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| Chapter XX.—Why choice of meats was prescribed.
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Chapter XX.—Why choice of meats was
prescribed.
“Moreover, you
were commanded to abstain from certain kinds of food, in order that you
might keep God before your eyes while you ate and drank, seeing that you
were prone and very ready to depart from His knowledge, as Moses also
affirms: ‘The people ate and drank, and rose up to
play.’1994
And again: ‘Jacob
ate, and was satisfied, and waxed fat; and he who was beloved kicked: he
waxed fat, he grew thick, he was enlarged, and he forsook God who had
made him.’1995
For it was told you by
Moses in the book of Genesis, that God granted to Noah, being a just man,
to eat of every animal, but not of flesh with the blood, which is
dead.”1996
| 1996
νεκριμαῖον, or
“dieth of itself;” com. reading was ἐκριμαῖον, which
was supposed to be derived from ἐκρίπτω, and to
mean “which ought to be cast out:” the above was suggested by
H. Stephanus. | And as he was ready to say, “as the green
herbs,” I anticipated him: “Why do you not receive this
statement, ‘as the green herbs,’ in the sense in which it was
given by God, to wit, that just as God has granted the herbs for
sustenance to man, even so has He given the animals for the diet of
flesh? But, you say, a distinction was laid down thereafter to Noah,
because we do not eat certain herbs. As you interpret it, the thing is
incredible. And first I shall not occupy myself with this, though able to
say and to hold that every vegetable is food, and fit to be eaten. But
although we discriminate between green herbs, not eating all, we refrain
from eating some, not because they are common or unclean, but because
they are bitter, or deadly, or thorny. But we lay hands on and take of
all herbs which are sweet, very nourishing and good, whether they are
marine or land plants. Thus also God by the mouth of Moses commanded you
to abstain from unclean and improper1997
| 1997 ἄὸικος καὶ παράνομος.
| and violent animals: when, moreover, though you were eating manna
in the desert, and were seeing all those wondrous acts wrought for you by
God, you made and worshipped the golden calf.1998
| 1998 “The reasoning of St. Justin is not
quite clear to interpreters. As we abstain from some herbs, not because
they are forbidden by law, but because they are deadly; so the law of
abstinence from improper and violent animals was imposed not on Noah, but
on you as a yoke on account of your sins.”—Maranus. | Hence he
cries continually, and justly, ‘They are foolish children, in whom
is no faith.’1999
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