Wilbur's Hey-Day

Leviticus 11

God tells Moses and Aaron about the food they need to keep out of their systems...actually even out of their hands. Just touching the carcasses results in being unclean.

As far as land animals are concerned, a good rule of thumb is if it has a split hoof and chews cud, dinner is served. If it's only one and not the other- stay away. So no camels, and avoid rock badgers, rabbits, stewed or otherwise, and...the killer...no pigs.

Water creatures are also discussed. If they have fins and scales- they're probably okay. Otherwise- you shouldn't just avoid eating them- you should also detest them.

The list of detestable birds includes eagles, vultures, black vultures, red and black kites, ravens, owls (horned, screech, little, great, white, and desert- if it's me, I'm just going to keep away from owls), bats, cormorants, gulls, osprey, storks, herons, and the belvoed hoopoes. As a Carson-Newman Eagle- I take the detestable comment a bit personally, but at least we shouldn't get eaten by any wayward Israelites.

Next comes a list of insects to avoid. In my way of thinking, this list is really not too important- I won't be ordering any fried termites anyhow. But maybe in this legalistic system something inadvertantly flying in your mouth would count. Here God just tells them the "OK to eat" ones: locusts, katydids, crickets and grasshoppers.

Before moving onto the crawling on the ground animals, there's a reminder about the whole unclean thing. Don't touch the carcasses or you are unclean until evening and you need to wash your clothes.

So of the crawling animals- stay away from the lizard (great, monitor, and wall), weasel, rat, gecko, the skink and the chameleon. So even if you saw what appeared to be a good eatin' skink, you'd still need to maintain your self-control. In fact, He goes on to say that all of these animals are detestable. These animals also make things unclean if they die on them. If they die on the shelf, the shelf is unclean, if they die in a clay pot- everything in the pot is unclean- and you need to break the pot. If they die in a spring, it's still clean, but if you touch the animal to remove it, you are unclean. If it dies on seeds, they are still clean unless they've been watered- then they're unclean.

Even if it's an animal you're allowed to eat, you are unclean if you touch the carcass- which I would imagine makes food preparation a little tricky.

So on top of all the sacrifice things you need to learn- here's a whole new list of things to be paranoid about. I'm guessing Egg McMuffins weren't the cleanest of choices.

I'm not sure what to take from this section except that being an Israelite would likely make you obsessive-compulsive.