“the context these creatures were detestable because they represented objects outside the pale of covenant allowance for the Israelite diet and not simply because they may or may not have had nutritive or hygienic deficiency.39 That is, they were impure simply because the Lord said so and for that reason alone were detestable and to be avoided. This is precisely the principle underlying the Lord's words to a protesting Peter, who, in his vision, refused to eat animals let down from heaven: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 11:9). All things are pure or impure as God himself dictates and not by inherent character or quality. Israel also, then, was pure (or holy) and the nations impure (or unholy) according to the elective purposes”