Did the Jews Eat Two, or Three Meals a Day? by Daniel T. Bourdeau

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 17, 1865

Did the Jews Eat Two, or Three Meals a Day?

By Daniel T. Bourdeau

FROM the comments of J. A. Spencer, A. M., on the original word ἀριστῆσαι, in Luke xi, 37, (see Spencer's Greek Testament), we see that they made but two meals a day. Upon this word he remarks as follows:

"The Jews made but two meals in the day; the ἄριστον was but a slight meal, and taken about twelve o'clock on the Sabbath, perhaps earlier on other days; the δεῖπνον, or supper, was taken after the heat of the day was over, and was, among the Jews, as well as among the Greeks and Romans, the principal meal. See Matt. xxii, 4." Also Luke xiv, 12.

Though the fact that the Jews ate but two meals a day, does not, abstractly considered, prove that we should do likewise, yet if we bear in mind the reasonableness and propriety of the two-meal-a-day system, it seems that the example of this ancient and healthy people (healthy, when compared with the people of this degenerate age,) deserves our candid consideration.

D. T. BOURDEAU.

Dansville, N. Y., Oct. 1, 1865.