Diet

Posted by fschmidt on
URL: http://mikraite.155.s1.nabble.com/Diet-tp173.html

Biblical dietary law can be found in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14.

Orthodox and Karaite Judaism simply accept these laws as stated.  This approach is known as Peshat which means simply accepting the literal meaning of the text.  This is not the Mikraites approach.  Unlike Judaism, we ask WHY?  We do this because we believe that God is reasonable and that God gave us commandments for our benefit, as said in Deuteronomy 6:24, not for God's benefit.  God doesn't need benefits.  God doesn't need anything from us, so everything God commands is for our own benefit.  This means that we can understand the commandments by understanding how they benefit us.  So how do the dietary laws benefit us?

The explanation of the reason for the dietary laws is perfectly clear in Leviticus 11.  It clearly states that certain foods are unclean for us.  What kinds of things are prohibited?  Pork which had parasites, shellfish which went bad quickly without refrigeration, and animal carcasses which would likely be infected by various things.  In other words, the issue here is health.  To further confirm this, note that Leviticus 11 begins a long section of the Torah which is all about health laws.  Another point is that the Old Testament never mentions a punishment for violating dietary law, and God never punished anyone for violating dietary law.  This also supports the idea that dietary law was a health code, not a moral commandment.

Now that we know that the dietary laws are for health, we can see that they made perfect sense in biblical times, but they don't make sense today when we have refrigeration and better ways of handling these foods.  Pork and shellfish are no longer health risks, so there is no reason not to eat them.

Does this mean these laws are now irrelevant?  No, the lesson to be learned is that God wants us to avoid unhealthy foods.  Today, instead of worrying about pork, we should be worry about all the unhealthy artificial foods in our diet.  In a sense, these should be considered "ungodly foods".  These are not foods that God ever intended for us to eat.