(15) So also, in particular, the Jews abstain from swine's flesh on the ground of this animal being unclean; since more than the other animals it roots up, and destroys the productions of the ground. But if they say that the animals were assigned to men - and we agree with them - yet it was not entirely for food.

(35) The learned have had many disputations, questions, conceits and opinions concerning the fierce malignity and evil that is in all the creatures in this world, and even in the very sun and stars; moreover, there are some so very poisonous and venomous beasts, worms and vegetables in this world, that thereupon rational men have justly wondered, and some have concluded peremptorily, That God must needs have willed the evil also, seeing he has created so much that is evil; and some have laid the blame and fault thereof upon the fall of Adam, and some have imputed it to the work and doings of the devil.

(122) O man, thou wast not, by the Word, created together with and as the beasts, from good and evil; and if thou hadst not eaten of good and evil, then the wrath-fire would not have been in thee; but by that means thou hast also gotten a bestial body: It is done: The love of God take pity, and have mercy in that behalf.

(14) Now Xenocrates, treating by himself of "the food derived from animals," and Polemon in his work On Life according, to Nature, seem clearly to say that animal food is unwholesome, inasmuch as it has already been elaborated and assimilated to the souls of the irrational creatures.

(1) As, then, God is not circumscribed by place, neither is ever represented by the form of a living creature; so neither has He similar passions, nor has He wants like the creatures, so as to desire sacrifice, from hunger, by way of food. Those creatures which are affected by passion are all mortal. And it is useless to bring food to one who is not nourished.

(32) Therefore, O Man! consider what thou hast received with thy bestial Body, to eat and to drink of Evil and Good, which God did forbid. Look here into the Ground of the Essences, and say not with Reason; It was merely for Disobedience, which God was so very angry at, that his Anger could not be quenched. Thou art deceived, for if the clear Deity was angry, it would not have become Man for thy Sake to help thee; look but upon the

(1) When the Father produced by intellect And austenty seven kinds of food, One of his [foods] was common to all, Of two he let the gods partake, Three he made for himself, One he bestowed upon the animals On this [food] everything depends, Both what breathes and what does not. How is it that these do not peiish When they are being eaten all the time He who knows this imperishableness— He eats food with his mouth (pratika), He goes to the gods, He lives on strength. Thus the verses.

(16) Nor was it all animals, but such as do not work. Wherefore the comic poet Plato says not badly in the drama of The Feasts: "For of the quadrupeds we should not slay In future aught but swine. For these have flesh Most toothsome; and about the pig is nought For us, excepting bristles, mud, and noise."

(10) God could well have created Creatures which should have managed the Beasts, [so] that Man might well have staid in Paradise in the angelical Form; and besides that, there are already, in all the four Elements, Creatures without a Soul; God would well have laid the Labour [or Charge] of Managing the Beasts upon another Generation, which were also 1 earthly. But he saw well that Man would not stand, therefore instantly the Burthen was laid upon him, as Moses also writes of it. Or of the four Elements. 1 1. But if God would have had bestial Men, then he would have created them so in the Beginning, and given them no Commandment, neither should they have been tempted; as indeed the Beasts have no Law.

(6) And behold I have given unto you all beasts, and all winged things, and everything that moveth on the earth, and the fish in the waters, and all things for food ; as the green herbs, I have given you all things to eat.

(7) So also it is very clear and manifest, that before the Curse there grew not such venomous [or poisonous] Thorns and Thistles, and poisonous Fruits; and if God had not cursed the Earth (from the [one] Element) then no Beast should have been so fierce and [mischievous or] evil; for God said, Let the Earth be cursed for thy Sake. From whence now is also arisen the Disobedience of the Beasts towards Man, and their Wildness, [or flying in their Face,] as also, that they are so [cruel,] fierce, [mischievous,] and evil, and that Man must hide himself from their fierce Rage and Fury;] whereas God (in the Creation) gave all into his Power, all Beasts of the Field should be in Subjection under him, which now is quite contrary; for Man is become a Wolf to them [in devouring the Beasts,] and they are [like] Lions against him, and there is mere Eternity against one another; he can scarce order the tame Beasts, much less the wild.

(37) Neither has man brought the malignity, poison and venom into the beasts, birds, worms, and stones, for he had not their body; otherwise if he had brought malignity and fierceness or wrath into all creatures, then he, like the devils, could never obtain God's mercy.

(20) Accordingly such food, in order to clear understanding, is to be rejected. Wherefore also the Egyptians, in the purifications practised among them, do not allow the priests to feed on flesh; but they use chickens, as lightest; and they do not touch fish, on account of certain fables, but especially on account of such food making the flesh flabby. But now terrestrial animals and birds breathe the same air as our vital spirits, being possessed of a vital principle cognate with the air. But it is said that fishes do not breathe this air, but that which was mixed with the water at the instant of its first creation, as well as with the rest of the elements, which is also a sign of the permanence of matter.

(79) Or if by tasting it should fall into a desire and longing to eat that which is not of the quality of the body, or is none of its own; as mother Eve in Paradise fell a longing to eat of the devil's crabapples, and did eat thereof; such stirring in lust the council also rejecteth.

(6) And this testimony is written concerning you that you should observe it continually, so that you should not eat on any day any blood of beasts or .birds or cattle during all the days of the earth, and the man who eateth the blood of beast or of cattle or of birds during all the days of the earth, he and his seed shall be rooted out of the land.

(1) The doubt mentioned by you in the next place, is, as I may say, an inquiry which is made in common both by the learned and the unlearned, I mean concerning sacrifices, “ what utility or power they possess in the universe, and with the Gods, and on what account they are performed, appropriately indeed to the powers who are honoured by them, but usefully to those by whom the gifts are offered .” In the same place, also, another objection occurs, viz. “ that the interpreters of prophecies and oracles ought to abstain from animals, lest the Gods should be polluted by the vapours arising from them. For this is contrary to the assertion, that the Gods are especially allured by the vapours of animals. ”

(3) As it says that, 'ever since a creature was created by, us, I, who am Aûharmazd, have not rested at ease, on account of providing protection for my own creatures; and likewise not even he, the evil spirit, on account of contriving evil for the creatures.'

(6) When God had created the Beasts, he brought them to Adam, that he should give them their Names, every one according to their Essence and Kind, as they [the beasts] were qualified, [or according to the Quality and Condition they were of.] Now Adam was in the Garden of Eden in Hebron, and also in Paradise at once, yet no Beast can come into Paradise; for it is the divine [or transitory] Life; much less is there the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yet Moses writes of it, that in the Garden of Eden there was the Tree of Temptation, which bore the Knowledge of Good and Evil; which indeed was no other Tree, than like the Trees we now eat of, in the Corruptibility; neither was it any other Garden, than such as we now have, wherein earthly Fruits (Good and Evil) grow; as is before our Eyes,

(8) And therefore that creature is a loathsome abomination before the total God, and before all his creatures, and must stand in eternal enmity and ignominy or shame before God, and before all the creatures.

(7) Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."