Patis in the time of Jesus

Did you know that Herod used patis? Romans called their fish sauces garum, muria, liquamen, and allec but by any other name patis still served as a condiment and seasoning. How do scholars know that Herod used patis? By the fishy smell—er, I mean, by the amphoras (a type of jar) and fish bones discovered around his palaces at Masada, Jericho, Herodium, and Jerusalem, which, according to Jodi Magness's Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit, indicate that Herod “imported high quality garum and allec from Spain.”¹

But for the stricter Jews, the Qumran sect in particular, patis was forbidden. Fermenting the fish together with its intestines, gills, and salt might have been okay but including the fish blood in the mix rendered the patis unclean.

1  Cotton, Hannah M., Omri Lernau, and Yuval Goren, “Fish Sauces from Herodian Masada,” JRA 9 (1996) 223-38. Quoted in Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2011).