ThinkBlog

A couple of years ago, when I was Secretary of the Philosophy Club at GTC, I fielded a somewhat-sarcastic question about shellfish and Jewish dietary laws with a serious response, since I figured it deserved an answer with more gravitas than the spirit in which the question had been asked.  I mirror that question/response below unedited because it came up again in a Bible study this past week and I was reminded that I never did put that on here.  It’s a little outside of my current style, and it was written as a mostly-casual email, but I stand behind the concepts expressed.

I posited the immutability of God, to which someone replied something to the effect that His laws sure have, so what does that say?  I answered that the spirit in which those laws were written has not changed; and that furthermore to interpret the OT and NT theologies as being temporally distinct is to tacitly admit that their Author has shifted views.  Thus began the discussion. [If you find an error of any sort, kindly bring it to my attention.]

[Someone] wrote on 2004/03/04 17:41 ET:

> So, you would agree then that eating shellfish is
> still an abomination to God?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what [the questioner] is talking about, he cites Levitical law that prohibits the eating of pork, shellfish, and other certain meats and such things. This was highly important to the Jews before Christ’s incarnation.

You touch on an extremely important and very exciting point—! It is important to understand for what Levitical law was put into place, and why there were all these specific ritual regulations.

Follow me on this. God has made an everlasting covenant with those who love Him and believe on Him. The Lord is the author of life and of *diversity* and has chosen to exhibit and express His covenant of love to us humans in several different stages through the millennia, according to what we could best understand.

The Jews of Abraham’s day, and of Moses’ day, were a very sensate-focused people. They were good with their hands; hard workers, agriculturally and creatively; carpenters, craftsmen, everything. Even their language is highly concrete: there are no abstractions in the Hebrew tongue insofar as words are concerned—that is, they had not the words to express what we consider abstract concepts. Take, for instance, the alphabet. Each letter corresponds to not only a letter, but also a concrete meaning tied to a symbolic meaning that they could not otherwise express. The second letter, for instance, “Bet”—looks like the roof, floor, and side of a house, and it stands for “house” (how ’bout that!). Symbolically, it means “place of dwelling,” “shelter,” &c. Whole words were the same way. When in our language we read, “The Lord is slow to anger,” in Hebrew this reads “I AM [the name of the Lord] is slow to nose.” Slow to nose?! you might say. Yes, think about it: when you’re angry, you begin breathing more heavily and your nostrils flare! Other examples include “horn” for “strength,” and “breath” or “throat” for “soul.”

So what’s the point? Well, just as their language was highly concrete, so was their connection to understanding sin. Over and over in the Old Testament (and the New, for that matter!), there are places where God makes it clear that He desires for His people to abstain from immorality. Well, how does He convey that to a people who don’t have any abstract words? God wants to reveal His truth to everyone, so naturally, He will reveal it to His people however they can best understand. In the ancient Jews’ case, this was through physical actions of either Doing Something or Not Doing Something.

For instance, the reason Jews even today will on proscribed days eat only bread without leaven (yeast) is because yeast is given in the Bible as an analogy for sin. Yeast, like sin, works itself through the dough, ferments (rots) it, spreads like bacteria on a petri dish, and is dog gone near impossible to extract from dough into which it has been worked. So to make His people understand that they are to be set apart morally (”holy”) from those around them, and pleasing to Him, He would have them abstain from dough with yeast in it to remind them that they are to make sure their souls and lives did not contain sins that would end up destroying them.

So then! we come to the shellfish and unclean animals. Just as with other physical demonstrations of purity, outpourings of their spirits that they otherwise would have trouble expressing (i.e., verbally as we often do), God gave specific instructions for them to eat certain things and abstain from others, as further illustrations on a concrete level of spiritual truths that they would otherwise had immense trouble grasping. There were two categories of animals: those that were acceptable for eating and sacrificing to the Lord, and those that were not. The ones that were, were called “kosher”—that is, “clean” or “whole.” The ones that were unacceptable were called “treif”—that is, “unclean” or “ripped.”

