Sven

Or, to be more specific, why prohibiting to eat certain food instead of simply telling the people about "sanitation and proper cooking" which humans were anyway able to find out on their own? Additionally, you pull this interpretation out of thin air, there's nothing in the bible which suggests that the food laws were changed later because of "sanitation and proper cooking".

Mageth

The way I understand it, the dietary laws, like other similar laws, were established to set the Israelites apart from surrounding cultures, to illustrate to themselves and others that they were different and specially chosen, not for any health reasons (I've always wondered, why restrict the eating of shellfish for a tribe of nomads wandering around in the desert, anyway?)

And I agree; pork etc. can be made perfectly safe to eat through proper, thorough cooking. So if the dietary laws were established for health reasons, why not just make it a law that pork etc. be properly and thorougly cooked?

Sauron

Responding to your bogus claim that the dietary restrictions were based upon food safety. There is no evidence for that, either from the text in Leviticus or from history.

And of course, food borne illnesses are found in beef (e.coli) and fowl (salmonella) as well - by your argument, then these should have also been on the restricted list of foods. If the Israelites were too primitive to handle pork and shellfish correctly, then they were also too primitive to handle beef and chicken safely.

Yes they were. People have been eating shellfish and pork for thousands of years. There is no evidence that there were any problems with this in the pre-Roman age. If you think there is such evidence, then by all means, present it.

No, it hadn't.

1. In the first place, you still haven't proven that the dietary restrictions were becaus of food safety.

2. You also haven't proven that there was any food safety issue to begin with.

3. Even if there had been some advance in cleanliness or food handling in Rome (the city) those practices could have hardly filtered through to a backwater province like Judea.

As usual, you're just making this stuff up as you go, Magus55.

Sauron

That's another fatal point to Magus55's claim. Leviticus does contain instructions about cleanliness:

So if God can give instructions on how to manage a contagious disease, then why can't God give instructions on how to handle food safely? Assuming that food safety was the reason for banning certain animals, of course.

Moreover, food safety has nothing to do with this set of creatures being banned:

Gregg

Just a small correction...I feel the need to do this every so often...

Judea really can't be described as a "backwater province." It was the nexus of several major trading routes and I believe it was also important as a buffer state.

If Rome hadn't considered Judea strategically important, it wouldn't have engaged in two long, exhausting guerilla wars there, which ended with the depopulation of the province.

Magus55

He did.

Lev 15:11 And whomsoever he toucheth that hath the issue, and hath not rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even.

God even emphasized to bathe in running water.

Lev 15:13 And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean.

An interesting question is, how did the israelites know about germs and that its much more sanitary to clean in running water?

Sauron

So then why not provide instructions on how to handle pork and shellfish?


Sheesh. By trial and observation. People who drink from still, stagnant pools get sick. People who drink from running water (that's being aerated to kill the anaerobic bacteria) don't get sick. Most peoples around the world know this, even if they explain it in superstitious terms.

Mageth

How did you derive the assertion that Israelites knew about germs from those scriptures?

And any idiot can figure out that running water is generally safer than stagnant water - and better for washing clothes. People in those days weren't so ignorant that they couldn't deduce from experience that doing certain things (e.g., drinking or washing in stagnant water) were likely to make one ill.

Clivedurdle

Be very careful with assertions like that!

The Romans were not that good at hygiene, unless you were a rich citizen!

"Rome was at once both the cleanest and filthiest of cities. Ordure as well as water flowed through her streets." Rubicon Tom Holland p17.

In many ways it was far worse than any third world city now. "the stench from the city" "Forests had long since vanished" "a distant haze of brown would forewarn the traveller that he was nearing the city." (p14) "The valleys of Rome were rife with malaria." (p13)

Dietary laws are classic inventions for ritual and magical reasons. Someone somewhere put two and two together and made twenty seven. It is as if we today made walking under a ladder the foundation for a religion - hmm - why not - ladderitians?

I recommend JG Fraser The Golden Bough.

On the second coming, Arthur C Clarke in the city and the stars had a robot waiting (from memory) several million years for the return of its Messiah!

It's fantasy!!!

Mageth

Indeed. "We want to be different than those umrellarians, who open umbrellas indoors. Say, why don't we walk under ladders?"

Which can be found online, BTW (the popular abridged version, not the fully-bibliographed, 12-volume version). Frazer's good for a lot of detail on various world mythologies, superstitions, rituals, and magical practices, but one should take some of his conclusions with a grain of salt. He's a bit dated, after all.