Saturday, August 19, 2017

Meat and milk, chicken and cheese

DR. JORDAN D. ROSENBLUM: Why Chicken and Cheese Became Prohibited. But Chicken and Egg Remained Permitted (TheTorah.com).
We have seen that normative rabbinic opinion prohibiting the consumption of meat with milk develops to include fowl—at least in practice—in the broader injunction in Deuteronomy 14:21 to not cook a kid in its mother’s milk. Unlike Philo, however, the rabbis decide that this biblical law is not about compassion, mercy, or kindness, but about compliance with divine rule.[12] And since, for the rabbis, the law isn’t about compassion, mercy, or kindness, then milk and eggs are not analogous. Eggs are not “milk,” so they present no problem, unless – like Philo – one is making an ethical argument, which the rabbis are not. And further, since the rabbis don’t consider eggs to be “meat,”[13] then there is no problem with cooking, eating, or deriving benefit from eggs and milk.
A past post on the biblical texts behind the rabbinic meat-and-milk prohibition is here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.