LatineEnglish
{Everything that moves and lives shall be food for you: even as the green herbs have I delivered them all to you.}1
Omne quod movetur et vivit erit vobis in cibum: quasi olera virentia tradidi vobis omnia.
HINC apparet ante diluvium esum carnium vel non fuisse licitum, vel non fuisse in more atque usu, saltem apud probos et pios viros, et quos Moses supra Dei filios appellavit. Ethnicorum sapientes hanc carnium abstinentiam in primaeva Mundi aetate, quam nominarunt illi seculum aureum, etiam subodorati sunt, vel scriptorum Mosis lectione, vel fama et traditione antiqua, Chaldaeorum praesertim atque Aegyptiorum, quibus instituta Iudaeorum propter diutinam cum illis conversationem non fuere ignota.
Hence it appears that before the flood the eating of flesh either was not lawful, or was not in custom and use — at least among the upright and pious men, and those whom Moses above called the sons of God. The wise men of the heathen even got an inkling of this abstinence from flesh in the primeval age of the world, which they named the golden age — whether from reading the writings of Moses, or from ancient report and tradition, especially of the Chaldaeans and Egyptians, to whom the institutions of the Jews, because of their long association with them, were not unknown.2
Continentiam igitur illius primaevae aetatis ab esu carnium expressit Ovidius illis versibus: At vetus illa aetas non polluit ora cruore. / Tunc et aves tutae movere per aëra pennas, / Et lepus impavidus mediis erravit in agris, / Nec sua credulitas piscem suspenderat hamo, / Cuncta sine insidiis, nullamque timentia fraudem, / Plenaque pacis erant. Verum quod abstinentiam illius aetatis ab esu carnium laudat Ovidius, recte quidem fecit: sed quod idem postea introductum esum carnium quasi magnum scelus exsecratur, dicens, Heu quantum scelus est in viscere viscera condi? / Congestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus, / Alteriusque animantem animantis vivere leto? poetico excessu veritatis lapsus est: nec enim damnari potest quod pro[magno]…
The abstinence of that primeval age from the eating of flesh Ovid expressed in those verses: “But that old age did not pollute its mouths with gore. Then the birds in safety moved their wings through the air, and the hare wandered fearless in the midst of the fields, nor had its own credulity hung the fish on the hook; all things were without snares, fearing no fraud, and were full of peace.” But whereas Ovid praises the abstinence of that age from the eating of flesh, he did rightly; yet in that he afterward execrates the introduced eating of flesh as a great crime, saying, “Alas, how great a crime it is for entrails to be buried in entrails, and for a greedy body to grow fat by a heaped-up body, and for one living creature to live by the death of another living creature!” — he lapsed from the truth by a poetic excess: for that cannot be condemned which for [a great]…3
…pro magno beneficio Deus homini concessit, et quod fragilitati et infirmitati hominis sustinendae confirmandaeque prope necessarium est.
…God granted to man as a great benefit, and which is well-nigh necessary for sustaining and strengthening the frailty and weakness of man.4
VERUM excutiamus causas propter quas Deus non ante diluvium sed post indulgere voluit homini esum carnium. Equidem tres eius rei causas afferre possum. Nimirum voluit Deus atrocitate vindictae, qua omne genus hominum et animalium (paucis exceptis) per diluvii cladem extinxit, illustri aliqua significatione benignitatis et indulgentiae suae erga hominem mitigare ac lenire: quocirca tanta divini supplicii severitate tremefactum, metuque consternatum hominem suavissimus Dominus statim post diluvium erexit ac recreavit trium concessu ingentium bonorum, numerosae fecunditatis, largioris cibi, et securitatis nunquam in posterum futuri diluvii. Alteram causam fuisse reor indigentiam hominis post diluvium, uberiori validioreque cibo indigentis.
