Or pretending to. Now, though she saw through it, she knew serious answers were needed too and gave such.
Another female friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination-Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?
You have taken this out of context. The full passage says, “abomination to you”. Who is “you”? Again, the signatories to the Sinaitic Covenant, or the Jews under the Mosaic Law. “Abominations” are a certain class of sins that would pollute the land, because it was ignoring the “boundaries” God put into place. Shellfish aren’t “natural” fish with fins and scales, so not appropriate for food according to the Sinaitic Covenant.
Now, for shellfish, the boundary may have been arbitrarily ritual, applying only to Jews. This doesn't mean abomination always works this way. Sodomy as a sin against a boundary set in place by God in Eden. "Be ye fruitful and multiply" was the first equivalent of "with the power invested me by ... I hereby pronounce you man and wife".*
Actually, I am not sure some of the dietary rules didn't get there to maintain sexual morality.
Shellfish, which has neither fins nor scales, has zinc. Eels which have neither fins nor scales, have lots of fat.
Canaaneans presumably ate lots of it, in order to keep in form for orgies.
Hebrews kept pure by not eating it. Catholics kept pure by eating it on the one hand but fasting wednesdays and fridays on the other hand over centuries.**
Protestants who have no weekly fast and no kashroot have over centuries headed apostasies into divorce and contraception in marriage and sodomy and apostasy from faith into evolutionism and atheism. Priests after Vatican II not keeping the two day fast (which would be more obliging on priests and monks and nuns and religious, than on laymen) are presumably (rather than such who continued keeping it) alone among those who committed acts of sexual predation on the youngest, on underage and sometimes even outright children.
But there is another side to the rituals than just this "over securitarian" way of making sure one doesn't sin on such and such an issue (like avoiding drunkenness by teetotalism, which is not obliging normally on men - though the teetotal issue was not there in the kashroot, except for nazirs***). It is making sure in a similar way one doesn't sin by mixing too much with Pagans.
Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. My work requires that I shave. What is a proper form of atonement?
Again, unless they and you are signatories to the Sinaitic covenant you don’t have to worry about it. Once again, the command was to keep the Jews separate from the surrounding pagans, including prohibiting Jewish men from copying pagan beard styles.
Well, duh!
Christians (including ethnic Jews as well as Samarians) were being persecuted by Jews who no longer had a Temple to centre their kashroot on and who collectively more and more hated Christ°. But sometimes Jewish hatred of Christianity also took turns of seduction by familiarity and friendliness.
And Christians still keeping kashroot were likelier to fall for it.
So, the Church ended the keeping of kashroot around year 70, when God using the Romans had ended the temple, so as to prevent this.
Also some Jewish styles might not have been agreeable to Christians to begin with. I have seen someone claim the the Tunic which was Seamless was the ritual headcovering, which reaches down on shoulders, the tallit. No, it was a Tunic. Or the Latin would not have tunica. It could possibly have been a tallit katan.
Same claim says he also wore Tsitsit. I'll investigate a little here, see were we go.
Now, it is true the Latin Bible uses the same word "fimbria" about both the hem of the garment of Christ and the Tsitsin of Pharisees.
However, it is from the mere text not quite clear if Jesus just had smaller Tsitsit or the fimbria of his tunic or mantle was a hem without any Tsitsit. The bleeding woman very obviously either touched a hem or a tassle visible - but the visible tassles (at least the very visible ones) were what Christ criticised when saying Pharisees extend the fimbria of their garments (the nearest language I know to original context is Latin).
Gaffiot qualifies fimbria as either "bord de vêtement" (hem) or "frange" (tassle). The adjective fimbriatus means ("dentelé, frangé" =) "having tassles" or "having macramé", but since any textile piece that is finished has a hem, perhaps it is not surprising of the cognate adjective does not being used as having a hem.
So, if the tsitsit (which Christ would have called fimbria in Latin) were absent or present as smaller knots rather than larger tassles, in either case the woman would have touched the hem, not so easily one of the tsitsit, though that is not impossible. And ... WAIT.
Tsitsit are kraspeda in Greek. And here is one Greek version of the passages referring to Christ's mantle:
Καὶ ἰδοὺ γυνὴ αἱμορροοῦσα δώδεκα ἔτη προσελθοῦσα ὄπισθεν ἥψατο τοῦ κρασπέδου τοῦ ἱματίου αὐτοῦ:
And ... a woman with bleeding through twelve years having come forth from behind took hold of ... of what? τοῦ κρασπέδου.
