I want to study Deuteronomy 12:15ff. Here is my initial post for this portion of the Pentateuch.
Deuteronomy 12:15 (ESV): "However, you may slaughter and eat meat within any of your towns, as much as you desire, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you."
(NWT 2013): "But whenever you desire it, you may slaughter and eat meat, according to the blessing that Jehovah your God has given you in all your cities. The unclean person and the clean person may eat it, as you would eat a gazelle or a deer."
Footnote: Or "in all the desire of your soul."
Robert Alter reckons that the word nephesh used in this passage most likely refers to appetite. Compare Psalm 107:9; see Alter, The Five Books of Moses.
Another exegetical issue is how one should understand the Hebrew particle be. Does it refer to the degree of craving (Richard E. Friedman) or to the frequency of craving (NJPS)? Alter thinks we should construe the particle locatively (i.e., "in"):
"The noun phrase itself, ’awat nefesh, suggests intense appetite, and the instructions that follow have to do chiefly with place—that henceforth the Israelites will be allowed to slaughter and eat meat wherever they happen to be, though sacrificial slaughter can take place only on the central altar" (The Five Books of Moses).
According to Alter, Deuteronomy 12:15ff deals with so-called "secular slaughter" in view of the fact that these rules would govern non-sacrificial uses of meat. Notice also that both clean and unclean persons could partake of the meat.
Yet another comment made by Alter is likewise enlightening:
"The one category of meat always permitted outside the cult was game, neither deer nor gazelle being among the animals specified for sacrificial use. Now, animals otherwise devoted to the cult (sheep, bulls, goats, rams) may be eaten without sacrifice, just as game is eaten."
Compare Genesis 27:1-4.
Turning to another work by Edward Cook, we read these observations about Deut. 12:15:
"This verse establishes a major change in religious and dietary practice (Tigay 1996: 124). Here we may observe an alteration to the previous legislation given at Leviticus 17:2–9, where the children of Israel were a pilgrim people within the wilderness setting. Now, the (profane) slaughter or sacrifice (zābaḥ) of animals otherwise suitable for the altar sacrifice (cf. Lev. 17:5) may be carried out on a par with the gazelle and deer (cf. 14:5) in any of their towns, according to the blessing of the Lord. Furthermore, the people need not be ritually clean in order to participate. This concession only has real meaning in the light of the anticipation of a central sanctuary at verse 18 (cf. vv. 5, 11, 14), and the impracticality of getting there frequently from distant places."
29 comments:
Once they were established in Canaan they were broken apart into city communities.
Interestingly, were gazelle and deer killed in the cities or around them?
General data on the effects of uncontrolled grazers(gazelle) and browsers (deer) is exceptionally clear. They destroy ecosystems. The domestic animals functionally are the same, lacking the original apex predators - man must take there place.
Apex predators would have been in decline before the Israelite arrived in the land but I will look for hard evidence to back this claim.
Just to reiterate regarding the video I sent you:-
https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/02/16/this-will-shatter-your-view-of-apex-predators-how-wolves-change-rivers/
An integrated system
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443940/
This article is interesting - not in evolutionary terms but definitely in action.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wondermonkey/2012/02/super-predatory-humans.shtml
https://nature.berkeley.edu/classes/espm-186/Unit_II_(cont)_files/grazer%20v.%20browser.pdf
Too high a density of both would be a disaster.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5204158/
See notes on Figure 1.
Domestic urban pigeons.
https://www.environpestcontrol.co.uk/pests/pigeon-control-in-london/
Some of the questions you're asking are worth contemplating, but I don't believe they have clear answers now. Firstly, the Israelite concept of a city had to be much different from our concept or the ancient Greco-Roman idea. Greeks thought in term of the polis; the Romans used the term urbs or oppidum for town.
But how would we know whether deer/gazelles were killed in/around cities? I don't believe we can answer that question with any degree of certainty.
So many questions remain to be answered about the population/status of gazelles/deer in ancient Canaan/Israel. How many of these animals existed in the land? Would there have been enough to cause desolation or such damage to the land? Again, the answers are likely to be speculative. Plus there's no ironclad evidence that Jehovah was ever doing any of this--allowing the eating of meat--for culling purposes. What about the creatures mention ed in Leviticus that include obscure birds. Why were some animals deemed unclean, but yet Israel was still allowed to consume other animals. Let's also not forget that alien residents could eat things that Israelites could not.
Deuteronomy 14:21 is a strange one. In this kind of climate why would anyone want to eat something found dead & why would you give it to someone else to eat?
Deut 28:43 is very interesting in light of giving them bad meat.
Deut 14:11 to 20 is even more interesting:-
Eagle - Apex.
Vulture - Apex.
Osprey - Apex.
Red Kite - Apex.
Falcon - Apex.
