Ritually Pure and Impure Food

(Deuteronomy 14:1 - 14:21)
"As you are the people of Jehovah your god, do not cut yourself or shave your heads in mourning the dead.  You are a people sacred to Jehovah your god and Jehovah has chosen you to be his cherished possession from out of all the nations of the world.

"You must not eat any detestable animals that are ritually impure.  The animals that you may eat are: cattle, sheep, and goats, the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and mountain sheep.  You may eat animals that have completely cloven hooves and chew the cud, but if an animal does not have both, it must not be eaten.  Thus you may not eat the camel, the rabbit, or the hyrax, because, although they chew the cud, they do not have cloven hooves and, therefore, are ritually impure.  And you may not eat the pig, because, although it has cloven hooves, it does not chew the cud and as such is ritually impure.  You must not eat the meat of these animals or even have contact with their carcasses.

"Of all the marine creatures, you may eat anything that has both fins and scales.  However, those that do not have both you may not eat, for they are ritually impure.

"You may eat any bird that is ritually pure.  These are the kinds of birds you may not eat: eagles, hawks, vultures, buzzards, kites, ravens, seagulls, ostriches, owls, cormorants, storks, herons, hoopoes, and bats.  And you may not eat swarming, winged insects; they are ritually impure to you.  But you may eat any winged creature that is ritually pure.

"You must not eat any animal that has died naturally.  You may, however, give it to an alien that lives among you; he may eat it.  Or you may sell it to a foreigner.  You are a people sacred to Jehovah your god: do not boil a goat kid in its mother's milk."

Notes
1. Not relating it to the contents that follow, Moses touches briefly upon proper mourning customs.  To cut one's self or to shave the head (literally, “make baldness between the eyes”), are foreign customs, one assumes, and deemed unseemly for the children of Jehovah.  All the rules and regulations set down here are specifically targeted for the Israelites, the chosen people of Jehovah, and are not binding upon or even suggested for the rest of the world's people.  Jehovah gives laws to his chosen people, but gives nothing (save, on occasion, destruction) to the rest of the people he supposedly created.

2. The original reasons for prohibiting the consumption of certain types of meat was doubtless hygienic.  Since ancient peoples (and apparently Jehovah) had no knowledge of micro-organisms or of pathology, a cause had to be found why certain foods were healthy and others would make one sick.  The cloven hoof-chewing the cud maxim would have been an acceptable and understandable explanation for the ignorant.  That such provisions and prohibitions are still meticulously followed as a requisite of religiosity is a stunning example of the survival of primitivism.

3. The list of prohibited birds refers to specific species, but there is no agreement on translation, with each version of the Bible giving a different list.  There being no reason to favor one list as being more accurate than another, I have simplified it and merely listed the type of birds probably referred to.   --- Interesting the bat was thought of as a bird; one would think the most primitive naturalist would see that the fact that it does not lay eggs, has fur, and feeds on milk makes it an animal, a mammal, not a feathered, egg-laying bird.  But we have already seen that scientific knowledge is not the Israelites' strong point.

4. The birds whose meat is prohibited as food were mainly raptors and scavengers, meat eaters.  This suggests that the reason for the prohibition was perhaps this: if you eat the meat of a buzzard you are also eating the meat of some ritually impure animal the buzzard may have fed upon. ---  Also, these birds are not particularly good eating anyway.  When was the last time you had fried vulture, hawk wings, roast owl, eagle stew, or even seagull soup?

5. Not boiling a kid in his mother's milk is a wonderful proverb, repeated elsewhere, but its relevancy here escapes one.