https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=BEv2uTGCsPg
Yeah. So there’s a lot of parts in the Bible that people would raise objection to, again, on this line of being nonsensical or superstitious. For example, recently I was talking to my wife about how I’ve started to better understand the value in these stories, but I still couldn’t figure out things like how anybody would justify not mixing wool with linen. That just seems so crazy. And then I saw your video where you addressed exactly that and on the purity laws. So that was really helpful. Can you explain some of that for the audience, like some of these purity laws, and how those make any sense whatsoever? Yeah. Well, the idea is that you have to… Well, first of all, when you interpret symbolism in the Bible, you really have to… even the laws in the Bible, you have to interpret them phenomenologically, okay? So phenomenologically means how you experience the world, like how you kind of engage with the world. So the way we engage with the world is that we have categories of beings, right? We have trees, we have categories of actual literal objects, and then we have categories that are like mine and yours and inside and outside, right? And you need to keep those categories separate. You need to make sure that, let’s say, the difference between mine and yours is clearly demarcated, because if it’s not clear, then we’re going to fight over it, right? And you need to be able to know what the clear demarcation, let’s say, of inside and outside. If you don’t have that clear, then you have the problem, let’s say, right now. Like you have this problem in the US with millions of illegal immigrants, right? And so some people are saying, let’s all let them in. Some people are saying, let’s all throw them out. The problem is the fact that you have so much that isn’t clearly either inside or outside. That’s the problem, right? And so you need to have clear demarcation. But at the same time, you also need to leave some buffer for the in-between, right? But the buffer for the in-between is like the margin. So the purity laws, especially the mixing linen and wool, they have to do with that. There’s one that says you will not mix two kinds of seeds in your field. And the second one says you will not mix linen and wool in your clothing. Oh, I forgot one in the middle. Sorry. You won’t. Yeah. Then you said you won’t yoke an ox and an ass together to plow your field. And then the fourth, the last law talks about keeping a fringe on your vestment that is intertwined cords. So you think like that doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s just absolute absurd, just arbitrary things. But if you look at it, it actually follows the order of the creation story in Genesis. And so the first two, which is not mixing two kinds of seeds together, that’s the creation of plants. You get that at the beginning of Genesis. Then not putting the ox and the ass together, that’s the creation of animals. And then after that, you’re not supposed to mix wool and linen in your clothing. That’s man. And then the last one, which is the fringe, that has to do with the Sabbath, the idea of leaving a part of the world that you don’t work, that is left unworked. And so that idea of Sabbath is there in time. You have the Sabbath, you have the Jubilee. There’s a lot of these cycles in that we have it in our week. Like we have days off, right? The idea that at the end of a cycle, you need to leave a holiday. You need to leave something, a carnival or some festival that will be a kind of transition time between the end of a cycle and the beginning of another. And in space, it’s the same. So you leave a buffer around you. So this idea that you have to leave a fringe on your vestment has to do with leaving that buffer around you. And so the basic idea is that it’s not just a bunch of stuff you’re supposed to do. It’s like it’s a kind of like telling your kid to to make their bed or to wash their hands. It’s like you’re giving people a way of being that will then have repercussions in their way of seeing the world. So if you tell people, don’t mix seeds, don’t mix, you know, different types of cloth, it’s like they realize that, no, you need to keep things separate and you need to not mix them. Because if you mix them too much, then you get confusion and the world starts to fall apart. And so that’s based. I don’t know if that’s clear enough. It’s hard to explain like fast. But if people want to hear more about it, they can watch the video where I explain it more fully. That video is good. Yeah. And I like the whole concept to sort of separateness, but together kind of thing that you think. Yeah. And in Christianity, then there’s really that idea of like, for example, in the Old Testament, there’s a law that says you shouldn’t mix wool and linen together. And in Christianity, there’s a tradition that in a cloth that’s used, let’s say, during the liturgy to cover the body and blood of Christ, it’s made specifically out of wool and linen. So it’s so that, yes, you do need to keep these separate. But let’s say in Christ, in the transcendent, in the absolute, those things aren’t separate. Like they do come together and there are ways to bring them together. And so it’s almost like a sexual union, too. Like you need to make sure that you keep man and woman separate. But then you also need them to join together while remaining separate, let’s say. And then that’s what produces life. And so it’s all that it’s very it’s like a cosmic. It’s really a cosmic structure, let’s say. Yeah. Very interesting. What about I’m going to hit you on this one, then what about the not eating pork and shellfish? How does that one work? That’s a bit more complicated. But there are reasons why you shouldn’t like the laws in the Old Testament of which animals you’re not supposed to eat. I’ll just use the pork example that because explaining each one will be difficult. This I get from my brother a lot. My brother, Matthew, he’s writing a book right now and he’s really kind of been able to understand this quite a bit. So the idea is that it’s not that you’re not allowed to eat