Conscious Eating Part 18

Preservation of personal health.

Seeking peace.

Because of these teachings, it is no coincidence that there have been three vegetarian chief rabbis in 25 years of the state of Israel's existence, as well as Rabbi Kook of the pre-Israel era. Four percent of the population in Israel is vegetarian, which, outside of India with 83% of its 680 million people who are vegetarian, is the largest percentage of vegetarians in the world. Prominent Jewish thinkers who are or were vegetarian include: Martin Buber, one of the greatest Existential philosophers; Isaac Bashevis Singer, winner of the 1978 n.o.bel Prize for Literature; Shmuel Yoseph Agnon, n.o.bel Prize recipient; Rabbi David Rosen, the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland; and Sher Yashuv Cohen, the Chief Rabbi of Haifa.

In the Talmud, Rabbi Yishmael said, From the day that the holy Temple was destroyed it would have been right to have imposed upon ourselves the law prohibiting the eating of flesh. But the rabbis have laid down a wise and logical ruling that the authorities must not impose any decree unless the majority of the members of the community are able to abide by it. Otherwise the law and those who administer it get into disrepute.

Perhaps this is the crux of the issue for why meat-eating has been allowed by many of the major religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and even Buddhism. Out of compa.s.sion for the limitations of their followers, the essential compa.s.sion for all life found in all religions needed to wait until people were ready I wonder if we have been waiting too long.

Compa.s.sion and Noncruelty to Animals and World Peace.

COMPa.s.sION TOWARD AND NONCRUELTY TO ANIMALS are directly linked morally and spiritually to world peace. Killing an animal for food is still a violent act. There is no compa.s.sion in it for the animal. There is also a connection between justifying slaughtering animals for food or profit and taking the next step in the violent process, which is the killing of one's fellow human beings for some sort of "good" reason.

George Bernard Shaw once said in his poem, Song of Peace: Like carrion crows, we live and feed on meat.

Regardless of the suffering and pain

We cause by doing so. If thus we treat

defenseless animals for sport or gain,

How can we hope to attain the

Peace we say we are so anxious for?

We pray for it, o'er hecatombs of slain,

To G.o.d, while outraging the moral law,

Thus cruelty begets its offspring-War.

Today, the cruelty extends beyond the ma.s.s killing of animals to a systematic, antilife, antihumane treatment of animals from the time they are born until they are harvested as if they were a cash crop. They are systematically deprived of their natural habitat and life cycle for the expediency of the meat industry Individual killing of animals for food is the first step of cruelty (hunting, fis.h.i.+ng). The profit-motivated industrialization of nature's living animals, as if they are inanimate and without any rights, feelings, or soul, is an example of the next step of the expansion of cruelty.

People in the US and Canada consume over 200 pounds of animal flesh per person a year. In one year, four billion cattle, calves, sheep, hogs, chicken, ducks, and turkeys are slaughtered. In a lifetime, a Canadian or US meat-eater eats: 11 cattle, one calf, three lambs and sheep, 23 hogs, 45 turkeys, 1,100 chickens, and 826 pounds offish. The Hebrew word for meat is "basar." As explained by the Talmudists, it is composed of the letters "bet" (shame), "sin" (corruption), and "resh" (worms).

The famous Talmudic jurist and Rabbi, Moshe ben Nachman, who lived in the eleventh century, said about compa.s.sion for animals: ...for cruelty expands in a mans soul, as is well-known with respect to cattle slaughters.

This is a prophetic comment in that a current struggle exists around the destruction of the tropical rain forests in which the cattle farmers and other forces who want to level the forests have been involved indirectly and directly in shooting people who oppose them. The most infamous of these money-, flesh-, and l.u.s.t-a.s.sociated killings was the a.s.sa.s.sination by cattle ranchers in Brazil of Chico Mendes, a leading environmentalist working to prevent the destruction of the Amazon rain forests. This killing of Chico Mendes forms a direct link between first killing animals for personal food, to raising animals to be killed for profit, to the next level of cruelty and violence which "expands in a man's soul," the killing of humans to preserve profit from killing animals.

The connection between the violence of killing animals for food and the violence of killing humans has been established by philosophers and religious teachers for hundreds of years. Quaker leader Thomas Tyron (1634-1703) points out that the violence of killing animals for food stemmed from the same source of "wrath" as the killing of humans. Maimonides felt that the Torah's emphasis on compa.s.sion was to protect us from acquiring the moral habits of cruelty. The violence of killing animals for our dinner table comes from the same rationale of justifiable violence that leads humans to kill humans. Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician and philosopher, once said: As long as men ma.s.sacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.