Shellfish, pigs, vultures, spiders, flies, bugs, rats, and mice are example of these “treif”—unclean—animals. What these all have in common are that the eating thereof or touching of their dead carcasses (also forbidden by Levitical law) would have contributed exceedingly to the spread of communicable diseases. Pigs will eat anything on the ground, just about; shellfish are the pigs of the ocean; vultures scavenge the dead carcasses of just about any meaty thing; and bugs and spiders could not only sting/bite to death but were also (as now) carriers of various pestilences. So there are health concerns for the Hebrew people back in the day: God was giving them these strict dietary laws, in part, because by abstaining from unclean animals they would keep themselves healthy and from disease. These dietary laws are often still practiced by both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews) alike today, because by doing so one will be quite healthy. (Don’t believe me? In the US alone, three of six [50%] of the most common food-borne parasites in humans are associated with eating pork, the animal considered among the “most unclean” by the ancient Jews.)

But of course, it doesn’t stop there! God was also illustrating concepts about spiritual health to His people. God’s chosen people whom He loves and who love Him are to be set apart morally, to not pollute their minds and souls with that which does not bring them closer to Him and help them illustrate His awesome love to those that don’t know Him. Eating with someone, or eating something, showed to the Jews an extremely intimate communion. To eat with someone was to commune with them on a level for which we in Western societies have nearly lost an appreciation. We are not to “eat” the spiritual “shellfish” of this world: we only allow our spirits to commune intimately with the “clean” spiritual food that feeds our souls and brings us closer to the glorious knowledge of our awesome and loving God. We are not to feast on “vultures”: not to take into our minds and hearts that which is dead and decaying, that which does not edify us to life and better understanding of Him. (Concrete examples might be participating in mockery and gossip, being around people who cast hateful curses all over the place, &c.) We are not to eat “spiders”: there are certain things to which each person is so morally vulnerable that to be “bitten” by them is to kill them spiritually—to deaden them to the voice of God.

What, then? you ask. Get to the point, Michael: has not God changed His mind, since you, even you, Christian, enjoy Irashiai Sushi Pub and Henry’s BBQ? And I answer thus. These dietary regulations served the purpose of keeping the ancient Israelites healthy both physically and spiritually. When Jesus came, He declared all foods to be “clean.” (Mt 7:14-23) This is because we (humanity) were at a level where we no longer needed physical restrictions to illustrate spiritual principles, and medicines and hygeine had begun to advance to the point that mortality would not necessarily be significantly increased by the partaking of certain foods. We can understand abstract concepts now, and we usually link abstractions with spiritual concepts though there is *not* a stepladder progression from concrete > abstract > spiritual, as some think (and I was once among them). Because we don’t need such constant, physical reminders of God’s laws as Christians—having God’s laws written on our hearts (Heb 10:16, Jer 31:33-34)—all foods are clean.

Take careful note, though, that God has not changed His mind in the slightest. Believers are still to abstain from spiritual “scavengers” and “spiders,” still to keep ourselves set apart from all the spiritual mud, gunk, nast, disease, and mind-numbing junk that this world throws at us. We are to live lives that please our loving and wonderful, morally perfect God. But we no longer are held to using our physical intakes as living illustrations of those truths. What has changed is neither the nature of God nor His morality for our lives, the lives for those who believe in Him—only the way in which that was physically expressed has been repealed to illustrate the powerful freedom that the Christian has in his Lord and savior.

Again, if I’ve been unclear, please let me know so that I can clarify; and, even though I love Judaic culture and language, I’m by no means an expert! Check this stuff out for yourself—and check out the Scripture verses, too. An onine, searchable, indexed Bible in 18 English translations (!) can be found here.

