20 Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
John 7:22 Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath.
First, let us notice, as you have pointed out, that the idea of clean and unclean animals was not a new idea at the time of Moses. Like circumcision, it was a much older teaching from God.
God associated clean to holiness, a separation from the unclean or common. The horizontal notion of clean and unclean reflected the vertical concept of holy and common.
Yes, but also notice that being unclean did not necessarily mean one was sinful or had done wrong. For example after sexual intercourse, as per text below.
Lev 15:18 If a man lies with a woman and has an emission of sperm, both of them shall bathe themselves in water and be unclean until the evening.
Attention to cleanness is a good thing, and setting up sanitary regulations for a large group of people is one of the first things a modern day refugee camp coordinator would attend to. The regulations Moses gave went so far as to paint a picture of the problem of people just pooping (defecating) on the ground, and the Lord not wanting to step in it.
12 Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. 13 As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. 14 For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you.
Why did God give the Israelites clean and unclean laws?
Le 20: 24b I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples. 25 You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. 26 You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.
Logically, I don't think this text explains WHY God gave the laws. It merely asserts that God DID give the laws, and that Israelites were to follow them --
as well as outsiders living among them.
Lev 24:22 You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.’”
In
Numbers 15:38, God gave the Israelites a dress code, with particular types of clothes regulated, with colors and tassels specified. To my mind, this dress code would have the same effect if the specified color had been
green instead of
blue. Think of all the different uniforms that various schools have used over the years. It also seems to me that
@tonychanyt is considering the dietary specifications to essentially be the same as the Israelite dress code.
Le 20: 26 You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.
Yes, God did want the Israelites to be different and "holy". I would argue that one important result of this difference would be to be an example to other nations. When others saw in the nation of Israel an orderly people, following sane regulations and free from the disease of Egypt (
Exodus 15:26), they would want to join in. There was always allowance for non-Jews to join their society if they followed Jewish law. God has always been the God of the entire world, and it was not just after the birth of Paul that He remembered the Gentiles.
Moses' clean and clean laws uniquely identified the Israelites as a people holy to the Lord.
No. As per Lev 24:22 above, it was to uniquely identify those who followed the Lord and aligned themselves with His chosen people. A genetic descendant of Israel that did not follow God's regulations was to be thrown out. And the foreigner who chose to follow God's instructions were to be accepted. God's laws effected a difference between those that followed Him and those that did not.
Do you see these as arbitrary/random regulations?
No, it was specifically designed by the Lord to hold the Israelites accountable for practicing their holiness before God.
This answer does not logically answer the question you posed. An "arbitrary" regulation is anything that could be 'A' or 'B', but someone (in this case, God) specifies 'B'. For example, the rules in the USA to drive on the right side of the road is arbitrary. Other countries, like the UK, drive on the left hand side of the road. Your answer that the regulations were just "designed to hold the Israelites accountable for practicing holiness" is completely compatible with the regulation being arbitrary. If 'A' would help the Israelites practice holiness, would there have been any difference if 'B' was commanded?
In order for a regulation to NOT be arbitrary, there needs to be something intrinsic in the regulation itself. A law against shooting a gun into a crowd of people is not arbitrary because there is an obvious reason for it. Likewise, when God gives a command for 'A', it is either arbitrary (like driving on the right vs left side of the road) OR there is something fundamental about 'A' that makes sense (like not shooting into a crowd).
Back to the Mosaic laws, there are some regulations such as how hair was to be cut or left long, that seem arbitrary to me. But other regulations such as when couples were to have intercourse over the course of a woman's menstrual cycle, may have seemed arbitrary to them at the time, but we know now that it was the perfect instruction for promoting fertility.
Why then would God work to counter His prior instruction?
I'd not say that God worked counter to the clean and unclean laws. These laws were fulfilled in Christ.
I hear this argument often, that Christ fulfilled laws, and therefore law and regulations no longer apply. This makes no sense to me. Jesus Himself said ....
Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus did come to fulfill the law. And after He fulfilled them, He expected everyone would be finally free from those pesky regulations, right? No. He specifically says that the Law will continue until "everything" is accomplished, and heaven and earth disappear.
Ac 10: 14 Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” 15 And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” 16 This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven.
I notice that God is not saying that He was lumping clean and unclean all together. Instead He was saying that if God has made something clean, then it should not be called common.
This applied to food and people:
The Israelites were no longer uniquely holy to the Lord. The way was opened to the Gentiles. Gentiles were not required to keep the ceremonial clean and unclean laws.
I agree that the Gentiles were not required to keep all the Jewish laws. The Jews had made God's instructions so insufferably awful that when the Messiah Himself came, they wanted to kill Him because He didn't play along. Allowances had to be made to open the gate and let Gentiles join Christ's sheep pen.
And I agree that regulations about clean and unclean food were changed.
Mark 7: 18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? 19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)
In the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, infant formula was adulterated with melamine, leading to 54,000 children being hospitalized and 6 babies dying (
source). So clearly something that enters the stomach can affect the body. Jesus is talking about the spiritual aspect of food cleanness.
I assert that God's food regulations were not arbitrary and had physical reasons for being true. There were also spiritual blessing that came from following God's instructions. Today we know the importance of washing hands for preventing the spread of disease. But Jesus didn't adhere to the Jewish rules about hand-washing because they were doing it for the wrong reasons. Is Jesus today against washing hands? No. Is Jesus today against medical professionals trying to stop people from living on a diet of Coca cola and French-fries? No. But it all depends on WHY one follows a particular path.
Gentiles could be a holy people without keeping the horizontal clean and unclean laws.
Yes, and hopefully over time the Holy Spirit would help them understand the reasons for sanitary rules, so they too could avoid the physical harm that comes from violating them.
Best wishes,
KT
an interesting thread as always
