Soil from Stone

Leviticus 11 lists the basic rules of kashrut:

1. Land animals that are cloven-hoofed and chew the cud are food. Any animal with one and not the other is not food.
2. Water animals that have fins and scales are food. Anything in the water with one and not the other is not food.
3. Birds of prey or carrion are not food.
4. Certain other birds are not food, but due to translation uncertainties and a lack of defining characteristics in Torah, we have no way besides inference and tradition to tell us about birds that aren’t mentioned. (Here’s an interesting article: http://www.star-k.org/cons-keep-basics-birds.htm Living the Law: Reinforcing the Tradition with a Palpable Precedent by Rabbi Ari Z. Zivotofsky and Dr. Ari Greenspan.)
5. Insects are not food except for four types of bugs that have over-sized rear legs for jumping.
6. Anything that walks on paws or slithers on its belly is not food.

That leaves most ruminants, most fish, and many birds as suitable material for stew, salad, or stir-fry. No reptiles, amphibians, or shellfish allowed.

There are six common objections to a Christian or Messianic Jew to keeping kosher:

1. Those rules were just because they didn’t have refrigeration. Now we know about tape worms and trichinosis and we keep everything frozen or at least cold before we cook it. Beef spoils if left unrefrigerated for too long, and chicken is dangerous if not cooked properly. Both are kosher. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with that.
2. Jesus made all foods clean. We don’t have to obey those laws anymore. Actually, Jesus never said anything of the sort. When debating the Pharisees about whether or not it is acceptable to eat food with unwashed hands when that food would otherwise be perfectly kosher, he told them that they were so concerned about their own traditions that they were ignoring God’s actual laws. His central point was this: What difference does it make if a man eats with dirty hands (or eats pork or lobster!) if he is a murderer, a liar, or an adulterer? If you put something into your mouth, your body eventually purges it. If you put something into your heart, however, there is no automatic, natural process to remove it.
3. That was only for the Dispensation of Law. God told Noah he could eat any animal. That changed when God gave the law at Mt. Sinai, then it changed again when Jesus rose from the grave. Now we are in the Dispensation of Grace and can ignore the Law of Moses. Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 12:20 that the Israelites could eat whatever meat they wanted, but just 2 chapters later he repeated the list of things that God didn’t want them to eat. Moses told us that Noah definitely knew which animals were kosher and which weren’t. Why did God tell him to take 7 clean animals and only 2 unclean?. Some were for sacrifices, but not all of them. They were almost certainly for food. Why didn’t he just send 4 of everything for variety’s sake? God told Noah “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” Perhaps he was using a figure of speech just as he did in Deuteronomy 12:20, and a hyperliteral interpretation is inappropriate. Instead, it should be understood to mean, “Now you can even eat living things that move, just like you can eat plants.”
4. Those are ceremonial laws. They don’t apply to us anymore. Only the moral laws are still in effect. I have never yet seen a reasonable defense of such a distinction in the Law. It’s an invention of man. To the contrary, God said, “Do not take anything away from my laws nor add anything to them.” On one side are hazy conjectures and complicated theories. On the other side are several very clear, unambiguous statements from God. I’ll go with the latter.
5. All of the Law of Moses was abolished. It was entirely replaced with a new set of morals defined by Jesus and fleshed out by Paul: Love God with everything you’ve got, and love your neighbor as yourself. When Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment, he quoted the Torah, and he said that all of the rest of God’s words hang on just two commandments. He didn’t say that the rest of Torah was no longer relevant. He didn’t add or subtract anything at all from the Torah. He didn’t even say anything new, although it might have been new to the Pharisees with their burdensome traditions:
   

   Matthew 22:37-40  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

   Here are the originals:

   Deuteronomy 6:4-5  Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

   Leviticus 19:18 Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

   Here’s something else Jesus said about the Law of Moses:

   Matthew 5:17-19  Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.  Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

   Note two things about that statement: 1) Whatever “fulfil” means here, it does not mean to destroy. 2) All will not be fulfilled until heaven and earth pass.

6. The Law of Moses is still valid and still applies, but only to Jews. It was never intended to apply to gentile Christians. As far as salvation is concerned, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” The New Covenant was not promised to the nations, to gentiles. It was promised only to the houses of Israel and Judah. “The Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things” and have been grafted into the tree of Israel, not the other way around. There is only one body in the Messiah, one nation, and one law.

[Edited to correct a few word errors and to add a sixth argument.]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Keeping Torah, Parsha 26 - Sh'mini, Theology, Torah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.