I am posting this article in response to an earlier post that I did on halaal food. This article was written by a good friend and I find it has helped to give me clarity and undertanding on this often confusing subject. I will be posting one or two more articles on this subject in the near future. Thank you Tim and Lauren for allowing me to post this article on my blog. You can read more of their very well researched and informative articles over at http://www.seekingtruthintorah.blogspot.com/
1st Cor. 10:23-18 - Beef in the Market Place!
In 1st Corinthians 8, Rabbi Sha’ul seems to allow the believer to enter the pagan shrine and eat the sacrificial meat. His reasoning? “The Idol is nothing”. This would seem to contradict Yakov in Acts 15. But Morris rightly points out that chapter eight wasn’t Paul’s final words of the subject. In truth it only brings out his thoughts that an idol is nothing.
Morris writes that Rabbi Sha’ul,
“is certainly not giving his own full idea on the matter, for he later says that what is sacrificed to idols is actually sacrificed to devils (10:20). There are spiritual beings behind the idols, though not the ones their worshippers thought. But here this is not the point. Rabbi Sha’ul is prepared to agree that the gods the heathen worship are no gods 1.
Rabbi Sha’ul also speaks of not making one’s brother stumble if he saw the believer in the pagan temple 2. By dealing with the issue of temple attendance this way, he is saying that the believer shouldn’t be seem in the temple even though the idol is nothing. This is his way of prohibiting the believer who thinks that there is nothing wrong with eating the meat at the temple.
When Rabbi Sha’ul speaks of the sacrificial meat (table of demons) in 10:21 he reveals his fuller thoughts on the subject by declaring that they weren’t to do that. With meat in the market, the main difference is that the believer is not a participant in the temple sacrifice. This is an important distinction. In 1 Cor. 10-23-28 Rabbi Sha’ul writes:
1Co 10:23 All is permitted me, but not all do profit. All is permitted me, but not all build up.
1Co 10:24 Let no one seek his own, but each one that of the other.
1Co 10:25 You eat whatever is sold in the meat market, asking no questions because of conscience,
1Co 10:26 for “The earth belongs to יהוה , and all that fills it.”
1Co 10:27 And if any of the unbelievers invite you, and you wish to go, you eat whatever is set before you, asking no question on account of the conscience.
1Co 10:28 And if anyone says to you, “This was offered to idols,” do not eat it because of the one pointing it out to you, and on account of the conscience, for “The earth belongs to יהוה , and all that fills it.”
In chapter six the understanding that all things were lawful for Sha’ul meant theoretically, he too was able to do anything he wanted within Roman jusisprudence. For Rabbi Sha’ul the phrase “eating anything” would fall within the boundaries of “anything” that YHVH declared to be clean. He wouldn’t eat a ham sandwich because he knew that it was a sin for him and for others 3. The text is not speaking about clean vs unclean meat but meat sacrificed to idols. Rabbi Sha’ul isn’t authorizing the eating of unclean meat. He is saying it’s alright to eat meat bought at the market (or meat given for
dinner in another’s home which had been sacrificed and then sold at the market), as long as one didn’t know it had been sacrificed.
From two very important passages of Scripture 4 it has seemed to some that Rabbi Sha’ul is contradicting both Yeshua and Ya’kov in allowing believers to eat meat offered or sacrificed to idols. But Ya’kov admonished the Gentile believers not to eat meat that was literally just sacrificed on the altar, specifically referring to it in Acts 15:20 as “the pollutions of idols”. In 1st Cor. 10, Rabbi Sha’ul forbids the same thing. Eating from the table of demons spoke of eating the just sacrificed animal, the person actually participating in the sacrifice and worship of another god. (The same would apply to the drinking of its blood 5).
In Revelation 2:20-21 Yeshua comes against eating of the meat at the time of sacrifice (and cult prostitution and fornication),
Rev 2:20 Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
Rev 2:21 And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not 6.
These Gentile believers at Thyatira were indulging in temple prostitution and eating the animal sacrificed to the idol within the framework of a pagan ceremony. Yeshua declared it was wrong to eat that meat, and of course to have sex with the cult harlots. He said Jezebel was teaching and seducing those believers into doing just that....offering “worship” to another god as a believer. In other words she taught this was and acceptable practise.
