(snip)
>
> Preached fully from what they had known. The Law says what to do and what not to do; Jesus came and gave the intent. And the Law did have incompletions, in that the blood of bulls and goats and so on could not atone, only the Lamb of God; the Law had not been written on people's hearts(If it's to be written on our hearts...)
>

Hmm... well, I'll go with you there.

> > > > But many of the pragmatic reasons no longer apply (if I cook pork the right way it's highly unlikely for me to get trichinosis)...
> > >
> > > And other diseases would require you to turn your meat into charcoal, by which time it's unpalatable.
> > >
> >
> > True, but those diseases tend to be rare. (No pun intended.)
>
> 200+? How does rheumatoid arthritis sound? (Also no pun intended.)
>

Really? I wasn't aware of that. (Then again, I tend to studiously avoid medical studies that tell me to drink wine every night or eat a bowl of taro root every day or consume tons of certain herbs or avoid certain herbs like heck or eat lots of carbohydrates or eat lots of protein or not eat anything...)

But I'd be interested to hear your sources for this.

> > At least right now I don't feel that frightened that my ham's going to kill me. I haven't heard of that many people who've died that way.
>
> Yeah, the ones that can't be removed by a good cooking take you slowly, or at least make life uncomfortable.

That's the same argument they used to get me to stop eating saturated fats and refined sugar. :)

Actually, I must mention that I've only been eating the way I do for about 5 years or so. A good comparison would be to someone sufficiently similar in every other respect except that he eats kosher. :)
>

Well, a truly scientific test would be unfeasible unless someone could steal that cloning machine Sam uses in the chatrooms.

> > Now, following the vegetarian diet Daniel and his buddies did because the meat was consecrated to idols, *that* makes sense and probably would allow me to live much longer... if I had the willpower and inclination to do it. Oh well.
>
> Yeah, and I can imagine the king's meat included pork, too. This *was* Babylon, and one of their chief gods, Tammuz(I wish our calendars would be rid of him), was killed by a boar. Sweet revenge, to have one's followers kill what killed you, huh?
>

BTW, I remember hearing that there were two animals greatly revered in the Middle East, the pig (Baal-worshipers) and the cat (followers of the Egyptian pantheon), which is why both animals were not highly regarded by the ancient Israelites (even including the kosher requirements against pork; it didn't say anything about the actual animal other than not eating it, after all). That was the fine tradition carried on to the Muslim hatred of cats as demon-possessed animals (not made by God but by Ahriman, IIRC) and the Christian association of cats (particularly black) with witchcraft.

Kind of a shame for people who just think cats are cute. But that's how culture-forming history goes...

> > BTW, the disease that's making all the splash right now (besides foot-and-mouth, which isn't contagious to humans) is BSE (which, to be fair, isn't contagious to humans either, but could become so; see what happened with that mutation of scrapie), which comes from beef, even when cooked kosher.
>
> Yeah... I wonder how it came about, anyway...
>

Okay, good point. :) (Feeding dead animal parts to cows... *ew*...) But I thought BSE originated from scrapie, a disease that infects sheep, which are kosher, I believe. (Is there something in the Mosaic commandments about not feeding meat to meat animals? I'm not sure; I can't find anything on it.)

(snip)

> > I think a similar argument can be extended to buying a big, impressive leather-bound Bible and carrying it with you everywhere even when you have no intention of reading it (no joke; I have Christian friends who do this "as a witness"). And prayers that do things like use archaic language (no, "thee" and "thou" were never divine pronouns in English, and they didn't have any such thing in Biblical Hebrew or Greek)...
>
> Heh. It's just the way they talked in the early 17th century. :)
>

And, in fact, in later times "thou" became familiar and "you" became the respectful address, until "creeping politeness" made "you" mandatory for everyone regardless of rank. (Similar to the now-meaningless terms "ladies" and "gentlemen".) So addressing God that way might actually be considered a sign of *dis*respect. :)

Although (and this is a funny thing) I've been taking Spanish and I've found that in Spanish translations of the Bible and when native Spanish speakers pray they always use the pronoun "tú", the familiar second person, when addressing God, rather than the pronoun "usted", the formal. I guess it's because God is someone you know and are familiar with, and to use the formal pronoun would be to formalize prayer in a way contrary to Matthew 6:5-13. I wonder if the situation is the same in other languages that make a distinction between formal and familiar address?

(snip)

I don't know where I stand on that issue, though I find it funny that most of the culturally non-Jewish Jewish (or half-Jewish or quarter-Jewish)...
>
> Oh, secular Jews(Jews in bloodline rather than in practice).
>

Ah, yes, that word works.

Though "secular" might be misleading since the friends I'm talking about consider themselves devout Christians.

(There was another word for liberal Jewish people, wasn't there? But vocabulary escapes me for now.)

> Eh, I don't think that'll be a problem, at least not in a Messianic-Israel-affiliated congregation.
>

That's good. :) The synagogue I meant was an Orthodox Jewish one; the friend who invited me was a Jewish Christan (a secular Jew of the type you said, and technically only with Jewish blood, not Jewish (the blood runs through his dad's side)). Part of his family still practices Orthodox Judaism, and they were going to go there for some special service. (I'm blanking on the details, which annoys me greatly as it's a sign of my deteriorating memory even though it only happened about a year ago. It wasn't one of the holiday services or I'd've remembered; it was something being done in honor of somebody who was related to this friend I'm talking about. Augh.)

> > (No one tell the joke about the Japanese rabbi now. I *mean* it. No one.)
>
> Ooh, the one with the samurai? You're right. :)
>

I've only heard it once or twice, but that's once or twice too many. :)

(snip)

> Nyperold

Ar"these posts are getting much shorter"thur