Why the Old Law Forbade Certain Foods: Clean and Unclean Animals, Literal and Figurative Reasons

Orientation #

He opens mid-reply and works straight through ad primum to ad quintum; he notes partway that he “broke up properly” at the division between the literal and the figurative reasons. He remarks near the start: “we now just got to do this 11 times and show that these things are true.” The previous class read the objections that open this article.

The class, in order #

1. The body of the article: the twofold reason (“were especially deputed for the divine worship”) #

• The Jewish people were specially deputed for divine worship, and among them especially the priests. As other things applied to divine worship must have something special about them pertaining to honour of the cult, so too the way of life of that people, and especially the priests, must have special features, spiritual or bodily.
• But the worship of the law figured the mystery of Christ — “Omnia in figura contingebant illis” (1 Cor 10): all things happened to them in a figure.
• Therefore the reasons for these observances can be assigned in two ways: (1) according to their suitability for divine worship; (2) according as they figure something of the life of Christ.
• Aside: the text is heavy with footnotes.

2. Reply 1, first distinction: two kinds of uncleanness (“twofold is pollution or uncleanliness”) #

• Objection was from Timothy: every creature of God is good — even the pig, because it is a creature of God. (A student adds our Lord’s “don’t cast your pearls before swine.”)
• Two uncleannesses in the law: (a) of guilt, by which the soul is polluted; (b) of a certain corruption, by which the body is stained.
• As to the first: no genus of food is unclean by nature or can stain a man — Matthew 15, “not what enters into the mouth stains a man, but what proceeds from the mouth”; this is expounded of sins.
• But foods can stain per accidens: as against obedience or a vow, eaten with exceeding concupiscence, or giving inclination to lust — on account of which some abstain from wine and flesh. Example: Dominic carrying barrels of wine over the mountain to the sisters, himself drinking none.

3. Reply 1, literal reason A: bodily corruption in the flesh itself (“some fleshes of animals have a what uncleanness”) #

Causes of the bodily uncleanness:

1. Nourished on unclean things — the pig (porcus, whence “pork”).
2. Living uncleanly, dwelling under the earth — moles and mice; whence they contract a certain fetidness.
3. Superfluous humidity or dryness, generating corrupt humours in human bodies. Hence prohibited: animals with solid/uncloven hoof (terrestrial, earthy); animals with many divisions in the feet (many toes), which are exceedingly choleric and hot, their flesh very dry — as the lion; rapacious birds, exceedingly dry; some aquatic birds, excessively humid; and fish without [fins/scales] such as eels, from excessive moisture.

• Conceded: ruminating animals with cloven hoof (cow, goat, sheep), because their humours are well digested and their complexion medium — neither too hot (signified by horns) nor exceedingly earthly (which the uncloven hoof would show). Fish that are drier, having fins and scales (squamae): these are of temperate complexion. Birds that are more temperate: chickens, partridge.
• Asides: his grandson Miles, told the cat was “my friend,” answered “Your friend eats mice” — “Touché.” A long exchange on calamari and octopus (octopus tough, some squid species tender). Hamlet on Polonius “in the dust, to which he is like.” St. Teresa of Avila: “Fasting is fasting, and partridge is partridge.” Cat food flavoured chicken — why not mice?

4. Reply 1, literal reasons B and C: idolatry and diligence about food (“another reason was in the detesting of idolatry”) #

• Second reason: detestation of idolatry. The Gentiles, especially the Egyptians among whom they were nourished, immolated these prohibited animals to their idols, or used them for magic/malice. The animals conceded to the Jews for eating the Gentiles did not eat, but worshipped as gods. Example: the sacred cows of India. Aside: Chick-fil-A’s cows saying “eat chicken”; their closing on Sunday and their trouble with the government, after which people went out of their way to buy from them.
• Third reason: taking away exceeding diligence about foods — so they conceded animals that can easily and promptly be had.

