BRUCE LICHT
ENTREPRENEUR, AUTHOR, AND FOUNDER OF MY ELEVATOR PITCH FOR GOD
Bruce grew up in Lafayette, California and received a BA in Political Science from UCLA as well as a Graduate Gemologist degree from the Gemological Institute of America. After graduating, Bruce operated his family’s 100 year-old retail fine jewelry business for twenty-two years. Bruce had a passion for computers and graphic arts, so he changed careers and joined his best friend at a national technical publishing company for seventeen-years as the company’s Publisher, where they invented the modern labor law poster industry, including the first “All- On-One Labor Law Poster” and “Labor Law Poster Compliance Plan.”
Aside from being the Founder of the website, “My Elevator Pitch for God,” Bruce was the co-editor of the book, My Elevator Pitch For God: Volume 1, and author of the cookbook titled, Immediate Chef: No Previous Experience Required.
Ten, Three & One
Bruce Licht
Moses spent his entire life in a “postage stamp” sized area of the earth.(1) What personal knowledge do you think Moses had over 3,300 years ago, of the many millions of different species of animals inhabiting the world’s seven continents and five oceans?(2) You would think he was an extensively educated zoologist that had crisscrossed the globe the way he made such bold and specific statements about the laws regarding the Kosher (3) animals Jews could eat?
Moses listed ten Kosher animals that must have both of these two specific characteristics: They must have completely split hooves and chew their cud.(4) There are several other characteristics that these ten animals have in common that amazingly are different from every other animal in existence. They all have two arteries that bring blood to their brain that cross each other right where the “ritual slit” is instructed to be made to kill them quickly and humanely.(5) Non-Kosher animals don’t have this unique physiology. So unlike a Kosher animal, when a pig for example is killed, blood continues to run to their brain and it remains conscious, and feels pain, for quite some time. Also, these ten Kosher animals don’t have upper incisor teeth,(6) and the flesh at their tailbones goes “warp and weft”, meaning it stretches vertically and horizontally.(7) Additionally, all of these ten Kosher animals eat only vegetation.(8)
If that wasn’t explicit enough, Moses went on - but don’t be confused by these three non-Kosher animals (that you can’t eat) that chew their cud but don’thave split hooves.(9) And likewise, watch out for this one non-Kosher animal (that you likewise can’t eat) that has split hooves but does not chew its cud.(10) How could Moses, or any human, know how many animals there were with just one of the two required characteristics?
But there’s more. Kosher fish have to have fins andscales.(11) Moses somehow knew, as stated in the Talmud,(12) that all fish that have scales necessarily have fins, but not all fish that have fins have scales. How could Moses, or any human, know that?
Let me ask you, what are the chances that Moses traveled to Madagascar, because there are approximately 175,000 species that only exist there.(13) Do you think Moses even knew what a penguin or a kangaroo was?
What would you say if I told you that more than 3,300 years later; there are still no more than those same ten animals that have both of those two characteristics, there are no more than those same three animals that have just that one characteristic, and there is still just that same one animal that has just that one other of the two characteristics.(14) Seems outright impossible – doesn’t it?
According to “Occam's razor”, the simplest explanation is usually correct.(15) How could Moses, who lived in the late Bronze age,(16) make these statistically impossible qualifications and alwaysguess right? The truth is he couldn’t. Only a Creator would have this information and know how many animals met these different, very specific, criteria. To this day, there are still just those ten, those three and that one.(17)
There’s your definite proof!
Footnotes
1. Moses had to escape Egypt as a young child and ended up in Midyan. While living in Biblical Midyan (which was on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea in the northwest Arabian Peninsula), he married Tzipporah (Zipporah) who was the daughter of Jethro. Moses stayed there until he was 80 years old, when he went back to Egypt and confronted Pharaoh to save the Jewish People. After the Exodus, Moses lived in what were the lands of Edom and Moab, to the south and east of Israel, where the Mount Sinai national revelation occurred and where he made forty-two journeys over forty years, before he died, never having crossed the Jordan River into the land of Israel. While in the Wilderness, Moses was the leader of the Jewish people and he conveyed the Torah from God.
