Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace
Immunity
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Pentateuch
Genre: Lessons with Q & A
Lesson: 21
Track: 21
Dictation Name: RR172L21
Date: Early 70s
Let us worship God. Thus saith the Lord, ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. Jesus said blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Let us pray.
Oh Lord our God, we give thanks unto Thee that Thy hand is upon us for good. That in Jesus Christ Thou hast made us heirs of Thine eternal kingdom and given us the assurance that day by day, Thy mercies are new every morning. Make us truly thankful. Give us joy and life in Thee. Make us faithful in season, and out of season, that in all things we may serve Thee, rejoice in Thee, delight in Thy Word and know the certainty of Thy victory. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.
Our scripture this morning is Leviticus 11:9-28. Our subject: “Immunity.” “Immunity.” Leviticus 11:9-28.
“9 These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.
10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcasses in abomination.
12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.
13 And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray,
14 And the vulture, and the kite after his kind;
15 Every raven after his kind;
16 And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckoo, and the hawk after his kind,
17 And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl,
18 And the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle,
19 And the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.
20 All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you.”
More properly, that refers not to fowls (that’s the English word, but it isn’t proper), ah, but to insects.
“21 Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;
22 Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind and the beetle after his kind and the grasshopper after his kind.
23 But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you.
24 And for these ye shall be unclean: whosoever toucheth the carcass of them shall be unclean until the even.
25 And whosoever beareth ought of the carcass of them shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even.
26 The carcasses of every beast which divideth the hoof, and is not cloven-footed, nor cheweth the cud, are unclean unto you: every one that toucheth them shall be unclean.
27 And whatsoever goeth upon his paws, among all manner of beasts that go on all four, those are unclean unto you: whoso toucheth their carcass shall be unclean until the even.
28 And he that beareth the carcass of them shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even: they are unclean unto you.”
The first dietary laws of scripture we encounter in Genesis 1:29 and following, when all fruits and vegetables are cited as permitted foods. In Leviticus 11, all herbivorous animals are clean, which meet the two specifications of the divided hoof and chewing the cud. Both domestic and wild animals are included in this and in fact, ten such are named in Deuteronomy 14:4-5.
All birds of prey are forbidden. The rabbis held moreover, that what came out of an unclean thing is unclean, so that the eggs of forbidden birds are held to be unclean also.
With respect to fish, the requirement is fins and scales. Here, there are divisions between the orthodox and the conservative Jews in England and in the United States. The sturgeon is banned in England, but not in America, where both the sturgeon and the swordfish are permitted by American rabbis.
Four kinds of insects, all locusts, are permitted. This was, and still is in many parts of the world, desert fare or common food for the very poor. Some people reported that they see the type of immense locust in that part of the world salted, strung on strings and sold in the marketplace to the poor. The bees, by the way, are not a clean insect, but unclean. But its honey is a transferred nectar, and hence is clean.
Not all portions of clean animals can be used as food. The abdominal fat and the blood in particular are banned. Ezekiel 33:25 equates the eating of blood with idolatry and murder, and the following verse with adultery. The rabbis taught that obedience to dietary laws had to be theological. It was the common saying centuries ago, rather than saying, ‘I do not like the flesh of swine,’ it is much better to say, ‘I like it, but must abstain, seeing the Torah has forbidden it.’
Usually, over the centuries, the Jews were over-strict in their observation of dietary laws. The relaxation of these laws is relatively recent. Thus, in the late 9th, early 10th century, Daniel Al-Cumesis held, “In general, he who fears God must keep away from all things subject to doubt as to their permissibility.” Some rabbis saw physical and spiritual consequences in eating these forbidden foods, including the blunting of the mind, the diminishing of the intellectual powers. Maimonides gave exclusively hygienic explanation to these laws, as did others, in the medieval era. It was easy for them to do so, because the facts bore this out.
The simple fact is, that although the sanitary conditions until this century, of the Jews, ah, usually were far worse than of their Christian neighbors. They had a remarkable immunity to a variety of epidemics, rarely contracting things like the Black Death or Cholera or other plagues that regularly had swept Europe and the Middle East. This immunity continues among the Orthodox Jews to this day and the Seventh-Day Adventists who observe the dietary laws. It is ironic that it was in the latter part of the 19th century that Reformed Jews began to abandon the dietary laws. They called them “unspiritual and debasing.” As recently as 1968, John D. Reiner restated this old argument, calling attention to the so-called superiority of Reformed Jews because they did not observe these dietary laws, and he insisted again in the old argument, these are “debasing and unspiritual and unsuitable to true religion.” I don’t know what poor health has to do with true religion, but some people seem to think it does. I recall in the last decade, one Christian college, which instituted as a result of the insistence of the doctor who was head of the School of Nursing, the Biblical dietary requirement. The health of the students improved. However, the Professor of Theology, on Dispensational grounds, protested against these dietary rules. And someone told him, ‘obviously you are willing to get sick for the glory of God!’
