Sunday Sermonette: Be thou intolerant

Deuteronomy 12 has three basic commandments. Two of them are straightforward enough, but one of them is extremely puzzling. First, the Israelites are commanded to destroy all the shrines of other religions in the land they will enter. Not very nice, but that ' s Yahweh for you. Second, the establishment of the Temple is foreordained. No problem there. The third, however, is plain weird: the dietary laws are explicitly revoked. As long as they aren ' t at the Temple, the people are given permission to eat unclean animals. I haven ' t found any explanation for this, and it is evidently ignored. In fact, the prohibition against eating unclean animals is repeated two chapters later, then revoked again in Ch. 20. Orthodox Jews today just ignore these permissions and follow the restrictions as laid out in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. 12 “These are the statutes and ordinances which you shall be careful to do in the land which theLord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess, all the days that you live upon the earth.2 You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, upon the high mountains and upon the hills and under every green tree;3 you shall tear down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and burn their Ashe ′rim with fire; you shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy their name out of that place.4 Asherim (most transliterations omit the apostrophe) were...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs