1 Corinthians 10:25 - "Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience."

In the past few weeks, my ears have been assaulted several times daily by ads for a local supermarket chain which assures me that the meat I buy in their stores will be absolutely fresh, because it is now computerized! Any housewife knows that the buying of meats has undergone a radical change from the days of our mothers. But - the cutting of the meat itself is still done by men.

Meat has been one of the most ancient of man’s foodstuffs - even, presumably, when he had to eat it raw. There is an instructive understanding in man that meat contains the elements that he needs to make him strong and healthy. There is even some sympathetic magic at work here - if I eat the blood and flesh of a strong, healthy animal, I will imbibe some of that strength.

With this thought in mind, we can understand the rise of a class of butchers - men who were apprenticed for a period until they had learned the proper method of preparing meat for the consumption of the Hebrews. This wasn’t as simple as it might seem to us.

In the first place, these must be men of strength, because the animals were usually killed while still fighting back. Then, too, they must be ritually instructed in their art or trade. You see, the meats that they prepared had to be "kosher" - that is, clean. This cleanness involved several things, but especially the necessity of being able to slit the windpipe, so that the animal died instantly. Since the ancients felt that the blood held the source of life, it could not be eaten. We remember the prohibitions in the Old Testament against the eating or drinking of blood. To the ancients, any slaughter of an animal was equivalent to a sacrifice, and thus sacred.

Now, you might look at the text and question this. Why does St. Paul tell them that they can eat non-kosher meats, then? Things had changed by his time, as they have further changed in ours. We look forward to a steak that is so rare that the blood spurts out at the first touch of the knife. Things and attitudes do change. Perhaps there’s more of Dracula in our make-up than we think!

Although the Talmud seems to indicate that the butcher, per se, was held in rather low esteem in ancient Israel, this was not necessarily so in other cultures. In ancient Persia, for example, it was a rare privilege to be allowed to cut the throat of the bull used in the "baptismal ceremonies" of a new convert. And, as with so many of the so-called "underdogs" of any occupation, they soon banded together, and we know that there was a guild of butchers in existence in Rome by the first century A.D.

From ritual sacrifice and "kosher" meat to a rare, bloody steak is a long step - but the butcher is still very much among us. And he has became very important to us in our culinary perspectives!