But at any rate, about the very time that Reformed Jews began to abandon them, an American Presbyterian scholar, Samuel Henry Kellogg, who died in 1899, found as a result of his studies, that the dietary laws had a remarkable propensity for giving immunity. He called attention to their validity in the better health and longevity of Orthodox Jews. I quote in part from his statement, “In this matter, we are not left to guessing. The facts are before the world and are undisputed. Even so long ago as the days when the Plague was desolating Europe, the Jews so universally escaped infection that by this, their exemption, the popular suspicion was excited into fury and they were accused of causing the fearful mortality among their Gentile neighbors by poisoning the wells and springs. In our own day in the recent Cholera epidemic in Italy, the Jews enjoyed almost absolute immunity, at least from fatal attack.” Kellogg cited the data concerning the mean average in Jewish and non-Jewish lifespans in Prussia, in Hungary, in Croatia, Germany and elsewhere, and the data was markedly in favor of the Jews, despite, as he said, the fact that the Jews are poor and live under more unfavorable sanitary conditions than their Gentile neighbors. [0:12:27.1)
Now these facts have been known for some time. The ironic fact is that with all the modern emphasis on health foods, no attention has been paid to the Biblical Laws of diet. The fact that more than a few experts have been aware of the implications of that diet for some generations indicates a remarkable kind of perversity. Very early also, in the early centuries, Jews added intelligent methods to the care and preparation of permitted foods. As A.Kingsly Golver has written, “To render meat kosher, both of mammal and fowl, it must be put in cold water for an hour, then and hour in salt, and finally be set on an earthen vessel, having holes for a drain. Lastly, it must undergo another washing in cold water.” The historical data makes clear, as does very recent research, that forbidden foods have a very destructive effect on the immunity system of our bodies. They are a form of slow poison. They do gradually, over a period of many years, what AIDS does very quickly, namely, to weaken if not finally to destroy, the immunity system.
Now the word ‘abomination’ that is used repeatedly in this chapter, is used nowhere else in the Bible, although we have two or three other words in the Hebrew which are also translated as ‘abomination.’ But the particular word is used only here, and a more modern translation would be ‘filth.’ So that, what the text is saying, these particular meats are filth, as far as diet is concerned.
Our separation from filth to holiness and to God’s service not only makes us useful to the Lord, but gives us health and life in His service. Gordon Wyham, and English scholar, in going over verses 24-45 of this chapter, called attention to four particular aspects thereof:
1. It is dead animals which pollute man. So that many of the animals which are unclean for dietary purposes are clean as working animals, as pets, and so on.
2. All dead animals, unless killed according to the Law, are unclean. If a clean animal dies a natural death or is wrongly butchered, it is unclean; it cannot be eaten or handled.
3. Such an uncleanness as a man contracts, is temporary, lasting only until evening of the day it occurs. And almost all forms of uncleanness can be eliminated by bathing.
4. Household articles become unclean on contact with unclean carcasses and must be washed.
All forms of classification are organization of knowledge—so that when we see any system of classification, we have to say, ‘Why this classification? Why was it so organized?’ Now a great deal of the scientific classification of our time rests on older systems of classification, but in part it also represents an evolutionary framework. It is valid if Evolution is valid, so that most classification represents a framework for a body of knowledge. And it is possible to reclassify the animal world or plant world in several different ways. We must recognize that fact, because we have been locked-in to one method of classification in our day—that imposed upon us by Evolutionary thinking. And while it has a certain degree of validity because it embodies pre-Evolutionary requirements, it insists that its rendition of classification is the only one that exists.
