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From: bennet@gymble.UUCP (Tom Bennet)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Hogs and Dogs
Message-ID: <190@gymble.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Jul-85 19:06:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: gymble.190
Posted: Sun Jul 14 19:06:21 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Jul-85 07:22:39 EDT
Distribution: na
Organization: U of Maryland, Laboratory for Parallel Computation, C.P., MD
Lines: 42

>From par@ihlpl.UUCP (Rupsis) Wed Jul 10 14:14:29 1985
>Message-ID: <209@ihlpl.UUCP>

>Matthew 7:6 Jesus says:
>
>"Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before 
> swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you
> to pieces."
>
> What did Jesus mean?
> Who are the dogs and swine?
> What are the pearls? 
>
>I would appreciate any light shed upon this subject.
>
>				Paul Rupsis

Some random thoughts.

First, to state the obvious, the parallelism in the quote would seems to
indicate that dogs are like hogs and pearls are like "what is holy."  Also
the Jewish audience would have noted that pigs are unclean animals in the
dietary law.  So it appears Jesus is talking about giving what is holy to
entities (most likely persons but not necissarily) which are unholy.

One suggestion I have read is that Jesus is simply advising us to use tact
when discussing religion.

Another interesting idea is that perhaps Jesus is sarcastically describing his
relationship with the religious leaders of his day; he casts before them
his words as holy pearls, but the leaders are pigs (unclean) who do not
appreciate pearls (holiness) but instead turn on the speaker.  If this is a
correct interpretation, Jesus is using some rather biting sarcasm.

The main problem with this idea is that one would expect such a remark to
occur in the context of Jesus arguing with the Pharisees, yet it does not;
in fact the context seems to shed very little light on the meaning here.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A balanced diet is important: one must | Tom Bennet @ U of MD Comp Sci Dept
occasionally change pizza places.      | ..!ihnp4!seismo!umcp-cs!gymble!bennet