pork, right? That’s not the rule. The rule is that what you’re supposed to eat has to have split hooves. OK. And it has to ruminate its food. OK. That’s the rule. OK. So pork is just one example of that. Right. Because a pork a pig has split hooves, but it doesn’t ruminate. So you can’t eat pig. Think like that is just arbitrary. It doesn’t make any sense. OK. So why is it that you have to eat those animals? Well, it has to do with what I said. The split hooves represent the separation. So you need to clearly separate a hoof that is clearly separate so that the concept stands in clear clear categories. And then the idea of of ruminating. I mean, it has to do with this idea of not of not let’s say of taking. How can I say this of integrating reality properly? OK. Yeah. Right. So the idea of integrating reality properly and having a clear separation. And so there’s both this idea of separation, but also of properly integrating. So let’s say a pig and a dog. Good example. Like they’ll defecate and then they’ll go back and eat their feces. OK. So that’s an example of an improper integration of reality where you don’t integrate reality. And then you go back to it and then you soil yourself with what you you cast aside. OK. So it’s really it’s like it’s really is like a cosmic image. I don’t know if people are going to get what I’m saying, because this is this gets very kind of. But there’s definitely a let’s say an ontological reason, a reason that’s related on how we live in the world, why we don’t do that. But Christians, they do eat pork like. Yeah. I feel like maybe that’s a little bit of a different thing. I feel like maybe that’s one of those ones where people thought this might not be the most pragmatic or useful literal rule to to move along with. Well, no, because because in Christianity there really is this idea that let’s say you have pure and impure. Right. And so you can’t eat the impure meat. You can eat the pure meats in Christianity. In Christianity there’s this idea that what was impure can be transformed, like can be made pure, okay? And so that’s why the fact that we eat pork, it actually comes from a vision of St. Peter. St. Peter in a vision saw this cloth, this four cornered cloth that opened up, and then on the cloth he had all these kinds of meats, and then God told Peter, eat. And he said, no I can’t because there’s impure meats and impure meat in this thing. And God said, no eat also the impure meat. And he saw it meaning that Christianity was going to be this universal thing which was going to kind of expand out of Judaism and kind of move out into the world and start to include all these impure things but transform them. And so it has to do with this idea of the Nordic thing that we talked about. Christianity always like comes to a culture and then takes the best of that culture and integrates it. It’s like the stories of the that’s why it’s the Christians that write the Northern myths and they preserve the festivals but maybe they’ll clean them up. Maybe there won’t be orgies at the festival anymore. We’ll still celebrate on that day, we’ll still have a celebration, but maybe we won’t sacrifice a child maybe. It’s like whatever the kind of crazy orgiastic or part of the culture they’re coming into, they’ll integrate it but then they’ll kind of smooth it out let’s say. So that’s part of why Christians eat pork. Okay that makes some sense. I imagine that one’s in the New Testament specifically. That’s why the Jews, the Orthodox still don’t. Okay that’s good actually. That one really I had no idea about the answer to that one. Even in Judaism they have this idea like the more kind of profound Jews, they have this idea. They call it the kosher pig. They said this idea that let’s say at some point the pig will return, will come back let’s say and become kosher. So even within Jewish tradition there’s this idea that at some point Judaism will have to join itself with the outer world. It’s going to happen. It’s just a question of when. They tend to think of it as the Messianic in the Messianic age or whatever like this idea of like an unknown future. The duality will be transcended. Like the duality of pure will be transcended. Interesting. Okay I like that. That’s very interesting and I also like the observation of that you know Christianity or at least the take that when Christianity that they really kind of integrated these things and you know pulled the Bruce Lee and said let’s take the useful parts and get rid of the rest as opposed to sort of the more self-destructive image that I had growing up of all these you know these poor pagans got you know slammed down by this evil you know church that came in and took over and renamed their holidays and stole it for their you know appropriated it or whatever it were. It’s nice to hear a better perspective on that that might be a little more useful and productive. Yeah but it’s not like there wasn’t some of that happening obviously I mean when two civilizations kind of come together there some of that happens but if you look at like a lot of people talk about let’s say like the Celtic world if you look at the Celtic world but the Celtic world had been decimated before Christians ever arrived. The Druids were almost completely you know eliminated by Julius Caesar because they were his political opposition and so it seems like that’s why one of the reasons why the Celts actually converted to Christianity so early is because Christianity actually filled this kind of hole that had been dug into their their culture and and they were Christians like before the Nordic the Germanic part of England was Christian you know like Ireland was all the way out there and kind of preserving Christianity and in between they had these barbarians you know they couldn’t they were struggling even to communicate with other Christians because they were so isolated and it was like there wasn’t like this church especially then like there wasn’t this church that was pounding like they were out there on their own doing their thing creating these amazing works of art in the book of Kells and you know that these just astounding works of art.