In this concise volume, Jordan D. Rosenblum examines the way in which ancient Jews defended their kosher laws and others, specifically Christian and pagan writers, critiqued them.

The book divides itself into seven chapters excluding an introduction and conclusion. Chapter i examines the kosher laws as these appear in Leviticus xi. Among the number of striking things about this Pentateuchal chapter, which has its parallel in Deuteronomy xiv, is the absence of any attempts to explain why these laws were given, though this has not stopped an array of anthropologists and theologians attempting to fill the vacuum with various theories, some of which Rosenblum reproduces and critiques. Chapter ii examines pagan interest in the food laws. Particular interest was shown in the command to abstain from eating pork. Some, like Plutarch, sought to explain, almost in neutral terms, the origins of such a law, while others were more polemical, positing a negative origin in Egypt and seeing it as a manifestation of Jewish misanthropy, and some simply reported the matter with an air of amusement or satire. Chapter iii looks at the laws as they were discussed by what Rosenblum terms ‘Hellenistic’ Jews. Here there is much evidence of attempts to justify these laws, sometimes with rational arguments, sometimes with allegorical ones. Ethical interpretations, sometimes bound up with abstinence, sometimes with interpretations which saw the animal as embodying a quality to be avoided or embraced, mixed with practical ones, as seen in the probably second-century bceAristeas and Philo of Alexandria. Also significant in this period were arguments concerning commensality and the role of food, as well as the role of food in martyrdom accounts as found in 2 and 4 Maccabees, both of which highlight issues of identity. Chapter iv concerns the New Testament. The food laws seem to have been a matter of controversy, especially as this related to questions of behaviour expected of Gentiles, and they loomed large where matters of commensality arose. A chapter follows on the Tannaim. They, by and large, despite introducing new food laws, were uninterested in justifying the food laws from a rational or allegorical viewpoint (so often evidenced among Hellenistic Jews), preferring simply to appeal to revelation, and to discuss the implementation of the laws (what Rosenblum describes as the ‘how’). Chapter vi deals with the Amoraim, who introduce, sometimes obliquely, rational justifications of some food laws, but largely reflect their Tannaitic predecessors in being content with a view of the laws as revealed truths. A final substantive chapter concerns itself with later Christian authors. Some, like Clement, could see the virtue of such laws in the kind of restrained and abstinent behaviour that they encouraged, though he saw no need to continue practising them, as was the case with writers like Barnabas and Novatian (spelled as Novation by Rosenblum), whose allegorising of the laws, in contrast to Hellenistic Jews, excluded their physical implementation. Rosenblum concludes with a discursive discussion of food ethics in the modern world and the broad relevance to that subject of some of the issues that he has surveyed in the ancient evidence.

This is a useful book, clearly written and full of helpful information. In the end, however, it is more a competent enumeration of results than a thesis of any kind. The categorisation of the various arguments used by an array of writers in discussion of the food laws as rational, allegorical and revelatory is helpful, though the first two refer to different things: one to a way of thinking; the other to a mode of interpretation. Sometimes Rosenblum pays too little attention to the context of the texts that he is discussing. So, for instance, is the writer of the Letter of Aristeas engaged in an externally oriented apologetic when he writes his elaborate section on the food laws (the section, after all, forms part of an extended discussion between the Jewish translators of the Septuagint and Ptolemy Philadelphus, the Egyptian king), or is it addressed to Jews, who struggled with the specificity and apparent arbitrariness of these laws? And similar questions could be addressed to Philo and other Jewish Hellenistic sources. Why the Rabbis seemed less interested in rational arguments justifying the food laws than their Hellenistic forebears could perhaps have been discussed more than is the case, not least against the background of questions of audience and context. The section on the later Christian writers could have benefited from more research. For instance, Rosenblum does not note that Clement of Alexandria knew some of the works of Philo (in fact he is the first Christian author to mention Philo); or that arguments aimed against the physical implementation of the food laws were not exclusively allegorical (here, inter alia, perhaps reference to Justin's presentation of the debate between him and Trypho on the subject of Genesis ix.3–4 at Dialogue 20 could have been made). A greater array of authors could have been discussed and, as with the Jewish sections of the book, issues to do with the context and audience of the texts under discussion could have been addressed. The absence of some of the more rebarbative pagan arguments against the food laws is a striking feature of Christian engagement with this subject and need not be explained simply by reference to the fact that Christians shared a reverence for Scripture not evidenced among pagans.

Other matters could be raised but in the end Jordan Rosenblum is to be thanked for a book which, potentially at least, opens up a range of interesting questions.