Is there doctrine regarding food prohibition in Judaism - God's reasoning.

Factual Questions
101

The only Biblical reference in there is Isaiah, with these two lines:

42.6 “I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and have taken hold of thy hand, and kept thee, and set thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the nations;”

49.6 “Yea, He saith: ‘It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the offspring of Israel; I will also give thee for a light of the nations, that My salvation may be unto the end of the earth.’”

But 42 then continues on:

“The LORD will go forth as a mighty man, He will stir up jealousy like a man of war; He will cry, yea, He will shout aloud, He will prove Himself mighty against His enemies. I have long time held My peace, I have been still, and refrained Myself; now will I cry like a travailing woman, gasping and panting at once. I will make waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbs; and I will make the rivers islands, and will dry up the pools. […] They shall be turned back, greatly ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say unto molten images: ‘Ye are our gods.’”

Which is to say, “I’ll slaughter people until they stop worshiping other people than me.” While I have no complaint as to whether one does or doesn’t worship Yahweh, I wouldn’t put said worship as being equivalent to “making the world a better place”. In the context, I don’t believe that 42.6 can really be read to have the meaning that it’s given quoted out of context.

Section 49, on the other hand, I would somewhat agree with the interpretation.

“Thus saith the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, to him who is despised of men, to him who is abhorred of nations, to a servant of rulers: kings shall see and arise, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the LORD that is faithful, even the Holy One of Israel, who hath chosen thee. Thus saith the LORD: In an acceptable time have I answered thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee; and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to raise up the land, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages; Saying to the prisoners: ‘Go forth’; to them that are in darkness: ‘Show yourselves’; they shall feed in the ways, and in all high hills shall be their pasture; They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor sun smite them; for He that hath compassion on them will lead them, even by the springs of water will He guide them. […] Behold, these shall come from far; and, lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Sinim. […] For thy waste and thy desolate places and thy land that hath been destroyed–surely now shalt thou be too strait for the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away. The children of thy bereavement shall yet say in thine ears: ‘The place is too strait for me; give place to me that I may dwell.’ Then shalt thou say in thy heart: ‘Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have been bereaved of my children, and am solitary, an exile, and wandering to and fro? And who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where were they?’ […] And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine; and all flesh shall know that I the LORD am thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”

This is a call to charitable acts and I would agree, in modern day, that charity is generally seen as being equivalent to “making the world a better place”.

But a cynical eye would note that this is explicitly targeted to groups who have been attacked by other nations. E.g., if the Egyptians came in and attacked Phillistine, then the Jews would be welcoming and helpful to the Philistines in the aim of showing them Yahweh’s greatness.

But there’s no restriction on the Jews to go and attack other nations. If the Yahweh tells the Jews to go attack Philistine, then that’s an entirely different ballgame and they’re just out of luck afterwards (as slaves and slave wives). Nor is there any attempt or recommendation for dealing with the bigger nations - like Egypt or the Achaemenid Empire - and convince them to be better. They’re just written off.

The cynical reading would be less that this is an act of charity so much as it’s an endorsement to try and make pals with other small-fry nations, in the hopes of building enough strength to go up against Egypt and the other mega-powers. Which matches the final line I quoted, where Yahweh (through Isaiah) is saying that the mega-powers will be made to suffer (eventually).

Of course, as it ended up, the Jewish state went from being a vassal state of Egypt to a vassal state of the Achaemenid Empire to being a vassal state of Rome, to being destroyed. History doesn’t strongly support the image that Yahweh was portraying.

And, of course, most of the Tanakh is not Isaiah.

102

Shodan:

According to the Talmud, the definition of sexual immorality for Noahides is six prohibitions: a man having sex with his mother, his father’s wife, another man’s wife, his sister with at least a mother in common, a man, and an animal. These are all derived, in classic Talmudic fashion, from the Biblical text.

Sage Rat:

You’re pretty surely wrong. The book of Joshua is the only one in which conquest is a big part, and taking slaves was not a part of that. After the initial period of conquest, the Israelites wanted to finally settle down, and left parts of the land unconquered. Any wars in the Book of Judges (past the first chapter, which was more of an epilogue to Joshua) were the other nations subjugating Israel (G-d using this as punishment for when the Israelites strayed) and being saved by a Judge appointed on an ad-hoc basis when they turned back to G-d for salvation. The last of these was the Philistines, and that conflict lasted into the first Book of Samuel.

There were a few wars of conquest engaged in by Israelite kings in II Samuel and I-II Kings, but those stories are mentioned only in passing, with the great bulk of those books dedicated to internal affairs of the Israelite monarchies, and the relative righteousness/sinfulness of, and prophetic admonitions to, their monarchs.

103

I only commented because the statement that there was a general “make the world a better place” rule in the Tanakh seemed a little too unsupportable as a slam dunk truism for GQ. Any reader of the thread has the Wikipedia link and my caution against a simple and/or out of context reading. They can make up their own mind between the two. Obviously, it is true that there is such a movement within the Jewish faith - as the Wikipedia page attests - but one might note that from the Jewish perspective, Christians have been horrible at understanding the book and their adjunct to it only proves how wrong people can be and the great lengths of time that people can maintain a clear falsehood. Christianity has existed for ~2000 years, so longevity of an idea is not really evidence that it is correct or particularly well connected to the original source material. (Or, from the Christian side of things, clearly the Jews have been misinterpreting their own book for thousands of years and the adjunct clearly follows - as you prefer.)

Anyways, if you wish to debate the proper reading, I would be fine to join a thread in GD.

104

[tangent]

Actually, God didn’t give reasoning for many of the prohibitions, and many of what he did don’t really make sense, and consequently have never been really adopted by Mormons. For example, (my bolding)

Several notes. Hot drinks were not specifically coffee and tea, but anything “hot.” There aren’t any real reasons for most of the commandments. Beer was not prohibited, only hard alcohol.

The Word of Wisdom was not taken as a commandment in the early days, and it wasn’t until much later that members were made to strictly follow later interpretations such as no coffee or tea or any alcohol. One school of thought is that it served the same purpose as the Jewish dietary restrictions, that is to differentiate people into group members and outsiders.
[/tangent]

105

Thanks.

Regards,
Shodan

106

I’m not so sure about that. Cheap pottery has always been cheap, and it also wasn’t very sturdy and broke frequently. Also, it’s porous and absorbed some of any food on it.

I believe the laws about having separate dishes actually stem from that last fact – that the dishes in use at the time couldn’t conveniently be cleaned of the residue of the prior meal. In fact, there’s an exception for glass dishes (which were expensive, and also COULD be cleaned) and rules about how to clean your glass dishes so you can use them e.g., for meat after they were used for milk.

A lot of less stringent Jews (Conservative Jews who keep kosher) hold that modern ceramics are glazed with “glass” and are willing to eat any kosher food from any clean ceramic plate.

Most Orthodox Jews don’t hold that, because the general “style” or Orthodox Judaism is to add rules, not subtract them. And because they want even the most stringent of their friends to be able to eat at their homes. But I’ve had Orthodox friends eat kosher food from my dishes at my home. (Yes, hot food. We discussed how I could cook the kosher veggie burgers, and I forget whether I covered a part of the grill with clean aluminum foil or used the microwave.)

In addition, scrolls (at least for sacred texts, like Torah scrolls) should be made from the hide of a kosher animal.