Jubilees 22:16

Pseudepigrapha

14 And may He cleanse thee from all unrighteousness and impurity, That thou mayest be forgiven all the transgressions; which thou hast committed ignorantly. And may He strengthen thee, And bless thee. And mayest thou inherit the whole earth, 15 And may He renew His covenant with thee. That thou mayest be to Him a nation for His inheritance for all the ages, And that He may be to thee and to thy seed a God in truth and righteousness throughout all the days of the earth. 16 And do thou, my son Jacob, remember my words, And observe the commandments of Abraham, thy father: Separate thyself from the nations, And eat not with them: And do not according to their works, And become not their associate; For their works are unclean, And all their ways are a Pollution and an abomination and uncleanness. 17 They offer their sacrifices to the dead And they worship evil spirits, And they eat over the graves, And all their works are vanity and nothingness. 18 They have no heart to understand And their eyes do not see what their works are, And how they err in saying to a piece of wood: 'Thou art my God,' And to a stone: 'Thou art my Lord and thou art my deliverer.' [And they have no heart.]

Galatians 2:12

New Testament

11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he had clearly done wrong. 12 Until certain people came from James, he had been eating with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he stopped doing this and separated himself because he was afraid of those who were pro-circumcision. 13 And the rest of the Jews also joined with him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray with them by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that they were not behaving consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “If you, although you are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you try to force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

 Notes and References

"... The significance attaching meals in the ancient world in general, as among Jews in particular, made sharing a meal the most intimate form of association between people other than sexual relations.'" This is why Jubilees, which so strongly opposes intermarriage, also says ... This makes clear that the reason sharing meals is forbidden is because the Torah requires "separation" from the Gentiles and from their corrupting influence (Leviticus 20:22-26; compare Nehemiah 9:2; 10:28). This general concern is not, as we have seen, by any means limited to Jubilees. As others have documented, sharing a meal with Gentiles, especially if provided by Gentiles in their own home, entailed serious risks of ipso facto committing idolatry: the meat might well have been sacrificed to idols in the pagan temple, the wine would have been put to idolatrous use by pouring a libation from it, and oil could also be tainted with idolatry." It is these dangers, as well as forbidden animals and blood, that the literary examples of Daniel (Daniel 1:3-17), Judith (Judith 12:1-4, 19) and Esther (Esther 14:17) avoid by not taking pagan meat and wine ..."

Bauckham, Richard The Missions of James, Peter, and Paul: Tensions in Early Christianity (pp. 91-142) Brill, 2004

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