Genesis: Gift of Food

Light brings fullness of life to plants, and plants are food for the animals. Light is given to the earth for the plants who become food --- mediators of life --- for all with the breath (spirit) of life. Moving beings are also given as food to man, only not to be eaten while the blood --- the life --- remains in the flesh. Life does not feed on life, living beings feed on the fruits of the green plants and on the flesh of the moving beings.

Anyone who has been paying attention to the construction of modern myths will notice that the myth of the  vampire has been the object of reconstruction lately. From Twilight to all the various television series, there is a modern fascination with the idea of “good vampires.” What makes this a modern myth? It has to do with blurring the lines between good and evil. The whole drama of nature vs. person is set to redefine the problem of good and evil. Can someone be evil by nature? Can someone be good or evil simply by obeying their nature? Is it right to choose to live in accord with one's nature when one's nature is profoundly broken?
Is it right to negate one's nature in the attempt to rise above it? Is it even possible to rise above one's nature? Heroes are not all good, villains are not all evil --- humanity is as profoundly good as it is broken. Virtue is gone, and since no one is truly virtuous, the only good thing left to do is hope that love will be strong enough to conquer evil most of the time.

Without looking more deeply at the myth about vampires, and its modern spin, why does the Word of God specifically disallow consuming flesh while it still contains the blood? The scriptures reject feeding on blood in the flesh because of what it symbolizes and implies practically speaking. Blood is the symbol of life, and the lives of animals have not been given to man for his consumption --- the life must be drained from the body before it can be considered food given by the Creator to man. Jesus gives us his flesh as true food and his blood as true drink --- but the two are separated. If blood symbolizes the soul of the living being in the Bible, with the heart at the vital center, the gift of Christ's blood to us as true drink reveals God's desire for us to be nourished by his very life --- His heart is opened to us.

The gift of every moving thing as food --- with the exception of man of course --- is given to Noah and his descendants. For anyone who kills a man shall be killed by men. Both man and beast are held accountable for the shedding of blood. The blood of man has something sacred about it because man is made in the image of
God.[footnote: Gn. 9: 5--6.] So why does God give the animals as food to Noah? Noah saved God's creation at His command, and offered a pleasing sacrifice of these animals before the Lord. As a response to this, God gives the animals of creation to man in a new way, as food. And this itself is connected to God lifting the curse of the ground. Indeed, it is already a kind of prophesy where the Word of God promises to bear the brokenness of humanity, “The Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.’”[footnote:Gn. 8: 21.]

Chasidic thought provides another reason as to why God gives the flesh of animals as food after the flood. This reason has to do with the natural qualities of flesh as food itself. Just an aside, but it is interesting to note that in the Eucharist, the Body (flesh) of Christ is given under the appearance of bread, the manna which is flesh indeed. According to Chasidic thought, creation itself reaches a new degree of subtlety after the flood
--- one “theological-empirical” explanation for why there weren't any rainbows in the sky until then --- and therefore matter itself loses its coarser edge and becomes more supple. The underlying spiritual revolution at the time of the flood is a general predisposition among men for repentance. Meat is a coarser food and would have plunged the pre-flood era into a hedonistic physicality void of conscience. The purification of the world by the flood is both physical and spiritual --- the physical becoming more refined, the spirit of man becoming
disposed to repentance.[footnote:See “The Gutnick Edition Chumash: Genesis” p 59.] The importance of this idea has to do with the increasing subtlety of the food given by God: from the plants, to flesh, to the manna and the quails, to the Word of God (the Thora), to the Word made flesh (the Eucharist).