Meat and Drink

Why this page exists

The corpus has already put its hand on this scale five separate times without ever putting the pieces on one table. The tract on what breaks Judaism reaches for Romans 14 as the summary of what the new covenant did to the rule-list, and quotes it against "the old stringent Jewish food restrictions" (TP 35.0.1). The tract on sins says flatly that pork "has no negative externalities in a modern context," and uses that as the thing that separates Christian sin from the era-bound rules of the other Abrahamic faiths (TP 35.0.3). The Pragmatist's Guide has a whole chapter arguing the other way: that fasting and "arbitrary self-denial" are among the oldest survival technologies hard cultures have, because they train the inhibitory pathways of the prefrontal cortex (TPG 4.9), and the guide lists "denying oneself certain foods" as a standard way to do it (TPG 14.2). The mysticism tract puts "food deprivation" first on the list of tricks a cult leader uses to manufacture visions of God (TP 7.0). And on the Sabbath episode, reading Colossians 2 live for apparently the first time, the reaction to "let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism" was "Oh, very good for techno puritanism there" (TPS 73.2).

Five positions, and they do not all point the same way. Self-denial is survival tech and food deprivation is a cult trick; food rules are obsolete and fasting is a discipline worth keeping. There is also the single place in the corpus where a food mandate is actually named, and it is not a restriction at all (TP 5.0, Exhibit F). This page is the evidence file that the five positions have to be reconciled against. It is deliberately not the tract: it assembles the passages, grades them, and keeps the ones that cut the wrong way.

Ground rules

Rude conclusion first. On the first three questions there is no live dispute worth having. No dietary law is in the Decalogue, which this tradition says is the list (TP 34.0.2, TPS 62.2). The food laws are tied to the sanctuary by the Torah itself and retired by name in Hebrews 9:10. Imposing one on a believer, or judging a believer by one, is forbidden in both buckets of the New Testament, by Jesus in Mark and by Paul in four letters, and the imposing of it is listed in 1 Timothy 4:3 as a sign of people who have "depart[ed] from the faith." Adopting one for yourself is permitted (Romans 14:2–6), and the person who does it is called "weak" in the same breath, told to keep it between himself and God (14:22), and overruled by his own doctor when it hurts him (1 Timothy 5:23). Fasting is contested only in the sense that it has no command behind it: it is presumed, predicted and practised, and never scheduled by any text this tradition reads. The exception that survives all of this is the blood rule, which predates Sinai, is restated for gentiles by the apostles, and is the one food restriction this page cannot clear.

The canon this page reads. This tradition does not treat Revelation as canon (TP 1.0, TP 3.0, TP 5.0: "I do not think the book of revelations is inspired by God"), and it does not treat Matthew as canon either; the argument for Mark's priority over the later gospels is made in TPS 71.2, and the house position is that Matthew is not read as scripture. That decision changes this file in specific, countable ways, so they are listed. Out: Matthew 6:16–18, the only passage in the New Testament that tells you how to fast ("anoint thine head, and wash thy face"); Matthew 23:24, "strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel"; Matthew 17:21, "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting," which is also absent from the oldest manuscripts (Exhibit E); and Revelation 2:14 and 2:20, which condemn eating "things sacrificed unto idols." Note what dropping Revelation does: it removes a restriction, not a freedom. Survives: every Matthew food passage has a parallel in Mark or Luke except the three above, and the fasting that TP 35.0.3 remembers Jesus condemning ("don't fast in a way where other people can tell") is reconstructed almost whole from Luke 18:12 and Mark 2:19–20. The practical effect is that this tradition has fewer rules about fasting than other Christians, not more.

Deep literalism. The house method, named in TPS 54.0: read the text the way its original audience would have understood its literary forms, then test it against the record. Here it mostly does one job: it stops "clean" and "unclean" from quietly becoming "healthy" and "unhealthy." The text never says that. It says "holy" (Leviticus 11:44, Deuteronomy 14:21), and the corpus already agrees that the pork prohibition "was almost certainly not a health thing but an economic thing and a Bronze-age-identity-politics thing" (TPG 17.2).