5. Reply 1, the general prohibitions: blood, fat, nerve (“generally, was prohibited to them the eating of blood”) #

• Blood: (a) to avoid cruelty — that they might detest the shedding of human blood; (b) to avoid the rite of idolatry, since it was their custom to gather around blood and eat in honour of idols, to whom blood was regarded as most acceptable. Hence the Lord commanded blood be shed out and covered with earth.
• Hence also the prohibition of animals suffocated or strangled: their blood is not separated from the flesh; and because in such a death animals are much afflicted, and the Lord wished to withdraw them from cruelty toward men by exercising piety even toward beasts. Student discussion: kosher slaughter, slitting the throat and hanging upside down to drain; the same with rabbits, chickens, deer.
• Fat: idolaters ate it in honour of their gods; also it was burnt in honour of God; also blood and fat do not generate good nourishment — a cause brought in by Rabbi Moses (“maybe he’s the guy behind these things”).
• Nerve: the cause is given in Genesis 32 — the sons of Israel should not eat the nerve, because Jacob’s was touched and he became stupefied (he walked with a limp after the angel struck him).
• Aside: Homer’s descriptions of preparing meals.

6. Reply 1, the figurative reason: signification, not nature (“both by nature is clean”) #

• The figurative reason: all these prohibited animals designate sins, and were prohibited in figure of them.
• Augustine, Contra Faustum: ask about the pig and the lamb — both are clean by nature, since every creature of God is good; but by a certain signifying the lamb is clean and the pig unclean. Comparison: the words “foolish” and “wise” — both clean by nature as sound, letters, syllables; unclean or clean in their signification. He flags this: “That’s like a subtle thing.”
• Ruminating with split hoof is clean in signifying: the cloven hoof signifies the distinction of the two testaments, or Father and Son, or the two natures in Christ, or the discretion of good and bad — “That’s pretty stretched, isn’t it?” Rumination signifies meditation on the scriptures and healthy understanding of them — “that’s the one that would make some sense to me.” Whoever lacks either is unclean.
• Fish with fins and scales: fins signify the sublime life or contemplation, scales the hard/ascetic life (aspera) — both necessary for spiritual cleanness. Aside: “per aspera ad astra.”

7. The catalogue of unclean birds and what each signifies (“in the eagle, which flies high, pride is prohibited”) #

Read through in order, each bird with its sin:

• Eagle — flies highest: pride. (He notes the eagle is taken in a good sense in the gospel, “where the body is, there the eagles shall be gathered”; and that Shakespeare’s history plays use birds flying high for pride.)
• Griffin — hostile to horses and men: cruelty in those having power. Students supply that it is a mythical beast, part eagle part lion, which went after knights’ horses; he notes the oddity of Jews being forbidden to eat griffins.
• Osprey (haliaeetus), feeding on little birds: those who molest the poor.
• Kite, using insidious tricks: the fraudulent.
• Vulture, following an army expecting the dead: those who take profit from deaths and seditions of men, wanting others to die or fight so they may gain — like those who make money selling weapons. Asides: vultures circling Ron McArthur lagging behind on a mountain climb; a student’s dog Habibi stuck on a cliff with two vultures overhead.
• Raven, which once sent from the ark did not return (unlike the dove): those blackened with pleasures, or lacking good affection.
• Ostrich (struthio), a bird that cannot fly but stays on the earth: those who fight [for/against] God and implicate themselves in secular business.
• Night owl (nycticorax), sharp-sighted at night, blind by day: those astute in temporal things, dull in spiritual.
• Gull (larus), flying in air and swimming in water: those who wish to fly by contemplation yet live in the waters of pleasures.
• Hawk (accipiter), serving men to hunt: those who serve the powerful in despoiling others.
• Owl (bubo), seeking food at night and hiding by day: the lustful, hot in their nocturnal works.
• Cormorant (mergulus), whose nature is to stay under the waves: those who immerse themselves in the waters of delights (gluttony).
• Ibis, an African bird with a long beak feeding on serpents, perhaps the same as the stork (ciconia): the envious, refreshed with the evils of others as with serpents.
• Swan (cygnus), of bright colour and long neck, drawing food from the deep: men who under an exterior candour of justice seek earthly things.
• Bittern (onocrotalus), which first puts food into [its pouch] and afterwards sends it into the stomach: avarice, gathering the necessities of life with immoderate solicitude.
• Coot / porphyrio: one foot webbed for swimming, one cloven for walking; it drinks only when it bites, since it dips all its food in water. It signifies those who wish nothing by another’s judgment, but only what is touched by the water of their own will. A footnote is read: Thomas’s description tallies with the coot or moorhen, though he is mistaken about the feet differing from one another.
• Heron, vulgarly called the falcon: those whose feet are swift to shed blood.
• Plover (caradrius), a talkative bird: the loquacious.
• Hoopoe (upupa), nesting in dung and whose song sounds like groaning: the sadness of the age, which in unclean men works death.
• Bat, flying above the earth: those endowed with a particular science who savour only earthly things — “See, Aristotle compares our mind to that.”
• Among quadrupeds/insects, only those with longer hind legs, accustomed to leap, are conceded; those more adhering to the earth are prohibited — signifying those who abuse the teaching of the four evangelists and are not elevated on high.
• In blood, fat and nerve are understood to be prohibited cruelty, pleasure, and strength for sinning.

