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As Easter gets closer, many newspapers and news services are covering People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' "Jesus Was a Vegetarian" campaign. PETA has been paying for billboards around the country proclaiming "Jesus Was A Vegetarian" and garnering lots of controversy. In addition PETA has sent letters seeking the support of Christian evangelists including Jerry Falwell; no word on whether PETA might interest Falwell in a "Tinky Winky Was a Vegetarian" campaign.
Thankfully there’s been a lot of good comments coming from religious authorities. Sister Sylvia Schmidt, executive director of the Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry, told the Daily Oklahoman that "dumping guilt on people about eating or not eating meat is not what Jesus is all about."
Several people have attacked the theological and historical claims of PETA’s Bruce Friedrich, who is directing the campaign. One might sum up the consensus by saying "Bruce Friedrich Isn’t a Historian."
As Dave Henry, editorial page writer for the Amarillo Globe-News, pointed out, one doesn’t have to be a biblical scholar to read several positive references to fishing in the New Testament. Friedrich apparently believes these are later interpolations into the text. Similarly, the PETA web site on the matter claims the narrative describing Jesus multiplying fish was a later interpolation by Greek scribes. Without going into a long debate about Biblical scholarship, it should be pointed out that this sort of textual criticism opens the New Testament open to a lot more challenges than simply Jesus’ dietary habits.
PETA also makes a lot of hay over the fact that Jesus is described eating on several occasions, including the Last Supper which, by tradition, would have included lamb – and yet the New Testament doesn’t give us complete menus for these meals. Which is hardly remarkable – although I eat meat, I don’t always relate what I have at every dinner in letters to friends. I would be especially loathe to do so if I had to painstakingly transcribe by hand such menus as the original authors and their copyists had to do with the New Testament.
L. Michael White, professor of classics and director of religious studies at the University of Texas at Austin, summed up the PETA’s campaign rather succinctly: "This is just another cause making bad use of Scripture. I’d say to them: You can’t make the Bible do that."
Source:
"Jesus was a vegetarian" ad makes critics cross. Reuters, March 4, 1999.