The authorial-choice rule. When the writer had an available way to say the other thing and did not use it, the omission is evidence (TP 1.0). It does unusual work on this page in both directions. Paul had the word for "clean" and used it of all foods; the Torah had the word for "stranger" and used it to say the stranger may eat what Israel may not (Deuteronomy 14:21); and the scribes who copied the New Testament had the word "fasting" and inserted it, four times, where the earliest copies do not have it.

Description is not a command. Same rule as The Assembly Concordance, Proper Worship Practices and The Seventh Day. A verse supports a practice only to the extent it commands rather than describes. This decides the fasting question: the entire fasting file in the gospels this tradition reads is description and prediction, and the one apparent command in Mark was written by a later hand.

The cultus flag. A rule whose authority rides on the sacrificial system is documented but not counted, because the tabernacle system is not in force (TP 1.2). On this page the flag has a verse of its own: the food laws "stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation" (Hebrews 9:10). The Torah agrees about what they were attached to: the blood belongs on the altar (Leviticus 17:11), uncleanness lasts "until the even" and bars you from the sanctuary, and the whole permission to eat meat away from the altar is written as a concession for when "the place which the LORD thy God hath chosen" is too far away (Deuteronomy 12:20–21).

Commands have reasons, and the reason governs the application. TP 8.0: a commandment is given "for our own benefit, and only for our own benefit," and we are to "reinterpret his revelations with pragmatic logic." So the operative question about every fast is "what is it for," and Isaiah 58 answers it in writing.

Two buckets. Jesus's own time (here: Mark, Luke, John) outranks the first generations (Acts and the letters), as Proper Worship Practices set out. This matters less here than usual, because on food the two buckets agree, and the one place they disagree is inside bucket 2 (Acts 15 against 1 Corinthians 10).

Exhibit A — every food rule in the Torah, and what each one is attached to

The complete set, which is shorter than the later tradition and attached to different things than people assume. Two features stand out when it is all on one table: not one food rule is in the Decalogue, and the Torah commands feasting far more often than it commands abstaining. The one commanded fast in the whole of Moses is a single day a year, and that day is the sanctuary's.

