The Law divided food into clean and unclean: land animals had to both part the hoof and chew the cud; water creatures needed fins and scales; blood was never to be eaten. By Jesus’ day these rules, “Biblical and rabbinical regulations concerning forbidden food,” as the Jewish Encyclopedia defines them, were a daily marker of Jewish identity. That is why Peter could say he had “never eaten anything that is common and unclean,” and why his rooftop vision, every kind of animal, “kill and eat”, staggered him: the food line had come to mark the line between Jew and Gentile, which is exactly what the vision overturned (Acts 10:28). Mark adds of Jesus’ teaching on inward defilement: “This he said, making all meats clean.”
Daily life in Bible times
Clean & unclean food
Food & meals
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Every cited verse, in full. Tap any reference to open it in the reader.
- Leviticus 11:3bsb
You may eat any animal that has a split hoof completely divided and that chews the cud.
- Acts 10:9bsb
The next day at about the sixth hour, as the men were approaching the city on their journey, Peter went up on the roof to pray.
- Mark 7:18bsb
“Are you still so dull?” He asked. “Do you not understand? Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile him,
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