What Came First: The Bible or Sausages?

If you're like me then welcome, curiosity must have gotten the best of you.

We all know the infamous question "What came first, the Chicken or the Egg?" or "Why did the Chicken cross the Road?". These seemingly absurd questions keep me up at night. That is why, when I stumbled upon this question, I knew I had to know more. At first glance, it seems obvious that an ancient scripture such as the Bible must be far older than something as familiar to us as a sausage. But then, doubt begins to settle, and before you know it, curiosity takes over, and you end up clicking on a blog like this one to find out the truth. You're not weak, my friend, you are inquisitive.

This leads us to now. The beginning of a journey through time that will undoubtably leave you with, at the very least, an interesting fact to share with your friends the next time you see them. Let's begin.

How Old is The Bible?

The age of the Bible widely depends on which version we look at. The Christian New Testament, the version we are most familiar with, was compiled over time, with the final canon being agreed upon around the 4th Century CE. However, we can go further back to the earliest writings that formed the Hebrew Bible. Scholars can trace back the Torah, the Hebrew term for the first five books of the Jewish Bible, as far as the 6th century BCE. This is a 900 year difference between the two.

The Story Behind the Sausage

The history of the humble sausage, much like The Bible, goes back thousands of years. Although the US often refers to ground meat as 'sausages', which still confuses me as Europe was championing sausages long before the US was established, we will refer to a sausage by its dictionary definition:

Sausage

minced pork, beef, or other meats, often combined, together with various added ingredients and seasonings, usually stuffed into a prepared intestine or other casing and often made in links.

Dictionary.com

If we are looking for a close comparison to what we know a sausage today, we can thank the Romans Empire. For the Romans, sausages were more than just food. Each region took pride in how and with what they made their sausages. A variety of spices were available for experimentation, leading to incredible variations that were passed down and later inspired kinds and blends used across Europe.

Despite refining and popularising what we now refer to as the common sausage, the Romans were not the first to make them. The earliest known sausages appear in ancient Mesopotamia around 3100 BCE, where simple mixtures of chopped meats, grains and spices were stuffed in stomach linings or intestines to avoid waste. Even today, many sausages use stomach and intestine casings, showcasing how efficient this method is. It's simple, effective, and makes use of parts of animal parts that would have otherwise been discarded.

The Final Verdict

For the sake of finding the oldest possible versions, we will use the Hebrew Bible as our comparison, making it approximately 2,500 years old. In contrast, since Mesopotamian sausages date back to roughly 3100BCE, sausage are over 5000 years old. This means sausages are about 2,500 years older than The Bible!

If there is one thing to take from this post, it is to never judge a book, or in this case, a sausage, by its cover. Everything humanity has invented has a history, and many of us don't understand how deep and intricate those histories can be.

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