Does Christianity command Christians to abstain from eating animal flesh?

[Boojatta]

For reference:

1 Timothy 4 (King James Version)

1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
3 Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:
5 For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

[revolve]

1. That verse quite starkly states followers should eat meat

It says that those who depart the faith are the ones "commanding to abstain from meats"

[TechBear_Seattle]

6. The passage is poorly translated, and taken out of context

Not that such things bother literalists. :eyes:

Throughout the Greek Scriptures, you find an ongoing ideological battle between Jewish Christians and gentile Christians. The Jewish Christians insisted that Jesus' movement was part of the Jewish religion and, as such, all converts to Christianity were also converts to Judaism and therefore had to obey all the Jewish laws, particularly the laws of kashrut. Gentile Christians, in response, told the Jewish Christians to go have sexual relations with pigs, shellfish and other "unclean" animals, eventually driving them out and turning Christianity into something wholely separated from its Jewish roots.

"Commanding to abstain from meats" is actually about commands to abstain from meats declared unclean by Jewish law, not about meat in general.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. You've very much misread that one - the writer is talking about decietful things others say,

which included the deceit that people shouldn't marry or eat certain foods.

Also, the KJV translates the greek as "meat", but it really is a word for "food". The New King James Version corrects it, as a quick check of five other translations use "food" or "certain foods".

[uberllama42]

4. "Meat" is one of the words which has changed meaning since 1611

It was used for all types of food at the time. "Corn" referred to grains other than maize. KJV's Genesis refers to corn in Egypt, but maize is a New World plant not introduced to Africa until centuries after the supposed events of Genesis.

[Poll_Blind]

3. Don't mean to be snarky but, ya know, it's a bullshit book. The highlights are wisdom to live by BUT

...most of it's fucked beyond repair by the hand of man. Old Testament, New Testament, Torah (but not so much the Torah as the Talmud which absolutely ruined Judaism with essentially a competing non-divine interpretation) and the Quaran. Who knows about the Quabala! Whatever wisdom (or more interestingly, truths) it may have contained have also been tampered with especially now that it is taught not to the most-respected, clearest-thinking, trusted Torah scholars but anyone.

  Rabbis, Priests, Imams and also the kings, caliphs and politicians who fund them: The worst thing ever to hit the word of God.

  Assuming they were all messengers of the same god, the Quaran would be the closest to a first-hand religious document. But even then, the codification of the Quaran went through it's own little "Council of Nicea". The Moslems did have a stroke of brilliance in not indexing the Quaran, placing the books or chapters or whatever by order of length but, again, it's all fuckered up by the hands of men.

  I'm an athiest, by the way. But I love all that invisible sky-wizard shit. It's like knowing that every day, thousands of people are being put to death for differing interpretations of Stephen King's The Gunslinger series of books. Specifically the English version which was translated from the Swahili version, which was translated from the "original" Chinese.

  Fascinating to me.

PB

[cosmik debris]

5. For every creature of God is good

Plants are also creatures of god.

People who eat plants are destroying god's creations.

I think they are going straight to hell.

Especially people who eat pickles.