The logic of the Noahide laws is as follows: these were the commands given to Noah by God in the mythic story of his adventures. Given that Noah is (1) not a Jew (Jews did not yet exist at the time the myth is set in), (2) the ancestor, according to the myth, of all humanity, and (3) a famously ‘good righteous person’ (it is why he & his family was saved), it therefore follows that all humanity can be “righteous” if it follows these laws.
That said, there is nothing beyond the laws themselves to explain why these particular laws were chosen.
There are a lot of post-hoc explanations for this prohibition, and some even make a lot of sense. However, the fact is that we cannot know what was in the minds of those who wrote down the original Noah myth (or that of God, if you are a believer), and so why this prohibition exists.
My favorite theory: that it was an early symbolic recognition that unnecessary cruelty to animals was a moral wrong, and covers more that simply eating bits of them while they are alive. The notion appears to be ‘you can eat animals for your sustenance, but please ensure that, if you do, you do not cause them to suffer in the process’. By extension, other types of cruelty for fun ought to be avoided as well.
But I admit that this is merely a favorite post-hoc explanation.
Is a glass of milk OK with a hamburger? Or a malt?
Reubens are awesome, have to have thick, dark crusty rye though. Thin tender corned beef, and I like to experiment with making Russian dressing. A couple dill pickles, and some sour cream and onion potato chips… And a tall glass of ice cold milk. Yum.
Nope, can’t mix milk and meat. You have to wait 6 hours after eating meat before you can have dairy. There are different rules for eating meat after having dairy; some types of dairy require 6 hours, some require less time.
As with all matters, there are exceptions, but those are the general rules.
perhaps as something to demonstrate man’s place above other animals? In that region of the world I think they’d be familiar with larger predators taking prey; e.g. when a big cat takes down an oryx, the oryx doesn’t go quietly, nor does the cat always wait for it to die before chowing down.
Thanks. I don’t recall any enumeration of the seven laws in Genesis - is there discussion of why those seven in particular in the Talmud? Do we know when they were written in the Talmud?
The laws derive from picking through Genesis. For example, the law against eating the flesh of a living animal is found in Genesis 9(4) (the law against murder, Genesis 9(6), etc.).
[emphasis]
This passage is also the basis for requiring courts and justice: “at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man”. It’s a bit of a stretch!
Here’s an interesting Talmudic discussion, in which various commentators argue about what is included.
Footnote 34 is interesting as to the “no eating live animals” commandment.
Well, never mind for a moment that shellfish are automatically non-kosher.
Years ago, a chef appeared on TV (I think it was the Today Show) and showed how to prepare a lobster dish. He started by cutting the claws off a live lobster and then sauteeing them in olive oil while the lobster was still alive.
But the prohibition, as I understand it, is against eating a live animal, not cooking it. Presumably after cooking the lobster was dead by the time it was eaten. Depending on where you draw the somewhat arbitrary lines between “slaughtering”, “preparing” and “cooking”, every animal is alive until some point in that process.
“Blessed are the cheesemakers?”
“It’s obviously not meant to be taken literally, it refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.”
IIRC, the “kid in mother’s milk” was a dish prepared by some neighbours of the Israelites, so the prohibition was also to distinguish them from the “barbaric neighbours”. The “thoroughly drain the carcass” ritual was also based on countering neighbouring religious practices which involved blood.
The “no fins and scales” thing was to eliminate bottom feeders and parasites which typically ate garbage and rotting things -unhealthy. But there’s also a school of thought that the rules were set down by people with OCD and they disliked anything that didn’t fit their pattern; split hoofs and chews cud, has fur, eats grasses, good. Missing some of those categories (pigs) not good.