Birds'

The Bible does not provide a simple means of identifying clean birds, as it does for other creatures. Through a careful comparison of all the unclean birds with those shown to be clean, it is apparent that all clean birds have six distinct features that are not, in every case, common to unclean birds. These features can be used for determining the status of birds not mentioned in the Bible.

The six features for clean birds are: (1) They have a crop or craw; (2) they have a gizzard with a double lining; (3) their feet have an elongated middle toe and a hind toe; (4) their toes are spread so that they have three front toes on one side of a perch and the hind toe on the opposite side; (5) they cannot be birds of prey; (6) they catch food thrown to them while they are in the air but they first bring it to the ground and divide it, before eating it. Unclean birds eat food in the air or tear it apart on the ground and eat as they tear.

Fish and Sea Creatures

Leviticus 11:1-47 and Deuteronomy 14:1-29 explain that only fish with fins and scales are clean for food. This eliminates all types of shellfish, including crabs, crayfish, shrimp, lobsters, clams, oysters, and other mussels, eels, squids and octopuses. Many of these creatures lack fins and must remain on the bottom to feed.

Some sea creatures have fins but no scales. Examples are sharks, whales, catfish and many others.

Land Animals

As with sea creatures, there are two basic criteria for determining how clean and unclean land animals are distinguished from one another.

Clean animals “part the hoof…and chew the cud.” The scripture says that they are “cloven-footed.” Pigs are cloven-footed, but do not chew the cud. The hyrax (a type of rodent) chews the cud but has toes and claws.

Disease and Filth

We have seen that God has called certain creatures abominable or detestable. He does this for a reason!

Consider the nature of mice and rats. They mark their trail to a food source with urine droplets carrying a deadly pathogen known as Toxoplasmosis. It only reproduces in felines. It remains dormant in the bodies of many mammals—especially rodents—until they are eaten by humans. This pathogen kills, blinds or causes crippling brain damage to unborn babies.

Estimates show that sixty-five to eighty percent of the world’s population have contracted it by middle age. God knew this could happen and prohibited keeping a vessel of food touched by any mouse, mole, or creeping thing. The Israelites were to break any vessel that was touched and throw away all of its contents (Lev. 11:33-34). Yet statistics today show that we systematically tolerate small amounts of mouse droppings in our food supply.

Rabbits carry a less common disease called Tularemia (rabbit fever). Those who eat and handle rabbits are susceptible to contracting this sometimes fatal disease.

Clams often rest at the mouths of rivers and ingest sewage flowing past them. People who eat such clams are eating many types of concentrated toxins that often result in death to those who do this.

God’s laws work. Mankind could avoid much illness if His instructions were followed and His warnings heeded!

Scavengers

Most of the creatures identified as unclean are actually scavengers. God designed them to be “garbage collectors”—a kind of “environmental cleanup crew.” These scavengers are capable of ingesting and processing tremendous amounts of poison and waste in short periods of time.

Some scavengers, such as catfish, crabs and lobsters, are bottom-feeders. Others, like vultures and crows, eat dead, rotting flesh. This assists in the breakdown of organic matter and bacteria, so that they do not remain toxic or dangerous to the environment.

Pigs can eat rattlesnakes and have often been used to clear areas where golf courses are planned. Anything a pig eats turns to flesh in approximately six hours. Cows require twenty-four or more. Hogs actually have specially designed pus ducts located above their hooves to regularly drain poisons from their bodies. They carry a number of viruses and diseases, including trichina worms, which, if ingested by humans, can cause the painful and sometimes fatal disease known as Trichinosis. Also, pig flesh is high in cholesterol, which is one of the first things doctors tell patients with coronary artery disease to avoid in their diets.

Misguided mankind has domesticated pigs for food and put them in pigsties, literally forcing them to wallow in their own filth. This can cause their pus ducts to become plugged. Thus, those people who eat them ingest even more poison than God ever intended even filthy pigs to carry!

While many scavengers are far from beautiful, these creatures actually demonstrate, in their own way, the perfect planning and creative genius of God!

What About Blood And Fat?

