BOILING KID IN MOTHER'S MILK---- TECHNICAL STUDY

 Boiling a Kid in his Mother's milk?

The law of Exodus 23:19 and Deut.14:21

YOU SHALL NOT BOIL A KID IN ITS MOTHER'S MILK (From "Bible Review" - 1985) by Jacob Milgrom A PUZZLING VERSE One of the oldest prohibitions in the entire Bible———

Is the injunction against boiling a kid in the milk of its mother. It is

repeated three times in identical words: "You shall not boil a

kid in its mother's milk."

     From these words, the rabbis extrapolated a complex set of

dietary laws, which to this day prohibit observant Jews from

mixing foods containing milk or milk by-products with foods

containing meat. The prohibition against mixing milk and meat is

an essential element of the dietary laws of kashrut it is a

significant part of what it means to "keep kosher."

     Yet the basis for the biblical prohibition itself is elusive. 

Why would the ancient Israelites even have contemplated

boiling a kid in its mother's milk?

     The cognoscenti know how modern archaeology has solved the

puzzle. It is a beautiful story, especially because the archaeological 

solution was presaged by a famous medieval Jewish exegete, 

Maimonides, who somehow managed to intuit from the text

itself the same solution archaeology produced centuries later.

In 1195, Maimonides suggested:

"As for the prohibition against eating meat [boiled] in milk, it

is in my opinion not improbable that - in addition to this being

undoubtedly very gross food and very filling - idolatry had

something to do with it. Perhaps such food was eaten at one of

the ceremonies of their cult or one of their festivals" (The

Guide to the Perplexed 111:48).

     Maimonides admitted, however, that he could find no support

for his theory:

"[Although] this is the most probable view regarding the reasons

for this prohibition... I have not seen this set down in any of

the books of the Sabeans [pagans] that I have read."

ARCHAEOLOGY

     On May 14, 1929, at a site in Syria that we now call Ugarit

and that the local Arabs call Ras Sharma, French archaeologist

Claude Schaeffer was excavating a room that turned out to be a

royal library. On that day he uncovered the first of more than a

thousand cuneiform tablets from about the 14th century B.C.,

written in a hitherto unknown script consisting of only about 30

signs - a kind of cuneiform alphabet.

     Most of the tablets are typical of a state archive-

administrative texts, censors lists, economic texts and letters.

But the cache also included literary, mythological and religious

texts. Some of these tablets are of a more ritual character,

illuminating the daily practice of religion in ancient Canaan.

One scholar refers to a series of tablets relating to the

Canaanite god Ba'al, whose worship is so frequently condemned in

the Bible, as a "Canaanite Bible."

     One of these tablets describes an obscure Canaanite

religious ritual. The tablet was first published in 1933 by

Charles Virolleaud, the local director of antiquities at Ugarit,

who later became instrumental in the decipherment and

publication of the Ugaritic tablets. Virolleaud called the text

"The Birth of the Gracious and Beautiful Gods." On one side of

the tablet was a list of ritual commands; on the other was a

story about some of the sexual escapades of the head of the

Canaanite pantheon, the supreme god EL.

     In the myth related on one side of the tablet, El fathers

the gracious gods, who are suckled by the goddesses Athirat

(biblical Asherah) and Rahmay. Many scholars believe that the

text is actually the libretto of a cultic play in which the

mythological roles were played by human beings, perhaps

culminating in a sacred marriage rite. Performance of the rituals

prescribed by the text may have accompanied the reenactment of

these mythical events. The purpose of the ritual was to ensure

the land's fertility, symbolized by the birth of the good gods.

A DAMAGED LINE

     Our present concern is with one line in this tablet.

Unfortunately, this critical line is damaged. Virolleaud

therefore "restored" as the scholars say - more accurately, he

reconstructed - part of the text. In the following quotation, the

pan in brackets is Virolleaud's reconstruction. As restated, the

text reads as follows: …..  Virolleaud translated the first three 

words of the line this way (again the restored pan is in brackets); 

"Fail (cuire un chelvreau tans lelait" ("Cook a kid in milk").

     A few years later, H.L.Ginsberg published several studies of

this text in which he drew attention to the biblical parallels.