One of the most elegant yet simple statements about the connection between the killing of animals and human violence and pain comes from the enlightened monk, Swami Prakasananda Saraswati. In 1987 he gave this answer to the question of the connection between vegetarianism and peace: Every animal that is slaughtered for human consumption brings the pain of its death into your body. Think about it. The animal is killed with violence. That violence causes the animal to experience very intense pain as it dies. That pain remains in the meat even after you prepare and cook it. When you eat that meat, then you eat pain. That pain becomes lodged in your body, heart, and mind. That violence and pain which you consume will eat you also. It consumes you so that you must experience the same pain in your own life also.

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. (Psalms 24:1) This is the Torah teaching: that we are to help, as G.o.d's co-workers, preserve and improve the world. It is essential to the teaching of Tikkun, in which the Torah instructs that it is part of one's role in life to help heal the substance and soul of the planet. This means that we are to protect the resources of the Earth as well as the animal and human inhabitants.

A flesh-centered diet that many follow results in just the opposite. For example, according to John Robbins' book, Diet for A New America, livestock use approximately 50% of all the water in the US. Livestock produce twenty times the excrement as the human population of the US. This increases the nitrate/nitrite water pollution. Extensive water use for livestock is pus.h.i.+ng us closer to a clean water shortage. It requires 60-100 times more water to produce a pound of beef than a pound of wheat. Robbins estimates that if everyone were vegetarian, there would be no need for irrigation systems in the US. Livestock require excessive water usage because the land needed to grow grain for livestock takes up about 80% of the grain produced, and because water is needed for the animals. When one considers the water needed for this extra grain and for the care of the livestock, a flesh-food diet creates a need for 4,500 gallons per day per meat-eater as compared to 300 gallons per day for a vegan. A vegan saves approximately 1,500,000 gallons per year as compared to a flesh- and dairy-eater. Much of this information is found in a greatly expanded form in Diet for A New America.

The destruction of the rain forests for grazing land and the resultant greenhouse effect is another example of the deleterious effects of a flesh-centered diet on our ecological system. In Deuteronomy 20:19 it says, "You must never destroy its trees ... you may eat of them, but you shall not cut them down."

This statement in Deuteronomy is one of the bases of the Talmudic laws which prohibit willful destruction of natural resources or any sort of vandalism to the natural resources, even if it is by those who have a deed to the land. An article in Vegetarian Times estimates that rain forest destruction causes the extinction of 1000 species per year. For each fast-food, quarter-pound hamburger, 55 square feet of rain forest are destroyed. One hundred species become extinct for every two billion fast-food burgers sold. The effects of livestock land use in the US account for about 85% of the four million acres of topsoil lost per year. A pure vegetarian diet, on the other hand, makes less than five percent of the demand on the soil in this country.

The ratio of food productivity per acre of land from livestock versus vegetarian food reveals a tremendous disparity from the same amount of natural resources. For instance, one acre of land yields 20,000 pounds of potatoes versus 165 pounds of beef. An acre of grain gives five times more protein than beef. An acre of legumes gives ten times more and an acre of leafy greens produces twenty-five times more protein than one acre of beef. Grain for 100 cows will feed 2000 people. Neither land, water, atmosphere, nor animal populations are safe from the resource-intensive destruction that results from a meat-centered diet.

We simply cannot escape the fact that raising animals for meat and dairy has a disastrous effect on our ecological system. US livestock regularly eat enough grain and soy to feed the US population five times over. More than 80% of the grain grown in the US is to feed livestock. This includes 80% of corn and 95% of oats. The total world livestock regularly eat about twice the calories as the human world population receives. By cycling our plant protein through the beef, the conversion to beef protein is between one-tenth and one-twentieth of the plant protein yield. This is a 100% loss of complex carbohydrates and a 95% loss of calories when plant protein is cycled through livestock. This is a significant waste of protein, complex carbohydrates, and calorie resources when so many people in this world suffer from malnutrition. It is an ecological shame to realize that meat-eaters, according to Diet for A New America, use three and one-half acres per year to supply their meat and dairy consumption lifestyle, whereas vegans require one-quarter of an acre of land. In other words, approximately 14 vegans can live off the same land and water supply that it takes for one meat-eater. A nondairy and nonmeat diet saves one acre of trees per year because of how few resources the diet demands. On our planet, with ever-increasing shortages of land and water, this is a tremendously significant amount of resources wasted.