Technorati Tags: God, dietary law, shellfish, Judaica, Christianity, religion, immutability

A couple of years ago, when I was Secretary of the Philosophy Club at GTC, I fielded a somewhat-sarcastic question about shellfish and Jewish dietary laws with a serious response, since I figured it deserved an answer with more gravitas than the spirit in which the question had been asked.  I mirror that question/response below unedited because it came up again in a Bible study this past week and I was reminded that I never did put that on here.  It’s a little outside of my current style, and it was written as a mostly-casual email, but I stand behind the concepts expressed.

I posited the immutability of God, to which someone replied something to the effect that His laws sure have, so what does that say?  I answered that the spirit in which those laws were written has not changed; and that furthermore to interpret the OT and NT theologies as being temporally distinct is to tacitly admit that their Author has shifted views.  Thus began the discussion. [If you find an error of any sort, kindly bring it to my attention.]

[Someone] wrote on 2004/03/04 17:41 ET:

> So, you would agree then that eating shellfish is
> still an abomination to God?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what [the questioner] is talking about, he cites Levitical law that prohibits the eating of pork, shellfish, and other certain meats and such things. This was highly important to the Jews before Christ’s incarnation.

You touch on an extremely important and very exciting point—! It is important to understand for what Levitical law was put into place, and why there were all these specific ritual regulations.

Follow me on this. God has made an everlasting covenant with those who love Him and believe on Him. The Lord is the author of life and of *diversity* and has chosen to exhibit and express His covenant of love to us humans in several different stages through the millennia, according to what we could best understand.

The Jews of Abraham’s day, and of Moses’ day, were a very sensate-focused people. They were good with their hands; hard workers, agriculturally and creatively; carpenters, craftsmen, everything. Even their language is highly concrete: there are no abstractions in the Hebrew tongue insofar as words are concerned—that is, they had not the words to express what we consider abstract concepts. Take, for instance, the alphabet. Each letter corresponds to not only a letter, but also a concrete meaning tied to a symbolic meaning that they could not otherwise express. The second letter, for instance, “Bet”—looks like the roof, floor, and side of a house, and it stands for “house” (how ’bout that!). Symbolically, it means “place of dwelling,” “shelter,” &c. Whole words were the same way. When in our language we read, “The Lord is slow to anger,” in Hebrew this reads “I AM [the name of the Lord] is slow to nose.” Slow to nose?! you might say. Yes, think about it: when you’re angry, you begin breathing more heavily and your nostrils flare! Other examples include “horn” for “strength,” and “breath” or “throat” for “soul.”

So what’s the point? Well, just as their language was highly concrete, so was their connection to understanding sin. Over and over in the Old Testament (and the New, for that matter!), there are places where God makes it clear that He desires for His people to abstain from immorality. Well, how does He convey that to a people who don’t have any abstract words? God wants to reveal His truth to everyone, so naturally, He will reveal it to His people however they can best understand. In the ancient Jews’ case, this was through physical actions of either Doing Something or Not Doing Something.

For instance, the reason Jews even today will on proscribed days eat only bread without leaven (yeast) is because yeast is given in the Bible as an analogy for sin. Yeast, like sin, works itself through the dough, ferments (rots) it, spreads like bacteria on a petri dish, and is dog gone near impossible to extract from dough into which it has been worked. So to make His people understand that they are to be set apart morally (”holy”) from those around them, and pleasing to Him, He would have them abstain from dough with yeast in it to remind them that they are to make sure their souls and lives did not contain sins that would end up destroying them.

So then! we come to the shellfish and unclean animals. Just as with other physical demonstrations of purity, outpourings of their spirits that they otherwise would have trouble expressing (i.e., verbally as we often do), God gave specific instructions for them to eat certain things and abstain from others, as further illustrations on a concrete level of spiritual truths that they would otherwise had immense trouble grasping. There were two categories of animals: those that were acceptable for eating and sacrificing to the Lord, and those that were not. The ones that were, were called “kosher”—that is, “clean” or “whole.” The ones that were unacceptable were called “treif”—that is, “unclean” or “ripped.”