8. Reply 2: why plants were not restricted (“the eating of flesh was introduced after the flood”) #

• Eating of plants was allowed before the flood; eating of flesh introduced after it — Genesis 9, “I have given you all flesh as the green herbs.”
• Reason: eating things growing from the earth pertains to a certain simplicity of life, eating of flesh to delight and curiosity of living. (He applies it: “So eat that octopus — that’s curiosity. I don’t want to be that curious.”)
• The earth germinates plants spontaneously or with little effort, in great abundance; but nourishing or capturing animals takes much work. The Lord, wishing to reduce the people to a simpler life, prohibited many animals but no plants. Or because animals were immolated to idols, but not things growing from the earth — though a student notes grain offerings in the old law.
• Asides: botanist vs. zoologist — nicer to cut up plants; students eating sandwiches in dissection lab; roasting frogs’ legs on a Bunsen burner.

9. Reply 4: the kid boiled in its mother’s milk (“it pertains to a certain cruelty”) #

• Though the kid does not sense how its flesh is cooked, in the soul of the one cooking it there is a certain cruelty, if the milk given the mother for its nourishment is used for the consumption of its flesh.
• Or: the Gentiles in their solemnities cooked kids in milk for offering or eating; hence Exodus 23 places the precept right after the solemnities to be celebrated.
• Figurative reason: it prefigured that Christ, who is called a kid in the likeness of the flesh of sin, was not to be “cooked” by the Jews in the milk of his mother, that is, in the time of his infancy. Or: the kid, i.e. the sinner, is not to be cooked in his mother’s milk [i.e. not condemned in his beginnings].
• Discussion: Fr. Hardon on why Christ had a hidden life of thirty years in Nazareth — so he could reach an age to preach, since otherwise they would kill him, as they tried at his coming into the world. Students ask when the flight into Egypt fell, since he was at the presentation on the fortieth day; St. Thomas takes it up. A long retelling of the children’s book Dance in the Desert: animals dance for the Christ child — the lion first, then a unicorn that bows, touches its horn to the ground and lays its head in the Blessed Mother’s lap; a wounded pelican whose blood drips, at whom the Christ child looks gravely; last the dragon, which prostrates. The pelican, said to feed its young with blood from its own breast, appears in Hamlet, in Thomas’s Adoro te devote, and on tabernacles and vessels.

10. Reply 5: the fruit of the first three years (“the first fruits, which were called fortunate”) #

• The Gentiles offered first fruits to the gods, or burnt them for magic; therefore the fruit of the first three years was commanded to be held unclean.
• Within three years almost all trees produce fruit, whether by seeding or by grafting; rarely is it otherwise with stones or encased seeds, which fruit more slowly — but the law regards what happens more frequently. The fruit of the fourth year, the first of the clean, is offered to God, and from the fifth year it is eaten. (He checks this against students’ experience of planting fruit trees.)
• Figurative reason: it prefigured that after the three states of the law — Abraham to David; to the transmigration to Babylon; and up to Christ — Christ would be offered to God, who is the fruit of the law. Or: the first of our works ought to be suspect to us on account of their imperfection.
• He takes up the last point pastorally: a woman’s lapsed son who has begun the rosary daily — “well, that’s a good start.” Then stories of a convert who resolved to say the rosary a week and by the third or fourth day knew he had to become Catholic; a friend who carried a rosary without devotion until suddenly it became her favourite prayer; a man whose wife and daughter were killed in a crash, who kept hearing “Go to Mary” and was ordained at fifty-five; a convert widower with children and grandchildren who became a priest; a Wall Street lawyer who entered seminary at sixty and became a tireless priest visiting hospitals and jails.