A vegetarian diet also helps to conserve the world's fuel energy and total raw material resources. Seventy-eight calories of fossil fuel are required for each calorie of protein from feedlot-produced beef. Grains and beans require approximately .6 to 3.9 calories of fossil fuel to produce each calorie of vegetarian food. About twenty times more fossil fuel energy is needed to produce one calorie of beef as compared to one calorie of vegetable protein. The energy required to produce food is about 16.5% of the total energy requirements of the US. The value of the raw materials consumed for livestock production is greater than the value of all the oil, gas, and coal produced in this country. Raw materials needed to support the livestock industry const.i.tute one-third of the value of all the raw materials consumed in this country. The Earth resources demanded by a flesh-centered diet are enormous as compared to those required by a vegetarian diet. A flesh-centered diet is a significant stress on the Earth's ecological balance. It is an unnecessary h.o.a.rding of resources.

Feeding the Hungry.

NEITHER HUMANS NOR ANIMALS are safe from the collective effects of a flesh-food diet. Approximately sixty million people starve to death per year on this planet. The reasons for this terrible state of affairs are a.s.sociated with many political, economic, and natural disasters, et cetera. However, the fact remains that a flesh-centered diet creates an overextended use of water, land, energy, and other resources. It is estimated by nutritionist Dr. Jean Meyer of Harvard that if meat-eaters ate just ten percent less flesh per year, the resources saved would be enough to feed all these sixty million who starve to death.

The number-one health problem in the world today is chronic malnutrition. The United Nations estimates that one-half the world's population suffers from malnutrition and 700-900 million people are seriously malnourished. Twenty-five percent of the world's children suffer from a lack of food. Forty-two thousand children die per day from malnutrition. That comes to 15 million per year or 30% of all the world's deaths per year. In the last ten years, more people died from malnutrition than from all the wars, revolutions, and murders of the last 150 years.

In the Jewish tradition, the Talmud teaches that providing sustenance to the hungry is as important as all the other commandments of the Torah combined.

To loose the chains of wickedness, to undo the bonds of oppression, and to let the oppressed go free.... Is it not to share thy bread with the hungry? (Isaiah 58:67) The Midrash-a highly respected compilation of commentaries by rabbis on the five books of the Torah-says that whenever we give food to the poor it is as if one is feeding G.o.d. The feeding of the hungry extends even to ones enemies.

If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. If your enemy is thirsty, give him water to drink. (Proverbs 25:21) The ethic of feeding the hungry can be seen directly in Leviticus 19:910: And when you reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corner of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather the fallen fruit of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and the stranger.

A flesh-centered diet creates a h.o.a.rding of resources in a way that greatly contributes to world hunger. World hunger, however, reflects a social and political disharmony as much as it does a resource problem. But it does help to have ample resources. Vegetarianism is a major step in reorganizing how our world food resources are used.

The implication of the above statistics is that one who is a vegetarian is indirectly helping to feed the hungry of this planet.

Preservation of Personal Health.

THE RENOWNED TWELFTH-CENTURY PHYSICIAN, rabbi, and sage Mai-monides, in his commentary on the Torah, makes it obvious that one must not place one's health and life in danger. This teaching includes the importance of actively living in a way that will bring good health. In Deuteronomy 4:9 it says: Take heed unto thyself and take care of thy life.

It is obvious at this point that a vegetarian diet is the most healthy diet.

Summary.

AVEGETARIAN DIET is the basic spiritual diet of the Torah and is consistent with many of its key teachings. Vegetarianism is compatible with, and supportive of, any spiritual path because it is conducive to spiritual growth of the individual. A vegetarian diet is automatically Kosher. It is the essence of sharing because it puts far less stress on the environment and allows far more of the Earth's bounty to be shared with everyone. It brings peace to the world because it establishes habits of peace and a relations.h.i.+p of peace with all of nature. By learning compa.s.sion for all of G.o.d's creatures, we develop habits that allow us to show peace and compa.s.sion for our fellow humans. Such a diet also brings us into a harmonious balance with the ecology of the planet. In this way a vegetarian diet is the basic nutritional blueprint not only of the Torah, but for enhancing aspects of spiritual life for all of humanity It is part of the plan for the coming Golden Age of world peace.

