Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
About
Christology
Israel/Palestine
Publications
KermitZarley.com
Archives
Categories
- Angels
- Blog Description
- Book Reviews
- Christian Living
  - Unconditional Love?
- Christianity
- Christology
  - Deity of Christ?
  - Holy Spirit
  - Incarnation?
  - My Change
  - Trinity?
- Church History
- Current Events
- War on Terrorism
- Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
- Eschatology
- Ezekiel 38-39
- Last Empire
- Primitive Weapons
- Film Reviews
- God
- Golf
  - Billy Graham
  - Karsten Solheim
  - Lee Trevino
  - Major Championship Winners
  - Masters
  - Purpose
  - Ryder Cup
- Gospel Harmonization
- Interview
- Islam
- Jesus
- Literary Announcements
- Monotheism
- My Books
  - The Restitution of Jesus Christ
- Old Testament
- Politics
- Society of Biblical Literature
- The Bible
- Trinitarianism
- Uncategorized
FREE NEWSLETTER

Home
Progressive Christian
Religion News
More About The Apostle Paul Not Abolishing Moses’ Food Laws

More About The Apostle Paul Not Abolishing Moses’ Food Laws

Last updated on: April 28, 2025 at 11:53 am by Kermit Zarley

0 Comments

More About The Apostle Paul Not Abolishing Moses’ Food Laws 2025-04-28T11:53:23-07:00 Kermit Zarley

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Sometimes an author finishes a book and gets it published, then sometime later the author realizes something that should have been put in that book. Maybe it was an additional piece of research for a nonfiction book or some tweak to a plot in a fiction book. But what’s done is done, right? Well, that the way it it used to be. But not any more.

Book publishing is much different now, due to our advancing technological age. Books aren’t just printed, but also digital. The internet changed book publishing big time, making possible eBooks. More recently, there is POD, meaning Print On Demand. That has changed book publishing too. The old model of print runs, storing a bunch of printed books in warehouses, distributors selling those books to brick-and-store retail outlets, and half of all those fiction print books get destroyed because they’re not selling–that model is still around, but it’s dwindling due to POD, in which books can be printed one at a time.

Amazon.com, which started out selling only books, but now sells everything, has affected the book business a lot. Half of all books now purchased in the U.S. are bought online from amazon.com. And guess how those individual orders are filled? A lot of those books are produced one-at-a-time with POD.

One of the many improvements Amazon made to the book business was to make it easier for authors to get published. Most people who tried to become an author just couldn’t get published. But now, with Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), anyone can publish a book, and it doesn’t even cost one red cent! The kicker is that marketing becomes that much more critical. That is, it’s up to the KDP author to promote his or her book(s) to get sales. With traditional publishing, it is mostly up to the publisher to do the promoting of books.

Another interesting point is that when an author finishes a book and it gets published with KDP, that author can add that later idea to the book. You just make the change on the KDP website, hit the button that publishes it, and presto–the book is changed. Now, that change in the manuscript can be issued as a new version of the eBook or even the printed volume because of POD.

Two months into COVID-19, I wrote a piece and posted it on my blog saying the apostle Paul did not abolish Moses food laws. Those laws are in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 in the Bible’s Old Testament, which is whole so-called Jewish Bible. It’s about God giving Moses the Torah and including instructions about what animal meats the Hebrew people could eat and not eat. Those land animals allowed to eat are called “clean,” such as cattle, sheep, goats, deer, etc. Those land animals prohibited are called “unclean,” which include pigs, horses, camels, etc. The measure applied is that land animals that divide the hoof and chew the cud are “clean,” and those that don’t are “unclean.” Not much is said about why this division, and nothing is said about what will happen if the Hebrews eat unclean.

Ever since antiquity, there has been a huge amount of debate about why God gave Moses this instructions upon which Jews largely base their so-called “kosher diet.” When Christianity came along, church fathers began opposing eating kosher. And to do so, they would interpret certain passages of the New Testament, which became part of the Christian Bible, in support of their opposition to a kosher diet. Thus, they taught that Jesus “declared all foods clean,” in Mark 7.19b, and Paul said of all meat that “nothing is unclean in itself” (Romans 14.14, cf. v. 20). I think the Mark 7.19b text is not translated correctly and that it is part of Jesus’ saying, instead of being translated as a parenthetical explanation by the author, as here. And the Romans text must be interpreted in its context.

