The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World

Author: Jordan D. Rosenblum  

Publisher: Cambridge University Press‎

Publication year: 2016

E-ISBN: 9781108110396

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9781107090347

Subject: B985 Judaism (Hebrew)

Keyword: 犹太教(希伯来教)

Language: ENG

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The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World

Description

In The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World Jordan D. Rosenblum explores how cultures critique and defend their religious food practices. In particular he focuses on how ancient Jews defended the kosher laws, or kashrut, and how ancient Greeks, Romans, and early Christians critiqued these practices. As the kosher laws are first encountered in the Hebrew Bible, this study is rooted in ancient biblical interpretation. It explores how commentators in antiquity understood, applied, altered, innovated upon, and contemporized biblical dietary regulations. He shows that these differing interpretations do not exist within a vacuum; rather, they are informed by a variety of motives, including theological, moral, political, social, and financial considerations. In analyzing these ancient conversations about culture and cuisine, he dissects three rhetorical strategies deployed when justifying various interpretations of ancient Jewish dietary regulations: reason, revelation, and allegory. Finally, Rosenblum reflects upon wider, contemporary debates about food ethics.

Chapter

Chapter 1 Hebrew Bible

What Not to Eat … and Why Not to Eat It

Edible and Inedible Animals

Blood

Sciatic Nerve

Slaughtering a Parent and Its Offspring on the Same Day

Sending the Mother Bird Away from Her Nest

Cooking a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk

Animals That Died by Non-Human Agency

Conclusion

Chapter 2 Greek and Roman Sources

Jews and Pork

Noting and Explaining Jewish Pork Abstention

Swine Satire

Pork-Related Jewish Martyrdom

Pork-Related Jewish Martyrdom: A Curious Absence?

Conclusion

Chapter 3 The Hellenistic Period: Jewish Sources

Rational Food Laws

Animal as Allegory

Rationalizing Commensality Restrictions

Rephrasing Biblical Rationales

Conclusion

Chapter 4 The Hellenistic Period: The New Testament

Old Testament Food Laws in the New Testament: Gospels

Old Testament Food Laws in the New Testament: Paul

The Shared Table

Conclusion

Chapter 5 The Tannaitic Period: Jewish Sources

Pork: A Complicated Meat

The Illogical Bird’s Nest

Meat and Milk

Blood and Bugs, Fish and Fowl, Nerves and Nevelah

Rationalizing Commensality

Conclusion

Chapter 6 The Rabbinic/Patristic Period: Amoraic Sources

Origin and Meaning of the Slaughter Regulations

Blood, Meat and Milk, and the Sciatic Nerve

Why Various Animals Are Permitted or Prohibited

Swine and Signified

Fish and Fish Slaughter

Flagrant Fowl

Other Forbidden Animals

Gentile Food and Gentile Table Companions

The World to Come

Conclusion

Chapter 7 The Rabbinic/Patristic Period: Christian Sources

Reason Not to Follow the (Ritual) Law

Follow the Spirit, Not the Letter, of the Law

Allegorically Speaking

“Mirror of Human Life”: Animals as Allegories

Idol Meat, Strangled Animals, and Blood

Break Ties or Break Bread?

Conclusion

Conclusion: Food Ethic

Bibliography

Index of Pre-Modern Sources

Selected Index of Modern Scholars

Selected General Index

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