Passage	What it says	The rule, and what it rides on	Reading
Genesis 1:29	"Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed… and every tree… to you it shall be for meat"	The first grant: plants. Whether this is a vegetarian command or a description of what was available is argued both ways; the corpus notes that Abel was a herder and God made Adam's clothes from an animal, and treats the vegetarian-Eden reading as "a very strange thing to think" (TPS 52.1).	description — a grant, not a limit
Genesis 7:2	"Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens… and of beasts that are not clean by two"	Clean and unclean exist before Sinai, before Abraham, before any permission to eat meat. The corpus has already spotted the problem: "if you can't eat animals, why are there clean and unclean animals already?" (TPS 54.0). The distinction is older than the diet law, which means it was never only a diet law.	description — pre-Sinai category
Genesis 9:3–4	"Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat"	The grant widens to everything that moves, with no clean/unclean filter, and one exception: blood. Given to Noah, which is to say to everyone, before any nation or altar exists. This is the rule that survives the page.	COMMANDED — pre-Sinai, all humanity
Exodus 23:19; 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21	"Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk"	Three times, each time at the end of a passage about offerings and firstfruits. The whole meat-and-dairy architecture of later law is built on these nine words, which say nothing about cheeseburgers, separate dishes or waiting six hours. Tract 22 covers what was built on top (TPS 74.0).	COMMANDED — offering context; narrow
Leviticus 11; Deuteronomy 14:3–20	"Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud… that shall ye eat"; the fins-and-scales rule; the bird list; the swarming things	The list. Its stated reason is not health and not hygiene: "ye shall be holy; for I am holy" (11:44–45), "to make a difference between the unclean and the clean" (11:47). Uncleanness from a carcass lasts "until the even" (11:24–40), which is a sanctuary-access category, not a medical one. Not on the Decalogue.	COMMANDED — cultus-attached; identity marker
Deuteronomy 14:21	"Ye shall not eat of any thing that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God"	The text says out loud what the rule is for. The same carcass Israel may not eat, the stranger may, and Israel may sell it to him. A universal moral law does not work like this; nobody is told to sell their murders to foreigners. By the authorial-choice rule, the writer had the option of forbidding it to everyone and chose not to.	COMMANDED — and self-limiting to Israel
Leviticus 17:10–14	"Whatsoever man… that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul… For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls"	The blood rule restated, and here its reason is explicitly the altar. That is the honest complication with the survivor: Genesis 9 gives it to everyone without an altar, Leviticus 17 ties it to one. Both are true and both are printed.	COMMANDED — Genesis reason and altar reason
Deuteronomy 12:15–16, 20–25	"Thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after… the unclean and the clean may eat thereof, as of the roebuck, and as of the hart… If the place which the LORD thy God hath chosen to put his name there be too far from thee, then thou shalt kill of thy herd"	Ordinary meat-eating away from the sanctuary is written as a concession for distance. The default the text assumes is that an animal is killed at the altar. This is the Torah itself saying the meat rules are organised around the sanctuary, which is what the cultus flag claims.	cultus-attached by its own terms
Deuteronomy 14:26	"Thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice"	A commanded feast, with strong drink in it. The tithe is to be eaten, with the household, in celebration. Put beside the one commanded fast below and count the days.	COMMANDED — feasting
Leviticus 16:29–31; 23:27–32	"On the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all… It shall be a sabbath of rest unto you, and ye shall afflict your souls, by a statute for ever"; "whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off"	The Day of Atonement: the only commanded fast in the Torah, one day a year, and it is the people's half of a rite whose other half is the high priest, the two goats and the blood on the mercy seat. "Afflict your souls" is read as fasting by Isaiah 58:3–5, which pairs the two phrases.	COMMANDED — the one scheduled fast; cultus
Numbers 6:1–21	"He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink… neither shall he eat moist grapes, or dried"	The Nazirite vow: voluntary, for a set period, with a food restriction in it. The Torah's model for taking a restriction on yourself. It ends at the tabernacle door with offerings (6:13–20), so the mechanism is cultus-attached even though the vow is free.	voluntary — regulated, not required
Numbers 30:13	"Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void"	The Torah knows people will take fasting vows on themselves, and regulates them without commanding them. By the authorial-choice rule this is the Torah's own evidence that fasting outside the one day is a private undertaking, not a statute.	voluntary fasting assumed
Deuteronomy 21:20; Proverbs 23:2, 20–21; 25:16	"He is a glutton, and a drunkard"; "put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite"; "the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty"; "Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee"	The one food fault the Torah names in a person is not what but how much, and whether the appetite is in charge. This is the restriction that never goes away, and the corpus already ranks it: gluttony is "extra bad" because of "the probability that it's going to kill you" (TP 35.0.5).	in force — appetite, not menu

What the table shows. The Torah has one food law for all humanity (blood), one list for one holy people with its reason stated and its limit stated, one day of fasting attached to the sanctuary rite, a feast commanded in the same book, and a vice named. The clean/unclean list is the only part anyone argues about, and the Torah itself fences it to Israel and organises it around an altar that no longer stands.

Exhibit B — every fast in the Old Testament, by what occasioned it

The thing to look for is the occasion column. Every fast outside Leviticus 16 is a response: a death, a siege, a sin, a decision, a journey, a plague. None is a diet. None is a schedule. When a schedule finally appears, after the exile, God's first question about it is whether it was ever for him.

