Meaty Salt

One a day for all of May...

In Bible studies over Christians being "the salt of the earth," I have always, without exception, heard that "salt was used as a preservative." The Bible study leader makes some sort of remark like - "Because they didn't have refrigeration back then, they had to use salt to preserve their meat." I have never thought much about that. I always just assumed this was the case. But this morning, out of the blue, the questions were summoned. Ok - so did "they" just completely smear their meat with salt? And then did they let these salt-coated meat hunks just sit there in the sun all day? And what did this meat taste like when they did decide to cook it? Was it so unbearably salty? I can't see how it couldn't be. Eating meat back then must have been absolutely terrible. You better eat it when it is nice and fresh because if you decide to wait and eat it in a few days, your meat totally just got saltified nasty style. Gobs and gobs of salt. Mountains of salt. Tlas.