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.

在古代，母乳是每个哺乳期的灵丹妙药。尽管如此，圣经中提到护理的章节很少。奇怪的是，使徒保罗将自己描述为信徒的奶妈和牛奶供应者（帖前书 2:7；哥林多前书 3:2）。男性提供牛奶的主题出现在许多依赖和独立于保罗的一世纪和二世纪的资料中。对前两个世纪基督信徒来源的概述表明，在对哺乳教父和哺乳基督的刻画中，哺乳和母乳的主题不断失去其作为女性事物的现实生活内涵，并以男性为主。本文追溯了一个最初以女性乳房的营养、健康、生存和幸福为基础的隐喻，