Well, he wore a smaller knot or tassle, but on the mantle. And presumably in corners, like four°°. Definitely smaller than those of the Pharisees.
And it would have been taken as obvious by Jewish Christians while they kept kashroot (up to 70) and opaque to other Christians before 70 and even of Jewish origin after 70, when they no longer kept the kashroot. EITHER way, it must NOT look like what was NOT opaque, the large fimbriae of Pharisees. Which is probably the reason why Tsitsit are not seen on early Christian art of Christ as good shepherd. Or perhaps the shepherd working dress depicted in those (a short tunic, not the long one we were talking of) was anyway without Tsitsit.
It is even possible Jews have the Tsitsit on tallit katan rather than mantle now, as a recognition of Our Lord's words about showing off the Tsitsit - in which case they forgot to mention who told them.
But even relinquishing Tsitsit would be done for the purpose of not getting swamped in Jewish company, as Jews were rejecting Christ and damning themselves, just as Israelites had back when they were faithful (the times they were) taken good care (under very direct and detailed commands from God but also with some creative good will) to not get swamped in Canaanean company.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Thomas More
6-VII-2015
Credits to Lita Cosner:
CMI Feedback : Hoax ‘testimony’ and Hoax endorsement:
Is eating shellfish still an abomination?
Published: 10 July 2010(GMT+10)
http://creation.com/hoax-testimony-hoax-endorsement
Footnotes:
* As she also said beginning of next paragraph:
Homosexual behaviour was not qualified in this way “to you”; i.e. it was an objective abomination, not just one to the signatories of the Sinaitic Covenant. Certainly, homosexual acts break the ritual boundary of appropriate relationships, but they also violate the Creation ordinance of marriage as one man and one woman (Genesis 1:27, 2:24), endorsed by Christ Himself as the words of the Creator (Matthew 19:3–6).
** The two day weekly fast was probably invented by Jews in Babylon not being able to keep kashroot, since invited by Babylonians, but on the other hand wanting to keep pure. This was probably the first time the Catholic way of being just as concerns the connexion stomach genitals was tried by a larger group, and the two weekdays were later changed by Christians to Wednesday, when Our Lord was betrayed by Judas taking the money, and Friday, when Our Lord was crucified. When they came back from Babylon they continued to keep two days per week fasts and added the kashroot back also. Which was a bit more than needed, but not bad. And Catholics a bit later still added the longer fasts (after Christianity was legal : a longer fast kept by someone who would not want detection as a Christian would have been dangerous, since exhausting if done with ordinary workload).
*** Who are, under the New Covenant, replaced by monks and nuns. And yes, these either drink no wine or regulate daily quantities, in rule of St Benedict.
° Flavius Josephus, who according to TF didn't, got in trouble with other Jews.
°° Just checked, the commandment says four, and therefore Christ certainly wore such. Hence I had to strike through a sentence as erroneous. Deuteronomy 22:12. Does this predict the Gospels shall be four, like the four corners of the world? Or does this predict Jewry - wearers of tassles in four corners of garments - being involved when Gog and Magog come from four corners or the world? Note, the inhabited world is not the whole globe, all through, nor all the surface of it, but a Riemann-rectangle (not to be confused with rectangles, those being Euclidean things!) on part of the globe surface. That Riemann-rectangle has four corners, just as a real rectangle has. And it is not a rectangle, since like other Riemann-figures on globes, it has a greater sum of angles than the corresponding Euclidean figure. In this case a rectangle. Which proves the Riemann-rectangle is not a rectangle, since its angles are greater than right ones - except where the sides are also caved inwards near the angle, which is the case on some corners of the inhabited world. And we are presumably talking of a Riemann-rectangle bent so its NW corner Alaska (Riemann-rectangle being broken up in two pieces by Atlantic) and its NE corner Sakhalin nearly meet N of Pacific. Unless all Americas count as only islands, in which case the Riemann-rectangle is shorter and England with South Africa the NW and SW corners. It is certain NW corner speaks English either way, it is certain SW corner had English speaking interference (South Africa by Cecil Rhodes, Chile by CIA involved with Pinochet). Since either way the four corners of the world are involved, the commandment might actually predict both.
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