So who are these trouble-making vegetarians who must not be offended? They were the leaders of the early church. In Galatians 2, Paul’s opponents are clearly spelled out: James the brother of Yahshua, Peter, and John. The dispute itself is not as clearly spelled out, all we know is that until “certain men from James” came to Antioch, that Peter ate at the “table of gentiles” (Galatians 2:12). We do know, though, that James’ view carried the day, at least at the time. Peter stops eating at the table of gentiles. “Even Barnabas was carried away,” Paul ruefully admits (Galatians 2:13).

James the brother of Yahshua, the first leader of the Jerusalem church after Yahshua’s’ departure, was universally acknowledged to be a strict vegetarian, and in fact was raised as a vegetarian (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.23.5–6). Why would Yahshua’s’ family raise James as a vegetarian, but not Yahshua? The natural conclusion is that Yahshua’s’ parents raised Yahshua and James as vegetarians and that this was part of the original gospel message.

This dispute in Galatians is not about kosher regulations in the modern sense, as if someone had pork at the table, or someone were mixing meat and milk. Rather, Paul is concerned with James’ much more radical idea of what is kosher; it is meat and wine, by themselves, that make a meal unclean (Romans 14:20–21).

Later J.wish Christianity, especially the Je.ish Christian Ebionites of the second, third, and fourth centuries, inherited the traditions of James and the Jerusalem church. They would not eat meat, or eat with anyone who was not baptized and had therefore given up meat — for them, all believers were vegetarians and had renounced violence. These later J.wish Christians were described by such early Christian writers as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius, and also in two lengthy documents which are mostly Je.ish Christian in origin, the Homilies and Recognitions.

To eat “dead flesh” is to eat at the table of demons (Homilies 7.4, 7.8), and in the Homilies and Recognitions, followers of Jesus are counseled to avoid eating at the table of demons. Indeed, they should not even eat with anyone who has eaten at “the table of demons” and has not subsequently been baptized. That’s why, according to Je.ish Christianity, Peter refused to eat with unbelievers or “gentiles” (Recognitions 1.19, 2.3, 2.71–72, 7.29, 7.34; Homilies 1.22, 13.4).