Food and Faith: The Ethical Foundations of the Biblical Diet Laws

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The biblical diet laws are most often thought of as health measures dictated by the primitive hygienic conditions of the ancient world. However, this theory cannot explain even one of the laws’ three basic rules. First, the prohibition against ingesting blood is incumbent on all people, not just the Israelites (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 3). Second, animals that are permitted as food—to take quadrupeds as an example—are limited to three domesticated species: sheep, goats and cattle (the seven permitted wild species are largely unidentifiable; see Deuteronomy 14:4–5) and there is no restriction whatsoever in the vegetable and fruit kingdom—not even in regard to unhealthy or poisonous plants. Third, even those animals that are permitted must be slaughtered according to a divinely prescribed method (Deuteronomy 12:21; see below). These laws can only be explained by an ethical hypothesis: They comprise a system whereby man will not be brutalized by killing animals for their flesh.

The obvious starting point in discussing these laws is the biblical assumption that man was created a vegetarian. Adam and Eve are told: “I give you every seed-bearing plant … and every tree; they shall be yours for food” (Genesis 1:28–29). Man, however, is not satisfied with his role as steward of paradise. He wants to be the active agent of his own destiny. He eats the forbidden fruit, for which he is punished with mortality and labor. And this new man is carnivorously inclined—he insists on bringing death to living things to gratify his appetite and need. The sons of Noah are permitted flesh, but not without reservation: “You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-blood in it” (Genesis 9:4). Man’s craving for meat is to be indulged, but he must abstain from ingesting the blood. For blood is life (Leviticus 17:14; Deuteronomy 12:23); it must be drained from the flesh and restored to its creator.

The importance of this blood prohibition cannot be overestimated. It is the only biblical commandment (other than homicide) binding on all human beings (Genesis 9:4–6). It is therefore more important than the Ten Commandments, which are enjoined solely upon Israel. This fact, in itself, leads one to suspect that it is based on an ethical value that, in the Bible’s view, is indispensable for a viable society.

This suspicion is reinforced by the second law: the limitation of permitted animal food to a few species—in the case of quadrupeds, to those that have cloven hoofs and chew the cud (Leviticus 11:3; Deuteronomy 14:6). These two criteria, it must be admitted, make no sense. Their purpose, however, is clarified by their result. Access to the animal kingdom is effectively confined to three herbivorous species: sheep, goats and cattle. The animal world is barred to the Israelite except for these three species, which he domesticates for his survival needs: milk, wool, skins—and meat.

The third diet law reads: “You may slaughter … as I commanded you” (Deuteronomy 12:21). Deuteronomy, in demanding the centralization of the cult, concedes to the individual Israelite the right to profane slaughter (overruling Leviticus 17:3–5), but only on condition that the slaughter is performed in the divinely authorized way. That way is nowhere explicit in Scripture, but it is encapsuled in the verb that the Priestly texts consistently use in regard to sacrificial slaughter, sahat, “to slit the throat.” According to rabbinic literature, the verb refers to the slaughtering technique practiced in the Temple, whose purpose is to render the animal unconscious with minimal suffering (which, in effect, prohibits the hunting of game).

This cursory examination of the biblical diet laws discloses their rationale. Humans will have meat for food and will kill to get it. The Bible has therefore worked out a system of restrictions whereby humans may satiate their lust for animal flesh and not be dehumanized in the process. These laws, therefore, teach the Israelite reverence for life by prohibiting the ingestion of life (identified with blood); by reducing the choice of flesh to a few animals; and by limiting the slaughter of even these few permitted animals to a humane method—thereby acknowledging that bringing death to living things is a concession of God’s grace and not a privilege of human whim.

This rationale for the food laws, though not spelled out in the Bible, is implied by the one word that occurs more often with the diet laws than in any other context: qadosh, “holy.” It occurs in all four sources that comprise the Bible^a in those sections where prohibited foods are enumerated. For example “Make yourselves holy … that you be holy … for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44; see Exodus 22:39; Leviticus 11:44–45 and 20:22–26; Deuteronomy 14:4–21). As I suggested in my previous column (“Seeing the Ethical Within the Ritual,” BR 08:04), holiness 010symbolized the forces of life. The diet laws, therefore, inculcate reverence for life by restricting access to animal life as a source of food.

Strikingly, the ancient Mesopotamians developed a similar rationale. The Sumerian myth of Lugalbanda relates that he is the first to make the transition from vegetarian to carnivore. He is only able to assuage his guilt by inviting the high gods of the Sumerian pantheon to share his meal, presumably to sanction the slaughter and consumption of his first animal. It is the innovation of the biblical lawmakers, however, to have converted this guilt into an ethical imperative.¹

In this limited space I can only give you my conclusions. Many questions are left unanswered: Why did the Priestly legislators insist that all meat for the table must initially be offered on the altar as a sacrifice (Leviticus 17:3–5)? In what way does the blood on the altar “ransom your lives” (Leviticus 17:11)? What is the meaning of the thrice-repeated prohibition, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (Exodus 23:19, 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21)? These questions and others are fully explored in my commentary on Leviticus.²

The biblical diet laws are most often thought of as health measures dictated by the primitive hygienic conditions of the ancient world. However, this theory cannot explain even one of the laws’ three basic rules. First, the prohibition against ingesting blood is incumbent on all people, not just the Israelites (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 3). Second, animals that are permitted as food—to take quadrupeds as an example—are limited to three domesticated species: sheep, goats and cattle (the seven permitted wild species are largely unidentifiable; see Deuteronomy 14:4–5) and there is no restriction whatsoever in the vegetable and fruit kingdom—not even […]