As I thought, PF simply has to say the Bible is not God's Word. (I submitted my reply before PF's response was posted.) But of course, when he/she goes on to say it is "an unreasonable and barbaric prejudice" he/she begs the question, as Bock points out. Pf, to butress his/her point that, I assume, the Biblical ethic is "unreasonable and barbaric", cites the fact that the Bible authors had no problem with slavery, polygamy, and genocide. Of course, he/she only continues to reason in a circle when he/she cites slavery and genocide (it's promotion of polygamy is still an unfounded assertion).

To say, "And to associate a wholesale change in what constitutes a sin as "administrative differences Jesus introduced as part of his program" is bizarre." is to work with a very narrow view of ethics which apparently either ignores or disregards the possibility of the moral value of thing being contingent on the situation (I'm not promoting anything like Fletcher's situational ethics).

I don't mean to sidetrack the focus of this series, but I'm not sure I agree with you, DLB, that, "Eating pork was a matter of clean and uncleanness for Israel. This is not the same as being sin or not. It was to be avoided but it did not mean one had sinned. It did prevent one entering the temple-- that is what cultic impurity was about. It is a distinct category from sin."

It certainly seems from the text that a person who disobeyed the dietary laws was guilty of sin: "Ye shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creepeth, neither shall ye make yourselves unclean with them, that ye should be defiled thereby. For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" (Le 11:43-45). Even though the passage doesn't specifically say that the person who eats the unclean food is sinning, it seems reasonable to arrive at that conclusion because God's people were supposed to be sanctified. In other words, the text does make clear that they had a moral obligation to sanctify themselves and be holy. It wasn't optional. According to this text, it would seem that keeping the dietary laws was one of they ways that they maintained this sanctity. A person's failure to observe the dietary laws would result in a loss of sanctity and, therefore, would also fail to keep their moral obligation.

Admittedly, you are probably more qualified than me in this issue. Perhaps you have something in mind that I've missed.