The Bible Tells Me So
In the book of Deuteronomy, the Israelites are given the following specific instructions from
God, through Moses, about the foods that they may and may not eat.
Don’t eat any disgusting animals. You may eat the meat of cattle, sheep, and goats;
wild sheep and goats and gazelles, antelopes and all kinds of deer. It is all right to eat
meat from any animals that have divided hoofs and also chew the cud.
But don’t eat camels, rabbits, and rock badgers. These animals chew the cud but do
not have divided hoofs. You must treat them as unclean. And don’t eat pork, since pigs
have divided hoofs, but they do not chew their cud. Don’t even touch a dead pig!
You can eat any fish that has fins and scales. But there are other creatures that live
in the water, and if they do not have fins and scales, you must not eat them. Treat them
as unclean.
You can eat any clean bird. But don’t eat the meat of any of the following birds:
eagles, vultures, falcons, kites, ravens, ostriches, cormorants, storks, herons, and hoopoes. You must not eat bats. Swarming insects are unclean, so don’t eat them. However,
you are allowed to eat certain kinds of winged insects.
You belong to the LORD your God, so if you happen to find a dead animal, don’t
eat its meat. You may give it to foreigners who live in your town or sell it to foreigners
who are visiting your town.
Don’t boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Source: Scripture taken from The Holy Bible: Contemporary English Version. © 1995 by American Bible
Society.
related
https://biblia.com/bible/esv/deuteronomy/14/3-10#:~:text=3%20Do%20not%20eat%20anything%20the%20Lord%20hates.,may%20not%20eat%20camels%2C%20rabbits%2C%20or%20rock%20badgers.
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I wonder what the writers of Deuteronomy would think of the modern world.
For supposedly being given free will, there are a lot of rules...
"Freewill" as it was was all around the Israelites inherently to walk in (in other nations). The status of being "God's chosen people" meant they were to walk in (God's) perfection (rules). Those rules, Israelites interpreted as being the perfect WILL of God for them. Little bit did they know the true intent and measure of those rules would be the means of demonstrating to them how impossible it is for humanity to be perfect in a (carnal) body of flesh. Full of passions, emotions, and drives.
With the above "considerations" in mind, free-will is easier!
I think a lot of these dietary rules are based on hygiene and healthy eating. Some seafood and pork are downright dangerous if not cooked properly. Some birds are just nasty critters because of the diseases they carry. Who would want to eat a vulture?
Bingo! Diseases were common after partaking of the unclean animals, but back then diseases were considered demons.
Most scholars agree with you on that.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out especially if you have some knowledge of biology and farm animals
The "issue" with Deuteronomy, in my mind, is not that it proscribes eating habits, but that it uses silly criteria
Is shrimp clean or unclean?
All crustaceans and mollusk shellfish have no scales and are therefore unclean. These include shrimp/prawns, lobster, scallops, mussels, oysters, squid, octopus, crabs and other shellfish) is not clean.
Deuteronomy prohibits eating lobster, oysters, crabmeat, shrimp, and octopus, all of which are very popular in one place or another.
So its ok to eat a giraffe.
Crustaceans are the mops and brrooms of the ocean floor. Lobsters are big time scavengers. That's why they have to be cooked properly. Back in those days they had no idea how long something should be cooked so they avoided that which were troublesome.
I won't eat a Giraffe. They're way too cute
Too bad the Bible is immutable. I think god needs to come out with another sequel, but he knows what a shit show that would be.
How many pork chops are consumed per year? How much bacon? How many ham sandwiches? According to the Bible all that is unclean.
I can see the point of ancient people trying to safely eat food and instructing about it, but why is it a religious text ?
Ask someone way more scholarly than me.
I raised pigs as a kid for 4-H projects. My mom always cooked pork chops and other pork til there was no red in it. Even I have a tendency to over cook pork chops. My dad told me once that the taint of trichinosis is pretty much gone because farm raised pigs aren't fed trash. They're fed mostly corn. They shouldn't be fed meat.
Until it is cooked?????????
John and Trout, let see if I can add to the understanding of these verses:
Start:
I am 'running' right now. But this is a wide-ranging topic and no one verse (that I can recall immediately will serve to answer your question as to the dietary laws being 'exotic' and 'strange.' It is best answered in a COMPREHENSIVE understanding of the Old Testament and New Testament (looking back) fashion. Here goes
" Righteousness ," is the most powerful word in all the sharing I offer in this comment. Because RIGHTEOUSNESS is defined by what God says "it" is, not by the logic and understanding or whims and wishes of men.
Thus when God gave commandments, in this discussion dietary statutes there were good benefits to health, but more or equally important God gave Israel's laws to determine if they would seek after God's Righteousness and not their own.
