The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World

by Jordan D. Rosenblum

In The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World Jordan D. Rosenblum explores how cultures critique and defend their religious food practices. In particular he focuses on how ancient Jews defended the kosher laws, or kashrut, and how ancient Greeks, Romans, and early Christians critiqued these practices. As the kosher laws are first encountered in the Hebrew Bible, this study is rooted in ancient biblical interpretation. It explores how commentators in antiquity understood, applied, altered, innovated upon, and contemporized biblical dietary regulations. He shows that these differing interpretations do not exist within a vacuum; rather, they are informed by a variety of motives, including theological, moral, political, social, and financial considerations. In analyzing these ancient conversations about culture and cuisine, he dissects three rhetorical strategies deployed when justifying various interpretations of ancient Jewish dietary regulations: reason, revelation, and allegory. Finally, Rosenblum reflects upon wider, contemporary debates about food ethics.

204 pages, Hardcover

Published December 15, 2016

Reviews

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why do Jews keep kosher? This book does not pretend to have a definitive answer to that question, nor does it pretend to survey 3500 years' worth of possible answers. Instead, it focuses on three groups of intellectuals:
*Hellenistic Jewish thinkers such as Philo of Alexandria, who believed that Jewish dietary laws were based on both revelation and reason- that is, that they were Divine commands that were also supported as a means of helping people achieve self-control. Philo also discussed more specific justifications for individual rules. For example, he argued that the Torah forbade Jews from eating predators to convey the message that "it is not fitting conduct for the sufferers to retaliate it on the wrongdoers, lest the savage passion of anger should turn them unawares into beasts." He wrote that the Torah requires Jews to eat fish with fins and scales because these fish can swim againast the tide, and Jews should do the same. Similarly, the Letter of Aristeas (written in the 2nd c. BCE) suggests that Jews eat ruminant beasts to encourage them to ruminate on God.
*The rabbis of the Mishna and Talmud, who (with some exceptions) assumed that these laws were Divine commands with no rational justification, and focused their energies on interpreting these laws.
*Early Christian commentators, who argued that these laws were merely allegories, but were no longer binding post-Jesus.

[FL · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned of this book's author through his appearance in an online Jewish Food festival---as I wasn't able to attend his session, I figured I'd try to read or at least skim his book instead. And it was very worthwhile, as the book answers, to quote the Haggadah's tale of the simple child, some questions I didn't know how to ask.

The broader context for this book can be set up through a few quick quips. It's often said that Jewish laws come from the Hebrew Bible, and the frankly archaic dietary laws especially so. But at the same time, modern Judaism is emphatically not identical to whatever religion Jesus would've allegedly practiced. So, something about Jewish laws has to do with a tradition lying outside the Bible.

This book, then, provides a historical outline of how Jewish dietary laws were seen by both Jews and non-Jews before the Middle Ages, from the Bible onwards. Both Jews and gentiles invented both rationalizations for why the laws existed, as well as sociological descriptions of their effects, in ways that were never present in the Biblical text itself, but that are much closer to what we now understand the laws as "being." In effect, then, the text also serves as an outline, at least for non-specialists, of who was bothering to even be aware of Jewish customs and laws at the time!

[Tim Shaw]

Prof. Rosenblum of the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison gives a thorough overview from what are written texts / traditions / interpretations of certain Proof-Material and Original-Prohibitions of what can be considered KOSHER / Clean and what is Forbidden / unclean. There are 7 chapters : Hebrew Bible (Leviticus 11 but more besides); Greek & Roman sources (on Jews and pork); the Hellenistic period (rational food laws, animal as allegory, more); Hellenistic New Testament discussion of Jesus' logoi about eating, in particular (GospMark chapter 7:14 - 23) in addition St. Paul (I Cor. 10:23 - 31) also "open commensality";
the Tannaitic period Jewish sources; the Rabbinic/Patristic Period both (Amoraic sources) and (Christian Sources: such as Epistle of Barnabas, Clement of Alexandria's PAIDAGOGOS section 2.1). This kind of text-based / tradition of discussion-debate begs certain questions as far as accomodation-compromises that obviously would happen when food is scarce, unavailable, everyone who has not starved is on the brink of collapse. A better consideration might also have been a long where he eventually ends up talking about Veganism / Vegetarianism and an ETHIC of Life. 5*

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many people find the biblical dietary laws puzzling. Is there a reason the Israelites should restrict their diets? Why is this one particular group told not to eat foods that are readily available to others? Is there any logical rationale for these commandments? In his fascinating “The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World” (Cambridge University Press), Jordan D. Rosenblum explores what a wide variety of ancient commentators – Greco-Roman, Jewish and Christian – have to say about the subject.
See the rest of my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...