A nonbeliever's SECOND reading of the Bible

A nonbeliever's SECOND reading of the Bible
Hunc tu caveto.
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Monday, February 22, 2010


Deuteronomy, Chapter 14 is instructions on how to create an ancient Israelite restaurant.

But first - a bit on how restaurant staff should look. Sorry emo people, God doesn't want you to cut yourself. And you guys and gals with uni-brows, you can't shave them! And you DEFINITELY can't do neither for the recently deceased!

Another important distinction to make about the Bible is to not take its scientific claims seriously, like in 14:7 where Moses instructs the Israelites not to eat "the hare, and the coney: for they chew the cud."

Just an FYI, rabbits don't chew their cud. They eat, poop, and then eat their poop, which is what they digest.

So yes, no rabbits on the menu! And no sea creatures that do not have fins or scales (i.e. mussels and clams). And there's a whole litany of birds that will not be on the menu; they're mainly predatorial birds like eagles and pelicans; but there's also those pesky swans and bats. Bats!?! Yes, the ancient Israelites had no concept of grouping animals by mammalian characteristics. At least, there methodology wasn't sophisticated enough to tell a flying mammal from any other bird. To them, animals were grouped by flying and nonflying, divided hooves or not, sea creatures with scales and fins and those that didn't; and 'clean' and 'unclean'.

The ancient Israelites didn't necessarily think these animals were dirty. By 'unclean', they were either talking about whether the animals was fit for animal sacrifice; and that is usually determined on whether the animals fit neatly into their primitive methodology of categorizing the world.

Also on the menu is roadkill, or any dead animal found laying around. Ancient Israelites couldn't eat these things because they weren't ritualistically cleaned when the animal died (they weren't 'kosher'), but they were instructed to have no qualms about selling this to outsiders. I wonder, if there was such thing as an Ancient Israelite restaurant, would the waiter tell the infidel guests that the food they were eaten was from an animal they found lying in the street?

Oh yes, and don't ask for a baby goat to be boiled in its mother's milk. They don't do that!

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