More about "Jesus was a Vegetarian", I know it's a dead topic here but
thought I'd share this MSN article anyway.
http://slate.msn.com/crapshoot/00-10-12/crapshoot.asp

Text reads:
Last week, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals launched a new
ad
campaign that features an image of the Shroud of Turin and the slogan
"Make
a Lasting Impression—Go Vegetarian." PETA explained in a statement
that it
"chose Jesus as its new 'poster boy' because he is widely believed to
have
been a member of the Essenes, a Jewish religious sect that followed a
vegetarian diet and rejected animal sacrifices."

Jesus a weed-eater? It's not a new claim, but a new spin on an old
one.
Vegetarianism's true believers have long held that the Garden of Eden
was a
meatless paradise ("And God said, Behold, I have given you ... the
fruit of
a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat," Genesis 1:29).
They've
also claimed that the New Testament supports Jesus' vegetarianism,
although
that requires you to believe that Jesus' frequent encouragement of
fishermen
was symbolic, "fish" being mere symbols of "disciples," and that he
cast the
sinners out of the temple because he wanted to rescue the Passover
lamb.

No mainstream theologian buys the vegetarians' argument because the
Gospels
are fairly straightforward about the Messiah's tastes in food. "Jesus
said
unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of broiled
fish.
... And he took it, and did eat before them" (Luke 24:41-43). The
story of
Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes, not to mention that Passover
lamb,
argues against vegetarianism, too.

But with this new campaign PETA foils the scholars by ignoring the
biblical
evidence—and the Bible altogether—preferring sources from the fringe
field
of "vegetarian theology," who depend on coincidence, historical
speculation,
and creative exegesis of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient texts
to
make their case that 1) Jesus was an Essene; and 2) that the Essenes
practiced vegetarianism.

Was Jesus an Essene? Did the Essenes practice vegetarianism? And just
who
were the Essenes?

The Essenes were a Jewish ascetical sect that lived in the Judean
desert on
the western shore of the Dead Sea during the time of Jesus. Secretive
and
communal, the Essenes broke with official Judaism and retreated from
the
world because they thought both "had become polluted, unclean and
ungodly,"
says Marcus J. Borg, a religious studies professor at Oregon State
University and a leading New Testament scholar. "They had rigorous
understandings of purity that could only be met by separating
themselves
from others, and they looked forward to an apocalyptic war in which
God
would destroy their enemies." (In that sense they were a little like
the
Branch Davidians, only without the automatic weapons.) Many scholars
also
believe the Essenes were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

To prove Jesus was an Essene, the vegetarian theologians work backward
from
John the Baptist. A few scholars have speculated that John might have
been
an Essene. Indeed, he preached along the Jordan River near the
Essenes' Dead
Sea settlement, he held political beliefs similar to those of the
Essenes,
and lines found in the Dead Sea Scrolls echo in his preaching. For
instance,
Isaiah 40:3 makes this reference to John: "The voice of him [John]
that
crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make
straight in
the desert a highway for our God." The same passage appears frequently
in
the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So if John was an Essene—which is by no means certain—the vegetarian
theologians maintain that he made Jesus one too by baptizing him.
That's
quite a stretch. So is the vegetarian theologians' second argument.
The
Gospels identify the two other major Jewish sects of the day, the
Sadducees
and Pharisees, as opponents of Jesus. But the Gospels don't mention
the
Essenes, therefore Jesus must have been an Essene. This is what is
known as
an "argument from silence." (William Phipps used a similar tactic for
different ends in his controversial 1970 book, Was Jesus Married?)
"It's a
lot of baloney, as far as I'm concerned," says Father Joseph
Fitzmeyer, a
professor of biblical studies at Georgetown University and an expert
on the
Dead Sea Scrolls.

Then were the Essenes vegetarians? Not likely. Vegetarianism goes
unmentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And since the Essenes were
purists,
Borg points out, it's likely they would have slaughtered a lamb at
Passover.
PETA draws its mainstream proof of Essene vegetarianism from a brief
article
in the May/June 1999 issue of Archaeology, which reports that a dig of
what
may have been an Essene settlement hasn't unearthed any animal bones.

And while PETA is right about the Essenes rejecting animal sacrifice,
it
wrongly attributes this stance to compassion for God's lesser
creatures.
When the Essenes split from the Jewish establishment they rejected all
rituals performed in the temple by the priests, of which animal
sacrifice
was only one.

Assuming that you accept the "Jesus was an Essene" argument, you still
have
to resolve the fundamental differences in their teachings. "Wherever
there's
an overlap in subject matter, there is significant disagreement," Borg
says.
Jesus socialized with lepers. The Essenes rejected even healthy Jews.
Jesus
spoke of loving one's enemy. The Essenes believed an apocalyptic war
would
wipe out theirs. Jesus taught that we're all God's children. The
Essenes
believed they were "children of light" while others were "children of
darkness", a lot like a certain group of proselytizing vegetarians.