Going back to the original diet for Adam and Eve….
Genesis 1:29-30 (KJV)
[SUP]29 [/SUP] And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
[SUP]30 [/SUP] And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
Let’s not make up doctrines supposedly taught in the Bible, or go against science knowledge of biology.
Notice man was initially given seed bearing flora for food (except the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil), but no flesh. Animals were allowed any green herb. After sinning God narrowed it down to a curse of having to till the cursed ground and eat the herbs of it.
Next we read of Cain being a farmer, tilling the ground, but Abel is a shepherd of sheep. From that time on people ate sheep as well as produce of the field and wild animals from the wilderness. I don’t know about when or why God began allowing flesh for food, unless it was after he slew animals to make coats of skin for Adam and Eve. IOW, I’d say God started the practice of killing animals for human use. That would have unleashed animals killing and eating animals and men. All of that is blamed on Adam’s sin
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People survived by using common sense before eating stuff like poison ivy. A good survival training course teaches you to handle one day, and taste the next if there’s no rash. The old advice of choosing on the basis of animals grazing on it is bad. Many edible plants look like poison ivy that are edible for man. If a rash appears the next day, you know not to consume it. Birds eat the poisonous red berries, but men have learned to avoid red berries. Berries are fruit bearing seeds, originally allowed for food, but no more for some.
Hemlock (Conium mac.) was used in ancient times as a sedative and antispasmodic.6-8 leaves can cause death, though. Men learned not to stew a pot of it.
Note that everything God made in Genesis one was very good. Due to sin even nature has been distorted to allow plants and animals to rebel against man and other plants and animals.
Clean and unclean had to do with fitness for sacrifice, not health. The Bible doesn’t teach about any flesh being bad for health. Jesus made it clear there is no food going in the mouth that defiles us, but what comes out can, that is, evil speech. There is no way to take that and say he only meant kosher. It was obvious what he said offended the Pharisees, and Jesus didn’t back down.
Where does it say hogs "are for" eating garbage? I know many schools put leftover lunches in barrels for hog feeding (farmers supply the barrels, lids, and handling). But the fact is wild hogs love to eat up fields of corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, all precious human food. People have multiplied on earth eating pork in every generation. They are eating up a lot of forest plants, robbing deer of forage, etc. What about that diet is garbage?
“Clean” goats approved by the law eat garbage like hogs do. We had one that ate the new asphalt shingles off our root cellar lid. All the kitchen garbage went into a large pan that was always licked clean. We did that after feeding regular feed. Goats stay hungry full time. If we forgot to give out the garbage the goat would climb a tree and eat the bark of small branches.
Nobody, even orthodox Jews, ought to use the Bible to command Gentile Christians to eat only ritually clean animals. There is no Bible teaching that any animal flesh is bad for health. Yes, some has become poisonous after the fall of man. But we know the ancients had knowledge of which was dangerous, described in Plato concerning the death of Socrates, for instance. Many plants and animals, including insects, were long ago found to be good for medicine, though sometimes not edible as food.
