What Are The Dietary Laws Of Leviticus?

Either the Christian doctrine on the dietary laws is that they, unlike the laws of justice and core morality (see Malachi 3:6), were obligatory for ancient Jews and by extension other followers of Yahweh before Christ but not afterward, or that they, like far more of Mosaic Law than most Christians are willing to even consider, are universally obligatory for all people across all geographical, historical, and other circumstantial variables.  These are the only two possibilities about what could be the Biblical stance on the matter since there are no passages that say the dietary laws are binding or intrinsically obligatory in part; it is all of them that are still binding if the New Testament verses that supposedly repeal them have been misinterpreted and all of them that are no longer morally necessary if these New Testament verses have not been misunderstood.

Now, only a fool would expect the majority of professing Christians to actually change their diet if it did turn out that the dietary laws remain obligatory and that they had only been assuming because of tradition or popularity that these rules do not also correspond to God's unchanging moral nature, despite still at most being secondary to many other moral ideas in Mosaic Law.  For all their talk about pretending to obey the dictates of God as expressed in the Bible, most Christians are only trying to satisfy their subjective consciences, the consciences of others on a selective basis, and meaningless social norms that they are personally accustomed to and confuse for default moral obligations.  It would be too inconvenient for them to want to do what the deity they claim to follow commands despite how every single detail of Mosaic Law, even the ones that could not possibly be obligatory in all times such as sacrificing animals at the Temple (a modern American like me cannot be obligated to sacrifice at the Temple one way or another if the Temple does not still stand, regardless of the death and resurrection of Jesus), is within everyone's ability to fully adhere to all at once (Deuteronomy 30:11).

With all of this understood, what even are the dietary laws of Leviticus?  They are inflexible restrictions on what people can eat that are still far less restrictive than many would likely expect, such as the command to not eat any water-based life form that does not have scales or fins (Leviticus 11:9) or the permission to eat land-based creatures that have split hooves and chew cud (Leviticus 11:3).  Leviticus 11:4-7 lists examples of animals that only have split hooves like pigs or only chew cud like camels, so both requirements apply simultaneously.  Crawfish, for instance, would be excluded from the water-based creatures permitted for consumption because they do not have fins or scales like fish.  Inversely, since cows have split hooves and chew cud, eating beef, given that it (like all meat) is eaten without blood as dictated by Leviticus 17:10-14, would be nonsinful.

There is also a list of various birds to not be eaten (Leviticus 11:13-19), the distinctions made between the flying insects to never be eaten (11:20) and the hopping, winged bugs that can be consumed (11:21-22), and the prohibition of eating creatures that move about or crawl on the ground like snakes, lizards, and rats (11:41-42)--different from creatures like cows that walk on the ground.  Yes, there are things like pork that American Christians might be frustrated about giving up if these laws have the same universal Biblical status as the obligation to never steal or executing rapists, but, ultimately there is still plenty that one could eat even within the rigid dietary restrictions of Leviticus.  The extent of these particular laws has been greatly exaggerated by Christians and non-Christians.

The dietary laws, even if they only applied to humans for a time, would still at least have reflected genuine moral obligations since if you should do something, it is morally required of you, and any command of a deity with a moral nature is rooted in the obligation to obey.  If they were only binding for a time as many Christians believe out of convenience and tradition rather than any sort of rationalistic exegesis, they would not have corresponded to the same core moral nature of God like issues of kidnapping, murder, rape, blasphemy, adultery, and the whole of criminal and social justice; it is also vital to clarify that Christians who reject the dietary laws usually reject too much of Mosaic Law beyond this or literally do so just because of church tradition.  However, if these laws are still obligatory, then they are still at best secondary, important because of their standing as a moral issue but far from having the same primary and crucial nature as most other parts of Biblical morality.  Soon, I hope to address whether the Bible does or does not actually teach that these dietary laws spring from universal obligations that, like the core obligations rooted in God's nature, never change.