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The 11th chapter of Leviticus deals with the dietary laws. We don't have time to go into
them at any great length. I will say that Milgrom has also argued that the dietary laws
of Leviticus are similarly part of a symbol system that emphasizes life over death. This
is the following evidence that he cites; the mainstays of the dietary laws are these: first,
the prohibition against eating animal blood from Genesis 9, which symbolizes the life.
We also, in Leviticus 11, meat dietary laws that are governed by criteria such as cud
chewing and having a split hoof; you can only eat animals that chew the cud and have a split
hoof. And those criteria seem arbitrary and meaningless in and of themselves, and he says
they are. But look at their practical effect: that limits the number of animals that one
can eat to a mere handful out of the hundreds upon hundreds of creatures on the earth, that
basically leaves you with--my animal husbandry is not good here--but it leaves you with the
bovine and the ovine classes--I guess ovine are goats and some such--so it leaves you
basically with goats and sheep and cattle. Some have hypothesized that whatever the origin
of various food taboos in Israel, the Priestly texts have tried to create a dietary discipline
that drives home the point that all life shared also by animals is inviolable, except in the
case of meat, which has been conceded by God, and provided that the animals are slaughtered
properly, painlessly, and that their blood, which is symbolic of the life, is not appropriated
but returned to God, its sacred source. So perhaps as it stands, the system of dietary
laws does in fact emphasize reverence for life. But they also serve another very important
function, and that was the formation and maintenance of a differentiated ethnic identity or in
Priestly parlance, the formation and maintenance of a holy peoples separated out from other
nations by rules that mark her as God's people. It's surely significant that the dietary laws
are followed by a powerful exhortation to be holy in imitation of God, Leviticus 11:43-45.
So we've just had the prohibition of not eating certain kinds of small animals, designated
as anything that swarms. And the text says, You shall not draw abomination upon yourselves
through anything that swarms; you shall not make yourselves unclean therewith and thus
become unclean. For I the Lord am your God: you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy,
for I am holy. You shall not make yourselves unclean through any swarming thing that moves
upon the earth. For I the Lord am He who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God:
you shall be holy, for I am holy.
Look at how much this is emphasized. The dietary laws are presented by the priests not as a
hygienic regimen--who knows if that's how they started--not as a sensible way to avoid
various diseases that are caused by the lack of refrigeration in the desert. Whatever the
actual origin of these various dietary taboos, they are here embedded in a larger ideological
framework concerning the need for the Israelites to separate themselves and to be holy like
their god. The dietary laws are connected then with this theme of imitatio dei, of imitation
of God. As God is holy, separate and distinct, so you shall be holy.