Passage	What happened	Occasion	Reading
Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 9:9, 18	Moses "was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water"	Already in the presence of God on the mountain; the second forty days is intercession after the calf. The fast accompanies the encounter; it is nowhere said to produce it.	description — prophet, extraordinary
Judges 20:26; 1 Samuel 7:6	Israel "fasted that day until even"; at Mizpah they "fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned"	Defeat in war; national repentance.	description — crisis
1 Samuel 14:24–32, 43–45	"Cursed be the man that eateth any food until evening." Jonathan, not having heard, eats honey: "mine eyes have been enlightened… how much more, if haply the people had eaten freely." The famished army then falls on the spoil and eats "with the blood"	A fast imposed by a king mid-battle. The text's verdict is Jonathan's: it "troubled the land," cost the victory, and drove the people straight into breaking the blood law. The people then overrule the king to save Jonathan.	imposed fast — shown as folly
2 Samuel 1:12; 12:16–23	David fasts for Saul and Jonathan; for the dying child: "while the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept… But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again?"	Grief and petition. David's own explanation of the mechanism is the plainest in the Bible: the fast was a plea while the outcome was open, and it ends the moment it can do nothing.	description — petition, with its reason
1 Kings 19:8	Elijah "did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb"	The angel feeds him twice first. The forty-day journey runs on the meal, and Horeb comes after it. Not a fast undertaken to see God; a fed man walking to where God is.	description — fed first
1 Kings 21:27–29	Ahab "fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly"; God defers the judgment	Repentance, and from the worst king in the book. Accepted anyway.	description — repentance
Ezra 8:21–23	"I proclaimed a fast there, at the river of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God, to seek of him a right way for us"	A dangerous journey with no escort. Ezra says plainly he fasted because he was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers.	description — decision and danger
Nehemiah 1:4; 9:1; Esther 4:16; Daniel 9:3	Nehemiah on hearing Jerusalem's state; the assembly "with fasting, and with sackclothes"; Esther's "fast ye for me… three days, night or day"; Daniel "with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes"	News of ruin; covenant renewal; a death sentence; the seventy years ending.	description — occasioned
Jonah 3:5–10	"Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing… and God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way"	Nineveh's fast, cattle included. Note what God "saw": their works, "that they turned." The fast is the signal; the turning is the thing.	description — gentile, accepted
Joel 2:12–15	"Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting… Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast"	A prophet calls a national fast under a locust plague. The nearest the prophets come to a command, and it is for one emergency.	COMMANDED — once, for a plague
Daniel 1:8–16	"Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat, and water to drink. Then let our countenances be looked upon… at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter"	Daniel refuses the king's food so as not to "defile himself," and then does something no other dieter in scripture does: he runs a ten-day controlled trial and lets the result decide. The house's own method, in Babylon.	voluntary restriction — honored; tested
Daniel 10:2–3	"I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth… till three whole weeks were fulfilled"	A partial fast, three weeks, while mourning and seeking understanding. The model for every "Daniel fast" since; note it is a mourning practice, not a programme.	description — partial, occasioned
Psalm 35:13; 69:10; 109:24	"I humbled my soul with fasting"; "I wept, and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach"; "My knees are weak through fasting"	Private, in distress, and in 69:10 mocked for it. Fasting as something done to oneself in grief, not as a credit.	description — private
Jeremiah 35:6–19	"We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us"; "Because ye have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab your father… Jonadab… shall not want a man to stand before me for ever"	A clan with a family food rule, praised and rewarded. Read what is praised: obedience to a father, held up to shame Judah for not obeying God. The wine rule itself is never adopted, endorsed or extended to anyone else. The corpus files the Rechabites among the ascetic sects of the period (TP 35.0.1).	voluntary rule — obedience praised, not the menu
Zechariah 7:5–6; 8:19	"When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me? And when ye did eat… did not ye eat for yourselves?"; "the fast of the fourth month, and… the fifth, and… the seventh, and… the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts"	The first scheduled fasts outside the Torah, instituted by the community after the fall of Jerusalem. God's response to the only fasting calendar in the Old Testament is to ask who it was for, and to announce its conversion into feasts.	scheduled fasts — questioned by God
Isaiah 58:3–7	"Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush?… Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness… Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house?"	The only passage in the Bible that defines what a fast is for, and it defines it as other people eating. A fast that feeds nobody and frees nobody is the one God is mocking, bulrush posture and all. For a tradition that asks of every command "what is it for" (TP 8.0), this is the controlling text.	the purpose, stated
Ecclesiastes 9:7; 2:24; 3:13	"Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works"	Kept here because the counter-file is always left out. The wisdom literature's standing instruction about food is to enjoy it as a gift.	enjoyment commanded

The pattern. Seventeen rows, one command for an emergency, one scheduled fast (the sanctuary's), one calendar (questioned), one imposed fast (a disaster), and a definition of purpose that is about feeding others. Everything else is a person or a nation responding to something that just happened. The Old Testament does not know fasting as a discipline you keep; it knows it as a thing you do when something is wrong.

