Leviticus 11 is one of the most detailed chapters in the Torah. It classifies animals, birds, fish, and insects into clean and unclean categories with surgical precision. Animals that chew the cud and have split hooves are clean. The pig chews the cud but has no split hoof - unclean. Seafood with fins and scales - clean. Shellfish, catfish, squid - unclean. The list goes on for forty-seven verses. For many in the Hebrew Roots Movement, this chapter represents one of the clearest and most incontrovertible cases that the Mosaic law applies to all believers in all ages. Surely God does not change what he called clean and unclean. Surely the New Testament does not overturn Leviticus 11.

The New Testament, in fact, addresses the dietary laws directly - in the teaching of Jesus, in the vision of Peter, in the letters of Paul, and in the Jerusalem Council's ruling. The evidence is extensive, consistent, and points in one direction. This article examines all of it, gives the HRM's counterarguments their strongest possible form, and explains why they fail - including the specific claim that Peter's vision in Acts 10 has nothing to do with food.

Jesus and the Dietary Laws - Mark 7

The place to begin is not Acts 10 but Mark 7, because Jesus addresses the question of food and defilement directly during his earthly ministry - before the cross, before the resurrection, before the giving of the Spirit, before any Gentile question has arisen to complicate the picture.

In Mark 7:1–23, the Pharisees challenge Jesus because his disciples eat without washing their hands according to the tradition of the elders. Jesus responds by distinguishing between human tradition and the commandment of God, and then addresses the crowd: "Hear me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him." (7:15).

When the disciples ask him about this privately, he expands: "Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?" And then Mark adds his own editorial comment: "Thus he declared all foods clean." (7:19).

The HRM response to this passage runs as follows: Jesus is addressing handwashing traditions, not the Levitical food laws. The "nothing outside a person can defile" statement is about ritual contamination through contact, not about removing Leviticus 11's categories. Mark's parenthetical comment is Mark's editorial interpretation, not Jesus's actual words, and Mark got it wrong - or was writing for a Gentile audience and overstated Jesus's point.

This response fails on multiple grounds.

First, Jesus's statement is categorical. "There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him." This is not a statement about handwashing traditions. It is a statement about the entire category of external things entering the body. Food is the primary thing that enters the body from outside. If Jesus meant only handwashing, the statement is vastly overstated - he would have said "washing your hands in the right way does not determine defilement," not "nothing outside a person can defile him."

Second, Jesus's private explanation to the disciples makes the point about food explicitly: "whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach." He specifically references what goes into the stomach. He is talking about eating. His contrast is between what enters the stomach from outside and what comes out of the heart from inside. The stomach reference is not compatible with a handwashing-only interpretation.

Third, Mark's editorial comment - "thus he declared all foods clean" - is not an error or an overstatement. Mark is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for an audience that needed to understand the implications of Jesus's teaching. If Mark got this wrong, we have a problem much larger than the dietary laws question: we have an inspired Gospel author misrepresenting Jesus's teaching on a significant point of practice. The HRM cannot dismiss Mark's comment without undermining its own commitment to the authority of Scripture.

Fourth, the parallel passage in Matthew 15:1–20 reaches the same conclusion through a slightly different angle. Matthew does not include Mark's editorial comment, but Jesus's teaching in Matthew 15 makes the same point: the mouth and what goes into it does not defile a person - what comes out of the mouth, proceeding from the heart, is what defiles. Matthew records this without correcting it as an overstatement. Both Gospel accounts consistently represent Jesus as relocating defilement from the external/dietary to the internal/moral.

Peter's Vision - Acts 10

Acts 10 is the most important passage in the New Testament on the dietary laws, and it is the passage the HRM works hardest to neutralise. Peter is on a rooftop in Joppa. He falls into a trance and sees a large sheet descending from heaven, held by its four corners, containing all kinds of animals - four-footed animals, reptiles, birds. A voice commands him: "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." Peter refuses: "By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean." The voice responds: "What God has made clean, do not call common." This happens three times. Then the sheet is taken up into heaven.

The HRM's standard response to Acts 10 is one of the most widely deployed arguments in the movement, and it must be stated in its strongest form before being answered.

The argument: Peter himself interprets the vision, and his interpretation has nothing to do with food. In Acts 10:28, Peter says: "God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean." In Acts 10:34–35, Peter declares: "Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him." The vision is about Gentile inclusion, not dietary law revision. God uses the image of unclean animals to teach Peter that Gentiles - previously regarded as outside the covenant, as "unclean" - are now to be welcomed. The food is symbolic. The lesson is about people. Peter never eats anything. The vision has no direct application to what believers may put in their mouths.