Of course, the rest of the books demonstrate the "back and forth" of Israel failing to keep those laws and what the "jealous" God did in response.
Also, compare with New Testament:
So you see it is not the food that is of itself the "problem," it was that God had placed limitations on the people of Old Testament Israel to be "clean" and "unclean" as God prescribed which ones to be so.
More later.
You're missing the point, which isn't about the food or why what was chosen as clean or unclean. Some of the laws, whether relating to food or some other issue, such as not wearing different fabrics at the same time, are simply arbitrary. Shellfish were an example. Jews faced no more danger from shellfish than gentiles did and they weren't dying in job lots from eating those. It didn't take a modern understanding of the world to know shellfish had to be properly cooked to be safe.
Shellfish and other dietary laws were ceremonial laws. While some health benefits may have been attached to them, they were not the primary reason for their existence. Whether something was clean or unclean had a purely ceremonial purpose and was not a comment on the goodness or badness of food items themselves.
The purpose of such laws was to convey the idea that it is God who sets the rules on how He can be approached. People were not to come up with their own ideas about what God was like or how to approach Him. One can see this in how intricate and detailed the Tabernacle and the Temple rules concerning their construction and the activities that went on within them. Every detail was according to God's design and will, not man's.
I also believe that the reason there were so many different kinds of laws like that was so that no matter what area of life one was dealing with, whether eating, working, playing, fighting or whatever, God was involved in some way, so laws also acted to keep people focused on God in every area of their life, reminding them that their life was about God.
Focusing on the food itself misses the point.
Did God personally tell anyone not to eat shellfish? I find that hard to believe.
Deu 1:3 In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the LORD had commanded him concerning them.
As have countless others since ... merely proclaimed.
And in this case we have a mere claim of a proclamation.
In Ancient Israel it was UNCLEAN (for a theocratic nation): Thus, it is in a religious text (because). . .
Compare:
Israel was supposed be a HOLY PEOPLE. Emphasis on "holy."
That is, a people SET APART. Thus, God gave them rigorous rules distinct from the rules of their neighbor nations which could not or would not or were not asked to be a holy people.
NOTE: Love to see this 'revisit' of one of your old avatars! It hails back to when I first came to NT some six years ago; of course, you were already here 'serving' up as good as you give now.
Ceremonial law. . . . That is the word phraseology that was escaping me (all day).
Thank you. (It's okay if you do not respond. Really, I'm good.)
Originally, the stories in the Bible weren't necessarily "religious". They were whatever the "intelligentsia" produced. There were songs, including some raunchy ones. History. Adventure. "Science", in the sense that they attempted to explain the world. And of course texts related to God.
Over time, these texts all fossilized into the Bible(s) we have today. People have completely lost sight of the fact that a dietary rule is kinda different from a psalm from a sermon...
Agree completely. In the absence of modern day technology and the knowledge we have today, these rules make perfect sense applying to an ancient people !
Thank-you. Nice to see you commenting
The new bible bumpers. "Trump said it. I believe it. That settles it."
The Bible is of course a collection of ancient writings that reveal the culture, politics, mores, beliefs, and knowledge of ancient men.
That is how it should be treated. It is certainly not a treatise of divine truth.
I never understood the cloven hoof thing.
I am sure there was some ancient reasoning to it. Probably based on ancient men observing differences in animals and forging basic beliefs which then serve as a foundation for (eventually) codified guidelines.
Similarly, why do Jehovah's Witnesses believe blood transfusions are against God's will? It is based on their own peculiar reading of scripture. Basic ideas (interpretations) that (over time) wind up as specific rules (in this case ... blood transfusions are unacceptable).
Most cloven hooved animals were herbivores and didn't eat from other animals, for instance, pigs are cloven hooved but also are omnivorous and will eat off other dead animals, insects, worms, grubs from under ground and therefore carried trichinosis which was considered a very dangerous "demon". Camels and horses were work animals, why would you eat your transportation?
Dunno. For a long time, scholars thought "no pork" was a hygiene rule, to avoid trichinosis. Archeological evidence now indicates that the rule is cultural, to distinguish "us good guys" up in the hills raising our sheep, from those evil farmers down on the plains... who raise pigs!
We need a time machine.
Don’t boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
This is from the "Second (replacement) set of the 10 commandments. Exodus 34: 10-27. Which set are we to follow?
Supposedly Yahweh still talks to the men who head up various religious sects even today, so wouldn't it be wonderful if Yahweh, or one of his approved earthly spokesmen, would inform these people that it would be highly pleasing to Yahweh to honor John the Baptist in a nonviolent way? There are pictures and video of the ritual at the link below.
And secondly, weigh in on the consumption of Chicago style pizza.
and because I googled for more into on San Juan de Oriente and found some wonderful pictures on the town, I will share them to show this seems to be a fairly modern place.