How often should we fast?
Since we are now in Lent, it might be a adept time to review the spiritual addiction of fasting. Jesus clearly expected his followers to fast after he had gone, so it is odd that this is not a widespread habit amid all Christians. To answer this, nosotros need to ask some groundwork questions. How frequently did the kickoff Jesus-followers fast? Was information technology an occasional thing, focused on specific events or causes? Or was it something more than habitual and regular, an integral part of their devotional life? And what was its significance?
As about studies of the subject point out, fasting in the Onetime Testament was associated either with item festivals (such as the Day of Atonement), with particularly intense experiences (as with Moses spending 40 days in the presence of God on Mountain Sinai), or with special seasons or feelings. Typically in the prophets and the writings, fasting is associated either with grieving, repentance, or intense prayer for a particular cause. There is zero in any of these references to propose that fasting was a habitual function of regular devotional action.
Just there are some fascinating clues to a alter of perspective in the (then-called) inter-testamental catamenia. The Book of Tobit relates stories fix in the 8th century BC, only nearly believe information technology was written in the mid-second century BC (most scholars date the book of Daniel to a similar period).
Tobit 12.8–x records the teaching of an affections equally follows (in the style of sayings from Wisdom literature):
Prayer is good when accompanied by fasting, almsgiving, and righteousness. A little with righteousness is better than much with wrongdoing. It is better to give alms than to treasure up gilded.
For almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin. Those who perform deeds of clemency and of righteousness will have fulness of life;
but those who commit sin are the enemies of their ain lives.
What is striking here, in relation to the before Erstwhile Testament texts, is that fasting has now go a regular part of devotional activity. What is even more striking is the shut relationship between the practices in this text and Jesus' didactics in Matt 6.1–eighteen:
Be careful non to do your 'acts of righteousness' in front of others, to exist seen by them… So when you give to the needy, do not announce information technology with trumpets… And when yous pray, practice not exist like the hypocrites… When yous fast, do not expect somber as the hypocrites exercise…
Here we take the same cluster of concerns—of righteousness, prayer, almsgiving, and fasting. And, one time again, fasting is assumed to exist a regular, habitual part of the devotional life, not something reserved for special occasions. This also fits with the question that is asked of Jesus and his disciples:
How is information technology that John'south disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, merely yours are non? (Marker 2.xviii).
The TNIV has translated this in a way suggesting this was a continual practice—and for practiced reason. In the parallel in Luke v.33, the question appears to be on the lips of Jesus' critics who country:
John's disciples oft [Gk:pukna, frequently] fast and pray, and so practise the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours become on eating and drinking.
Matthew appears to be caught betwixt Marker and Luke. Whilst near manuscripts accept at Matt ix.14 John's disciples asking the question 'How is it that nosotros and the Pharisees fast…?', a minority tradition has added the word 'often' [Gkpolla], probably in an effort to harmonise Matthew with Luke.
In fact, Luke appears to have a detail interest in this regular habit. In Jesus' story of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke xviii, we hear the Pharisee proclaim, 'I fast twice a week…' (Luke xviii.12), and in fact nosotros know on which days he fasted! An early Christian pedagogy certificate, the Didache (usually dated to the late first century, but lost until its rediscovery in the 19th) says this:
Chapter 8: But let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth mean solar day of the week. Rather, fast on the fourth day and the Training (Fri). Do not pray like the hypocrites, but rather every bit the Lord commanded in his Gospel, similar this:…
and then follows a version of the Lord's prayer very similar to the one nosotros observe in Matthew ('his Gospel'). (For more than on this, run across the mail service on Jesus' poetic teaching.) The term 'hypocrites' most probable refers to Jews who do non follow Jesus (hence almost certainly dating the Didache to some time afterward the year 85) just who fast—guess what!—on two days a week, Mondays and Thursdays. And precisely in line with Jesus educational activity in all three Synoptic gospels, the followers of Jesus are also expected to fast two days a week, admitting on different days. In 1 of Luke'southward other references to this practice, Acts thirteen.two, again it appears to be a habitual practice of the community of believers. (There is evidence that this regular fasting went from after breakfast until a light evening meal, rather than being a 24-hour menstruation without food.)
Further confirmation of this practice comes from a slightly unlikely source. In Rabbinic Judaism from the second century onwards, there is no evidence that fasting continued to be a habitual practice. Instead, patterns of fasting return to what we find in the Old Testament. The best historical explanation of this is the mirror of what nosotros find in the Didache. Just as the early Jewish followers of Jesus began to define themselves over confronting mainstream Judaism, so Rabbinical Judaism and then began to define itself against the growing Jesus move. So a practice like regular fasting, which marked out Jesus-followers against their pagan context, would be a skilful affair to drop.
Finally, it's worth reflecting on what this addiction of fasting two days a week signified equally a devotional exercise. As Eliezer Diamond notes (Holy Men and Hunger Artists, p 130) the idea of regular fasting would accept seemed odd to about in Graeco-Roman culture. The majority would have seen no need for it, whilst certain austere groups did practise fasting, but as a sign of detachment from the earth. Intermittent fasting says something unlike. 'Banquet' days historic a world made by God and all the practiced in it; alongside this, 'fast' days signified repentance, mourning and longing for deliverance—just the sort of practice you might adopt if you were awaiting the deliverance of a Messiah and the breaking in of the age to come. Intermittent fasting is just the sort of thing you might go on to practice if you wanted to keep to both assert the globe you lived in, merely also to look for an historic period to come; it is the dietary expression of the 'now and not however' of the kingdom of God (or, to use a theological term, the 'partially realised eschatology') we notice in the New Testament. In fact, information technology is just the thing you lot would practice if you lot were in the habit of praying 'Your kingdom come up, your will exist done, on earth as it is in heaven'!
(In a wonderful piece of synchronicity, Michael Mosley advocates, on health grounds, intermittent fasting on…Mondays and Thursdays!).
So, this Lent, is at that place whatsoever reason why nosotros should non all adopt this ancient practise of intermittent, twice-weekly fasting, as we look frontward non merely to the breaking in of the kingdom through Jesus' cross and resurrection, but the completion of all things in his coming over again?
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