Preview of Chapter 18.

ALTHOUGH IT CANNOT BE PROVEN that Jesus did not eat flesh food, consider the following evidence: He grew up in an Essene community that was vegetarian and against animal sacrifice; his family, and probably all his disciples, were vegetarian; and many of the early Christians were vegetarian, and some claimed to have been directly instructed by him to be vegetarian. The fact that Jesus was the master example of love and reverence for all life strongly suggests that he was vegetarian. Although it may be easier for us to believe and project that a Son of G.o.d would eat meat, we may have to accept that Jesus came to help us return to the original spiritual plan and dietary blueprint of G.o.d as revealed in Genesis 1:29 (see previous chapter). Are we ready to give up our human projections of Jesus so that we can see him in his original light and teaching?

I. Jesus and vegetarianism A. Dead Sea Scrolls B. The Essene Gospel of Peace C. Inaccurate translations from the Council of Nicea II. The historical Jesus A. The Essene Jesus B. The Gospel of the Hebrews III. History of vegetarianism in early Christianity IV. The vegetarianism of the disciples, including writings on the disciples' eating habits V. Many early Christian leaders were vegetarian VI. Summary A. Historical evidence suggests Jesus was a vegetarian B. Messianic prophecy includes a vegetarian Messiah.

VII. Contemporary Christian vegetarians.

A. Ellen G. White, Seventh-Day Adventist.

B. Christian vegetarian writers in early America.

Jesus and Vegetarianism.

WHETHER OR NOT JESUS WAS A VEGETARIAN is a delicate subject with no definitive answer because of variations in different his- torical accounts. The Dead Sea Scroll materials unearthed in 1947 indirectly suggest that Jesus was a lifelong vegetarian. This is because they indicate that the Essenes were vegetarian, and historically there is evidence that Jesus was raised in an Essene community; therefore it is highly likely that he and his family were vegetarian. The Essene Gospel of Peace, Book One, taken from the original Aramaic third-century ma.n.u.script discovered in 1927 in the secret Vatican archives by Dr. Edmond Bordeaux Szekely directly and strongly suggests that Jesus was a lifelong vegetarian. It reveals his direct teachings against the eating of flesh. Nevertheless, as these doc.u.ments come to the surface, there is still lack of definitive proof, as well as confusion about mistranslations and conscious and unconscious changes made in the scriptures as we see them today. This is especially true with the claims of various changes and deletions in the Gospels and Epistles that in all probability largely occurred at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325. According to The Prophet of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Upton Clary Ewing, a theologian praised by world-famous Albert Schweitzer, M.D., as the "renaissance of Leonardo da Vinci": There is hardly a single scholar among Bible exegetists who will not agree that there are many inconsistencies and contradictions to be found in the Gospels and the Epistles.

Perhaps this inability to make a final proof one way or the other is fortunate, as no one's faith need be flatly challenged by this chapter. Ultimately there is room to believe whatever one feels comfortable believing. This topic is not meant to challenge anyone's religious beliefs. It is meant to raise issues and information not readily available in order to aid and support those who are Christian vegetarians already or those Christians contemplating the transition to vegetarianism as part of the medicine for healing themselves and this planet. The following information is for those who are confused or disempowered in their desire to be vegetarian by the commonly held interpretations, based on the currently used editions of the New Testament, that maintain Jesus was not a vegetarian.

To understand the relations.h.i.+p of Jesus to vegetarianism, we must probe into a realm in which much of the historical doc.u.mentation has been lost, and that which is left is partially confused by the subtleties in the translation from Greek to English. The accuracy of the translations has also been affected by the limited understanding and philosophy of those who were doing the translating. For example, the word "meat," which appears nineteen times in the New Testament, seems to imply that Jesus sanctioned meat-eating. The most accurate understanding, however, of the word "meat" in the translation from Greek to English does not imply flesh food at all. The Greek word translated as "meat" is more precisely translated as "food" or "nourishment," and not animal flesh as we currently think when we hear the term "meat." For example, Jesus did not actually say, "Have ye any meat?" as in John 21:5 but "Have ye anything to eat?" And when the Gospels say that the disciples went away to buy meat (John 8), it merely means to buy food.

