Wings, Locusts and John the Baptist

[Porknpie]

Perhaps someone can help me here.

Deuteronomy 14:19 refers to the prohibition against eating winged insects while Deut 14:20 permits eating any ‘clean winged’ creature. I assume that the latter refers to an insect w/out wings.

11 “You may eat all clean birds. 12 But these are the ones which you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, 13 the buzzard, the kite, after their kinds; 14 every raven after its kind; 15 the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk, after their kinds; 16 the litle owl and the great owl, the water hen 17 and the pelican, the carrion vulture and the cormorant, 18 the stork, the heron, after their kinds; the hoopoe and the bat. 19 And all winged insects are unclean for you; they shall not be eaten. 20 All clean winged things you may eat.
John the Baptist however ate locusts which have wings.

*4 Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair, and a leather girdle around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. *

How does one make sense of this apparent contradiction?

 

[Reepicheep]

I have read that in the passage about John the Baptist, the word ‘locust’ refers to a species of plant, not to the insect.

Reference Wikipedia, which says there are trees called ‘Locust Trees’.

 

[Dorothy]

I have read that in the passage about John the Baptist, the word ‘locust’ refers to a species of plant, not to the insect.

Reference Wikipedia, which says there are trees called ‘Locust Trees’.

I am a senior, senior citizen. And I have heard that a very long time ago. It makes a lot of sense.

 

[Autumn_Smoke]

According to this site and several others, certain species of locust happen to be kosher. The Torah in Leviticus 11:22 identifies them as those that have four wings that cover most of the body, four legs for walking, plus two upper legs with joints for leaping. And some species of locusts are kosher, whereas others aren’t.
ou.org/torah/mitzvot/taryag/mitzvah158/

and from this site ohr.edu/ask_db/ask_main.php/19/Q1/
2 quotes

locusts were never really considered a ‘delicacy’ – rather they were generally food for the impoverished.

and

the preferred way to eat locusts was to pickle them

no thanks

 

[Casilda]

How does one make sense of this apparent contradiction?

Perceived contradiction. The Bible is NOT an exhaustive source, looked towards Jewish or Catholic tradition. Article regarding solutions to a recent locust invasion, recipe suggestions included

bbc.com/news/magazine-21847517

 

[Bonnie]

I have read that in the passage about John the Baptist, the word ‘locust’ refers to a species of plant, not to the insect.

Reference Wikipedia, which says there are trees called ‘Locust Trees’.

AKA honey locust & carob. I wonder if honey locust was mistranslated to locusts & honey.

 

[jcrichton]

Perhaps someone can help me here.

Deuteronomy 14:19 refers to the prohibition against eating winged insects while Deut 14:20 permits eating any ‘clean winged’ creature. I assume that the latter refers to an insect w/out wings.

11 “You may eat all clean birds. 12 But these are the ones which you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, 13 the buzzard, the kite, after their kinds; 14 every raven after its kind; 15 the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk, after their kinds; 16 the litle owl and the great owl, the water hen 17 and the pelican, the carrion vulture and the cormorant, 18 the stork, the heron, after their kinds; the hoopoe and the bat. 19 And all winged insects are unclean for you; they shall not be eaten. 20 All clean winged things you may eat.
John the Baptist however ate locusts which have wings.

*4 Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair, and a leather girdle around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. *

How does one make sense of this apparent contradiction?

Hi!

…I think the key is to be found in the part of the passage that states: “All clean winged things you may eat.”

…have you considered why those winged creatures were deemed unclean? Could it be due to the fact that they eat carrion or, as bats, drink blood?

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[Nelka]

Ver. 4. His garment of camels’ hair,[2] not wrought camlet as some would have it, but made of the skin of a camel, with the hair on it. Thus Elias (4 Kings, i. 8,) is called an hairy man, with a leathern girdle about him. — Locusts, not sea-crabs, as others again expound it; but a sort of flies, or grasshoppers, frequent in hot countries. They are numbered among eatables. (Leviticus xi. 22) St. Jerome and others mention them as a food of the common people, when dried with smoke and salt. Theophylactus, by the Greek word, understands the tops of trees or buds. (Witham)

 

[jcrichton]

AKA honey locust & carob. I wonder if honey locust was mistranslated to locusts & honey.

Hi, Bonnie!

…actually the reference is quite specific on the “honey”:

4 This man John wore a garment made of camel-hair with a leather belt round his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.

