THE KUKMIN DAILY

It is easy for believers to regard eating and other everyday life matters as distant from the Christian faith. Opening up the Bible, however, we find it overflowing with cooking and food stories. The forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve, Esau who sold his birthright for a bowl of stew, the manna and quail that the Israelites lived on in the wilderness for 40 years, Elijah eating food brought by ravens, Jesus eating with his disciples, and the Lord’s prayer asking for daily bread: These are all food stories.

“Table of God, Table of Human Beings” by Yu Seung-jun (Sodam Publishing, cover photo) selects from the Bible 40 scenes of various kinds of cooking and food, and reinterprets the Bible stories by running them through the lens of food. The author redefines the Old Testament as the story of God who, like the mother of a child, keeps preparing and feeding, without ceasing. And the New Testament, he sums up, is the story of Jesus, who became nourishment himself and shared his own flesh and blood, to fundamentally solve problems associated with eating and living for the human soul and body.

The author asks us to pay close attention to the word “feast” when reading the Bible. That is because God made Eden in order to feast together with humans. God enjoyed feasting with Abraham, and promised to feast with chosen people in the New Heaven and New Earth. Yu is neither a theologian, nor a Biblical researcher, nor a professional cook. He confesses that he was able to approach the Bible stories without limits precisely because he is not an expert. Indeed, page by page, this is an admirable way to read the Bible.

Food and restaurant entrepreneur Baek Jong-won highly recommends this book, saying, “I came to realize the long history of cooking is also religiously profound. The author has done an amazing job, raising the mundane, everyday matter of eating and living to the level of human greed and desire, ownership and distribution, and social justice and equality, while providing interpretation and new ideas.”

Reporter Sangmok Shin (smshin@kmib.co.kr), with Yeara Ahn-Park (yap@kmib.co.kr)


Original Article in Korean:
[책과 영성] 스토리로 재해석한 성경 속 요리와 음식에 관한 40장면: 신의 밥상 인간의 밥상/유승준 지음/소담출판사