From *The Skeptical Review*, 2002 / May-June:
by Farrell Till
In the mailbag column of this issue
(p. 12), Vallon England saw divine guidance in the Israelite Levitical
law that required ceremonial bathing and various ritual cleansings. This
is an argument that has made the rounds as long as I can remember. I
even recycled it myself when I was a fundamentalist preacher. Usually,
dietary restrictions are also touted as part of the divine guidance
intended to protect Yahweh's "chosen ones" from diseases. He declared
pigs unclean, so the argument goes, because pork can transmit
trichinosis if it isn’t sufficiently cooked. If that was Yahweh’s
concern in giving this law, one has to wonder why he didn’t just command
that the meat be cooked thoroughly? Why ban the entire product when
there is a simpler solution, but who am I to question the creative
genius of the universe?
If
there is any merit at all to this argument, then surely there were
health reasons for Yahweh’s ban on the eating of camels and hares (Lev.
11:4-6), fish without scales (v:9), and various birds like eagles,
falcons, hawks, and owls (vs:13-19). What were these reasons? What risk
to his health does a person take if he eats a catfish or a rabbit? Of
course, we know that catfish and rabbits, as well as any other kind of
food, would pose a health risk if it is contaminated, but the
fundamentalist argument is that the danger from trichinosis was so
overwhelming that Yahweh ordered "his people" not to eat pork at all. If
this is so, then surely the omni-one had similar reasons for banning
all the other prohibited foods in Leviticus 1l. What were they? Unless
such dangers can be demonstrated, fundamentalists have no convincing
argument in this matter.
Probably
nothing more than tribal custom and personal whims were involved in
these dietary restrictions. As a nation, we avoid eating horse meat,
whereas other countries consider it a delicacy. We don't generally eat
insects either, but they are a staple in some parts of the world. The
ancient Hebrews apparently ate locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers,
because they were permitted under the dietary laws, whereas all other
insects were prohibited (Lev. 11:20-23). Yuck! If I had written
Leviticus, I would have banned all insects and thrown in broccoli for
good measure. Whoever wrote this book had probably been conditioned by
tribal customs to eat certain insects and not others, and so what he
wrote reflected the tribal preferences and revulsions that he was
accustomed to. In "Kosher Baloney," Dr. Tim Gorski, a physician in
Arlington, Texas, wrote on this subject from a medical point of view to
show that there is no basis at all for arguing that the Levitical
dietary laws were Yahweh's way of protecting "his people" from health
hazards. In his article, Dr. Gorski made a statement that is worth
reconsidering.
Even allowing that these [previously listed examples] may be instances of kosher practices having some practical utility, this would hardly argue for their being of divine origin. The operation of natural selection on the simple process of trial and error would be sufficient to result in the prevalence of useful, and especially lifesaving traditions. Nor does anything in the Bible argue to the contrary. God never tells his "chosen people," for example, that the reason they’re to avoid pork or not mix milk and meat products is because of "creeping things" too small to see that can make them sick (The Skeptical Review, November/December 1998, p. 6).
If
the Levitical dietary laws had contained any explanation for the
restrictions, such as the one that Dr. Gorski mentioned above, that
would have given biblicists a strong argument, because a reference to
tiny or invisible "creeping things" that could cause illness would be
hard to explain in a time when microscopic organisms were unknown.
Without any direct reference like this, however, any apparent benefits
that seem to be derived from some of the Levitical restrictions could be
explained as nothing more than what Gorski mentioned above, i. e., the
result of having learned through trial and error. After all, if even a
primitive people observed outbreaks of illness (now known to be
trichinosis) enough times after pork was eaten, it shouldn’t have taken
them too long to conclude that eating pork was not a good idea.
