Miscellanies 7.6.31

And Menander has written of “the tip of the loin and the gall, the inedible bones,” which, he says, “they set before the gods, while they consume the rest themselves.” For is not the smoking fat of whole burnt offerings something even wild beasts would flee from? But if the savor is truly the prize of the gods of the Greeks, they should lose no time in making gods of the cooks too, who are thought worthy of the same happiness, and in worshiping the oven itself, which comes even closer to the much-prized savor. And Hesiod says somewhere that Zeus, deceived by Prometheus in a division of meat, received “the white bones of an ox, by crafty art,” covered “with shining fat”: “and from that time the tribes of human beings on earth burn white bones for the immortals on fragrant altars.” But they say that God could by no means be nourished, as though afflicted with a desire arising from need. They will make him, then, like a plant that is fed without appetite, and like animals that hibernate in dens; for they say that these grow unharmed, nourished either by the density of the air or else by the vapor of their own body. And yet if, as they hold, the divine is nourished without needing it, what further need of food has what needs nothing? But if, being by nature without need, it rejoices in being honored, not unreasonably do we honor God through prayer, and send up this sacrifice, the best and holiest, with righteousness, revering him with the most righteous Word, through whom we receive knowledge, glorifying through him the one whom we have learned to know. Our altar here, the earthly one, is the assembly of those devoted to prayer, having as it were one common voice and one mind. And nourishment through the sense of smell, even if it is more divine than nourishment through the mouth, still implies breathing. What, then, do they say about God?