Today I dedicate this podcast to a vegetarian saying of Jesus found in the Syriac-Aramaic Gospel of Luke. There once existed a Jesus Movement where vegetarianism was the norm, and so the passage found in this old Luke manuscript is very much in harmony with a whole collection of such sayings attributed to Jesus, the Apostles, and some early church fathers. Today, an introduction to "Christianity Before Paul", the vegetarian disciples, their writings, their teachings about becoming an ethical vegetarian. -- James Bean, Spiritual Awakening Radio

"Now beware in yourselves that your hearts do not become heavy with the eating of flesh and with the intoxication of wine and with the anxiety of the world, and that day come up upon you suddenly; for as a snare it will come upon all them that sit on the surface of the earth." —Jesus, Syriac-Aramaic Luke 21 : 34 & 35 (the Old Syriac Gospels)

No doubt for some the idea of a vegetarian Jesus seems a bit of a stretch, at least based on the European Christian traditions they might be acquainted with, but there once existed a Jesus Movement in the Middle East and Near East where vegetarianism was the norm, part of an ethical code referred to as “the Yoke of the Lord”. And so the passage above found in this Syriac-Aramaic edition of Luke is very much in harmony with other such sayings attributed to Jesus found in the Hebrew and Ebionite sources along with other early Christian writings.

There’s actually also a surprising number of references to the vegetarianism of various Apostles and even a few of those early church fathers claimed by Orthodoxy. These writings preserved in the Ante-Nicene Fathers and other collections of early Christian literature have been with us for most of the last two thousand years, but only vegetarians or vegans seem to be the ones willing to pay any attention to those sources!

I often explore apocryphal writings, lost books of the Bible, gnostic gospels, mystical texts, rare books, and spiritual classics.