So, what inspired the cooking show Tasting the Bible?
Simple truth is that I started watching a YouTube channel called “Tasting History with Max Miller.” Max started his channel back at the beginning of the pandemic when he got laid off from Disney, although he’d been prepping for the show before that. He had a love for both food and history, and not being either a professional historian or chef didn’t stop him from creating something that brought these two passions of his together. So, each episode has the same format: a recipe from history, the cooking part, then the lesson from the historical context from which the recipe comes, and finally the tasting part! Max puts out one episode a week from his modest home kitchen in L.A., presenting his in-depth research in an engaging and witty way. Now, I only started watching Max’s YouTube show around Christmas of this past year, and I was immediately hooked. And I’m not the only one. The show has drawn in a lot of people. When he started in February of 2020, Max was hoping that he would have about 1000 subscribers by the end of the year. He actually had over 400,000 followers by December 31, and as of today, he has 624,000 people who have subscribed to his channel. That’s a lot of people interested in this unique combination of food and history!
I don’t know what came over me, but I was telling Fran Park Center director, Kelly McGinn, about Max’s show, and I said, “I’d love to do something like that with food and the Bible.” And in typical Kelly fashion, she responded, “Let’s do it!” And so, our own show, Tasting the Bible, was born.
Did you ever reach out to Max Miller to let him know about your show?
I did actually. Now, the reason I reached out to him wasn’t to tell him about our project. What connected Max and me was the word “Galatians” if you can believe it! If you all know anything about me, it’s that I wrote a master’s thesis and a doctoral dissertation on the book of Galatians. I spent far too many years of my life on this letter of Paul not to be intrigued when during an episode of “Tasting History” Max used the word “anti-Galatian” to refer to the anti-French sentiment of certain 18th-century English chefs. Well, as anyone who had written a doctoral dissertation on Galatians would know, the Galatians lived in Anatolia, which is modern-day Turkey. So, I just had to write to Max to find out more. (OK, I knew that those people called “Galatians” were also called “Celts,” and the Celts were those who dwelled in “Gaul” before the Romans came and before the Germanic “Franks” came along and the area came to be known as “France.” So, I figured that “anti-Galatian” referred to the French somehow…but this one word allowed me an “in” with Max…yes, I know, it was a very nerdy conversation starter!)
Well, anyway, I wrote to Max, introduced myself, and asked him my burning question about Galatians. And, to my surprise, I heard back from him right away. He couldn’t remember exactly where he’d heard the term “anti-Galatian” but he knew it was some obscure 18th-century British insult against the French. It turns out that Max is from AZ, he went to ASU, having studied music theatre, and that he and I have quite a few friends in common, some of whom have been soloists in our Pinnacle choir. (One of our current soloists is close friends with him!) I did let him know that I was so inspired by his show that we were going to do a mini-version about the foods of the Bible! He wished me well in our endeavor.
What was the best part of creating “Tasting the Bible”?
I think doing the research on what foods people from the Bible would have eaten. I learned a lot about what foods they had and enjoyed, and what foods they didn’t have. Twenty years ago, I lived in Israel for the summer teaching English. I enjoyed everything I ate there. Such exotic flavors! In researching our cooking show, it dawned on me that people of the Bible never ate a tomato, a potato, an ear of corn, chile peppers, or chocolate. Just think of it: Jesus never ate chocolate! All these foods didn’t come to the Middle East until after 1492 when Columbus and other Europeans began bringing back these foods to the “Old World.”
Most of all, though, I love bringing the world of the Bible alive through any means. Doing so with food helped to awaken my senses and hopefully others’ to the psalmist’s words, “O taste and see that the Lord is good!”
