Why did God give man meat to eat (for the first time) after Noahs flood?

[Harry123]

Initially, man was created vegetarian as God gave Adam only plants to eat:

And God said (to Adam), “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.
GENESIS 1:29

Hundreds of years later, after Noahs flood, God now gave man meat to eat in addition to plants:

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, …”Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.”
GENESIS 9:1-3

If you take the bible literally, this change in diet would lead to an increase in brain size and function amongst the first humans. This would explain why early humans had smaller brains than later humans …which evolutionists mistake as evidence of monkeys evolving into humans and getting bigger and bigger brains as they evolved.

Whether you take the bible literally or not, what was the purpose of God giving man meat to eat for the first time after Noahs flood?

Giving man meat to eat would lead to an increase in brain size, hence head size …which would make childbirth more dangerous for women (giving birth to babies with larger heads). This seems like a negative though.

 

[Della]

First of all, you have to prove that eating meat makes human heads grow bigger.

As to when man could eat meat, Haydock’s Catholic Bible Commentary says this about Gn. 9:3:

Ver. 3. Meat. The more religious, at least, had hitherto abstained from flesh, being content with herbs, &c.: which had been expressly granted. Now, the salt waters of the deluge had vitiated the earth, its plants were no longer so nutritive. (Menochius) — God gives leave to eat flesh meat, but with some restriction, that we may still learn to obey. (Worthington)

So, it’s not that God had forbidden eating meat before the Flood, but that he gave express permission to eat meat after it.

 

[1ke]

If you take the bible literally

The Catholic Church has no teaching requiring a literal interpretation of the first 11 chapter of Genesis. The opposite in fact.

 

[mommy_k]

Idk, but I would think to balance His creation. Death came after the fall.

 

[cfauster]

The CCC (Catechism) puts it well, I think, for all Christians, not only Catholics:

CCC 289 Among all the Scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint, these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation– its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation. Read in the light of Christ, within the unity of Sacred Scripture and in the living Tradition of the Church, these texts remain the principal source for catechesis on the mysteries of the ‘beginning’: creation, fall, and promise of salvation.

CCC 390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.

CCC 410 After his fall, man was not abandoned by God. On the contrary, God calls him and in a mysterious way heralds the coming victory over evil and his restoration from his fall. This passage in Genesis is called the Protoevangelium (“first gospel”): the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle between the serpent and the Woman, and of the final victory of a descendant of hers.

 

[cfauster]

Also this:

St. Jerome (AD 340-420) wrote to a monk in Milan who had abandoned vegetarianism:

“As to the argument that in God’s second blessing (Genesis 9:3) permission was given to eat flesh—a permission not given in the first blessing (Genesis 1:29)—let him know that just as permission to put away a wife was, according to the words of the Saviour, not given from the beginning, but was granted to the human race by Moses because of the hardness of our hearts (Matthew 19:1-12), so also in like manner the eating of flesh was unknown until the Flood, but after the Flood, just as quails were given to the people when they murmured in the desert, so have sinews and the offensiveness been given to our teeth.

“The Apostle, writing to the Ephesians, teaches us that God had purposed that in the fullness of time he would restore all things, and would draw to their beginning, even to Christ Jesus, all things that are in heaven or that are on earth. Whence also, the Saviour Himself in the Apocalypse of John says, ‘I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.’ From the beginning of human nature, we neither fed upon flesh nor did we put away our wives, nor were our foreskins taken away from us for a sign. We kept on this course until we arrived at the Flood.

“But after the Flood, together with the giving of the Law, which no man could fulfill, the eating of flesh was brought in, and the putting away of wives was conceded to hardness of heart…But now that Christ has come in the end of time, and has turned back Omega to Alpha…neither is it permitted to us to put away our wives, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat flesh.”

St. Jerome was responsible for the Vulgate, or Latin version of the Bible, still in use today. He felt a vegetarian diet was best for those devoted to the pursuit of wisdom. He once wrote that he was not a follower of Pythagoras or Empodocles “who do not eat any living creature,” but concluded, “And so I too say to you: if you wish to be perfect, it is good not to drink wine and eat flesh.”

 

[twf]

The Catholic Church has no teaching requiring a literal interpretation of the first 11 chapter of Genesis. The opposite in fact.

Yep, the Catechism explicitly states that these chapters use figurative language. This is only a hang up for those of our American brethren who have been influenced by their Evangelical neighbours.

 

[on_the_hill]

Giving man meat to eat would lead to an increase in brain size, hence head size

How do you know?

It seems as if you’re trying to draw a connection between eating meat, an increase in head size, and painful childbirth, as if it was all part of God’s plan to punish women for Eve’s sin.

 

[Mintaka]

Jerome was talking about monastic asceticism. That is fasting, not vegetarianism.

St. Jerome also advised a young nun to fall asleep on her Bible every night, exhausted from study. But again, he was talking about monastic study, not about “stuff all schoolkids should do”.

 

[Nelka]

The Catholic Church has no teaching requiring a literal interpretation of the first 11 chapter of Genesis. The opposite in fact.

Yep, the Catechism explicitly states that these chapters use figurative language. This is only a hang up for those of our American brethren who have been influenced by their Evangelical neighbours.

But Abel appears in the Eucharistic Prayer.

 

[Della]

But Abel appears in the Eucharistic Prayer.

I’ve stated before that figurative language doesn’t mean that the events described did not happen. Mythology is a form of story-telling. It does not mean not true, as in fairy tale. It’s merely a form of literature in which events, true or fiction, are cast into mythological/figurative/metaphorical language. The Creation of the universe and of man are related in this kind of language.

Unfortunately, the persons mentioned in Scripture have slipped into the mists of history–we have no producible records of their existence except in the stories related in Genesis–any that historians can accept, that is. This doesn’t mean they didn’t exist–Scripture plainly tells us they did in several references, and in the liturgies of the Church, as you cited. However, we cannot ask historians to accept their existence on such evidence but it is enough for us who believe in the revelation of God to man in the Scriptures and in the person of Jesus Christ.

For example, many historians doubted the existence of Kind David until the fragmentary Tel Dan stela, was discovered containing the Tel Dan inscription (or “House of David” inscription) provided the first historical evidence of King David from the Bible. This was reported last year, 2016. Ancient persons, even ones we think we know so well, are often unsupported by historical evidence, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.

 

[twf]

But Abel appears in the Eucharistic Prayer.

I believe these figures lived. The when and where, and the specific details of their lives, are conveyed to us using figurative language.