(Reply 3 he calls “short” and “easy” and passes over to reach the fourth; it is not read out in the transcript.)

His words #

• “Figured” / “figurative reason” — the second kind of reason, according as the observance signifies something of the life of Christ, against the first, “suitability for the divine worship.”
• “Omnia in figura contingebant illis” — all things happened to them in a figure (1 Cor 10).
• “Pollution or uncleanliness” — twofold: of guilt (soul polluted) and of corruption (body stained); inquinare, to stain.
• “Per accidens” — the way food can stain the soul: against obedience or vow, from concupiscence, or inclining to lust.
• “Complexion” — the humoural balance of a flesh: “medium complexion,” “temperate complexion” [ed.: temperament].
• Ungula — hoof or horn; findentia ungulam, cloven-hoofed; “solid” / uncloven hoof.
• Squamae — scales; with fins, the mark of clean fish.
• “Rumination” — signifies meditation on the scriptures and healthy understanding of them.
• Aspera — the hard, ascetic life signified by scales.
• “Signifying” (Augustine’s usage) — clean or unclean not by nature but by what the animal signifies, as words are clean by sound but unclean in meaning.
• “Rabbi Moses” — the authority he cites for blood and fat generating poor nourishment [ed.: Maimonides].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II q.102 a.6, corpus and replies 1, 2, 4, 5 (inferred; he cites no number aloud)
• 1 Corinthians 10 (quoted in the corpus)
• Matthew 15, “not what enters into the mouth…”
• Genesis 9 (flesh given as the green herbs); Genesis 32 (the nerve, Jacob)
• Exodus 23 (you shall not cook the kid in its mother’s milk)
• Augustine, Contra Faustum (pig and lamb; foolish and wise)
• A footnote in the edition, on the coot/moorhen and Thomas’s error about its feet

Mentioned

• 1 Timothy (every creature of God is good) — the objection
• The gospel: “where the body is, there the eagles shall be gathered”
• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote (the pelican)
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (Polonius “in the dust”; the pelican) and the history plays (birds and pride)
• Homer (preparation of sacrificial meals)
• Aristotle (the mind compared to the bat)
• Dance in the Desert (children’s book on the flight into Egypt)

His questions #

• Why were certain foods prohibited in the Old Law, given that every creature of God is good? Not by nature but either per accidens as to guilt, or by bodily corruption, idolatry, cruelty and simplicity of life — and in figure of sins.
• In how many ways can the reason for these observances be assigned? Two: suitability for divine worship, and figuring the life of Christ.
• What makes an animal’s flesh bodily unclean? Feeding on unclean things, living uncleanly underground, or excessive dryness or humidity generating corrupt humours.
• Why were ruminants with cloven hoof conceded? Their humours are well digested and their complexion medium — neither too hot nor too earthly.
• Why was blood prohibited? To withdraw them from cruelty, and to avoid the idolatrous rite of eating around blood.
• Why were strangled animals prohibited? Their blood is not separated from the flesh, and such a death afflicts the animal, and God would exercise piety even toward beasts.
• Are the pig and the lamb clean or unclean? Both clean by nature, since every creature of God is good; unclean or clean only in their signifying, as “foolish” and “wise” are both clean as sounds.
• Why were plants not restricted as animals were? Eating plants pertains to simplicity of life, flesh to delight and curiosity; and plants were not immolated to idols.
• Why may the kid not be cooked in its mother’s milk? Cruelty in the cook, and the Gentile rite; figuratively, Christ was not to be killed by the Jews in his infancy.
• Why the fruit of the first three years is unclean? Against the Gentile offering of first fruits; figuratively, the three states of the law, and that our first works should be suspect to us.