Exhibit C — Jesus, in the three gospels this tradition reads

Mark, Luke and John, which is to say the house's most trusted gospel and the two that are not Matthew. The complete file on what Jesus said and did about food and fasting, with the one teaching on fasting he actually gave and the sayings he attached to it.

Passage	What it says	What it does	Reading
Mark 7:1–23	"Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands?"… "There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man"… "it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats"	The fight is about hand-washing, a rabbinic fence, not about Leviticus 11; Jesus answers by attacking the fence ("laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men," 7:8) and then states a principle that is wider than the fence: nothing going in defiles. The last clause is the famous one. The best manuscripts read the participle in the masculine, agreeing with "he saith" in 7:18, which makes it the narrator's gloss: "(this he said, making all meats clean)." The KJV followed a variant that attaches it to the digestive process. Either way it is in Mark, the gospel this tradition ranks first (TPS 71.2). Matthew's parallel (15:17) drops the clause, which under the authorial-choice rule is itself a datum about Matthew, and Matthew is not read here.	TEACHING — Jesus; gloss is Mark's
Luke 11:37–41	The Pharisee "marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner"… "but rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you"	Luke's independent version of the same collision. Again the issue is washing, again the answer reaches past it: cleanness is produced by giving, not by the ritual. The same move as Isaiah 58.	TEACHING — cleanness by giving
Mark 2:18–22 (Luke 5:33–39)	"Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not?"… "Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?… But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment… no man putteth new wine into old bottles"	The only teaching on fasting in the gospels this tradition reads. Three things are in it. His disciples did not fast, and were noticed for it. He predicts that they will, "in those days," which is the New Testament's own license for Christian fasting, in the house's top gospel. And he immediately attaches the new-cloth and new-wine sayings: whatever fasting his followers do is not a patch sewn onto the old practice. A prediction with the weight of an expectation, and still not a command, a schedule or a method.	PREDICTED — they shall fast; no rule given
Luke 4:1–2, 5	"Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered"… "the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time"	Jesus fasts forty days. Mark 1:12–13 has the forty days and the temptation but says nothing about food; Luke supplies the fast. He is led by the Spirit before the fast, not to a vision through it; and the one vision the narrative reports during those forty days is the devil's, which Jesus answers from Deuteronomy. For a tradition that lists food deprivation among the tools for manufacturing visions of God (TP 7.0), that detail is worth more than it looks.	description — he fasted; the vision is the tempter's
Luke 7:33–34	"John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!"	Jesus, by his own account, was known for not keeping an ascetic diet, so much so that the charge against him was gluttony. He accepts the contrast with John without apologising for his side of it. Luke 5:29, 7:36, 11:37, 14:1 and 19:5–7 are the dinners.	description — ate and drank, and was accused for it
Luke 18:9–14	"God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are… I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess"… "this man went down to his house justified rather than the other"	The only scheduled fast in Jesus's mouth is a Pharisee's boast, and the man boasting goes home unjustified. The twice-weekly fast was real, documented practice (Exhibit E). This is what survives of Matthew 6:16–18 once Matthew is out: fasting as a credit, or a performance, is condemned.	scheduled fast as merit — rejected
Luke 2:36–37	Anna "departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day"	An approved figure, fasting constantly, in the temple, in old age, waiting. Kept in full because it is the strongest description of habitual fasting in the gospels this tradition reads, and it is description.	description — habitual; approved person
Luke 10:7–8	"In the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give… eat such things as are set before you"	The seventy are sent out with one food rule: eat what you are given. Paul repeats it almost verbatim for pagan dinner invitations (1 Corinthians 10:27). The gospel's dietary instruction to its missionaries is "don't fuss."	COMMANDED — eat what is served
Luke 12:22–29	"Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat… The life is more than meat"… "seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind"	Anxiety about food is the thing forbidden. A diet that occupies the mind is, on this text, the problem rather than the cure.	COMMANDED — do not fret over food
Luke 21:34	"Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life"	The one food warning Jesus gives in his own voice is against excess ("surfeiting" is the word for the heaviness after over-eating). Same shape as Deuteronomy 21:20 and Proverbs 23: the fault is the appetite in charge.	COMMANDED — against excess
John 2:1–10; Luke 22:19; Luke 24:41–43; John 21:9–13	The first sign is wine for a wedding that had run out; "this do in remembrance of me" is said over bread; the risen Jesus asks "Have ye here any meat?" and eats broiled fish; on the beach "they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread… Come and dine"	The only food act Jesus commands is eating. He supplies a feast, institutes a meal, proves his resurrection with a fish, and cooks breakfast. The gospels' food is almost entirely shared meals; the fasts are offstage.	COMMANDED — a meal, not a fast
John 4:32–34; 6:27	"I have meat to eat that ye know not of… My meat is to do the will of him that sent me"; "Labour not for the meat which perisheth"	Food reframed, not forbidden. The nearest John comes to asceticism is a man skipping lunch because he is busy, which this household will recognise.	description — reframing
Mark 9:29	KJV: "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting"	The one sentence in Mark that looks like a fasting rule. "And fasting" is absent from the two oldest complete manuscripts and the critical editions omit it; the oldest text reads "by nothing, but by prayer." See Exhibit E. Matthew's version (17:21) is a whole verse that is likewise absent from the oldest witnesses, and is Matthew.	LATER HAND — not in the earliest Mark