God strictly prohibits the consumption of the blood of any flesh (Lev. 17:10-14). This prohibition is emphasized throughout the Bible (Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25). God says that the life is in the blood. It carries away various toxins, viruses and bacteria for elimination.

God also forbids eating fat (Lev. 3:17; 7:23). Animals and humans store poisons and viruses in their fat. When people eat fat, they are ingesting additional poisons. (The fat of clean fowl is not expressly forbidden. The fat or oil of clean fish is not mentioned.)

We should be aware of one side note. While the expression “to eat the fat” is sometimes used in the Bible (Gen. 45:18; Neh. 8:10), it has a figurative meaning. It means to enjoy the best of something good. This statement does not counter God’s instruction in other places.

Did Christ Permit All Meats to be Eaten?

Many Bible critics cite Mark 7:1-15 as license from Christ to eat all kinds of meat. Did Christ do away with the prohibition of unclean meats? Did He say that He had “purged all meats”?

Ancient Israel’s dietary laws were well known by the Jews of Christ’s time. The self-righteous Pharisees criticized Christ’s disciples for eating bread without first washing their hands (Mk 7:2). Christ’s response was to severely reprimand them for their rejection of God’s commandments (Mk 7:6-13). He then summoned the crowd to hear what He was about to say (Mk 7:14). He told them that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile the man, but what comes out of a man can (Mk 7:15-23).

Many read Mk 7:19 and conclude that one can eat any kind of meat because Christ has “purged all meats.” Most people neither carefully read Mk 7:19, nor read past it as they should—and thereby miss the entire point of Christ’s instruction! Even Christ’s own disciples did not immediately understand His teaching (Mk 7:17, 18). Matthew’s account shows that Peter asked Him to explain it (Matt. 15:15).

Christ clearly was emphasizing that it is the evil things that come out of people—from within, out of their mouth and heart—that defile them. He went on to explain that to eat with unwashed hands does not spiritually defile anyone (Matt. 15:20; Mark 7:20-23). This entire account was written to address the futility of the Pharisees’ elaborate handwashing before meals!

When privately explaining the parable to His disciples, Christ gave a frank description of the human body’s normal elimination of any accidentally ingested dirt. He said that such dirt “goes out into the draught”—the sewer. There was never any Old Testament command to avoid eating food with dirty hands. Christ used this occasion to condemn a man-made tradition that had been elevated above the importance of getting rid of evil, rotten attitudes and thoughts that are inside all human beings, thus defiling them!

Notice that, in Luke 11:38, Christ’s Pharisee host was astonished that He sat to dine without first washing His hands. Christ showed that it is much more important to control what words come out of our mouths, and what thoughts come out of our minds, than to worry about dirty hands (Mark 7:20-23).

The Mark 7:1-37 and Matthew 15:1-39 accounts of this event have been misrepresented. Many false teachers over the last 19 centuries have convinced their followers that Christ annulled the long-understood distinction between clean and unclean meats!

Let’s examine more closely how they have done this!

The King James Version of the Bible renders Mark 7:18, 19 as: “…Do you not perceive, that…it…goes out into the draught, purging all meats?” The Revised Standard Version inserts three extra wordsafter “draught,”—the added words are printed in italics because, as the Revisers’ Preface explains, they “did not appear to be necessarily involved in the Greek.” The revisers also changed the punctuation at this point, thereby producing a completely different statement! They altered it to read: “‘...it...goes out into the draught?’ This he said, making all meats clean.”

The new rendering of this verse is a perversion of Christ’s words to His disciples! It changes them into a categorical statement, presented, almost casually, in this and later versions, as if it were an explanatory comment added by Mark. It is a deceptive attempt to establish a completely new understanding of what God has made clean. The phrasing of these seven words changes the entire meaning of what Christ actually said. This account is twisted into a license to eat everything from aardvarks to zebras!

This does not seem to be an innocent error in translation, but rather appears to be a blatant, dishonest forgery! Many post-1885 versions of the New Testament perpetuate this myth, several adding their own elaborations into Mark 7:19. Be careful with modern versions and translations, especially any that are primarily paraphrases designed for easy reading.

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