This argument is presented with great confidence in HRM teaching. It is the argument that makes sincere believers feel that the dietary laws are safe - that Acts 10 has been defused. It fails for reasons that are visible in the text itself, and the failure is total.

Why the "It's About People, Not Food" Argument Collapses

The argument that Acts 10 is purely about Gentile inclusion and has no bearing on dietary laws rests on a logical error so fundamental that it dismantles itself once stated clearly.

The argument requires the symbol to be false for the lesson to be true.

Here is the structure of the vision. God says: these animals, which you consider unclean, I have made clean - do not call them common. The lesson Peter draws: people I considered unclean, God has made clean - I should not call them common.

The HRM says: only the lesson is true. The symbol (the food) remains as Peter initially understood it - unclean. God used a false premise to teach a true lesson. He told Peter that what is unclean has been made clean - but actually it has not been made clean, only people have been declared acceptable. The food in the vision is still unclean. God was lying about the food in order to teach a truth about people.

This is the logical position the HRM argument requires. God says "what I have made clean, do not call common" - referring to food - and the HRM response is: the food has not actually been made clean. God's statement about the food is a rhetorical device, not a real declaration. The food is still what Peter initially thought it was.

But this creates an insuperable theological problem. If God's declaration "what I have made clean, do not call common" does not actually make the food clean, on what basis does Peter conclude that it makes Gentiles clean? Peter's entire application depends on taking God's declaration at face value: if God says something is clean, it is clean. If the declaration does not actually apply to the food, why does Peter trust it to apply to people? The argument's own logic destroys the lesson it is trying to preserve.

The vision only works - the application to Gentiles only follows - if God's declaration genuinely cleanses what it declares clean. And if God's declaration genuinely cleanses what it declares clean, then the food in the sheet has been genuinely declared clean. You cannot have the lesson without the literal truth of the symbol.

The Three-Fold Repetition and What It Means

The vision happens three times. Peter is told three times: rise, kill, eat. He refuses three times. Three times the voice responds: what God has made clean, do not call common.

In biblical narrative, threefold repetition is a signal of emphasis, certainty, and divine confirmation. God is not giving Peter a gentle suggestion that he might want to reconsider. He is driving a point home with maximum force. And he does it specifically on the question of the food - the food Peter refuses to eat, the food God declares clean three times in succession.

If the vision were only about Gentile inclusion and had nothing to say about food, the threefold repetition of "kill and eat" followed by "what God has made clean, do not call common" is inexplicably elaborate. You would expect the vision to depict Gentiles being welcomed, or the dividing wall being removed, or some other image directly corresponding to the lesson about people. Instead God chooses food - specifically, food Peter identifies as Torah-unclean - and three times declares it clean. The choice of this particular image is not arbitrary. God is making a declaration about food that has implications for people, not using people as an image that has no implications for food.

The HRM's Other Dodge: The "Fasting" or "Ritual Purity" Reading

Some in the HRM go further than the "it's about people" argument. They argue that the vision relates to ritual purity distinctions - the clean/unclean categories of Leviticus 11 are not primarily about what one eats but about ritual status, and what is being removed in Acts 10 is not the dietary restriction but the ritual boundary between Jew and Gentile. God is not saying "you may now eat pork." He is saying "the ritual boundary that marked Gentiles as outside the covenant community has been removed." The food laws, on this reading, remain intact as dietary requirements. Only their function as covenant boundary markers has changed.

This is a more sophisticated version of the same argument, and it fails for the same reason plus several additional ones.

First, the text does not say this. Peter does not interpret the vision as being about ritual purity categories in the abstract. He says: "God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean." His application is specific - it is about Cornelius, about this particular Gentile household, about welcoming them into his company. He does not say: God has shown me that the Levitical clean/unclean framework is now reorganised with respect to its social function while remaining intact with respect to dietary practice. He says: what God has made clean, don't call common. The application is direct and personal.

Second, if the dietary laws remain fully intact as divine requirements, Peter's refusal in the vision makes no sense as a symbol. Peter refuses because he has "never eaten anything common or unclean." If the dietary laws are unchanged and still bind all believers, Peter is right to refuse and should continue to refuse. God saying "what I have made clean, do not call common" would then mean: continue refusing, because actually nothing has changed about the food - I just want to talk to you about Gentiles. This makes the vision incoherent as communication.

Third, the logic of the vision requires that Peter's categories were wrong - not just socially applied in a way that needs adjusting, but wrong in their underlying premise. God is not saying: your food restrictions are fine, but you've been applying the clean/unclean logic wrongly to people. He is saying: your entire premise about what I consider clean and unclean has been revised. Don't call common what I have made clean. Peter's application to people follows because the principle applies to people. But the principle itself is stated in terms of food, and it is stated as a genuine revision, not a clarification.