Raven - Apex.
Ostrich - Not sure about being an Apex but was never a large population in Canaan.
Seagull - Apex.
Hawk - Apex.
Little Owls - Apex.
Great Owls - Apex.
Horned Owls - True Apex, may kill the smaller owls - but not to eat (in the same way that a tiger will kill a panther but not eat it).
Pelican - Not a resident but migrates across Israel.
Vulture - Probably one of the most important Apex animals that would normally eat the dead carcasses and keep the wilderness clean. Including dying/old/sick animals - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZpMctCc1UM.
Cormorant - see http://www.marineornithology.org/PDF/43_2/43_2_259-262.pdf regarding the importance of the Guano.
Stork - Not a resident but migrates across Israel
Grey Heron- Not a resident but migrates across Isreal - eats amphibians and insects.
Hoopoe - "Hoopoes have well-developed anti-predator defenses in the nest. The uropygial gland of the incubating and brooding female is quickly modified to produce a foul-smelling liquid, and the glands of nestlings do so as well. These secretions are rubbed into the plumage. The secretion, which smells like rotting meat, is thought to help deter predators, as well as deter parasites and possibly act as an antibacterial agent" - the also eat crop pest like locusts & crickets. "The diet of the hoopoe includes many species considered by humans to be pests, such as the pupae of the processionary moth, a damaging forest pest. For this reason the species is afforded protection under the law in many countries."
Bats - also eat many crop pests but a prey for a number of above.
Apex predator birds mat kill each other in overlapping territory but the do not normally eat each other - not normal prey.
Came across this paper :-
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1b79/569470876c329ffa56fe3df255427183bcb3.pdf
He points out that many have had difficulty with the list of birds but I believe ecology is the answer. The law would benefit the land itself & by extension those in it, but favoring the Jew over the foreigner (echo - Galatians 6:10). Harm the land and get the plagues.
Unfortunately he is a dietitian & not an ecologist.
"So many questions remain to be answered about the population/status of gazelles/deer in ancient Canaan/Israel. How many of these animals existed in the land? Would there have been enough to cause desolation or such damage to the land?"
The speculative part is - how many apex predators were in the land to kill them?
If not enough predators then these animals would certainly multiply & would eventually destroy the land. If not, then the killing of these by man & beast would have led to their extinction.
They may be later, but look at examples we do have that relate to domestic animals and mans effect on apex predators. Samson kills a lion, David kills a lion and a bear.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320797000050
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/.premium--1.5162321
"A bat that weighs five grams can eat a thousand mosquitoes in a single night of culinary delight. Ridding ourselves of mosquitoes by this natural process is better than using expensive, damaging insecticide sprays."
Deut 28:58-61
https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-famines-and-epidemics-trigger-wars
Deut 28:25,26
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090418085935.htm
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317348406_Using_barn_owls_as_biological_rodent_control_agents_in_agriculture
One thing I am confused about is John the baptist eating locust's when Deuteronomy say not to eat any winged insects or is it a swarming things (which would still indicate locust) or creeping things?
Deuteronomy 28:42
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-grasshoppers-go-bibl/
"In the wild, swarms usually appear after a rainy period followed by a time of drought. After rains, populations of grasshoppers explode, Burrows says, because there is food aplenty. >>But when the land becomes parched and grass scarce<<, the populations get pushed into smaller and smaller areas, becoming more packed as desirable pasture diminishes, he says. At a certain point of density, the swarm-inducing serotonin gets triggered and the locusts set off en masse to find greener pastures. After that, few things — other than an end to the food supply or an ocean — can stop them."
Deut 28:44 is intriguing - לראש ואתה תהיה לזנב.
See Leviticus 11:21-22.
Thanks, yes Leviticus is more specific. Of course all that I have posted has a level of speculation as we are guessing regarding putting a modern name to an ancient bird designation.
See also:- https://www.ibr-bbr.org/files/bbr/bbr20c03.pdf
Living with Lions: The Economics of Coexistence in the Gir Forests, India
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3547023/
What is an apex predator?
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5ea0/c780049f7e8d6fb686ce9c276589dfff578e.pdf
Judaism and Ecology
Created World and Revealed Word
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780945454359
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson: Nature’s Otherness and Human Responsibility: Jewish Ecological Ethics
https://vimeo.com/88364021
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/world/americas/30peru.html
This is just an example of birds bringing in resources that benefit the land. Cormorant, pelican & seagull do this but also so do pidgins but from outside land sources into agricultural land.
The ostrich in my list may be the stork. This is also a migrating bird.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-seeing-early-flocks-of-migrating-storks-amid-hot-european-summer/
https://ukwct.org.uk/index.php?page=israel
http://www.annzool.net/PDF/anz48-free/anz48-108i.pdf
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