Comment on Seriously Jesus, who was doing that for that to be added 😭

AeonFelis@lemmy.world ⁨3⁊ ⁨weeks⁊ ago

I like Rabbi Joseph Bekhor Shor’s interpretation. It’s far from being accepted in Judaism - probably because it makes so much sense.

The interpretation is based on the fact that the passage originally appears in Exodus twice - but not in a section about Kosher laws. It appears in sections about Bikurim - bringing offerings to the temple:

The very same verse that contains that law also contains a law about Bikkurim:

Bring the best firstfruits of your land to the house of the Lord your God.

You must not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.

Because these two laws seem so unrelated, Rabbi Joseph Bekhor Shor suggests a different way to read the second part.

In Hebrew, the root of the word “cook”/“boil” is B-SH-L - and this is also the root of the word “ripe”/“mature”. Because of that, it’s possible to read “you must not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” as “you must not let a young goat mature while drinking its mother’s milk”.

This makes the second part of the verse a repetition of the first part - a pattern very common in the Old Testament as a (vain) attempt to prevent misinterpretations. Reading it like so, both parts mean “the offerings should be as young and as fresh as possible”.

That reading is a little bit odd - but not too odd in biblical language standards, and it makes so much more sense in the context where the passage appears.

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