II. PRECEPTS RESPECTING PURITY IN DIET AND PERSON. CHAPTERS XI TO XV. A. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. CHAPTER XI. PRELIMINARY ESSAY. ON THE DIETARY LAWS OF THE HEBREWS. Scattered throughout the Pentateuch, and occasionally in other portions of the Hebrew Canon, are found dietary rules and suggestions not recommended as measures of expediency from considerations of health, but invested with the solemnity of religious observances and the binding power of moral duties. The dietary laws appear, therefore, to be intimately allied to the system of Hebrew theology; indeed both derive light from each other; and it is highly instructive to trace the connection into which spiritual ideas were brought with practical life, and thus to prove how, by wonderful consistency and energy of mind, the distinctive doctrines of "Mosaism" were made a reality by their concrete embodiment in the ordinary course of existence. In surveying this subject, the following questions are forced upon our attention. How far did the ideas prompt the enactments, and to what extent did practice precede the formation of general principles? Did the latter modify the customs, or did the customs influence the teaching? It will, therefore, be necessary to follow the dietary laws from their origin to their complete development in the Hebrew code, and not only to weigh each ordinance as it is set forth in the Pentateuch, but also to search for its reason, B deeper import, and religious hearing; and above all to pursue its history from the beginning down to the time when it was finally fixed and adopted. Under these different aspects the commands will be viewed in the following treatise; they will, moreover, be carried on through their Talmudic and Rabbinical expansions, and will be compared with analogous laws or habits of the nations of antiquity and of modern times. I. THE PROHIBITION OF BLOOD. The connection between blood and health or life was discovered at an early period; to shed blood and to destroy life soon became equivalent terms; and the maxim was currently and almost proverbially adopted, that "The blood is the soul" or "the life"1. From remote ages, therefore, a reluctance was felt to eat the blood of animals, especially as a certain cosmic relation was supposed to exist between man and the animal kingdom'. When, fatigued by their pursuit of the defeated Philistines, the Hebrews killed cattle and ate the meat with the blood, Saul reproached them with "sinning against the Lord”, and guarded against a repetition of the offence3. Nay, according to a thoughtful narrative embodied in the Pentateuch, man, in the primitive time of his innocence, content with vegetables, and unwilling to disturb the harmony of nature by the agonies of death, abstained entirely from animal food; but when, depraved and corrupted by sin, he was, after the Deluge, permitted to kill animals for his subsistence as unreservedly as he had before been permitted to eat all produce of the soil, he was still commanded, "But flesh with its soul, which is its blood, you shall not eat". So firmly did the teachers of the nation cling to this theory, and so anxious were they to enforce the awe of blood, that they fostered and disseminated the ideal hope, that, as once in the time of Paradise, so also in the age of the Messiah, when peace shall again pervade the world, no creature will bleed and die in the service of man, and that even the animals themselves now fierce and sanguinary, will "eat grass like the ox". It may be that they deemed, besides, the eating of blood detrimental to gentle ness and humanity', injurious to health, and, if taken largely, even dangerous to life; nor is it improbable that they saw with disgust the nefarious abuse made of it by heathens for the sealing of oaths and treaties, or for seeking the alliance and aid of demons either by drinking the blood itself, the supposed nourishment of evil spirits, or by consuming the sacrificial meal near the blood, as did the Zabii, who believed that they fraternised with the demons by eating with them at the same table 10: all these reasons combined may have operated to confirm men of intelligence in their hostility to blood as food. But their efforts remained long unsuccessful; not only was their injunction unheeded in the time of Saul, as has been observed; but even in so late an age as that of Ezekiel, we hear the bitter and well-deserved complaint, Thus says the Lord God, You eat with the blood 11, and lift up your eyes towards your idols, and shed blood" 12. Undaunted and by no means discouraged, because too well accustomed to hard struggles with the people's obstinacy, the legislators continued and increased their exertions. For, in the course of time, another motive for the sanctity of blood was added, a motive more powerful and commanding 7 Comp. Philo, De Concup. c. 10; Maimon. Mor. Nev. III. 49; Lipmann, Sepher Nitsachon on Lev. XVII. 10, 11, "If any one eats the blood of an animal, his rational soul takes the nature of that animal"; Bechai on Lev. XVII, fol. 46a ed. 1864, "Our nature should be mild and compassionate, and not cruel, but eating blood would engender in our souls coarseness and ferocity;" therefore the Rabbins made Satan the originator of the custom of eating blood (see Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth. II. 620); comp. also Trusen, Sitten, Gebräuche und Krankheiten der alten Hebräer, p. 77, "Bei dem Verbot des Blutes lag die moralische Absicht zu Grunde, dass das Blut als die Quintessenz und das eigentliche Substrat des thierischen Lebens dasselbe unmittelbar in das menschliche Leben übertrüge und den Menschen zum Thiere mache." Comp. Galen. De Aliment. Facult. III. 23, δύσπεπτον δ' ἐστὶ καὶ περ μετωματικὸν ἅπαν αἷμα, καθ ̓ ὃν ἂν αὐτὸ τρόπον σκευάσῃ τις; and Mish. Macc. III. 15, p - U "UDIU DIT. Similarly the early Greeks seem to have loathed the brains of animals, though some ancient writers thought they abstained from them as being "the seat of nearly all sensation" (dtà τὸ τὰς αἰσθήσεις ἁπάσας ἐν αὐτῷ εἶναι); Athen. II. 72; Plut. Sympos. VII. Ix. 3. 