Exhibit D — the first generations: Acts and the letters

Bucket 2, held as valuable and fallible. On food it is unusually loud and unusually consistent, with one internal disagreement that is printed rather than smoothed. The letters are where the question "may I impose a diet on a believer" is answered, and the answer is the harshest language in this file.

Passage	What it says	What it does	Reading
Acts 10:9–16, 28; 11:1–18	"Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean… What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common"… "God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean"	The vision everyone quotes for pork. Peter's own stated application is about people, not menus, and the chapter is about Cornelius, not dinner. Honest grade: the symbol only works if the animals really are cleansed, so the vision presumes the food law is lifted; but nothing in the passage commands anyone to eat anything. "Peter was told to eat pork" is an overclaim; "the food law is treated as no longer a wall" is the text.	description — about men; presumes the food law lifted
Acts 15:19–29; 21:25	"It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication"	The only food law the apostles imposed on gentile believers, and it is a real one. Four rules, three of them about food, and two of those (blood, strangled) are the Genesis 9 rule in two forms. The council that declined to impose the sabbath on gentiles (The Seventh Day, counterweight 3) did impose this. The corpus reads the passage as "strict rules… they just don't include all of the old rules" (TPS 73.2). Noted: the rules are introduced as what makes table fellowship between Jewish and gentile believers possible (15:21), which is the Romans 14 logic a generation early.	COMMANDED — apostolic; blood and idol-meat
Galatians 2:11–14	"Before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself"	Peter rebuked to his face for letting a food line divide the table. The one food dispute between apostles on record is about refusing to eat with people, and the refuser loses.	description — the table wins
Romans 14:1–6, 13–23	"One believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth"… "I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean"… "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink"… "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth"… "Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God"… "whatsoever is not of faith is sin"	The controlling text for Q2 and Q3, and the one the corpus already uses (TP 35.0.1, TP 2.0). Read every clause. The restrictor is called weak; the eater is told not to despise him; the restrictor is told not to judge the eater; nothing is unclean of itself; a restriction kept for a brother's sake is good; a private conviction is to be kept private; and eating against your own conscience is sin. Everything this page concludes about adopting versus imposing is in this chapter.	COMMANDED — do not judge; may abstain; keep it private
1 Corinthians 8:8, 13; 10:25–31	"Meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse"… "if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth"… "Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake: For the earth is the Lord's"… "whatsoever is set before you, eat"… "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God"	Food is morally neutral in both directions (8:8). Paul will give up meat for life for someone else's sake, not his own (8:13). Buy anything, ask nothing (10:25), which sits awkwardly with Acts 15's idol-meat rule and is the one disagreement inside bucket 2; the usual reconciliation is that the decree governs the common table and 10:25 governs the market. The corpus uses 10:31 as its definition of a life without sin (TP 2.0).	COMMANDED — neutral food; abstain for others
1 Corinthians 6:12–13; 9:25–27	"All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both"… "every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things… I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection"	The nearest the New Testament comes to the Pragmatist's Guide thesis. Lawful is not the same as master; the athlete trains; the body is kept under. The point is self-command, and no menu is attached to it. TPG 4.9 would recognise every word.	TEACHING — discipline without a diet
1 Corinthians 11:20–22, 33–34	"In eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?"	The one meal the church is commanded to keep, being wrecked by gluttony and drink while others go hungry. The rebuke is Isaiah 58 again: a religious meal where the poor are not fed is the thing condemned.	COMMANDED — against excess at the table
