Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Just as God, therefore, occupies no fixed spot in space, nor is he ever pictured in the form of any living creature, so too he is not subject to feelings like ours, nor is he in need, as created things are — as if, in the manner of nourishment, he desired sacrifices out of hunger. Whatever is touched by passion is all perishable, and it is vain to bring food to that which is not nourished. And indeed that comic poet Pherecrates, in his Deserters, has amusingly represented the very gods reproaching men over their sacrifices: "Whenever you sacrifice to the gods, first you set apart for the priests the customary portion, and then for yourselves, and then — it is shameful to say it — having stripped the two thighs clean right down to the groin, all the meat, and the loin quite bare, and then having filed off the backbone itself as with a file, you dole it out to us just as to dogs, and then, ashamed before one another, you hide it under many wrappings of fat." And Eubulus, himself also a comic poet, writes something like this about sacrifices: "To the gods themselves you sacrifice only the tail and the thigh, as though to boy-lovers." And having brought Dionysus onto the stage in his Semele making a distinction, he has written: "First of all, whenever certain people sacrifice anything to me, they sacrifice blood, bladder, liver, heart, a thin outer membrane; for I myself do not eat sweetmeat nor thigh-piece."
And Menander too has made the topmost part of the loin and the gall — the inedible bones, he says — the portion set before the gods, while they themselves consume everything else.
For is not the reek of whole burnt offerings something even wild beasts flee from? And if in truth the reek is the prerogative of the gods among the Greeks, they would not be far from making gods of the cooks as well, who are deemed worthy of the same happiness, and from worshipping the very cooking-oven, since it comes into closer contact with that highly prized reek. And somewhere Hesiod says that, in a certain division of the meat, Zeus was deceived by Prometheus and received "the white bones of the ox by a crafty device," concealed "in glistening fat" — and from this, for the immortals, the tribes of men upon the earth burn white bones of sacrificed victims on their altars. But they say that god could in no way be sustained, being harmed by desire arising from want, in the way described. They will therefore make him like a plant, being nourished without appetite, and like the beasts that hibernate in their dens. They say, at any rate, that such creatures grow without harm, nourished either by the thickness of the air or, again, by the very exhalation of their own body. And yet, if the divine is nourished by them without need, what further need is there of food for that which lacks nothing? But if, being by nature free of need, it delights in being honored, then it is not unreasonable that we honor God through prayer, and that we offer up this sacrifice, the best and holiest, together with righteousness, glorifying him with the most righteous word, through which we receive knowledge, and through this same word giving glory to him whom we have come to know. Indeed, our altar here on earth is this: the gathered assembly of those devoted to prayer, joined in what amounts to a single shared voice and a unified mind.
As for offerings through the sense of smell — even if they are more divine than those through the mouth — they are nourishment; but they are indications of breathing. What then do they say about God?
Does he breathe through and through, as the race of daemons does? Or does he merely draw breath inward, as creatures of the water do through the slits of their gills? Or does he take in breath on every side, as insects do through the pressure exerted by their wings upon the incision of their body? But they could not liken God to any of these things, if they were of sound mind. As for creatures that breathe, they draw in air by the counter-expansion of the lung against the chest. Then, if they should assign to God internal organs, arteries, veins, sinews, and bodily parts, they will be introducing things no different from these. But the term "common breath" is properly spoken of the church. For indeed what the church offers up as sacrifice is the word, rising like incense-smoke from holy souls, the whole mind being uncovered to God together with the sacrifice. But they have long repeated the story that the most ancient altar, on Delos, is pure, the one to which alone, they say, Pythagoras even approached, unstained by murder and death — yet will they disbelieve us when we say that the altar that is truly holy is the righteous soul, and that the incense rising from it is the pious prayer? Sacrifices, I think, were devised for men under the pretext of meat-eating. But it was possible in another way, without such idolatry, for whoever wished to partake of meat. For the sacrifices prescribed by the Law allegorize our piety toward God, just as the turtledove and the pigeon, offered up for sins, signify the purification of the irrational part of the soul as acceptable to God. And if any righteous person does not burden the soul with the eating of meat, he makes use of some reasonable argument — not the one Pythagoras and his followers dream up, of the transmigration of the soul. Xenocrates, in his separate treatise On Food from Animals, and Polemon, in his works On Life According to Nature, appear to say clearly that flesh-food is disadvantageous, since, once assimilated, it makes men resemble the souls of irrational creatures.
For this reason especially the Jews abstain from pork, on the ground that this animal is unclean, since more than any other it roots up and destroys the crops. And if they say that animals were given to men, we too agree — except not entirely for eating, nor indeed all animals, but only those that do no work. Hence the comic poet Plato, in his play the Festivals, not badly says: "For of the four-footed animals we ought henceforth to kill none, except pigs; for their meat is most pleasant, and nothing comes from a pig except bristles and mud and squealing for us." Hence too Aesop said, not badly, that pigs squeal loudest when they are being dragged along, for they are conscious that they are useful for nothing else except sacrifice. Wherefore Cleanthes too says that they have a soul instead of salt, so that the flesh not rot. Some, then, eat them as being of no other use, others because the animal is destructive of crops, and others again abstain from eating it because the creature is prone to excessive sexual activity. For this reason too the Law does not sacrifice the goat, except solely for the sending-away of evils, since pleasure is the mother-city of vice. Indeed, people claim that eating goat's flesh brings on the falling sickness. And it is said that pork supplies the richest nourishment of all, which is why it benefits those who train the body; but to those who attempt to strengthen the soul itself it is no longer useful, because of the sluggishness that arises from meat-eating. Perhaps, then, one of the gnostics might abstain from flesh-eating even for the sake of discipline, and so that the flesh not grow wanton with regard to sexual matters. "Wine," says Androcydes, "and a surfeit of meats render the body vigorous, yet leave the soul duller." Such food, then, is unsuited for exact understanding. Wherefore the Egyptians too, in their rites of purification, do not permit their priests to eat meat; they use fowl as being lightest, and they do not touch fish, both for certain other legendary reasons and, above all, because such food renders the flesh flabby.
Now land animals and winged creatures, breathing the same air as our souls, are nourished by it, having a soul akin to the air. But fish, they say, do not breathe this air at all, but that other air which is mixed into the water from the very first moment of their generation, just as it is with the other elements — which is also a proof of the persistence of matter.
We must, then, offer to God "sacrifices not costly, but pleasing to God." And that composite incense spoken of in the Law, made up of many tongues and voices arranged according to the prayer — or rather, that incense compounded from different peoples and natures by the giving of the covenants "into the unity of the faith," and gathered together according to the hymns of praise — with a pure mind, and a righteous and upright manner of life, out of holy works and righteous prayer. For who is so foolish, to use the poet's graceful phrase, and so utterly loose and credulous among men, as to hope that the gods rejoice in fleshless bones and burning gall — things not even fit for hungry dogs to eat — and that all of them obtain this as their due honor, and that in return for these things they repay favor to those who perform them, even should these be pirates or robbers or tyrants? But we say that it is not the flesh that fire sanctifies, but sinful souls — meaning by fire not the all-devouring and vulgar kind, but the intelligent fire, that "which pierces through the soul" as it passes through it.
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