     Both the Ugaritic text and the Bible contain references to

cooking a kid in milk. Ginsberg concluded that the ritual

described in the Ugaritic tablet was the "same idolatrous custom

that the Torah forbade." In the Canaanite ritual, the milk in

which the kid was cooked symbolized the milk that the newly born

gods were given when suckled by the pagan goddesses Athirst and

Rahmay. The cooking of a goat in milk was forbidden in the Bible

because it "symbolizes the suckling [by the pagan goddesses} of

the newborn gods!"

     So here at last was the explanation of the biblical

prohibition. Maimonides' intuition was right; the biblical

prohibition was a reaction against a Canaanite ritual involving

the boiling of a kid in its mother's milk.

CANAANITE PAGAN RITUAL

     In the ensuing years, this explanation gained wide

acceptance among both Ugaritic and biblical scholars, and indeed

became almost a dogma of scholarship. Anton Schoors concluded

that "the parallel is most striking and the biblical prohibition

is certainly directed against the practice described in this

text." Umberto Cassuto said, "It is clear that this was the

practice of the Canaanites on one of their holidays"

and we can now "guess that this custom was widespread in the

ritual of the [Israelite's] pagan neighbors." And Edward

Ullendorff found that the two texts "astonishing verbal

resemblance helps to illuminate some of the obscurities of both:

it is clear that the Pentateuch is inveighing against an

obnoxious Canaanite custom, perhaps a fertility cult or some

other ritually significant ceremony."

     Bible commentaries quickly made use of the scholars' work of

illuminate this previously obscure commandment. The Interpreter's

Bible, Moody Bible Institute Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament

Commentary Daily Study Bible, New Century Bible Commentary, Torah

Bible Commentary, Bible Study Textbook Series, Old Testament

Library, and other commentators, all concluded that the Ugaritic

text conclusively demonstrated that the Bible prohibition was

aimed at discouraging the Israelites from participating in some

sort of Canaanite fertility rite.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP YES NO

     Recent scholarship, however, has thoroughly un-dermined this

explanation.

     First, the most obvious problems that the Ugaritic text

makes no reference to mother's milk. Even after the Ugaritic text

is reconstructed, it refers only to boiling a kid in milk, not in

is mother's milk.

     Second, the reconstruction of the Ugaritic text is almost

certainly wrong. The scribes at Ugarit marked the division

between words with a special symbol, a small vertical wedge,

which epigraphers transliterate as a dot. There is little room in

the text of our tablet both for the customary word divider and

for the extra letter, h, that would allow the word Virolleaud

reconstructs as "cook" actually to be read that way. Even if the

h could somehow be squeezed into the line, however, the resulting

word tbh never means "to cook" in Ugaritic anyway, only "to

slaughter." So the text would refer to slaughtering a kid rather

than to cooking it.

     Finally, the Ugaritic word gd doesn't mean "kid." It

probably means coriander, an aromatic herb, a meaning found in

the Bible.

     So whatever it was that happened "in milk" during the

Ugaritians' ritual did not involve any cooking, and mother's milk

certainly wasn't used. Moreover, whatever happened "in milk"

didn't happen to a kid but to some kind of plant, probably

coriander.

     In short, no "cooking" no milk of "is mother" and probably

no "kid." There is thus no way that this Ugaritic tablet can be

used to illuminate the basis for the prohibition against boiling

a kid in its mother's milk.

     We are left, then, with the same puzzle: what is the basis

for the biblical prohibition?

SO WHAT IS THE BIBLE SAYING?

     One intriguing possibility is that the Bible verse has a

hidden purpose: it is actually directed against incest. Starting

with the hypothesis that legal prohibitions often reflect

society's taboos, the French diplomat-scholar Jean Soler

interprets the law concerning a kid to mean: "You shall not put a

mother and her son in the same pot any more than in the same

bed."

     This explanation has one major drawback: it's not

linguistically sound. In order to fit within the "incest"

paradigm, we must have both a mother goat and her male offspring.

But the Hebrew word for kid, "gdy" is asexual. So the

prohibition, as it stands, applies to female kids as well as m

males.

     We must therefore look for a more plausible explanation.

Several exegetes have suggested that the prohibition against

boiling a kid in its own mother's milk has a humanitarian basis,

that it s a sort of "kindness to animals" legislation. In the

end, however, this theory is also an unsatisfying solution to the

crux.