(St. Matthew 3:4)
…so while we may wonder about the source of protein locust (grub or pod), wild honey can only mean that John raided beehives as he needed–which would bring us back to the grubs…

Locust has been an ancient source of food, so it is not surprising that John the Baptist would use them as nourishment:

Several cultures throughout the world consume insects, and locusts are considered a delicacy and eaten in many African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries. They have been used as food throughout history.[51]

They can be cooked in many ways, but are often fried, smoked, or dried.[52] The Bible records that John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey (Greek: ἀκρίδες καὶ μέλι ἄγριον, akrides kai meli agrion) while living in the wilderness;[53] attempts have been made to explain the locusts as suitably ascetic vegetarian food such as carob beans, but the plain meaning of ἀκρίδες is the insects.[54][55]

The Torah

, although disallowing the use of most insects as food, permits the consumption of certain locusts; specifically, the red, the yellow, the spotted grey, and the white are considered permissible. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust)
Maran atha!

Angel

 

[patrick457]

Perhaps someone can help me here.

Deuteronomy 14:19 refers to the prohibition against eating winged insects while Deut 14:20 permits eating any ‘clean winged’ creature. I assume that the latter refers to an insect w/out wings.

11 “You may eat all clean birds. 12 But these are the ones which you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, 13 the buzzard, the kite, after their kinds; 14 every raven after its kind; 15 the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk, after their kinds; 16 the litle owl and the great owl, the water hen 17 and the pelican, the carrion vulture and the cormorant, 18 the stork, the heron, after their kinds; the hoopoe and the bat. 19 And all winged insects are unclean for you; they shall not be eaten. 20 All clean winged things you may eat.
John the Baptist however ate locusts which have wings.

*4 Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair, and a leather girdle around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. *

How does one make sense of this apparent contradiction?

As someone mentioned, certain species of locust were considered to be kosher.

There was actually a whole study on this issue of what exactly John the Baptist ate: James A. Kelhoffer’s The Diet of John the Baptist.

To sum, locusts or grasshoppers were eaten in the Middle East: the Assyrians ate them (we have Assyrian artworks showing skewered locusts and lots of references to locusts as food), the Arabs too. Ancient Jewish literature in addition consistently referred to and tolerated locust eating among Jews, suggesting that it was far from unusual. They tended to focus more on the injunction in Leviticus 11, which did allow for some types of locusts to be eaten, over that of Deuteronomy 14, to the point that they pretty much ignored Deuteronomy’s injunction altogether or interpreted it in the light of Leviticus. Locust eating in the Middle East was just too established and commonplace to ban outright.

It was really only in the Middle Ages that Jewish legal experts like Maimonides began to discourage the eating of locusts altogether, because the exact identification of the species referred to in Leviticus were lost to time at that point as locust consumption became increasingly uncommon.

Now later Christians who came from cultures who did not consider locusts edible or decent enough to be human food - in Greco-Roman culture, locusts were either medicine, bird feed, fish bait, poor man’s fodder, or something only foreign barbarians eat, not an actual food fit for ‘real’ humans - apparently found the idea of John literally eating locusts to be quite weird, icky or not fitting enough for him, so they began to propose that ‘locust’ meant something else, maybe a species of plant like the carob. This interpretation became popular among certain individual Christians and sects who embraced vegetarianism, like the Ebionites.

 

[patrick457]

Ancient Assyrian locusts-on-a-stick:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

… And now I’m hungry.

 

[Porknpie]

As someone mentioned, certain species of locust were considered to be kosher.

There was actually a whole study on this issue of what exactly John the Baptist ate: James A. Kelhoffer’s The Diet of John the Baptist.

To sum, locusts or grasshoppers were eaten in the Middle East: the Assyrians ate them (we have Assyrian artworks showing skewered locusts and lots of references to locusts as food), the Arabs too. Ancient Jewish literature in addition consistently referred to and tolerated locust eating among Jews, suggesting that it was far from unusual. They tended to focus more on the injunction in Leviticus 11, which did allow for some types of locusts to be eaten, over that of Deuteronomy 14, to the point that they pretty much ignored Deuteronomy’s injunction altogether or interpreted it in the light of Leviticus. Locust eating in the Middle East was just too established and commonplace to ban outright.

It was really only in the Middle Ages that Jewish legal experts like Maimonides began to discourage the eating of locusts altogether, because the exact identification of the species referred to in Leviticus were lost to time at that point as locust consumption became increasingly uncommon.

Now later Christians who came from cultures who did not consider locusts edible or decent enough to be human food - in Greco-Roman culture, locusts were either medicine, bird feed, fish bait, poor man’s fodder, or something only foreign barbarians eat, not an actual food fit for ‘real’ humans - apparently found the idea of John literally eating locusts to be quite weird, icky or not fitting enough for him, so they began to propose that ‘locust’ meant something else, maybe a species of plant like the carob. This interpretation became popular among certain individual Christians and sects who embraced vegetarianism, like the Ebionites.

Thank you Patrick and everyone else who has replied. Appreciate the explanation(s). My OT remembrance is lacking. I even had just read Leviticus prior to Deut. and hadn’t recalled the Locust passage. The book on the diet of John the Baptist sounds like a good one to order and have on the bookshelf to read when time allows. I’ll add this to my amazon wish list.