Corpus-Paul

[Jeff Peterson <peterson AT mail.ics.edu>]

At 2:52 PM -0400 5/21/99, Liz Fried wrote:
>Btw, the issue of table fellowship with uncircumcised Christians is not the
>issue of fellowship, with which there is no problem, but the issue of eating
>non-kosher food.

It's a bit overstated to say that eating with Gentiles would never cause
observant Jews any problem, isn't it? E.g., Exod 12:43-49 bars foreigners
and the uncircumised from the Passover, and while among Jews that may have
been just one more way in which that night differed from all other nights
of the year, the adherents of Jesus may have felt similarly about their
more frequent sacral meal, especially as it seems to have been kept with
Passover overtones (cf. 1 Cor 5:7-8).

There's a good consideration of this question by E. P. Sanders in the _The
Conversation Continues_ (FS J. Louis Martyn), concluding that while there
was no formal legal prohibition of table fellowship with gentiles, there
were customs of segregation for meals.

Jeff

------------------------------------
Jeffrey Peterson
Institute for Christian Studies
Austin, Texas, USA
------------------------------------