But let us sift out the causes for which God willed to indulge man the eating of flesh not before the flood but after. Indeed I can bring forward three causes of this matter. Namely, God willed by some illustrious token of His kindness and indulgence toward man to mitigate and soften the atrocity of the vengeance by which He extinguished (a few excepted) the whole race of men and animals through the disaster of the flood: wherefore man, made to tremble by so great a severity of divine punishment and dismayed with fear, the most gentle Lord immediately after the flood raised up and revived by the grant of three immense goods — numerous fecundity, more abundant food, and security against any flood ever to come thereafter. The second cause I judge to have been man's need after the flood, needing richer and stronger food.5
Haec autem indigentia tribus ex rebus accidit: nam caelestium astrorum aspectus et defluxus minus fuit humanae vitae propitius ac beneficus quam fuerat ante diluvium; et ipsa tellus, salsis Oceani aquis per unum annum tota perfusa et obruta, multo sterilior ac deterior facta est: quocirca earum rerum quas ex se generabat proventu non, ut antea, sufficiens alendo homini subministrare potuit alimentum; fragilior denique fuit post diluvium valetudo hominum, pluribusque incommodis ac morbis obnoxia: quamobrem ad eam sustinendam firmandamque pluribus et validioribus adminiculis et quasi fulturis opus fuit; id quod satis indicat vita hominum in tantum contracta et recisa post diluvium.
And this need arose from three things: for the aspect and influence of the celestial stars was less propitious and beneficial to human life than it had been before the flood; and the earth itself, drenched and overwhelmed for a whole year by the salt waters of the Ocean, was made much more barren and worse: wherefore by the yield of those things which it generated of itself it could not, as before, supply sufficient nourishment for feeding man; finally, men's health was frailer after the flood, and liable to more discomforts and diseases: wherefore, for sustaining and strengthening it, there was need of more and stronger supports and, as it were, props — which the life of men, so greatly contracted and cut short after the flood, sufficiently indicates.6
TERTIAM causam tradit quaestione in Genesim 55 Theodoretus, ita scribens: Post diluvium magis pretiosum Deus homini cibum contulit, iubens occidere et comedere ex omni genere animalium, videlicet affectum repellens affectu, et leviori curans graviorem. Praevidens enim Deus in tantam homines lapsuros dementiam ut animalia pro diis veneraturi essent, permisit illorum esum, quo impietatem eorum cohiberet. Summa enim est insania adorare quod comeditur. Propterea quoque animalium quaedam haberi voluit immunda, alia munda, ut immunda eo ipso quod immunda sunt adorare perhorrescerent: munda vero, quod et ad esum hominis et ad sacrificia mactarentur, pro diis colere erubescerent.
A third cause Theodoret hands down, in question 55 on Genesis, writing thus: “After the flood God conferred on man a more precious food, commanding [him] to kill and eat of every kind of animal — that is, repelling one affection by another affection, and curing the graver by the lighter. For God, foreseeing that men would fall into so great a madness as to venerate animals for gods, permitted the eating of them, whereby He might restrain their impiety. For it is the height of insanity to adore what is eaten. For this reason too He willed that some animals be held unclean, others clean, so that they might shudder to adore the unclean by the very fact that they are unclean; but the clean, because they were slain both for man's food and for sacrifices, they would blush to worship for gods.”7
Translator’s notes
- Gen 9:3 (lemma). Margin: v. 3. ↩
- §6 (printed §7). The pagans' ‘golden age’ echoes the pre-flood abstinence from flesh. Margin: Gen. 6. ↩
- §7 (printed §8). Ovid's verses on golden-age abstinence (rightly praised), but his condemning all flesh-eating as crime is poetic excess. Margin: Ovid, Metamorphoses bk. 1. Continues on p. 319. ↩
- §7 (cont.). Flesh-eating is a divine benefit, near-necessary for man's frailty — so not to be condemned. ↩
- §8 (printed §9). Why flesh was granted only after the flood — three causes: (1) to soften the flood's severity with a kindness; (2) man's greater need. Margin: “Three causes why flesh-eating was granted to man after the flood.” ↩
- §9 (printed §10). The threefold source of man's post-flood need: less favorable stars, a salt-soaked barren earth, frailer health. Margin: “For three reasons man's need was greater after the flood.” ↩
- §10 (printed §11). Theodoret's third cause: flesh was allowed to wean men from worshipping animals — one shudders to adore what one eats. Margin: Theodoret. ↩