Paul and the Dietary Laws

Paul addresses food restrictions in multiple letters, and his handling of them is consistent and directly applicable to the Leviticus 11 question.

Romans 14:14: "I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean."

This statement is categorical. Nothing is unclean in itself. The Greek word is koinos - common, unclean - the same word used in Acts 10 for what Peter was told not to call common. Paul says nothing is unclean in itself. This is not a statement about personal preference or cultural sensitivity. It is an ontological statement about the nature of food: no food is intrinsically unclean.

The HRM response is that Paul is talking about food offered to idols, not Levitical clean/unclean categories. But Paul's statement does not restrict itself to idol meat. He says nothing is unclean in itself. If he meant only idol meat, he would have said "idol meat is not unclean in itself." He uses the universal negative. Nothing. And the word koinos - common/unclean - is the specific vocabulary of the Levitical purity system, the same word Peter uses in Acts 10, the same word used throughout the Septuagint for Levitical impurity.

Romans 14:17: "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." The kingdom of God - the domain in which believers live under Christ's reign - is not constituted by food observance. Eating and drinking do not define kingdom membership or kingdom faithfulness.

Romans 14:20: "Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats." Everything is clean. Paul says it twice in this chapter - nothing is unclean in itself (14:14), and everything is clean (14:20). The second statement uses the word kathara - clean - the specific vocabulary of Levitical purity. Everything is Levitically clean. The restriction that remains is not Levitical but relational: don't use your freedom in a way that destroys a weaker brother.

1 Timothy 4:1–5 is even more direct: "Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer."

Read that carefully. Paul calls the requirement to abstain from certain foods a teaching of demons. He says everything God created is good and nothing is to be rejected. He grounds this in creation - God created all these animals. Receiving them with thanksgiving makes them holy. He does not say: everything is fine except the Leviticus 11 list, which remains restricted. He says everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected.

The HRM response is that Paul is addressing Gnostic food restrictions or pagan asceticism, not Leviticus 11. But the text does not say this. "Foods that God created" - all foods - are declared good and nothing is to be rejected. The principle applies to everything God made, which includes the animals of Leviticus 11 since God made them too.

The Jerusalem Council - Acts 15

The Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 is the apostolic body's definitive ruling on what Gentile believers are required to observe. The question before the council was precisely this: do Gentile converts need to observe the Mosaic law? The answer was no - and the four requirements they specified are revealing.

Acts 15:28–29: "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well."

Notice what is not in this list. There is no requirement to observe the Sabbath. No requirement to keep the feast days. No requirement to avoid pork, shellfish, or any of the Leviticus 11 unclean animals. The four requirements relate to idol worship, the sanctity of blood (connected to the Noahic covenant in Genesis 9:4), improperly slaughtered animals, and sexual immorality. Levitical food categories are entirely absent.

If Leviticus 11 were binding on all believers in all ages, the Jerusalem Council's ruling is inexplicably incomplete. The council was led by the apostles and elders, guided by the Holy Spirit, ruling specifically on what Gentile believers must observe. If unclean animals were still prohibited, this was the moment to say so. They did not say so. Their silence on Leviticus 11 in a ruling about Gentile observance is not a gap - it is a statement.

The Theological Logic: Why the Dietary Laws Were Always Provisional

Understanding why Jesus, Peter, and Paul all point in the same direction on the dietary laws requires understanding what the dietary laws were for.

Leviticus 11 was never presented in the Torah as a timeless moral principle derived from the nature of reality. It was presented as a covenant boundary - a set of practices that would distinguish Israel from the surrounding nations, mark out the covenant community as holy to God, and teach Israel through embodied daily practice that distinction, separation, and holiness were at the heart of their identity. "You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy." (Leviticus 11:45). The dietary laws enacted this holiness in the most ordinary and constant sphere of life - food.

But the boundary they maintained between clean and unclean was always a shadow of a deeper boundary - between the holy and the common, between those who belong to God and those who do not, between covenant inclusion and covenant exclusion. When Christ came, the substance arrived. The boundary between Jew and Gentile - which the dietary laws helped maintain - was broken down. The dividing wall of hostility was demolished (Ephesians 2:14). One new man was created in place of the two. Gentiles became fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, fellow partakers of the promise (Ephesians 3:6).

When the substance arrives, the shadow's specific function is fulfilled. The dietary laws were not arbitrary rules God invented for obscure reasons. They were a coherent covenant practice pointing toward holiness and separation from idolatrous nations. That separating function has been fulfilled in Christ - not discarded, fulfilled. The holiness they pointed toward is now written on the heart by the Spirit (Ezekiel 36:26–27). The separation they enacted has been replaced by a deeper, spiritual separation from the world's values and the flesh's desires (Romans 12:2, Galatians 5:16).

