Doug Freyburger wrote:

> Ran�e at Arabian Knits wrote:
>
>> And really, Jesus was only telling
>>people to fast because it was a cultural custom.
>
>
> I thought that while he was alive he managed to keep his followers from
> fasting but he understood that once he was gone he would no longer be
> able to stop them. Sounds to me like it was a topic he wanted to
> prepare folks for but not one so important as to make rules about it.
> So later generations made up rules about it because that's what happens
> in organized reading.
>
> That's how I understood it when I read the New Testament as a member of
> another religion learning comparative religion. I don't know how much I
> missed doing it that way.
>
> The holiday ties in with the agricultural year. A time to celebrate
> that your family supplies lasted the winter and no one starved to death
> this year. A time to rest before it was time to plant the new crops.
>
> What I don't get is calling a meat-free diet a fast. It triggers a
> language barrier inside my head like calling flesh cut from the bones of
> an animal that happens to be a fish not meat.

The English word "meat" originally meant any food one ate, not just
animal flesh.

See Genesis 1:29
--
JL