2. The seven continents are: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America. The five ocean basins in the world are: Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, and Southern. However, there is only one Global Ocean. About 8.7 million (give or take 1.3 million) is the new, estimated total number of species on Earth -- the most precise calculation ever offered -- with 6.5 million species on land and 2.2 million in oceans. Announced by the Census of Marine Life, the figure is based on a new analytical technique. From: ScienceDaily https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110823180459.htm
3. The word “kosher” in Hebrew literally means “fit”.
4. Deuteronomy 14:4-5 “These are the animals you may eat: the ox, sheep, and goat: the hart, deer, and the yachmur, the akko, dishon, the teo and the zamer.” Translated to the common names used for these animals today: the ox, sheep, goat, deer, gazelle, roe deer, wild goat, ibex, antelope and mountain sheep. According to the Talmud, in Chullin 80a, these ten (and their subcategories) are the only species world-wide that have both kosher requirements. So one may conclude that an animal is kosher by either observing the physical indicators, or by distinguishing it as one of the ten kosher species (Rambam, Ma’achalot Asurot 1:8; Aruch Hashulchan 79:4).
Moshe says two seemingly independent statements: He lists the criteria for what makes a Kosher animal; and he lists ten animals that qualify. Implicit from these statements is that there are ONLY ten animals that have the criteria for being Kosher. Otherwise, Moshe's statement would be self-contradictory. Thus, the fact that Moshe tells you that there are ten kosher animals and there are two qualifications that are needed to be included, is also a statement that there are no other such animals. Similarly, he lists the criteria and the number of animals that have one characteristic but not the other. The redundancy is telling us that this is an exhaustive list of this criteria.
5. “Shechitah” is the name for the ritual slaughter. The special shechitah knife is honed razor sharp. The act cuts the carotid arteries, causing the blood supply to the brain to cease immediately. It is the most humane because it is the swiftest and most pain-free procedure for the animal.
6. Sefaria.org, Chullin 59a (https://www.sefaria.org/Chullin.59a.8-13?lang=bi) This dental property is considered satisfactory verification to ascertain that an animal is kosher.
7. An additional identifying feature of the ten Kosher animals with both characteristics, as stated by Chazal, is based solely on the oral tradition received at Mount Sinai by Moses. Other than the donkey (which its true identity is uncertain) kosher species have a grain at their tailbones that runs both warp and weft, or vertically and horizontally. If an animal is not a wild donkey and has flesh at the tailbone that runs both ways, it is permissible to eat.
8. Of these ten kosher animals with these two characteristics, none are carnivorous nor omnivorous – They are true herbivores.
9. Deuteronomy 14:7 “But this you shall not eat from among those who bring up their cud or have a completely separated split hoof: the camel, the hare, and the hyrax for they bring up their cud, but their hoof is not split – they are unclean to you;”
10. Deuteronomy 14:8 “and the pig, for it has a split hoof, but not the cud - it’s unclean to you; from their flesh you shall not eat and you shall not touch their carcasses.” Any unknown species that has split hooves and is not a pig is permissible to eat.
11. Leviticus 11:9-10 “This you may eat from everything in the water: everything that has fins and scales in the water, in the seas, and in the streams, those may you eat. And everything that does not have fins and scales in the streams – from all that teems in the water, and from all loving creatures in the water – they are an abomination to you.” Therefore, for example, salmon, tuna, carp, herring, flounder and pike are kosher, while swordfish, catfish, shellfish, crabs, lobster, sturgeon and all water mammals are not.
12. Niddah 51b
13. Madagascar is located off the coast of southern Africa in the Indian Ocean and is the fourth largest island in the world. Surprisingly, around 70% of the estimated 250,000 species on the island exist nowhere else on the planet.
14. One would think that by now, another species surely would have been found and there would be more (or according to Darwinism, one might think they would have morphed into different species altogether by now and there would be more or less.
15. Occam's razor - The principle attributed to William of Occam, and English Franciscan friar, philosopher and Catholic theologian, that in explaining something, no more assumptions should be made than are absolutely necessary.
16. The Bronze Age started around 3300 BC and lasted until 1200 BC. Moses died around 1273 BC, so he lived just up to the cusp of the Iron Age.
This not only proves God's existence, but also proves the principle of prophecy and that God communicates to humanity.