On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Matthew Hunter wrote: > Consider one of the most ancient (known) bodies of "tradition" in > our history, that of Judaism. There are many elements of the > Jewish tradition that are wholly practical; I shall put forth > kosher food as an excellent example. Nowadays, we can look at > the traditions concerning kosher food and understand that food > prepared in that specific way was less prone to disease or > spoilage than foods prepared in other ways. (I don't know enough > about kosher to give any really good examples). I think this is arguable - most things appear (from a secular perspective) to be considered unclean because they don't fit someone's category of what's natural in terms of scales or foot structure - maybe pigs with trichinosis were worth avoiding, and maybe milk has some bad chemical reaction with beef on wooden plates, I don't know - or squeamishness about blood. To me the greatest advantage of these laws was that it set the community apart from their neighbors, as did circumcision. This separation probably brought a lot of persecution but a lot of cohesion as well. On the other hand, maybe G*d thinks it's bad to eat rabbits and scallops and llamas, as well as golden retrievers, and maybe G*d wasn't clear about swordfish because He hadn't thought about it.