I’d like to read a passage from a Christian scholar, C.D. Ginsberg, who gave us a summary of the definitions of clean and unclean fish as established in the era of the second temple. “First, all fish with scales have invariably also, fins. But fish which have fins, have not always scales. Any fish therefore, or even a piece of one exposed by itself for sale in the market which exhibits scales, may be eaten, for it is to be taken for granted, then, that it had fins or that the fins cannot be seen because of their extraordinary smallness. But on the other hand, a fish with fins may exist without scales and hence is unclean. Second, clean fish have a complete vertebral column. But the unclean simply have single joints united by a gelatinous cord. To the former belong the soft fins, or the salmon and trout, with capelin and grayling, the herring, the anchovy and sardine, the pike and carp families, the carp, the haddock, the sole, the turbot and the plaice, the spiny fins as the perch, the mackerel and the tunny. Ah, to the latter, these spiny fins belong the shark tribe, the sturgeons with their caviar, the lamprey and the nine-eyed eel. The head of clean fish is more or less broad, while that of the unclean kind is more or less pointed at the end, as the eel, the mammalian species and so on. Fourth, the swimming bladder of clean fishes is rounded at one end, pointed at the other, whilst that of the unclean fishes is either rounded or pointed at both extremities alike. It is an illusion to this law that we are told in the parable of the fisherman, which is taken from Jewish life, that when they drew to shore the net with every kind of fish, the fisherman sat down to examine the clean and the unclean, and gather the good (that is the clean) into the vessels, but cast the bad (the unclean) way, as in Matthew 13:48. The Orthodox Jew to this day strictly observe these regulations and abhor eating those fishes which are enumerated unto the four above-named criteria of ‘not clean.’ It is moreover, to be remarked, that fishes without scales are still regarded in Egypt as unwholesome, and that the Romans would not permit them to be offered in sacrifice.”
Now, such a system of classification is a good one. It serves its purposes: to organize a body of knowledge for a particular kind of purpose. We have suffered in this century, because classification has been denied to anything that is not Evolutionary, which means that we have taken many, many distinctions and blurred them, because they do not fit a preconceived mold.
Now, such a division as that of the second temple had as its purpose, man’s holiness and health, with a result in sanctification and immunity. The fact that recent studies show that obedience to God’s dietary laws strengthens our immunities should not blind us to the fact that this may be a new discovery to us, or to many in our time, but it is the ancient affirmation to God’s Law; namely, that obedience to His rules, whether we understand them or not, gives health, prosperity, and fertility. We read in Deuteronomy 7:11-15,
“11 Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which I command thee this day, to do them.
12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the Lord thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers:
13 And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee.
14 Thou shalt be blessed above all people: there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle.
15 And the Lord will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them, that hate thee.”
Let us pray.
Thy Word, oh Lord is truth, and Thy Word is health and life unto us. Make us zealous in Thy Word, and faithful in all things unto Thee. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.
Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes, Otto.
[Otto] I was wonder... I wonder what percentage of the Jewish people are still orthodox.
[Rushdoony] In this country, it’s a relatively small percentage, but a growing one. What is happening is that, ah, the liberal Jew is progressively, ah, leaving entirely and less and less inclined to maintain his identity. There’s no purpose in maintaining it. The Orthodox Jews do have losses, but at the same time they have gains in that some liberal Jews return to orthodoxy. Also, they do have a higher birth rate, and it’s the only segment of the Jewish community in the United States and in Western Europe where the population is not increasing—ah, decreasing—dramatically. The percentage of Jews in the Western world is decreasing, very dramatically, because, like the liberal neighbors they have among the Gentiles, they have a very, very low birth rate.
Any other questions? Yes.
[Audience] There’s a difference between the dietary laws that you’ve been describing and the kosher diet.
[Rushdoony] Ah, the difference between the Biblical dietary laws and the kosher diet is a real one. The strictly kosher diet goes to great extremes to avoid any semblance of contamination, to the point that certain vessels are entirely limited to certain things, far beyond anything the Bible requires. They will not mingle milk and meat in any form. There are a number of things like that that they do in their zeal to prevent any even remote transgression of the requirements.
For example, the, ah, regulation, “Though shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk. It’s used to bar any comingling in any form of meat and milk, so they have felt it’s better to err on the side of severity.
[Audience] Isn’t that diet mostly chicken?
[Rushdoony] No, ah, they do use chicken very heavily, and, there’s no question about it that this is the case, partly because in Central Europe, where they lived, they had chicken {?} and that sort of thing, so that it was very easy for them to keep chicken. As a result, chicken became an important item over the centuries of the Jewish diet.
Any further questions or comments? Well if not, let us bow our heads in prayer.
Oh Lord our God, we know Thy Word is truth, and Thy Word is given to us for our life and our health in Thee. Make us ever-joyful in Thy Word, faithful. And grant, Lord, that we may be made strong and healthy, clear-minded in Thy service, to the end that all things may be brought into captivity to Thee. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.