Alma pater?

Abstract

In antiquity, breast milk was an elixir for every nursling. Despite this, there are but very few passages in the Bible that mention nursing. Curiously enough, the apostle Paul depicts himself as a nurse and provider of milk for his believers (1 Thess 2:7; 1 Cor 3:2). The motif of male providers of milk appears in numerous first and second century sources dependent on and independent from Paul. An overview of sources of Christ-believers from the first two centuries demonstrates that in characterizations of the lactating Godfather and the nursing Christ, the motifs of nursing and breastmilk continuously loses its real life connotation as something female thing and becomes predominantly male. This paper traces how a metaphor that is originally informed by nourishment, health, survival, and wellbeing at a female breast, eventually develops into a description of salvation mediated by male characters.