A question

[tober]

I was having a discussion about the Old Testament (and its importance to Christianity) with a religious Christian yesterday and I asked her "Why do Christians not keep kosher?" and she said "Because Jesus said we didn't have to." So, I ask you, lazywebs... is that true and, if so, is there a citation for where Jesus said that? If it's not true

Comments

[csbermack]

As I understand it, when Jesus came along, he renewed humanity's contract with God, fulfilled the old prophecies, and replaced it with getting to god through jesus.

Historically speaking, it was the resolution of a conflict between early christians, some of whom were jewish and some were not. those who were not did not want to adopt jewish traditions. Instead of running with "jesus is jewish so we are too" and face a schism, they went with "we're an all new shiny thing and the old rules don't apply, yay."

[benndragon]

Which leads to another obvious question: why do they cling so heartily to certain Old Testament rules while completely ignoring the existence of others? I mean, no one gathers at the statehouse demanding the outlaw of poly-cotton blends. . .

[csbermack]

I think your question has a flawed basis: religions are not actually about the fundamental texts. They're as much tradition and practice and local adaptation as the fundamental texts; some acknowledge this explicitly but most don't. It's important to most religions to claim they are acting according to the text because the text is a source of authority. But people don't act that way.

So it's not important or useful to notice the gotchas about how people actually practice, unless you're planning a schism or something. Periodically fundamentalists of whatever sect it is come out and say "no way man we need to get back to basics" of whatever they think their basics are... but even those are very rarely actually literal interpretation of source texts.

It's just how people are.

It's not important to them to care about poly cotton blends, so they don't, and no amount of pointing at texts is going to change that.

[geekpixie]

I care about poly cotton blends, damnit... but not in a religious context ;)

[srakkt]

I like woolens.

The poly-cotton blend thing...

[tober]

Since you mentioned it... ISTR that one comes from Deuteronomy and what it actually says that you're not supposed to wear wool and linen together. I researched it a little and the scholars seem to have essentially no idea about this one. There's a line of thought that a mixture of wool and linen is for priestly vestments only although other scholars contradict that. Is there a Talmudic or merely traditional interpretation that - as with how "no meat with the milk of its mother" expanded by interpretation/caution to "no meat with milk at all, even for meat of birds (despite that birds don't give milk)" - this law effectively forbids any textile that is a mixture of two or more materials? Are there Orthodox Jews who hold to that one?