This has been the view that Christian scholars have taught ever since, even to this day, that both Jesus, Paul, and Peter abolished the Mosaic food laws about animals being clean or unclean. I had never been comfortable with this interpretation because of only one very important biblical text–Matthew 5.17. At the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, laid down in his so-called Sermon on Mount, after the beatitudes he prefaced his remaining remarks by saying, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” Why do I say this is so important? According to the New Testament gospels, Jewish religious authorities were constantly trying to trap Jesus, a Torah expert, in his words in order to accuse him of teaching against Torah and thereby get him killed for blasphemy. If he taught against Moses’ food laws, they surely would have brought to his attention and mentioned it at his hearing before the Sanhedrin, both of which never happened showing that he never taught against it.

When COVID-19 emerged, I noticed that the nine leading pandemic diseases in the world ever since the Spanish Flu were corona viruses caused by animals which the Mosaic food laws deem unclean. I then began to wonder if there was a connection.

Then I quickly wrote a book about this, comparing Moses’ food laws to zoonotic diseases, especially COVID-19. I published it in mid-summer of 2020. I admit that it has an ambitious title, which is Moses Predicted COVID-19. I was restricted in doing research since libraries were closed and governments imposed lock down measures to fight this pandemic that has now killed over one million Americans.

About two months ago, I noticed a New Testament text that supports my thesis in this book, and I wished I would have mentioned it. But guess what, because I published this book with Amazon’s KDP (my first time to do this), I could now easily edit the manuscript and republish it, which I did.

What NT text is it? The book of Acts informs that the apostle Paul had been arrested by Roman authorities because of Jews bringing accusations against him. There came a day when Paul stood before “Felix the governor” of Judea (Acts 23.24; xd. 24.1-2). It was Roman law that defendants were permitted to speak in defense of themselves before the governing authority (Acts 25.16). In Paul’s statement he said, “I worship the God of our ancestors, believing everything laid down according to the law or written in the prophets” (Acts 24.14 NRSV). And he subsequently added, “I have in no way committed an offense against the law of the Jews” (25.8). For Paul to say this, he certainly had not taught against the Mosaic dietary laws in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, that is, to abolish them.

So, I easily added a paragraph about Acts 24.14 in my already published book to further strengthen my thesis. It’s one of the advantages of our advancing technological age.

Christianity

Health

The Bible

Clean and Unclean Animals

Previous Post

June 26, 2022

Xander Schauffele Wins Travelers Championship

Next Post

June 27, 2022 Supreme Court Upholds Coach's Public Prayers. But Does Justice Jesus?

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Glen, you seem to be advocating a preterist viewpoint, with which I disagree." I'm a ..."

Kermit Zarley

Family Estrangement Versus Honoring Father and ..."

"THESIS is a SCRIPTURE QUOTE.“Remember the predictions foretold by the holy prophets and by the ..."

glen smith

Family Estrangement Versus Honoring Father and ..."

"How are they going to answer it. They don't have unlimited financial resources. They're trying ..."

Kermit Zarley

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Getting Much Worse

"...but isn't that an important question to answer?"

Harold Porter

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Getting Much Worse

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Angels Billy Graham Blog Description Book Reviews Christian Living Christianity Christology Church History Current Events Deity of Christ? Disarmament Eschatology Evangelicalism Ezekiel 38-39 Film Reviews God Golf Gospel Harmonization Health History Holy Spirit Incarnation? Interview Islam Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Jesus Last Empire Literary Announcements Major Championship Winners Masters Monotheism My Books New Testament Old Testament Politics Primitive Weapons Ryder Cup Science Society of Biblical Literature The Bible The Restitution of Jesus Christ Trinitarianism Trinity? Uncategorized Unconditional Love? War on Terrorism

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: The feast of Purim commemorates the Jewish people's deliverance from Haman's plot.

Select your answer to see how you score.

TRUE FALSE

Books by This Author Books by Kermit Zarley Blog

See All Titles »