Reply to Why do some care about rules about gay people but ignore rule about shrimp, rape, and stoning women?

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Reply to "Why do some care about rules about gay people but ignore rule about shrimp, rape, and stoning women?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't believe the OP is asking this "sincerely" as he said in his post. I think this is the same OP that brings shrimp into any discussion that is even remotely relevant.

But for everyone else:
1. Shrimp. God never says it's a "sin." He says don't eat it. The Jews lived in the desert with no refrigeration. Makes perfect sense. (Then see Acts 9, where God declares all food "clean," and Peter totally gets the analogy that God loves everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, not just Jews. It's the same as if I told my son, don't hit your sister (it's wrong) and don't cross the street without looking both ways (it's a bad idea because you might get hurt).[/quote]

There are sins between man and man, and sins between man and G-d. IE ritual sins.   The Hebrew bible is clear that ritual sins are important (see so many laws in the 5 books of Moses) There are mixed indications in prophets as to their importance relative to the sins between man and man - the famous section of Isaiah about fasting, on the one hand, but lots of prophets complaining about ritual violations.

The book of Acts (you mean 10, not 9, right?)  is an odd vision, not clear to me at least that its an indication the dietary laws are revoked, or were never about sin.  In  any case, the book of Acts is not cannon in Judaism.

Note also, many of the dietary laws have nothing to do with health.  There is no health reason not to eat the calf and its mother's milk together, nor to avoid the sciaitic nerve.

As for the laws claimed to be about health, the nations that lived alongside Israel did not follow them, and there is nothing in the historical record indicating they had poor health as a result.  Certainly its not hard to cook pork, for example and the dangers of infection are more than offset by the value of the protein source. The dietary laws are NOT about hygiene, but about creating a bond between the children of Israel and their G-d, a bond expressed in daily living, that sets them off from the nations.
[/quote]
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. And yes, you are right, it is Acts 10, not 9. My bad.

I understand that Acts is not cannon in Judaism, but the OP was asking about Christianity and why Christians don't follow all the Old Testament laws, so Acts would be relevant here. In any case, I agree with you that there were a lot of laws of ritual, and I agree with you that a lot of what was in the law was to set apart a people from God. But I don't think the shrimp was an indication of that. The LORD told the Jewish people that if they followed all the laws, they would live long in the land the LORD was giving them. So I think PART of that was not eating shellfish where there was no refrigeration. In the case of not cooking a calf in mother's milk, the idea as I understand it was that milk was life-giving and so to kill a calf and cook it in what was supposed to give life was an odd image that the LORD wanted them to think about. I don't know what the point of the sciatic nerve was. Mixed fabrics I believe was a way to illustrate not to mix with other religions and intermarry with populations that did not worship the LORD. So there were many reasons that these laws were on the books, so to speak. There is even a passage about breaking a pot if a bird had died in it. This was to keep food from being contaminated -- the LORD knew about this long before the scientific method was aware of it. So some of these things were indeed for health. Some were not.

In any case, yes, the prophets complained about ritual violations because they were in disobedience to the LORD. That much is pretty clear.

However, in Christianity, there is very little concern about ritual violations, because there is very little ritual discussed. The theology is: Believe in the LORD Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. There are a couple of admonishments about how to observe communion, but ritual is almost entirely non-existent. This is mostly because Christians believe that Jesus is our priest, and worshiping Him is done with the heart. So the Levitical rituals don't enter into it, because we don't have a priestly class. And in worshiping Christ, Christians are -- are should be -- still set apart. [/quote]

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