I’ve been reading through Paul Copan’s Is God a Moral Monster and I hit a great chapter on Kosher food and the meaning behind them. This book is a benchmark in the modern response to the Atheist movement(people like Hitchens, Dawkins). Therefore Copan tries to approach the oddities and strictness of the levitical cleanness laws and kosher foods. He begins to handle the topic with debunking the common understanding of the kosher laws(The listing of animals is found in Lev. 11 and Deut. 14). I will outline these and one of his proposed handlings of the laws.
1. Health/Hygiene Argument: This is a very common argument, people even have even adapted it into modern diet trends(The Maker’s Diet). The belief is that if God established them than therefore it must be true for a health reason because well back in the day things were less hygienic and they didn’t have hand sanitizer. But let’s get back to this proposed argument, Copan goes on to say, “Israelites were to aviod eating vultures because these creatures eat road kill and carnivores…pigs can transmit diseases…hare and coney/rock badger commonly carry tularemia…shrimp shouldn’t be eaten because they raise your cholesterol level.” This is a fairly brief understanding of what shouldn’t be eaten and why in this argument.
Problems with this Argument: What Copan says is that tries as hard as you can you can’t find health being the concern in Leviticus or anywhere else in the Hebrew Scriptures. He goes on to say things like posionous plants aren’t considered unclean, and to top it off “Why did Jesus declare all these foods clean if health was really the issue in the kosher food section of the OT.
2. Association with non-Israelite Religions Argument: People have stated that the reason that these foods were unclean was their association with religions of the ancient Near East, but this argument falls apart right from the start because of the bull issue. Bulls were central to the Canaanite and Egyptian religions. yet the bull was one of Israel’s “most valuable of Israel’s sacrifices…Canaanites sacrificed the same sorts of animals in their religious rituals as did the Israelites.” So what is a better understanding of the kosher laws in the OT?
Copan’s Proposed Argument: Paul outline’s two “angles” to deal with the kosher texts, but I will outline one for sake of brevity and just overall strength of the one argument. His angle is that on creation. The Creation account sets up three spheres in which animals are placed they are as follows: those that walk on the land, those that swim in the water, and those that fly in the air. The uncleanness of the animals in the Leviticus account are connected to land (11:2-8), water (11:9-12), and air (11:13-25). God desired that Israel be set apart, distinct, and different. Therefore they were exist clearly defined and obviously different; in their own category. The unclean animal symbolized a “mixing or blurring of categories” or as I would put it distinctness. Animals that did not remain in characteristics of their kind were seen as unclean. Copan goes on to explain…
“Water: To be clean, must have scales and fins… eels and shellfish don’t fit this category, and therefore are unclean and prohibited.”
He goes on to show this through Land: and Air: and concludes
“that unclean animals symbolized what Israel was to avoid-mixing in with the unclean beliefs and practices of the surrounding nations. Israel was to be like the clean animals-distinct, in their own category, and not having any mixed features.”
His understanding of these texts was that they were to symbolic and alluding to the distinctness and, differentness of being God’s people. But this does not entail that these animal aren’t “very good” because Jesus stated that all foods are clean in Mark 7:19 and Paul did the same in Acts 1o:10-16. God’s set apart people were to be reminded in the mundane of life: clothing and eating, that they were to be different, disctint to show the uniqueness of being God’s people.
Any thoughts?
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