Rabbi Sha’ul allows believers to eat of sacrificial meat 7 but not at the sacrifice to the god. It pertains to the Gentile in the marketplace seeking to buy some meat. They’re told by Rabbi Sha’ul not to ask if it had been sacrificed, which means that all meat sold in the market didn’t come from pagan sacrifices. This is how Rabbi Sha’ul could say what he does and not be coming against Yeshua or James. Rabbi Sha’ul allows the Gentile to eat this meat because “idols are nothing” 8 and the Earth is YHVH’s and everything in it 9.
Some of the meat in the marketplace would come from pagan sacrifice, the pagan priests selling the excess to the vendors in the market. This was common. Morris states, “The priests customarily sole what they could not use” 10
Other meat might be “blessed” by a pagan priest and then slaughtered in the marketplace by the “butcher” (but not literally sacrificed on a pagan altar). With the blessing of the pagan priest the meat would be seen as “fit for consumption” having received the pagan “seal of approval”. But it might
concern some believers even though it hadn’t been part of a sacrificial ceremony 11. This is why Rabbi Sha’ul can tell them they can eat the meat in the market. Just don’t ask if it was sacrificed.
Why Rabbi Sha’ul told them not to eat the meat if the unbeliever said it was from a pagan sacrifice rests on not confusing the unbeliever in terms of being able to present the Great News to them. What he’s not saying (“don’t ask”) is that if someone puts pork chops in front of you, you can eat it. No. Rabbi Sha’ul is addressing the problem of meat bought at the market or eaten an unbelievers home that may have been used in a pagan sacrifice, not which meat to eat (clean vs unclean). In the year and a half that Rabbi Sha’ul taught the believers in Corinth 12, he most likely would have had a few classes on the dietary laws 13.
Rabbi Sha;ul wasn’t rebelling against Ya’kov14 in his allowing the Corinthians to eat meat from the market even if it had been part of a sacrificial rite. His teaching compliments what Ya’kov wrote, addressing the issue of sacrificial meat in the market 15.
First Corinthians ten deals with cult harlotry and some Corinthians believers engaging in it, along with the eating of sacrificial meat from the pagan altar and the drinking of blood from the sacrifice. Rabbi Sha’ul warns them to flee from it, presenting the Baal Peor 16 affair to show the Corinthians that their salvation would be nullified if they continued in sacrificial and sexually idolatrous practices.
Ya’kov’s rules in Acts 15: 20-21, were certainly needed in the Corinthian congregation. This only emphasises the Law of Moshe, so the believer can be “fully equipped for every good work”. The Corinthian assembly fell behind none of the other assemblies in the Gifts of the Spirit 17 yet their need for instruction in the laws of righteousness was all too evident 18.
1 Morris. 1 Corinthians,p.122.
2 1 Cor. 8:7-13.
3 See 1st Timothy 4:4-5 and note the two qualifications for what makes food acceptable to eat: prayer and the word of YHVH (i.e the Scriptures, specifically Lev 11), not just prayer
.4 Acts 15:20 (refer to Why all this stumbling over Acts 15 part 1 and 2 on our blogger. www.seekingtruthintorah.blogspot.com/), and Revelation 2:20.
5 1 Corinthians 10:16-22.
6 KJV.
7 1 Cor. 10;23-28.
8 1 Cor 8:4,7,10.
9 1 Cor 10:28; Ex.9:29, Ps. 24:1.
10 Morris. 1 Corinthians. Pg. 120.
11 This is what Rabbi Sha’ul addressed in Romans 14 (refer to the article Paul Romans 14 and the Dietary Laws: http://seekingtruthintorah.blogspot.com/2010/12/paul-romans-chapter-14-and-dietary-laws.html) not clean vs unclean meats. This also happens in South African today where Moslem “priests” offer their blessing to Allah before the animals are slaughtered for market. When one goes to the grocery store to buy meat, this is the only meat offered. It has the Moslem religious seal on the wrapper declaring that the meat was offered to Allah and is “fit to eat”.
12 Acts 18:11.
13 Lev 3:17; 11:1-47; Deut 12:16, 23; 14:1-21.
14 Better known as James (Acts 15:20-21).
15 Again I urge you to read the article on the blogger “Why all the stumbling over Acts 15 part 1 &2: http://seekingtruthintorah.blogspot.com/2010/12/act-1520-but-that-we-write-to-them-to.html
16 Numbers
Blessings and Shalom!!
