fulfill the redemptive act the Eucharist, eating His Body and Drinking His Blood. I think this, with your answers, will satisfy them.
 
I think it is because it took a good while for the trees that were alive at the time of Adam to become charcoal. God knows ya kaint eat meat if ya aint gut a way’n ta barbeeque it!
 
:rotfl: I haven’t much thought about that question. I guess it’s because of my protestant background. The churches I went to considered the Old Testament as history only. So it wasn’t studied. And since becoming catholic, I haven’t found a decent bible study.
 
You could make a case that eating meat was not God’s original plan or His ideal plan for man because it involves death and before there was sin in the world there was no death. Death is an evil even if it is an animal death. But perhaps after the flood there was not suficient vegitation to sustain Noah and his family and so they were given permission to eat from the extra clean animals that they had brought along. The death of Noah and his family would be a much greater evil than the death of animals. So once the precedence is set - then it continues. The permission to eat meat would then be something similar to Moses’ permission for Israelites to divorce, even though this wasn’t God’s original or ideal design: something God allows for a reason but something that may not be his perfect will. Im not a vegetarian but this makes some sense to me. Jesus however pronounced all foods clean so I am gonna keep eatin my ribeye’s untill I hear otherwise!
 
I always thought that the animals also didn’t eat meat. The reason for this was God planning ahead for when Noah would have to house lions and lambs together. It was only after the flood that animals (and humans) began to eat meat. Of course, I haven’t thought about this element of Genesis since I was about six years old, so I really only have a childish perspective on it all. :o
 
nmorton said:
Thanks for the replies. The first answer that I came up with is that after Adam and Eve’s sin, God’s plans were altered and in order for Christ to come and save us, we had to have this change to include meat to fulfill the redemptive act the Eucharist, eating His Body and Drinking His Blood. I think this, with your answers, will satisfy them.
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God’s plans never alter because that would mean he can change. God is eternal and unchanging outside time and change, which are constructs of the created universe. The OT is a record of the growth in man’s reception and gradual understanding of God’s revelation, and that understanding is reflected in the fact that the revelation is communicated by and through the divinely inspired human writers of the bible in small doses, framed in certain historic times and places and contexts. Each story or book is not a stand-alone complete revelation of God’s plan and will, which exists only in the person of Jesus Christ. Each aspect of God’s plan and relationship with mankind revealed in the OT foretells and directly relates to that complete revelation of Christ recorded in the NT. This poster is correct that whenever the OT is talking about food to sustain mankind this always foretells the aspect of Christ’s sacrifice that is nourishment, true bread and living water, however be careful how you couch that statement.

Genesis is a poetic account of creation and world inhabited by our first parents, and their relationship with the Creator and how the relationship changed through their sin. It is not a diet book (go to Oprah for that) or a list of laws, beyond the universal natural law inherent in the nature of the created world including human beings. It makes the point that all of creation is good from its inception because its Author is the all good-God, and that mankind is given dominion over nature, and that mankind has the capacity to know and understand nature and and natural law.
 
I think it would have something to do with the fact that God made Adam and Eve the stewards of the Earth. Everything they needed was in the garden.
 
My understanding is that this occured because sin entered the world, and sin is death- for man and for the animals, i.e., even the animals had to pay the consequences for Adam and Eve’s mistake. In the garden animals were man’s companion, but after being kicked out, man had to struggle to grow food, etc. He now needed to use the animals as beasts of burden, food, etc, just to survive.

Mark Wyatt
www.veritas-catholic.blogspot.com
 
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