Colossians 2:16–17, 20–23	"Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink"… "why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh"	The text read aloud on the Sabbath episode and received as "very good for techno puritanism" (TPS 73.2). Two claims. Nobody may judge you by what you eat. And self-made rules of "touch not, taste not" have "a shew of wisdom" in "will worship" (ethelothrēskia, self-chosen religion) and "neglecting of the body" (apheidia sōmatos, severity to the body), but, in the modern renderings of the last clause, "are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh." The KJV's wording is obscure; the Greek is not. This second claim collides with TPG 4.9, which says exactly that bodily self-denial checks the flesh by training inhibition. Printed in full in Exhibit F.	COMMANDED — no judging; asceticism rated worthless
1 Timothy 4:1–5	"In the latter times some shall depart from the faith… Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving… For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving"	The strongest text on Q2 and the harshest language on the page. Commanding abstinence from foods is not a lesser way; it is paired with forbidding marriage as a mark of people who have left the faith, "giving heed to seducing spirits." Note the universal: "every creature," not "every clean creature." The writer had the narrower word available and did not use it.	COMMANDED — imposing a diet is apostasy-marked
1 Timothy 4:8; 5:23	"Bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things"… "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities"	Two concessions that go opposite ways. Bodily training (gymnasia) profits "a little," which is a small admission, not a dismissal, and the only verse in the New Testament that gives ascetic practice any credit at all. Then the same letter tells Timothy, who was apparently keeping a water-only abstinence, to stop it for his health. The one voluntary food restriction in the New Testament that we can see a named believer keeping is overruled by his doctor.	a little credit; health overrides the vow
Hebrews 9:9–10; 13:9	Gifts and sacrifices "which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation"… "it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein"	The cultus flag's own verse. The food laws are named as part of the tabernacle package and given an expiry. Then 13:9: food rules have not profited the people who kept them. This is the New Testament's explanation of what the Leviticus 11 list was, and it is the explanation this tradition already uses for the sacrifices (TP 1.2).	TEACHING — food laws expire with the cultus
Titus 1:15; Philippians 3:19	"Unto the pure all things are pure"… "whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things"	Purity relocated into the person; and the belly as a god, which puts gluttony where this tradition puts the worst sin, under idolatry (TP 8.0). The one food fault the letters name in a person is appetite enthroned.	in force — appetite as idol
Acts 13:2–3; 14:23	"As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul… and when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away"… "when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting"	The church fasting, twice, both times at a decision point: a commissioning and appointments. Occasioned, exactly like Exhibit B, and description. Acts is a history of what the first churches did, not a rule (Proper Worship Practices).	description — occasioned; bucket 2
Acts 27:33–36; 2 Corinthians 11:27	"This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and continued fasting, having taken nothing. Wherefore I pray you to take some meat: for this is for your health"… "in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness"	Paul ends a fourteen-day involuntary fast on a sinking ship by telling everyone to eat, for their health. In his hardship list "fastings" sits next to "hunger," so they are distinct, and both are hardships, not programme. The apostle's own fasting is described the way he describes being cold.	description — hardship; health first
Acts 10:30; 1 Corinthians 7:5 (KJV)	Cornelius: "Four days ago I was fasting until this hour"… "that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer"	Both "fasting"s are absent from the oldest manuscripts (Exhibit E). Without them Cornelius is simply praying at the ninth hour, and the married couple in Corinth are told to give themselves to prayer. Two more apparent New Testament fasts that are later hands.	LATER HAND — not in the earliest text

Exhibit E — the hands that added fasting, and the calendars with dates on them

This tradition treats a datable doctrine as a human one (TP 8.0; TP 35.0.1), and judges Nicaea on that basis. Applied evenhandedly here, the test finds two things: that the New Testament's apparent fasting rules were inserted by copyists, and that every fasting calendar any church keeps can be dated to the person or council that made it. The first finding is unusual enough that the manuscript evidence is given rather than asserted.

