When I say cheese in the Bible, I am not talking about the unfortunate situation where over lunch, during a heated debate on a Biblical topic, a slice of finest Italian cheese has slipped from it’s intended location in someone’s sandwich and ended up falling on a Bible!

Rather, I am referring to references about cheese that can be found in the Bible. Maybe some would say that this is a very specialised topic, but the Bible is an important book, which has something to say about all areas of life, even food!

So, not surprisingly, the Bible even mentions cheese and while it’s not something of central importance, it is interesting to know that even in Biblical times, cheese was consumed. It’s also interesting to take note of the contexts in which cheese is mentioned.

Where it all Began

No one knows for sure the origin of cheese. For sure, since the early days of human kind, people have kept animals for agricultural purposes.

In the Bible, the first two people born to Adam and Eve were Cain and Abel. Cain is described as working the soil and Abel as keeping flocks. Whilst the Bible doesn’t explicitly say it, it’s not hard to imagine that Abel realised that milk could be extracted from these animals and used for human consumption. Maybe, he even realised how to make basic cheese. Who knows!

In any case, there are a few different ways to make cheese, one of them being to add an enzyme called rennet, which can be found in animals’ stomachs to the milk. This enzyme breaks the milk down into a liquid and solid part as would be needed for digestion of the milk in the animal’s stomach.

It’s not hard to imagine that at some point in history people stored milk in animals’ stomachs and realised that by doing this that the solid part of the milk began to separate and could be further processed to form cheese.

Alternatively, maybe people just realised that a similar effect can be achieved simply by heating milk.

Biblical Evidence

Whatever the first technique that was used to make cheese and whoever the first people were to discover it, remains a matter of speculation. The fact though that cheese is mentioned in the Bible gives credence to the fact that cheese has been consumed since ancient days, as the Bible is an ancient book.

As it happens, the actual word cheese is not mentioned a lot in the Bible. In the New Testament, it’s not mentioned at all, although the events of the New testament take place during Roman times and we know from other sources that cheese making was prevalent by this time, just not relevant to the Biblical narrative, which is concerned with how Jesus restored our relationship to God.

There are three mentions of cheese in the Old Testament however, not to mention some references to curds which are the precursor to cheese and it is to these that we now turn our attention.

King David

David was the second and greatest King of the Jewish people and it would seem that cheese set him on his way (although his greatness was more to do with his heart for God than his diet).

In the book of 1st Samuel chapter 17, when David is still a young man, his friends are out with Israel’s army, stuck in a stand-off with Goliath. David’s father tells him to take some supplies, including 10 cheeses and go and visit his brothers to see how they are. The cheeses were for the commanding officer, so maybe they were intended to curry favour as it were. In any case, it seems that David’s family were into cheese, not surprising really as they kept sheep, which David looked after.

It’s a bit hard to know what this cheese was, but I’m guessing a matured sheep’s cheese something like the Pecorino cheeses of modern day Italy. It must of been a hard cheese that could be kept for a while, otherwise it would have been tricky and fruitless for David to have taken ten of them as a gift.

We also encounter cheese one more time in connection with David. This time in second Samuel chapter 17. By now, David has grown and long since become King of Israel. However, he is on the rin due to his son usurping his throne. While in the wilderness, we read that people brought David and his men supplies, including cheese made from cow’s milk. Again, it’s hard to know exactly what sort of cheese this was, but if it was being brought out as a supply for harsh connections, we can assume that it was a matured, resistant type of cheese. Who knows, maybe even an ancient version of Parmesan!

Job

The other place where cheese is explicitly mentioned is in the book of Job chapter 10. Job was a righteous man who God allowed to go through a time of severe testing. In this context, he questions God about the reasons why, asking whether God would curdle him like cheese. The period when Job actually lived is unknown, but it is speculated that it could have been even as early as when Abraham, another great ancient Biblical figure was around. This would make it somewhere a bit after 2000 B.C.

So, we see that even as early as that the process of making cheese by curdling milk was known. Once again, it remains to be seen what sort of cheese fare job enjoyed. Actually, in his suffering he was probably too busy to think about food, although thanks to his faithfulness to God, he was shown to be a truly righteous man, and God rewarded him with many blessings again. These included 14,000 sheep so that would give scope for plenty of Pecorino cheese, not to mention the 1,000 donkeys (yes, you can make donkey’s cheese, although who knows if the ancients indulged in such a delicacy!)

The Last Curd

Has we have seen, even in Biblical times cheese was known and enjoyed. There are also a number of references to curds or curdled milk in the Bible, but we’ll save those for another time!