Feasts & banquets

A feast had protocol. Guests were invited (“bidden”) beforehand; couches were assigned by rank, the worthiest in the middle, which is why “the chief place at feasts” was worth coveting (Matt 23:6) and why Jesus told guests to take the lowest place instead (Luke 14:7–10). The courses ran from an appetizer of salted food, through the dinner itself, to a dessert of fruit and pickled olives, radishes and lettuce; the learned were specially honored, sometimes with a double portion, and an unbidden guest was “proverbially an unwelcome apparition.” Yet hospitality was the prized virtue, a rabbinic saying held it “might make every home a sanctuary and every table an altar.”