9 Comp. Comm. on Levit. I. 123, 128, 231 note 19. When a Scythian had killed the first enemy, he drank his blood (Herod. IV. 64). 10 Maim. Mor. Nev. III. 46; comp. c. 41; Wisd. XII. 5; Kimchi on 1 Sam. חק הזובחים לשדים שאוכלים סביב 32 .XIV BRÓ 17319 178 ; Schöttgen, Hor. .על הדם האכלי 11 12 Ezek. XXXIII. 25; comp. Lev. XIX. 26. Maimonides (Mor. Nev. III. 46) translates aan by bonn nå, questionably, "You shall not eat near the blood, assembling round it for idolatrous purposes" (see supra). than any that had before been felt or urged: the blood was made the centre of sacrifice; it was viewed as the indispensable means of atonement 1; representing the life of the animal, it was shed and sprinkled for the sinner's life which was thereby saved; it embodied the leading principle of "life for life", on which the holiest sacrifices were. founded; the soul, which God had breathed into the animal, was given back to Him in the place of the worshipper's soul, which His stern justice had a right to demand. Yet these views did not prevail at once, nor so decidedly. The Deuteronomist, writing towards the end of the Hebrew commonwealth, still adhered essentially to the old conception sanctioned by the traditions of preceding centuries. Permitting the slaughter of animals for food at any place where Israelites might reside, he simply repeated what might as well have been enjoined in the patriarchal time of Noah, "Only be firm (p) that thou eat not the blood, for the blood is the life, and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh; thou shalt not eat it; thou shalt pour it upon the earth as water" 2: his exhortation "to be firm" not less than the persuasive and encouraging promise which he added, "Thou shalt not eat it, that it may be well with thee and with thy children after thee, when thou doest what is right in the eyes of the Lord” 3, prove sufficiently how feeble was his hope of seeing even then the command scrupulously obeyed. Again, in speaking of the sacrifices at the national Sanctuary, he could not well avoid alluding to the disposal of the blood of the altar, but the allusion is so general and indistinct, that it is difficult to discover in it the notion of atonement: "And thou shalt offer thy burnt-offering, the flesh and the blood, upon the altar of the Lord thy God; and the blood of the sacrifices shall be poured upon the altar of the Lord thy God, and thou shalt eat the flesh". How great is the contrast, if we turn to the injunctions of the later Levitical legislator 5! He resembles the previous writer in nothing but the rigour with which he denounces the heinousness of eating blood; he almost rises to vehemence, which again and again seeks vent in menaces like 'these uttered in the name of God, "Whosoever... eats any blood, I will set My face against that soul... and cut him off among his people"; and he repeats both the command and the threat so often and so energetically, see Comm. on ; אין כפרה אלא בדם 1 Lev. I. 124 note 4. 2 Deut. XII. 23, 24; comp. vers. 15, 16; XV. 22, 23. 3 Deuter. XII. 25. 4 Ibid. ver. 27. 5 Lev. XVII. 10-14; see the explanations in loc. that it is evident how far the practice was from being eradicated even at his time; and there are indeed clear proofs of its prevalence at much later periods. But in every other respect he markedly differs from his predecessor. Venturing in his demands to the extreme point of insisting, that every beast required for food shall be killed at the common Sanctuary as a sacrifice, in order that the fat may be burnt and the blood sprinkled on the altar, and branding the slaughtering of such animals at any other place as nothing less than murder certain to be punished by excision, he views the blood mainly in its connection with the altar, and in reference to its power of expiation: "The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul" 9. Hence the blood of the victim is simply called "the food of the Lord" 10. For the atoning attributes of all sacrifices, and of the expiatory offerings in particular, were indeed of later growth, but when once conceived, they soon rose to most prominent importance in the sacrificial system 11. Again, the Deuteronomist requires nothing more than that the blood of animals killed at home for food, shall "be poured on the earth like water", as he repeatedly states 12; but the Levitical writer demands that the blood of beasts of the field hunted or caught, and the blood of birds, after having been shed on the ground, shall be "covered with dust" 13, so that it may be removed from the sight of man, and its trace be concealed, since blood exposed to view "cries to heaven" 14. And lastly, the Deuteronomist addresses the prohibition to Lev. XVII. 10, 14; VII. 27; comp. XIX. 26. 7 See Comm. on Levit. I. 189 note 12, the quotation from Philo, De Concup. c. 10. Penalty of death would certainly have been contrary to the spirit of the Pentateuch; but "excision" () is hardly a lenient punishment; it is spiritual and civil death, or utter exclusion from the holy community: it was menaced with reference to blood and fat, not because partaking of either "does not do much harm", nor "because men feel no strong temptation in that respect" (so Maim. Mor. Nev. III. 41). 8 Lev. XVII. 3-9; see Comm. on Lev. I. p. 39. .כי הדם הוא בנפש יכפר 9 10, Ezek. XLIV. 7, 15. 11 See Comm. on Lev. I. pp. 251 sqq. 12 Deut. XII. 16, 24; XV. 23; DOM PON; comp. Talm. Pesach. 22 b. 13 Lev. XVII. 13; comp. Talm. Chull. 83b, and the Rabbinical regulations in Yor. Deah § 28. 14 Comp. Gen. IV. 10, 11; Isai. XXI. 26; Ezek. XXIV. 7, 8; Job XVI. 18; Comm. on Lev. I. p. 39. Maimonides supposes that the reason of this command also was "to prevent the Israelites from assembling round the blood in order to hold meals." |