Ancient Jewish Health Rules Can Defeat the Coronavirus!

The dreaded coronavirus has been connected to some nasty, even shocking culinary habits of the Chinese—primarily their consumption of snakes and bats. A shocking dietary reported this week in the Daily Mail revealed the barbecuing of a live dog in a Chinese market. Eating cats and dogs is considered perfectly acceptable and delicious by many citizens!

Chinese eat snakes, worms, and water bugs boiled and soaked in vinegar. The wealthier eat live scorpions soaked in strong liquor. Chinese connoisseurs delight in roasted bee larvae and fried silkworm moth larvae after a steaming bowl of ant soup. Others eat large water beetles, stinkbugs, and fly maggots. They raise the larvae of flies in heaps of rotting fish.

Live scorpions are placed on a bed of noodles and gourmets say they taste like potatoes. I’ll take their word for it.

The Chinese mainland has about 100 cockroach farms, and new ones are opening frequently. Even many Chinese were surprised when a million cockroaches broke out of one of those farms! This Great Escape made headlines around the world. Cockroaches are considered a succulent delight and are farmed like chickens in Georgia.

However, health experts reveal that the coronavirus is connected to bats that are considered a delicacy; a viral video has emerged online of a Chinese woman devouring a bat. A second video features a woman eating a “bowl of bat soup.” There is little doubt these filthy creatures play a critical role in transmitting the deadly coronavirus.

After a careful review of the habits of ancient Jews, I suggest that Jews were thousands of years ahead of all nations, and a return to their diet and sanitary habits might limit or eliminate many of the world’s diseases.

Some uninformed health officials teach that Egypt was the medical center of the ancient world. This mistake was advanced by the ancient historian Herodotus who recorded that during the days of the Medo-Persian Empire, it was King Darius’ practice “to keep in attendance certain Egyptian doctors, who had a reputation for the highest eminence in their profession.” However, Egypt was not nearly as medically informed as ancient Israel. Egypt was more skillful in building (think, pyramids) than medicine, but Israel was far advanced of all nations in health issues.

An example of Egypt’s medical backwardness is their instructions on removing splinters from the flesh. It consisted of “worm blood, mole, and donkey dung.” However, Doctors S. I. McMillen and David Stern noted that dung “is loaded with tetanus spores” and “a simple splinter often resulted in a gruesome death from lockjaw.”

The ancient Egyptians’ prescription for skin disease was “A hog’s tooth, cat’s dung, dog’s dung, aau-of-samu-oil, berries-of-the-xet-plant, pound and apply as poultice.” (Ancient Egyptian, 1930, p. 92.) Other remedies included dried excrement of a child, hog dung, and a farmer’s urine. One recipe to prevent hair growth included lizard dung and the blood from a cow, donkey, pig, dog, and stag.

It was said that the urine of a faithful wife was effective in the treatment of sore eyes. It seems ancient Egyptians had a thing about dung and urine! Israel was not so backward.

The Encyclopedia Britannica’s conclusion regarding the Bible’s instructions on sanitary and medical practices is very revealing: “The Old Testament is a mine of information on social and personal hygiene. The Jews were indeed pioneers in matters of public health.”

The Jews’ strict regulations regarding sexual activity along with their sanitary regulations plus their treatment of infectious diseases were millennia ahead of all other nations. God gave specific instructions to Israel regarding human waste. They were to relieve themselves away from the living area and to carry a tool for covering excrement! People in third world nations still don’t follow that basic practice!

The Encyclopedia of Medical History declares, “The idea of contagion was foreign to the classic medical tradition and found no place in the voluminous Hippocratic writings. The Old Testament, however, is a rich source for contagionist sentiment, especially in regard to leprosy and venereal disease.” Maybe, just maybe, we should use the Bible to manage our personal lives, not because it is ancient but because it is accurate.

When one looks at the book of Leviticus for treatment of infectious disease he does not see dirty, dangerous, and deadly remedies and ingredients prescribed by Egypt and other ancient civilizations. In fact, the Pentateuch reveals awareness of germs and disease that “modern” medicine did not grasp for 3,500 years after the book was written!

For thousands of years, doctors denied that disease could be transmitted by imperceptible means; but in the 1860s, Louis Pasteur confirmed it in his Germ Theory of Disease. He proved that most infectious diseases were caused by microorganisms originating from outside the body.

Moses gave specific instructions to prevent the spread of disease from dung and dead bodies thousands of years before modern man understood the danger. Moses instructed Jews that diseases such as leprosy were dangerous to everyone and such infected people were to “dwell alone without the camp.” Leviticus 13:45 commands when an infected person came near an uninfected person, the infected person was to “cover his upper lip, and shall cry, ‘unclean! unclean!’” That was not unkind; it saved thousands of innocent lives.

It is obvious that the covering of the upper lip was to keep the infected person from coughing, sneezing, or spitting on non-infected people. On Oct. 9, 2014, it was announced that researchers found that a patient showing no symptoms of the disease “can still transmit a virus like Ebola by air if droplets containing the virus are transmitted to another person by a sneeze or cough.” That is contrary to what major health officials were saying!

It was 1873 that mankind finally realized that leprosy was infectious instead of hereditary, but then Moses and the Israelites knew about it 3,500 years earlier! If a Jew was suspected of being infected he was examined by a priest who confirmed whether or not he was infected. If so, then he was to be removed from the living area until he was healed. That meant quarantine and while it was unpleasant and uncomfortable, it was not unreasonable.

Because of Israel’s advanced knowledge they were the only culture cognizant of infectious diseases with the knowledge of how to deal with them. They were the only group to practice quarantine until the Black Death (bubonic plague) smacked the face of Europe in the 14th century. Millions were dying of plague until church leaders in Vienna thought about the Bible’s plan to stop the spread of infectious disease. Officials required all ships entering Vienna’s port on the Danube to be isolated 40 days to ensure that none of the sailors or passengers were infected. Other cities followed the plan and the Black Death was stopped.

U.S. and world health officials must realize they are health officials not politicians dedicated to making everyone feel good, safe, and fuzzy. We must prohibit anyone from entering the U.S. who has been to any Asian or African nation unless they have been in isolation 21 days. That also includes our southern border where people are entering our nation daily without any physical examination. Even animals have to have shots to enter and kids have to have vaccinations to attend school. You think maybe we could be a little stricter with so many deadly viruses? It is time to act now. If the coronavirus reaches a critical mass, it could become a medical tsunami that will burn itself out after killing millions of people.

Ancient Israel told us how to stop infectious disease: confirm, contain, and confine the disease. Maybe physicians should add the Bible to their medical references.