It doesn’t have to. Scientists have made the claim.

Just pointing out God’s *capability* to offer miraculous blessings to Jews who kept the diet doesn’t negate the possibility of natural benefits as well. So therefore, Jordan’s argument isn’t any more biblical or theological than mine is, and the question remains a scientific one.

//And you can’t say that uncleanliness is a health issue but cleanliness isn’t!//

Sure I can. I am saying that health-wise, the animals WERE unclean and always have been unclean, even now. A long time ago, God recognized this intrinsic nature of the animals, and he therefore used their natural unhealthfulness to illustrate his theological truths. His designation of these animals as “unclean” was not arbitrary. Once Jesus came and fulfilled the law, however, this theological/moral aspect of their uncleanness faded away. But that didn’t change the original fact that they were unhealthful.

Granted, nowadays we have technology and medicine that can better deal with issues such as trichinosis. In a sense, you could I guess argue that nothing is truly unclean just because we have medicine to cure all ills. But that doesn’t really change the intrinsic nature of the animals. And Jesus’s declaration of all foods as clean shouldn’t be construed to mean that all diets are equally healthy. That just was not his point at all.

//Jordan says elsewhere, in a lecture, that the Law was quite easy to keep for the Jews. Israelites weren’t ordinarily going to eat pig or horse or other unclean things.//

Even if this were true, it would support my claim — because it would mean that ancient peoples naturally recognized the unhealthfulness of certain foods.

Where does the Bible ever say that these prohibitions *were* for health purposes. And you can’t say that uncleanliness is a health issue but cleanliness isn’t! The clean/unclean issue regarding food was pedagogical, a test of obedience, with a lot of important symbolic significances attached.

It is interesting that the Israelites lived in Goshen because Egyptians considered shepherds (and sheep) unclean, in fact, an abomination. Was that a health issue?

I think it requires a rather crummy view of God to think that he gave the Israelites a bunch of complicated, difficult, and painful rules if those rules were largely arbitrary and weren’t even designed to benefit them. And if he wants to make this type of argument, the burden of persuasion is on him to make a scientific argument that the mosaic rituals had no health purposes. The Bible itself says no such thing.

What exactly Jesus said about quarantining lepers (he said nothing), or about marrying your sister (he said nothing), or about defecating (he said nothing) is not particularly relevant. Jesus’s words about the cleanliness of animals were about morality, not health.

Following Jordan, I wouldn’t say God sanctified existing customs, well, not in the way that most modern expositors think. God is always first, always original. The list of clean animals goes back to earlier Scripture, Abrahamic and Noahic. So they were pre-existing, but they were still from God, and so not actual accommodations as such.

All joking aside, I think this is a far better way to think about the dietary laws than most. I was struck, however, as I studied Mark 7:14-23, by the centrality of the “all foods clean” in the chiasm:
* A. what comes out defiles a person (14-18a)
** B. outside in? no! (18b-19a)
*** C. thus he declared all foods clean (19b)
** B’ inside out? yes! (20-22)
* A’ what comes out defiles a person (23)’
I was struck by the similarity to Mt 5/Mk 10 (talking about Dt 24). The feeling I get, is that the some parts of the Mosaic law were accommodations to existing Israelite practices. Everett Fox’s Torah says as much for the lists of clean and unclean animals. God took their existing customs and sanctified them. They don’t apply to non-Jews and they don’t apply after the Jewish covenant era.