Was there a specific point in history when Christians no longer observed Jewish dietary laws? When & why?

Answer 1

Acts of the Apostles....God told St. Peter that what He has cleansed, let no one call "unclean".

Book of Acts 11: 1 Now the apostles and the brothers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God.

2 When Peter had come up to Jerusalem, those who were of the circumcision contended with him,

3 saying, "You went in to uncircumcised men, and ate with them!"

4 But Peter began, and explained to them in order, saying,

5 "I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision: a certain container descending, like it was a great sheet let down from heaven by four corners. It came as far as me.

6 When I had looked intently at it, I considered, and saw the four-footed animals of the earth, wild animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky.

7 I also heard a voice saying to me,'Rise, Peter, kill and eat!'

8 But I said,'Not so, Lord, for nothing unholy or unclean has ever entered into my mouth.'

9 But a voice answered me the second time out of heaven,'What God has cleansed, don't you call unclean.'

10 This was done three times, and all were drawn up again into heaven.

Answer 2

The Bible records the incident in Acts 10. Peter is given a vision in which God tells him that eating "unclean" animals will not longer make a person spiritually unclean. This is because being "clean" have moved from things done in the physical to things done in the spiritual.

In Acts 11 a church coucil is called to decide if Peter's vision is true. After hearing the evidence, they decided that Christians were not bound by the dietary and other Jewish laws.

Galatians 2 tells about how shortly after this Paul and Peter have a face off over the issue, and again the "does not need to keep the dietary laws" win out.

Read the entire book of Hebrew. The whether Chrisitans have to keep the dietary and other laws is a major theme of that book. Again, it shows that they do not.

In the practical world, how long did it take for Christian to stop follwing the dietary laws? Not long. Most of the people coming into the Christian faith were non-Jews who did not keep the dietary laws before that. It was only the Jews who had to change their diet.

Now, while Christians are no longer required to follow the dietary laws, there are many good health reasons to use them as a guideline in determining what you eat. They are still valid guidelines, they just do not determine "heaven or hell" for the Christian.

Answer 3

I am a Christian and I observe Biblical (not just "Jewish") dietary laws.
When the Catholic Church invaded heathen lands, the populace were already pig-eaters. In order to further divide Gentiles from Jews, the church OK'd these customs, saying, "Those rules are just for the Jews," but with no scripture to back it up.
Some people think that all you have to do is pray over unclean food and that makes it "clean". First of all, I don't know any Christians who actually do this, and secondly, why would praying over something make it clean when God has expressly forbidden it? God doesn't go back on His Word. Even the NT characters refuse to eat unclean meat.
Some people think that a certain story in the Bible that tells about a dream Peter had about unclean animals coming down on a sheet means that it's now OK to eat unclean animals. They misinterpret the passage. Peter clarifies it when he says, "God says that I should call no MAN unclean" - He doesn't say, "I should call no PIG unclean."
The book of Revelation speaks of Babylon (in the future) a habitation of every UNCLEAN bird." Why would unclean animals exist in the future?
Did you know that the FDA doesn't grade pork like it does beef? You'll never find "Grade A pork". That's because the FDA believes you shouldn't even feed pork to your dog, it's that bad, and filled with trichina larva, carcinogens and bad cholesterol. The FDA says, "eat at your own risk". You've probably heard the slogan, "Pork - the other white meat". This slogan came out when all this info about how bad pork was came out. They wanted to make it look as healthy as chicken, when it was far from.
The pig is an omnivore, a scavenger. It will eat anything. It will eat garbage and poop. Do you want that going into your body? When you eat pork, you are eating waste. This is why God made health rules for us, because He wants us to be healthy! He's not doing it to be arbitrary.
These are the basic rules for food:
Mammals: only those that have a split hoof AND chew the cud.
Birds: only foraging birds, like turkeys, chickens, pheasants, etc.
Fish: only fish with fins and scales.
Insects: only the grasshopper family.

Anything else is either a scavenger or a carnivore or has a single stomach, insufficient for purifying food.

Answer 4

"Father K" gave a great answer, but the problem is we really don't know the timeframe of that speech by Peter. Please remember that the new testament was written long after Jesus' death. I would say, however, that the pagan converts to christianity never had dietary laws and that as soon as you started having mixtures in the congregations of both former Pagans and Jews, conflicts would arise and since the pagan outnumbered the Jews in converts, the pagans would have won any argument about having to keep the dietary restrictions.

Answer 5

Yes, around 45-50 A.D. You can read about it in Acts. Some uninformed church members have from time to time attempted to observe those old laws, few do today. Its really silly for people to do this today-as these laws were never meant for anyone but Jews at a specific time in history for a very specific reason, and they never applied to anyone else.

Answer 6

Yes during the time of the apostles in the early church -- anywhere between 33AD to 400AD. Gentile believers often didn't observe the dietary laws while the jewish believers did.

Answer 7

Peter went up to the flat roof to pray. It was about noon, and he was hungry. But while lunch was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, "Get up, Peter; kill and eat them."
"Never, Lord," Peter declared. "I have never in all my life eaten anything forbidden by our Jewish laws."
The voice spoke again, "If God says something is acceptable, don't say it isn't." The same vision was repeated three times. Then the sheet was pulled up again to heaven.
Acts 10:9-16

This letter is from the apostles and elders, your brothers in Jerusalem. It is written to the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. Greetings!
We understand that some men from here have troubled you and upset you with their teaching, but they had no such instructions from us. So it seemed good to us, having unanimously agreed on our decision, to send you these official representatives, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we are sending Judas and Silas to tell you what we have decided concerning your question.
For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden on you than these requirements: You must abstain from eating food offered to idols, from consuming blood or eating the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. If you do this, you will do well. Farewell.
Acts 15:23-29