     Those who espouse the humanitarian theory point to the

biblical passages showing a special concern for the comfort and

even "feelings" of animals. The Israelites are commanded to be

especially sensitive to the tender relationship between a mother

animal and her young. For example, animals may not be slaughtered

on the same day as their offspring (Leviticus 22:28); a wild

mother bird may not be taken out of her nest along with her eggs

or fledglings (Deuteronomy 22:6-7); and no animal may be

sacrificed to God unless it has first been given a week with is

mother (Leviticus 22:27; Exodus 22:29).

     According to these scholars, a kid may not be boiled in its

mother's milk for the same reason: to prevent cruelty to animals.

     The reason this solution is unsatisfactory is that, while it

is true that the Bible recognizes that a mother and her young

feel pain at separation, this principle is not taken to extremes.

A dam and her offspring certainly can be slaughtered on

consecutive days, a bird and its fledglings may be taken

separately from the nest, and an eight-day-old lamb or kid may be

sacrificed, even if it is still nursing. In our case, a concern

about maternal sensibilities could not have given rise to the

prohibited practice because the mother goat can't possibly be

aware that her offspring is boiling in her milk.

     A second humanitarian-type motive for our biblical passage

has been advanced by scholars: that its purpose was to maintain

the comfort of the mother animal. This interpretation depends on

a different translation of the Hebrew text, made possible once

the text is freed of the incubus of the supposed "Ugaritic

parallel."

     Under this new reading, the Israelites are commanded to make

certain, when they bring their first fruits and then first-born

animals to Jerusalem to sacrifice, that they do not sacrifice (by

boiling) "a kid [which is yet] in the milk of its mother": in

other words, still nursing, and supported solely by its mother's

milk.

     The nursing kid prohibition so interpreted would thus be

closely related to the command to refrain from sacrificing a

newly born animal during the first week of its life (Leviticus

22:27; Exodus 22:29). The basis for this command is a principle

of animal husbandry that would have been well known to the

agricultural Israelites. Philo of Alexandria explained it this

way.

"During the first week after the birth of its offspring, the

mother's udders are a true fountain, but [the mother] has no

young ones to suck when one removes them. Since the milk fords

no more exit, the teats become hard and heavy, and by the weight

of the milk stuck inside they begin to hurt the mother" (Philo,

De Virtute,  128-129).

     Thus, the prohibition may be just a shorthand reminder to

the Israelites of a salutary husbandry rule set out elsewhere in

the Bible; for the mother animal's comfort, her newly born

offspring should not be taken away from her for sacrifice during

the first week of their life, while they are still sucking their

mother's milk.

     Again, the fatal flaw in this theory is philological - in

biblical Hebrew it is not possible, as this interpretation

requires, to refer to a "suckling" as one that is "in his

mother's milk." 

THE SWISS SCHOLAR KEEL

     Yet another possibility has been advanced by the Swiss

scholar Othmar Keel. In a new book he brings together a wealth of

icono-graphic material from the ancient Near East - seals,

pottery and rock tomb-paint-ings - bearing the image of a mother

nursing her young. He thinks that this material has a special

significance for the biblical prohibition. According to Keel, the

pervasiveness of this image reflects its symbolic power for the

primarily agricultural societies of the Bible: The nursing mother

is a source of fertility and benevolence, and her milk is a fount

of growth and new life.

     The symbolism takes on cosmic dimensions because the animals

portrayed in this Near Eastern iconography can stand for

divinities.

     In Ugaritic mythology, for example, the goddess Anat,

daughter of El and Athirat, assumes the shape of a heifer and

acts as wet nurse to the gods, as does Athirat. Both goddesses,

in addition, suckle specially deserving humans who are destined

for great things. 

     The Egyptian goddess Hathor is also represented as a cow.

She is depicted suckling Pharaoh Menwhotep 11 on the rock

painting found at Deir elBahari.

     In Babylonia, the mountain goddess Ninhursag is pictured

flanked by the wombs of animals, suckling a child.