This is why God can say to Peter "what I have made clean, do not call common" - without lying and without reversing himself. He is not saying he was wrong about Leviticus 11. He is saying that the purpose Leviticus 11 served has been fulfilled in Christ, and the specific dietary restrictions that served that purpose no longer function as covenant markers for the people of God. Colossians 2:16–17 states this plainly: food, drink, festivals, new moons, Sabbaths are "a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ."

Answering the Strongest HRM Objection

The HRM's strongest remaining objection goes like this: even if Acts 10 and Paul's letters address the question, Jesus himself said not one jot or tittle would pass from the law until heaven and earth pass away. Heaven and earth have not passed away. Therefore Leviticus 11 still stands.

This objection has been addressed in detail in the Matthew 5:17 article on this site, but a brief response is appropriate here. The phrase "until all is accomplished" in Matthew 5:18 is the second until clause that the HRM consistently ignores. Jesus says the law stands until all is accomplished - until everything the law and prophets were pointing toward has come to pass. His cross, resurrection, and the giving of the Spirit are the fulfilment of what the law was pointing toward. The law has not been discarded - it has been fulfilled. And Mark 7:19 records Jesus himself, before the cross, already declaring all foods clean - indicating that the fulfilment of this particular covenant boundary was directly connected to his ministry and authority, not to some future event still pending.

Furthermore, even on the HRM's own terms, this objection proves too much. If the dietary laws still stand in full because heaven and earth have not passed away, then so does the entire Levitical sacrificial system, the temple requirements, the Nazirite vow regulations, the laws of ritual impurity from corpse contact, the leprosy inspection requirements - every jot and tittle of the Mosaic law. The HRM does not observe most of these. The selective application of "not one jot or tittle" to the Sabbath and dietary laws while ignoring the temple, priesthood, and sacrifice regulations reveals that the HRM is already making distinctions within the law that its stated hermeneutic does not justify.

What About Health Arguments?

A subsidiary HRM argument is that the dietary laws reflect God's design for human health - pigs and shellfish carry parasites and pathogens, and God's restrictions protect his people from disease. Therefore the dietary laws have a timeless health rationale that survives the fulfilment of their covenantal function.

This argument has no exegetical basis and several practical problems. Leviticus 11 gives no health rationale for its distinctions. The text presents the dietary laws as holiness requirements, not health protocols. The clean/unclean distinction is covenant language, not nutritional language. Insects that hop are clean; those that crawl are unclean - this is not a disease-prevention framework. Locusts are clean; owls are unclean - not a health rationale.

Furthermore, Jesus specifically says that what enters the stomach cannot defile a person, because it goes into the stomach and is expelled (Mark 7:19). If the dietary laws were primarily about physical health, Jesus's statement would be medically wrong - pathogens in food absolutely can harm the body. But Jesus is not making a nutritional statement. He is making a covenantal purity statement: the Torah's dietary distinctions do not determine a person's standing before God. His statement presupposes that food is about covenant categories, not health - and then he declares those categories revised.

Conclusion

The evidence on the dietary laws is extensive and consistent. Jesus declared all foods clean in Mark 7:19. God declared all foods clean to Peter in a vision that happened three times, in language that only works if the food declaration is genuine and not merely symbolic. Paul wrote that nothing is unclean in itself (Romans 14:14), that everything is clean (Romans 14:20), that everything God created is good and nothing is to be rejected (1 Timothy 4:4), and that requiring abstinence from food is a teaching of demons (1 Timothy 4:1–3). The Jerusalem Council's ruling on Gentile observance does not mention the Leviticus 11 food categories at all.

The HRM's claim that Acts 10 is about people and not food fails because the symbol must be true for the lesson to follow. If God's declaration "what I have made clean, do not call common" does not actually apply to the food, then Peter has no basis for concluding it applies to Gentiles. The vision only works - the application to Cornelius only follows - if God genuinely declares the formerly unclean animals clean. And if he genuinely declares them clean, they are clean.

The dietary laws were real, were from God, served a specific covenantal function - marking out Israel as a holy and separate people - and pointed forward to the holiness that Christ would produce in his people through the Spirit. They have been fulfilled in the one they always pointed toward. Receiving food with thanksgiving, made holy by the word of God and prayer, is the practice of the new covenant people - not the Levitical animal classification system that served its appointed purpose and gave way to the substance it anticipated.

What God has made clean, do not call common. - Acts 10:15