Handling animal carcasses and purifying clothes. Phillip Medhurst Bible illustrations, 1970 (adapted). Wikimedia
Leviticus’ More Priestly Version of the Dietary Laws
Deuteronomy and Leviticus drew on common Vorlage (source text) to develop their regulations about the consumption of land, marine, and winged creatures. While Deuteronomy only lightly modifies this Vorlage, the editors of Leviticus expanded the text in several stages to align it with Priestly ideology.
Published: April 13, 2023
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Last Updated: October 28, 2026
For a parallel presentation of the two passages and a table summarizing the content of Leviticus 11, see Appendices 1 and 2 of Eve Levavi Feinstein, “The Animal Laws Before Kashrut: A System of Purity,” TheTorah (2015).
Both passages also present the same four examples of animals that meet only one of these criteria and are therefore prohibited: הַגָּמָל (the camel), הַשָּׁפָן (the rock hyrax), and הָאַרְנֶבֶת (the hare) lack hooves; and הַחֲזִיר (the pig) does not chew the cud.
Editor’s note: On colophons as a feature in priestly writing, see Martha Himmelfarb, “Scribal Features that Helped the Priestly Text Survive,” TheTorah (2020).
Timo Veijola, Das fünfte Buch Mose: Deuteronomium: Kap. 1,1–16,17, ATD 8.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 295–302.
See Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 698–704. Other scholars who have a similar understanding include Reinhard Achenbach, “Zur Systematik der Speisegebote in Leviticus 11 und in Deuteronomium 14,” ZAR 17, no. 9 (2011): 161–209; and Eckart Otto, Deuteronomium 12,1–23,15, HThKAT (Freiburg: Herder, 2016). Achenbach and Otto’s arguments are much more complex. Peter Altmann, Banned Birds: The Birds of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, Archaeology and the Bible 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 135, describes the approach by Otto as “staged Levitical priority.” For Otto, only the first layer of Leviticus 11 (namely verses 1–23 and 47) was available to the authors of Deuteronomy 14:1–11. In this sense, his arguments are similar to Milgrom, with Deuteronomy presenting a shorter version, but this is where the similarity stops. At a later stage, verses 12–18 were added to Deuteronomy 14 and verses 24–46 to Leviticus 11. See Otto, Deuteronomium 12,1–23,15, 1296.
See Christophe Nihan, “The Laws about Clean and Unclean Animals in Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Their Place in the Formation of the Pentateuch,” in The Pentateuch: International perspectives on current research, ed. Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid, and Baruch J. Schwartz, Forschungen zum Alten Testament 78 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 401–432; and Feinstein, “The Animal Laws Before Kashrut,” who shares this view.
The editors of Leviticus 11 inherited a Vorlage that is close to what we have in Deuteronomy 14. See the Vorlage constructed by Karl Elliger, Leviticus, HAT 1.4 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1968), 140–141. It is all limited to verses 1–20 and does not include any references to טָמֵא or שֶׁקֶץ.
The proposed version is similar to Milgrom’s “first compositional section” (Leviticus 1–16, 697), and includes verses 2–23, 41–42 and 46–47. See also Lance Hawley, “The Agenda of Priestly Taxonomy: The Conceptualization of טָמֵא and שֶׁקֶץ in Leviticus 11,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 77 (2015): 231–249.
בראשׁית א:כ וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יִשְׁרְצוּ הַמַּיִם שֶׁרֶץ נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה וְעוֹף יְעוֹפֵף עַל הָאָרֶץ עַל פְּנֵי רְקִיעַ הַשָּׁמָיִם. א:כא וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹהִים אֶת הַתַּנִּינִם הַגְּדֹלִים וְאֵת כָּל נֶפֶשׁ הַחַיָּה הָרֹמֶשֶׂת אֲשֶׁר שָׁרְצוּ הַמַּיִם לְמִינֵהֶם וְאֵת כָּל עוֹף כָּנָף לְמִינֵהוּ וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים כִּי טוֹב.
Gen 1:20 God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” 1:21 God created the great sea monsters, and all the living creatures of every kind that creep, which the waters brought forth in swarms, and all the winged birds of every kind. And God saw that this was good.