Shellfish, pigs, vultures, spiders, flies, bugs, rats, and mice are example of these “treif”—unclean—animals. What these all have in common are that the eating thereof or touching of their dead carcasses (also forbidden by Levitical law) would have contributed exceedingly to the spread of communicable diseases. Pigs will eat anything on the ground, just about; shellfish are the pigs of the ocean; vultures scavenge the dead carcasses of just about any meaty thing; and bugs and spiders could not only sting/bite to death but were also (as now) carriers of various pestilences. So there are health concerns for the Hebrew people back in the day: God was giving them these strict dietary laws, in part, because by abstaining from unclean animals they would keep themselves healthy and from disease. These dietary laws are often still practiced by both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews) alike today, because by doing so one will be quite healthy. (Don’t believe me? In the US alone, three of six [50%] of the most common food-borne parasites in humans are associated with eating pork, the animal considered among the “most unclean” by the ancient Jews.)

But of course, it doesn’t stop there! God was also illustrating concepts about spiritual health to His people. God’s chosen people whom He loves and who love Him are to be set apart morally, to not pollute their minds and souls with that which does not bring them closer to Him and help them illustrate His awesome love to those that don’t know Him. Eating with someone, or eating something, showed to the Jews an extremely intimate communion. To eat with someone was to commune with them on a level for which we in Western societies have nearly lost an appreciation. We are not to “eat” the spiritual “shellfish” of this world: we only allow our spirits to commune intimately with the “clean” spiritual food that feeds our souls and brings us closer to the glorious knowledge of our awesome and loving God. We are not to feast on “vultures”: not to take into our minds and hearts that which is dead and decaying, that which does not edify us to life and better understanding of Him. (Concrete examples might be participating in mockery and gossip, being around people who cast hateful curses all over the place, &c.) We are not to eat “spiders”: there are certain things to which each person is so morally vulnerable that to be “bitten” by them is to kill them spiritually—to deaden them to the voice of God.

What, then? you ask. Get to the point, Michael: has not God changed His mind, since you, even you, Christian, enjoy Irashiai Sushi Pub and Henry’s BBQ? And I answer thus. These dietary regulations served the purpose of keeping the ancient Israelites healthy both physically and spiritually. When Jesus came, He declared all foods to be “clean.” (Mt 7:14-23) This is because we (humanity) were at a level where we no longer needed physical restrictions to illustrate spiritual principles, and medicines and hygeine had begun to advance to the point that mortality would not necessarily be significantly increased by the partaking of certain foods. We can understand abstract concepts now, and we usually link abstractions with spiritual concepts though there is *not* a stepladder progression from concrete > abstract > spiritual, as some think (and I was once among them). Because we don’t need such constant, physical reminders of God’s laws as Christians—having God’s laws written on our hearts (Heb 10:16, Jer 31:33-34)—all foods are clean.

Take careful note, though, that God has not changed His mind in the slightest. Believers are still to abstain from spiritual “scavengers” and “spiders,” still to keep ourselves set apart from all the spiritual mud, gunk, nast, disease, and mind-numbing junk that this world throws at us. We are to live lives that please our loving and wonderful, morally perfect God. But we no longer are held to using our physical intakes as living illustrations of those truths. What has changed is neither the nature of God nor His morality for our lives, the lives for those who believe in Him—only the way in which that was physically expressed has been repealed to illustrate the powerful freedom that the Christian has in his Lord and savior.

Again, if I’ve been unclear, please let me know so that I can clarify; and, even though I love Judaic culture and language, I’m by no means an expert! Check this stuff out for yourself—and check out the Scripture verses, too. An onine, searchable, indexed Bible in 18 English translations (!) can be found here.

Technorati Tags: God, dietary law, shellfish, Judaica, Christianity, religion, immutability