How Luke Makes Jesus a Roman: The Custom of Dining in Luke 14

I am forever interested in the ways the Bible appropriates wisdom from the culture around it. And the Roman influence is significant as it concerns the New Testament. One of my favorite pastimes is finding obscure tracts of wisdom in Roman culture that are taken up in the scriptures. For example, Jesus’ admonition against putting new wine in old wineskins can be found in Martial’s Epigrams and so we must assume that it is far from an original wisdom saying with Jesus. So at a conference the other day on drinking and symposia in the ancient world, I ran across this passage by Horace. In ancient Greece, when men came together to recline and drink, they didn’t discriminate between rank and position (most of the time this was because the men were of equal station anyways). But in Rome, the situation is quite different. Rank, station, position are all taken into account when drinking with other men (or women, as became the case among the Romans) and were reflected in the seating arrangement. The passage below from Horace sheds light on a Roman symposium:

Nasidienus’ Dinner Party

I was there at the head, and next to me Viscus

From Thurii, and below him Varius if I

Remember correctly: then Servilius Balatro

And Vibidius, Maecenas’ shadows, whom he brought

With him. Above our host was Nomentanus, below

Porcius, that jester, gulping whole cakes at a time:

Nomentanus was by to point out with his finger

Anything that escaped our attention: since the rest

Of the crew, that’s us I mean, were eating oysters,

Fish and fowl, hiding far different flavors than usual:

Soon obvious for instance when he offered me

Fillets of plaice and turbot cooked in ways new to me.

Then he taught me that sweet apples were red when picked

By the light of a waning moon. What difference that makes

You’d be better asking him. Then Vibidius said

To Balatro: “We’ll die unavenged if we don’t drink him

Bankrupt”, and called for larger glasses. Then the host’s face

Went white, fearing nothing so much as hard drinkers,

Who abuse each other too freely, while fiery wines

Dull the palate’s sensitivity. Vibidius

And Balatro were tipping whole jugs full of wine

Into goblets from Allifae, the rest followed suit,

Only the guests on the lowest couch sparing the drink.

Horace - BkIISatVIII:20-41

So I was thinking of the way this works out in the New Testament and found this passage in Luke 14:8 in which Jesus warns those attending a wedding not to seek the highest place. The word here prōtoklisian can be translated many different ways, and you find it as “seat” in Aramaic versions, although in English versions it is usually translated as “highest room” or “place of honor.” Given the socio-context, the idea of a seat seems to make the best sense in the Galilee of Jesus as imagined by the Greek writing author of Luke.  As Willi Braun points out in his excellent book Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, “Luke shows himself to be a master of narrative evocation of the Greco-Roman social dining scene.” That is to say, he uses the image of the Roman Triclinium, the three-sided room situated with couches on those sides and used by the Romans for socializing, drinking, and eating. And so we have example of Luke’s genius for syncretistic borrowing of situation to place on the lips of Jesus wisdom sayings about a cultural practice that relevant only to Luke's Hellenistic audience, and would have been anachronistic to Jesus' real situation.

The question of whether Jesus was acquainted with such customs is only of secondary importance and possibly not important at all. It seems more likely by those like Braun, that it is the Lukean writer, educated in his own right and writing in Greek, who was more than likely interjecting the influence of his own Greco-Roman world into Jesus’ world, and in doing so, appealing to a Gentile audience.

For more information:

Braun, Willi. Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14: Society for New Testament Studies, Monograph Series 85 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)