     The nursing mother image as it appears in the art of

Syro-Palestine, unlike the Ugaritic, Egyptian and Babylonian

iconography, is not attributable to any particular deity. For

this reason, Keel believes that the image could easily have been

absorbed into the monotheism of the Israelites. A ban on seething

a kid in is mother's milk makes sense against this Canaanite

cultural background, for boiling a kid in the milk of is mother

would be opposed to and would vitiate the life-sustaining and

divinely ordained nurture inherent in all living being.

ON THE RIGHT TRACK...BUT

     Keel is, I submit, on the right track. But his explanation

is not fully satisfying. The kid of the biblical command is not

being suckled; it has already been separated from is mother. The

focus in the biblical verse is upon the kid, not upon the nursing

mother - in fact, the mother, which under Keel's theory

represents the transmission of the life-force, is totally absent.

Only her milk is present. In the biblical image, we do not find

the image of the suckling mother representing the transmission of

the life-sustaining force proceeding from generation to

generation.

PHILO ... PROBABLY MORE CORRECT

     I believe it is more productive to take our cue from Philo,

the first-century Hellenistic Jewish philosopher and exegete. As

Philo put it, it is "grossly improper that the substance which

fed the living animal should be used to season or flavor it after

its death" (De Virtute, 13).

     Hence, according to Philo, the root rationale behind the kid

prohibition is its opposition to commingling life and death. A

substance that sustains the life of a creature (milk) should not

be fused or confused with a process associated with is death

(cooking).

     This prohibition is, thus, simply another instance of the

emphasis on opposites characteristic of biblical ritual and

practice: to separate life from death, holy from common, pure    

from impure, Israel from the nations. The reverence for life and 

Israel's separation from the nations are ideas reflected

throughout the dietary laws. For example, the reverence or life

is reflected in the blood prohibition. Separating Israel from the

nations is re reflected in the prohibition against eating certain

animals such as pig and crusta-ceans.

     Thus the prohibition against cooking a kid in its mother's

milk conforms neatly with Israel's overall dietary system.

     The command not to boil a kid in mother's milk is first set

forth in Exodus, where the context in which it appears shows that

it probably applies only to kids sacrificed on one of the

Israelites pilgrimage festivals. By the time the command appears

again in Deuteronomy, however, it is apparent that it has been

transformed into something much broader, a new dietary law.

     It is easy to see why this prohibition would have been so

quickly integrated in the Israelites' dietary system. It bodies

two common biblical themes reverence for life, even dumb animal

life, and Israel's separation from the nations.

     This life versus-death theory also completely and neatly

elucidates the other biblical prohibitions mentioned earlier 

that, heretofore, have been explained as having humanitarian

motives. 

NO FUSION WITH LIFE AND DEATH

     However the common denominator of all these prohibitions

is that they prevent the fusion of life and death. Thus, the 

life-giving process of the mother bird hatching or feeding

her young should not be the occasion of their joint death

(Deuteronomy 22:6). The sacrifice of the newborn may be

inevitable, but not for the first week while it is constantly 

at the mother's breast (Leviticus 22:27); and never should both

the mother and its young be slain at the same time (Leviticus   

22:28). By the same token, mother's milk, the life-sustaining

food for her kid, should never become associated with is death.

     Is it, then, so far-fetched for the rabbis to have deduced

that all neat, not just of the kid, and all milk, not only of the

mother, may not be served together? In a fundamental way, the

rule encourages a reverence for life, a separation of life

and death - and separates Israel from the nations.

                            ..................

Note:

[I think putting it in simple terms we can deduce this from Jacob

Milgrom. The new born kid, calf, sheep, should not be killed

within the early new life it has, then be cooked in its mother's

milk (possibly because it may give some added flavor to the meat)

that it was depending on for life. As Milgron states, that would

be confusing life and death, hence a teaching to instill in

Israel a certain reverence for life and death - a separation of

life and death, which many of the nations around them did not

practice. As Milgrom has given, thus the life-giving process of

the mother bird hatching or feeding her young should not be the

occasion of their joint death (Deut.22:6). The sacrifice of the

newborn may be inevitable, but not for the first week while it is

constantly at the mother's breast (Lev.22:27); and never should

both the mother and its young be slain at the same time

(Lev.22:28). By the same token, the mother's milk, the life-

sustaining food for her kid, should never become associated with

its death - Keith Hunt]

Entered on my Website - October 2007