Similar mistranslations have occurred with the use of the word "fish." The misunderstanding of this word results in a portrayal of Jesus as eating fish and encouraging the eating or killing of fish by others. In the early church, the word "fish" was a secret term. The Greek word for fish is I-CH-TH-U-S. It is made up of the first letters of the words "Jesus Christos Theou Uios Soter." This translates as Jesus Christ Son of G.o.d Savior. The fish is also found as a Christian symbol in the catacombs. It is symbolic of the Pis-cean Age, which was emerging at that time. It is entirely conceivable that the word "fish," as written in the New Testament, was used primarily in this deeper mystical way. Since Jesus taught in parables and metaphors, I believe its use in the New Testament was to communicate this deeper meaning of "fish" rather than the literal idea of a dead fish that was physically eaten. In this context, the feeding of the fish to the people is a metaphor for the feeding of the higher teachings of the Master to the ma.s.ses. In a second-century book by Irenaeus (A.D. 120-202), it is twice stated that Jesus fed the mult.i.tude of five thousand with bread alone. Others have pointed out that there is an aquatic plant called the fish plant that was used as a food in that era as well as during Babylonian times. These fish plants were dried in the sun, beaten into mortar, and baked into bread-like rolls and sold in the open market. Perhaps in the translation, the "plant" portion of the word designated as the fish plant was omitted. It was only in the fourth century that fish was added to the bread offering in the scriptures. This suggests that the second-century version of The Gospel of the Hebrews might be more authentic. In this translation, it says in Lection XXIX, verses 7 and 8: And when He had taken the six loaves and the seven cl.u.s.ters of grapes, He looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and the grapes also, and gave them to His disciples to set before them, and they divided them among all.

And they did all eat and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that were left. And they that did eat of the loaves and of the fruits were about five thousand men, women, and children, and He taught them many things.

In any case, the souls of the five thousand, we can a.s.sume, were at least fed with the mystical meaning of fish.

The Historical Jesus.

IT IS A LOT EASIER TO UNDERSTAND Jesus' teachings about vegetarianism when he is understood in his historical context. He and his family were a.s.sociated with the Essene movement of the times. The Essenes were Jewish communities of very evolved people who had broken away from the mainstream of Jewish thought several hundred years before the time of Jesus. They were vegetarians in accordance with the highest meaning of the Law of Moses, which said, "Thou shalt not kill." They were also against the practice of animal sacrifice. In The Prophet of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ewing quotes Philo of Alexandria, a historian writing during the time of Jesus' ministry, who said: They are called Esseni because of their saintliness. They do not sacrifice animals, regarding a reverent mind as the only true sacrifice.

Ewing quotes Professor Teicher in saying: But we have there (in the Essene scriptures) the emphatic prohibition of eating animals. No consumption of meat means no killing of animals and both together means no sacrifice of animals.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, by Millar Burrows, quotes from the Essene scriptures: Let not a man make himself abominable with any living creature or creeping thing by eating of them.

The lives of the Essenes required a discipline and purity of mind, body, and spirit that was beyond the practice of the typical religious person of the time. The Essenes developed self-sufficient communities in the peace of the desert in order to make it easier to focus on G.o.d. It is thought that Jesus and his parents were part of the Essenes, some of whom were also called the Nazarenes. It is said that Jesus escaped to an Essene community in the desert to avoid the murderous intent of King Herod. It was in the Essene communities that he was raised and trained. Some of the Essenes, such as John the Baptist, as well as the Master Jesus himself, went out into public to uplift the people. As part of their teaching of compa.s.sion and love for all life, they taught vegetarianism. For example, in The Essene Gospel of Peace, Book One (p. 36), Jesus is quoted as saying: G.o.d commanded your forefathers: "Thou shalt not kill" But their heart was hardened and they killed. Then Moses desired that at least they should not kill men, and he suffered them to kill beasts. And then the heart of your forefathers was hardened yet more, and they killed men and beasts likewise. But I do say to you: Kill neither men nor beasts, nor yet the food which goes into your mouth. For if you eat living [uncooked] food, the same will quicken you, but if you kill your food, the dead food will kill you also.

What is important here is that this teaching is a direct quote of Jesus from an original Aramaic third-century ma.n.u.script found in the secret archives of the Vatican. It is not a teaching by implication. The message is consistent with Jesus' own dietary practice and that of his community of birth and where he grew up, which also practiced vegetarianism. Aside from these exciting findings, most of the information concerning Jesus' explicit teachings on this subject has been lost or destroyed. One exception is the work by Epiphanius (A.D. 315-403), a Catholic bishop of Constantia in Cyprus. In his book Panarion (as explained in A Critical Investigation of Epiphanius' Knowledge of the Ebionites: A Translation and Critical Discussion of "Panarion," by Glenn Alan Kochit), Epiphanius points out that according to the Ebionites, a group of early Judaic Christians who were vegetarians: Whenever you speak to them (Ebionites) concerning flesh food, the Ebionites reply they were vegetarian because "Christ revealed it to me." [This was a direct teaching they were referring to and not a revelation.]

