As the season is drawing to a close, I have finally allowed myself a serious read –
the first of many that will surely fill the long winter months that I am already looking forward to. The stack of books beside my chair is tall, but I decided to start with an essay that still touches on agriculture, even if its implications verge on the existential. Written in 2023 by Olivier Christin and Guillaume Alonge, the book bears the rather evocative title Adam and Eve: Paradise, Meat, and Vegetables – which, I must say, irresistibly calls to mind that deliciously baroque film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. But I digress, and the topic here is of a much graver kind: it lay at the heart of the great theological debates that divided Protestants and Catholics in the decades following the Reformation.
The question, then, is this: Were Adam and Eve vegetarians – perhaps even vegans?
At first glance, it feels like a very modern question, given the place such concerns occupy amongst today’s psychological and moral preoccupations. Yet, in its time, it began as a strictly theological dispute – between Protestant reformers and Catholics – before being taken up by scientists, biologists, and physicians, who transformed it into an anatomical and therefore medical debate. While it may all sound amusing from a distance, the Christin/Alonge essay is genuinely fascinating – and, as you might imagine, everyone is left to draw his/her own conclusion. Indeed, we’ll never know for certain whether Adam and Eve were vegetarians in the Garden of Eden, before the Fall; and whether they became omnivores only after stepping off Noah’s Ark, post-Deluge. 😕
In your baskets this week, a wholly vegetarian selection, as always: winter squash, beets, onions, potatoes, leeks, leafy greens, herbs, and a touch of fennel – small, but full of flavor.
We look forward to seeing you all again.