It’s tempting to read Peter’s response as self-righteousness. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean,” he says (Acts 10:14). He’s been a good Jew all his life, and not even God can make him compromise his scruples. But perhaps Peter’s reaction to the vision is not simply righteous indignation; maybe it is nausea. No doubt Peter would have been disgusted by the very idea of eating the animals presented in the sheet. Restrictions against eating pork and shellfish are legalities to us. But for first-century Jews, they were deeply entrenched dietary (cultural) mores. The Lord’s command
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