There is another early book called The Gospel of the Holy Twelve, also known as The Gospel of the Hebrews, the Essene Gospel, the Gospel of the Ebionites, or just plain "the Gospel." This book has been translated from the Aramaic by the Englishman Reverend Gideon H. Ousley (1835-1906). Ousley claims that it is the translation of the original gospel, and that it had been preserved first by the Essenes and then later in a Tibetan monastery after the Essenes were forced to leave their communities in A.D. 68 by the advancing Romans. The Essenes apparently hid many of their scriptures in the desert (such as the Dead Sea Scrolls) and took some with them as they dispersed. Reverend Ousley claims that this Gospel was taken to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery by Essene monks. It was in the Tibetan monastery that Reverend Ousley found it. If this is authentic, as some scholars believe, it would be the most ancient and complete writings available about Jesus and his teachings. Dr. Ewing believed that this might be the original gospel, but it might have been known primarily as "the gospel" and was written in western Aramaic. Jesus' teaching of vegetarianism in The Gospel of the Hebrews is both poetic and clear as he answers a doubting Sadduce man who asked, "Tell me, please, why sayest thou, do not eat the flesh of animals... ?" Jesus' beautiful answer to him was: "Behold this watermelon, the fruit of the earth." Jesus then broke open the watermelon and said: "See thou with thine own eyes the good fruit of the soil, the meat of man, and see thou the seeds within, count ye them, for one melon maketh a hundredfold and even more. If thou sow this seed, ye do eat from the true G.o.d, for no blood was spilled, nay no pain nor outcry did ye hear with thy ears or see with thine eyes. The true food of man is from the mother of the earth, for she brings forth perfect gifts unto the humble of the land. But ye seek what Satan giveth, the anguish, the death, and the blood of living souls taken by the sword. Know ye not, those who live by the sword are the ones who die by the same death? Go thine way then, and plant the seeds of the good fruit of life, and leave ye off from hurting the innocent creatures of G.o.d."

In a teaching to his disciples in Lection x.x.xII, verse 4, of The Gospel of the Hebrews, Jesus is completely clear about his opposition to killing and eating animals: For of the fruits of the trees and the seeds of the herbs alone do I partake, and these are changed by the Spirit into my flesh and my blood. Of these alone and their like shall ye eat who believe in me, and are my disciples, for of these, in the Spirit, come to life and health and healing unto man.

In the same section, verse 9, Jesus explains the problem of the custom of flesh-eating with an understanding of the past and a prophecy for the future return to vegetarianism for the whole world: Verily I say unto you, in the beginning, all creatures of G.o.d did find their sustenance in the herbs and the fruits of the earth alone, till the ignorance and the selfishness of man turned many of them from the use which G.o.d had given them, to that which was contrary to their original use, but even these shall yet return to their natural food, as it is written in the prophets (Isaiah), and their words shall not fail.

In Lection x.x.xVIII, verses 3,4, and 6 of The Gospel of the Hebrews, the spiritual meaning of the awareness and practice of the oneness with all of life is translated into Jesus' teachings of vegetarianism and noncruelty to animals and all of life; his words are consistent with the awareness one would expect from someone of Jesus' great spiritual stature: 3 G.o.d giveth the grains and the fruits of the earth for food; and for righteous man truly there is no other lawful sustenance for the body.

4 The robber who breaketh into the house made by man is guilty, but they who break into the house made by G.o.d, even of the least of these are the greater sinners. Wherefore I say unto all who desire to be my disciples, keep your hands from bloodshed and let no flesh meat enter your mouths, for G.o.d is just and bountiful, who ordaineth that man shall live by the fruits and seeds of the earth alone.

6 And whatsoever ye do unto the least of these my children, ye do it unto me. For I am in them and they are in me. Yea, I am in all creatures and all creatures are in me. In all their joys I rejoice, in all their afflictions I am afflicted. Wherefore I say unto you: Be ye kind one to another, and to all the creatures of G.o.d.

History of Vegetarianism in Early Christianity.