בראשׁית א:כד וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים תּוֹצֵא הָאָרֶץ נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה לְמִינָהּ בְּהֵמָה וָרֶמֶשׂ וְחַיְתוֹ אֶרֶץ לְמִינָהּ וַיְהִי כֵן.
Gen 1:24 God said, “Let the earth bring forth every kind of living creature: cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts of every kind.” And it was so.
See Richard Whitekettle, “Rats are Like Snakes, and Hares are Like Goats: A Study in Israelite Land Animal Taxonomy,” Biblica 82, no. 3 (2001): 345–362; and Hawley, “The Agenda of Priestly Taxonomy,” 234–235, 246.
Biblical translations follow the NJPS, with modifications.
The analysis here follows Whitekettle (“Rats are Like Snakes, and Hares are Like Goats,” 346n3) in connecting the רֶמֶשׂ, “creeping things,” of day 6 (Gen 1:24) with the שֶׁרֶץ of Leviticus 11. It is reasonable to ask, however, whether the land swarmers of Leviticus 11 belong with the creatures of day 5 or the creatures of day 6. They are usually described as הַשֶּׁרֶץ הַשֹּׁרֵץ עַל הָאָרֶץ, “the things that swarm on the land” (see vv. 29, 41 and 42), so that should mean day six, when land creatures were made. Yet the noun שֶׁרֶץ itself is only used in Genesis 1:20 for the creatures of day 5 in the following construct: שֶׁרֶץ נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה, “swarms of living creatures.” Previously in Leviticus 11, this noun appears in constructs referring to שֶׁרֶץ הַמַּיִם (v. 10) and שֶׁרֶץ הָעוֹף (v. 20 and others), thus referring to the water creatures and the winged creatures of day 5.
In Deuteronomy 14, טָמֵא is applied to land animals (v. 8), marine creatures (v. 10), and flying insects (v. 19), but not to other winged creatures. Verse 12 simply says that other winged creatures may not be eaten, while verse 20 says that the Israelites may only eat clean winged creatures.
Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v., שׁ.ק.ץ.
שׁ.ק.ץ also appears in verbal form, in the Piʿel. For example:
ויקרא יא:יג וְאֶת אֵלֶּה תְּשַׁקְּצוּ מִן הָעוֹף לֹא יֵאָכְלוּ שֶׁקֶץ הֵם אֶת הַנֶּשֶׁר וְאֶת הַפֶּרֶס וְאֵת הָעָזְנִיָּה.
Lev 11:13 The following you shall abominate among the birds—they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, and the black vulture.
“[The] distinction introduced by P sets apart the land animals from fish, birds and flying insects, and probably corresponds to an attempt to refine the classification received” (Nihan, “The Laws about Clean and Unclean Animals in Leviticus and Deuteronomy,” 291).
Hawley, “The Agenda of Priestly Taxonomy,” 247.
In this context, the verbal root ט.מ.א, “to be (ritually) unclean,” and the adjective טָמֵא now describe not the prohibited animal, but the state of the person who has had contact with its carcass.
Deuteronomy, by contrast, prohibits eating an animal that has died naturally:
דברים יד:כא לֹא תֹאכְלוּ כָל נְבֵלָה לַגֵּר אֲשֶׁר בִּשְׁעָרֶיךָ תִּתְּנֶנָּה וַאֲכָלָהּ אוֹ מָכֹר לְנָכְרִי כִּי עַם קָדוֹשׁ אַתָּה לַי־הוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ....
Deut 14:21 You shall not eat anything that has died a natural death; give it to the stranger in your community to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a people consecrated to YHWH your God.
Presumably these creatures may be touched when dead, as the passage only specifies that the animals that are טָמֵא may not be eaten and may not be touched when dead (v. 8).
See Leviticus 19:2, 20:7, 26, 21:6. This emphasis on holiness is why Leviticus 17–26 is usually called the “Holiness Code” or the “Holiness Legislation.”
Esias E. Meyer, “Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14 and Directionality,” JSem 23, no. 1 (2014): 71–89 (at 87).
