Prayer of Thanksgiving -- Ancient Vegetarian Meal Mentioned in Gnostic Gospels: Nag Hammadi Library and in the Corpus Hermeticum
The Manichaeans, the largest Gnostic movement in history, almost became one of the world's major religions and they were vegetarian, as were many Hermetic, Jewish, and Gnostic Christian groups 2,000 years ago. There are Hebrew Gospels which present Jesus and John the Baptist as vegetarians, rather than eating Passover lamb and fish (Jesus) and bugs (John's famous "locusts"). The Hebrew Christians affiliated with James the Just in Jerusalem read vegetarian (Ebionite) gospels reflecting their values, even as the gospels of Paul's version of Roman Christianity reflected the values of that group (including meat-eating).
A really good book on this is, "THE GOSPEL OF JESUS - IN SEARCH OF HIS ORIGINAL TEACHINGS," John Davidson, Clear Press UK.
The following comes from an ancient Egyptian scripture called, "The Prayer of Thanksgiving," one of 50 books unearthed near the village of Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt. Since the same prayer is also found in the Corpus Hermeticum, another Egyptian scripture, I've decided it's useful to include three other Hermetic translations of the last sentence, which further describes the vegetarian nature of the meal.
In Ahimsa, Namaste',
James
The Prayer of Thanksgiving
Translated by James Brashler, Peter A. Dirkse and Douglas M. Parrott
This the prayer that they spoke:
"We give thanks to You!
Every soul and heart is lifted up to You,
undisturbed name, honored with the name 'God'
and praised with the name 'Father',
for to everyone and everything (comes) the fatherly kindness
and affection and love,
and any teaching there may be that is sweet and plain,
giving us mind, speech, (and) knowledge:
mind, so that we may understand You,
speech, so that we may expound You,
knowledge, so that we may know You.
We rejoice, having been illuminated by Your knowledge.
We rejoice because You have shown us Yourself.
We rejoice because while we are in (the) body,
You have made us divine through Your knowledge.
"The thanksgiving of the man who attains to You is one thing:
that we know You.
We have known You, intellectual Light.
Life of life, we have known You.
Womb of every creature, we have known You.
Womb pregnant with the nature of the Father,
we have known You.
Eternal permanence of the begetting Father,
thus have we worshiped Your goodness.
There is one petition that we ask:
we would be preserved in knowledge.
And there is one protection that we desire:
that we not stumble in this kind of life."
When they had said these things in the prayer, they embraced each
other and they went to eat their holy food, which has no blood in
it.*
* A vegetarian meal. This passage is also found in the Epilogue of
Asclepius, in "HERMETICA," translated by Sir Walter Scott:
"Having prayed thus, let us betake ourselves to a meal unpolluted by
flesh [animalia] of living things."
The G.R.S. Mead translation of the same passage says:
"With this desire we now betake us to our pure and fleshless meal."
"With such hopes we turn to a pure meal that includes no living
thing." (Asclepius, translated in "Hermetica", Brian Copenhaver,
Cambridge University Press)
