So this is something I’ve wondered about on and off but ever got to actually trying to study it. I remember growing up , and even now, often hearing from those who eat meat, and especially from the Christian vegetarian community, that the foods the Hebrews were prohibited eating were all unhealthy foods. That Yahweh was looking out for them by banning unhealthy foods for them to eat. Like non kosher foods like shrimps and octopuses were unhealthy. But in general i almost always hear of these foods as healthy, for those flesh eaters that chow down on corpses anyways.
So it made me wonder has anyone looked into the specifics of why they had the prohibitions they had?
I mentioned it in another conversation not too long ago, but None of These Diseases goes into it some.
It’s been decades, probably more than five, since I read the first edition paperback, so I can’t speak to the latest version, but I still remember the bit about circumcision, its multiple benefits for men and women, and the timing with respect to the baby’s vitamin K level. It also mentions trichinosis and the prohibition on pork, and I think shellfish and high cholesterol and maybe food allergens, among other things.
Some of them are (like boiling a kid in its mother’s milk) are “do not look like you are performing a pagan ritual”, others are “if this isn’t cooked fully, you are likely to get unpleasant parasites (like pork or carnivorous birds)”, and others are unknown as to reason.
Probably. That would still be relevant in places (like New Zealand, I believe) where certain tattoos are closely associated with worship of specific deities.
2 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
7
You get unpleasant parasites from ovines and bovines. Carnivore liver is lethally toxic with vitamin A. As Sir Douglas Mawson discovered. Boiling a kid in its mother’s milk has very unpleasant symbolism of callousness. It’s all ritual derived from being picky eaters.