Israel and Humanity - The dietary laws

 Share 

IX.

The dietary laws.

§ 1.

The biblical text on which rests the banning of the Noachide is located in the Genesis and read: "Every moving thing that lives will be food. Only you do not eat flesh with its soul, with his blood " Contrary to the opinion of some commentators who see in this passage that the prohibition against eating flesh cut from the body of a living animal and therefore argue that the use of blood alone is allowed Noachide, R. Hanina ben Gamaliel believes that there is a double bar, it's blood and that of the flesh and cut. . There seems no doubt that this view is much more consistent than the other to the sound exegesis. Far from being excluded from the defense made by the Mosaic prohibition of blood appears to be rather unique subject matter of precept, because it effectively implies logically that the flesh of the living animal. We also know that the blood is called in another page shift "the soul of the animal. "Keep yourself from eating blood because blood is the soul and you shall not eat the soul with the flesh ". Friedenthal is right, we believe, to write: "Maimonides shares the opinions of doctors who provide the blood of the animals living in Noachide, but the opinion of R. Hananiah ben Gamaliel, who defended him in the Talmud, was more consistent with the meaning of the text mosaic ".

This question, which is already interesting by itself, since it proves the scrupulous care with which the rabbis studying the law of the Gentiles, acquires special importance when one considers the history of Christianity. It is clear to all that this rabbinic discussion relates closely to those that occurred in the early Church regarding the prohibition of blood or the flesh of strangled animals. We are not afraid to say that Jewish tradition holds the key to this episode so instructive of Christian origins and, in general, is the existence Noachide code that explains how we have hesitated between two time solutions, also fair, however, when considered each in its respective field: full observance of the Mosaic and the substitution of another law. This law was not and could be called that Catholicism Noachism, long proclaimed by Judaism as the only compulsory for the Gentiles, and that Israel had managed to already embrace by many pagans. Only in this way so frankly opened by Hebraism, there was reason to fear a misstep that early Christians knew not how to avoid precisely. They erected a rival because of the Jewish religion that Act Catholic Judaism had carefully preserved for the Gentile. Instead of looking like the synagogue to reach agreement both legitimate forms of the divine religion, the Church asked instead that the two should prevail.

In what concerns the defense of the blood, probably as a last tribute to the law of Noah it was retained for the Gentiles by early Christianity and was only in that the faithful interpreter of Judaism if he had was untenable claim to supplant it even reducing the number of the Jews of legal observances to those he chose to maintain.

§ 2.

It is worth recalling here the difference between the law of Moses and Noah in connection with the use of the flesh of animals. For Noachide it is sufficient that the animal has ceased to live, regardless of how he was killed, because if one part of the prohibition of blood can speculate the need for cheek, even for the Gentile, the meaning of the limited ban, as we have said, the live animal, suggest both that to kill the animal, it is not necessary to shed his blood. This hypothesis appears to receive a complete confirmation of this legal provision which expressly directs the Israelites to give nebel , that is to say the dead animal or the Gentile Noachide ( gher ) .

For the Jew, this is not the death of the animal is only avoidance is imposed as a prerequisite. The difference does not deserve to be reported, if not the result of this approximation is that the Noachide that the law is more stringent. But if one considers that in the spirit of the Pharisees, the notion of a superior sanctity is still attached to the more rigorous practices and duties for them grows proportionally to the hierarchical levels, it has serious reasons to believe that this is not the idea of a higher perfection of the Jewish side and suggested that the distinction drawn between the ritual laws. This interpretation has not escaped the Talmudic doctors, too, when it was presented to them did they hastened to conclude that the Noachide, any more than Jewish, should be required to wait for death complete the animal, the rules under which it could not be more stringent than the Jewish law itself, according to this principle in the Talmud that there is nothing that is allowed and prohibited to the Israelite Gentil .

This principle however does not seem, even for the rabbis who allege that fact, an absolute since, according to them, the condition of the complete death of the animal continues to be required of Noachide that when clean animals, probably because it is the only case where we could establish a Jewish law humiliating comparison to the non-Jew. The provision does not leave, according to the same doctors , to keep all its force for unclean animals whose Gentile, unlike Israel, had the freedom to eat.

§ 3.

Before closing this study of the dietary laws Noachism, we must say a word about the benefits attributed to the Gentiles first-born priests Products agricoles.On knows that tithing existed before Moses. We see that Jacob agrees to observe, which is proof enough that someone was right and it could be that the ministers of divine worship. The silence of the Bible in this regard just shows, like so many other subjects, living tradition that runs under the text of Scripture as the sap under the bark of the tree. Doubt can not survive elsewhere to Abraham not only practice here also the duty of tithing, but offers it as a gift to that which the Bible calls the pontiff God Almighty .

Some commentators have found traces of the right of the firstborn to the tithe under the Noachism in the words that Moses prescribed the Israelite rule when it came to present the beginnings of the Temple Earth: "Thou shalt say before the LORD thy God: I removed from my house what is spent, and I gave it unto the Levite, the stranger, the orphan and the widow, according all orders which you have prescribed ". That is to say, according to these authors: it is because of our sins and those of our fathers, we must remove from our homes holy things no longer able to provide first-borns who were called to enjoy the levies and tithes , according it is written: "I have rendered impure in respect of their offerings "

Tithing and other practices before Moses that we are silent, she was part of the Noachism or was it just like those other observances as a precept of piety optional for those seeking a more perfect in a word, a work of supererogation similar to those particular rules of Hasidim to add Mosaic itself? This is a question that is difficult to determine. Without doubt the simultaneous existence of a binding law for all religious practices and additional left to the discretion of each is a fact that is found in all ages and can even be said in all places, because these two aspects of duty, whatever name they are assigned elsewhere, are consistent with human nature. But the challenge is to accurately mark, especially when it comes to antiquity, to what extent the general law and eventually begins exactly the voluntary work of piety, because the limits are as variable and the law qu'indécises as well as the crown is in a perpetual state of transformation. It certainly happened in the Gentile world before the advent of Moses that we saw going on at home since the dispersion of Israel, while the Gentiles have been recalled by the Jewish propaganda in the primitive religion of their ancestors. Regardless of Noachism them was presented as obligatory, we saw that the Gentiles, without fully embrace Judaism, voluntarily accepted a particular practice mosaic. That's what we reported about including circumcision and the Sabbath and we know that this is confirmed by the testimony of history is embodied in the formal provisions of the Talmud and Maimonides .

We believe it is instructive to see Noachides Gentiles who, while retaining their independent position vis-à-vis the Mosaic Law itself, completed the tenets of their particular law by the free practices borrowed from the religion of Israel, and that this attitude provides a valuable clue to the constitution or réogaruisation the cult of humanity returning to the providential plan.