Where	What was added or decided	When, and by whom	Reading
Mark 9:29	"and fasting" appended to "by nothing, but by prayer"	Absent from Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (4th c.) and the Old Latin k; present in later Alexandrian, Western and Byzantine copies. Omitted by the critical editions. A copyist's addition, probably 3rd–4th century.	DATED — scribal
Matthew 17:21	The whole verse, "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting"	Absent from Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and the early versions; imported from the expanded Mark. Doubly out: a later hand, in a gospel not read here.	DATED — scribal; Matthew
Acts 10:30	"fasting until this hour, and" inserted before "at the ninth hour I prayed"	Absent from P74, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Ephraemi; present in the Byzantine text behind the KJV.	DATED — scribal
1 Corinthians 7:5	"fasting and" inserted before "prayer"	Absent from P46 (c. 200), Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Claromontanus; a Byzantine addition. Four insertions, one direction: nobody ever copied fasting out of a verse.	DATED — scribal
The Pharisees' twice-weekly fast	Monday and Thursday fasting, the practice behind Luke 18:12	Post-biblical custom, attested in the Didache and the rabbinic sources. Not in the Torah.	DATED — custom
Didache 8:1	"Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week; but do ye fast on the fourth day and the Preparation"	c. 100. The first Christian fasting rule, and it is a tribal marker: fast on different days from the Pharisees. Also 7:4: fast a day or two before baptism.	DATED — Wednesday and Friday, c. 100
Irenaeus to Victor (Eusebius, HE 5.24)	On the paschal fast: "some think they ought to fast one day, others two, others more; some count their day as forty hours"	c. 190. The length of the one fast every church kept was unfixed, and Irenaeus says the variety went back to "our ancestors."	description — no fixed length
Tertullian, On Fasting 1–2	The catholic majority, whom he mocks as "psychics," hold that fasting is "to be practised of free choice, not of command, according to the times and needs of each," that the only fast the Gospel fixed is "the days in which the Bridegroom was taken away," and they quote Romans 14:17 and 1 Timothy 4:3 against him	c. 208–212. Tertullian, by then a Montanist, is arguing for compulsory extra fasts and recording that the mainstream church of his day held exactly the position this page reaches: free choice, Mark 2:20, no command. He lost.	the 3rd-century mainstream: no commanded fast
Nicaea, canon 5	Synods to be held "before the forty days" (tessarakostē)	325. The first clear reference to a forty-day pre-Easter period. Lent is datable to the same council this tradition cites as the model of a human doctrine (TP 35.0.1).	DATED — Lent, 325
Augustine, Against Faustus 32.13	The Acts 15 blood rule was for the time of the mixed church; "who among Christians now observes it?"	c. 400. The Western church letting the one apostolic food rule lapse by disuse. Meanwhile the Eastern church kept it.	DATED — the survivor dropped in the West
Rule of Benedict 39	"Let all abstain entirely from eating the flesh of four-footed animals, except the very weak and the sick"	c. 530. Monastic meat abstinence, with a health exemption written in.	DATED — monastic
Council in Trullo, canon 67	Eating blood "in any manner" forbidden; clerics deposed, laity excommunicated	692. The East still enforcing Genesis 9:4 and Acts 15 six centuries on, which is a point for the survivor.	DATED — blood rule, East
Friday abstinence, Latin church	Meatless Fridays year-round as binding law (1917 Code, canons 1250–1254); relaxed to Lent only, or substituted penance, by Paul VI's Paenitemini and the US bishops' statement	17 February and 18 November 1966. A rule unmade by the same authority that made it, inside living memory. The clearest demonstration in the file that a fasting rule is legislation.	DATED — made and unmade
The Orthodox calendar	Wednesday and Friday most of the year, plus four fasting seasons	Roughly 180 to 200 fasting days a year, against the one day in the Torah. The gap between the two numbers is the size of the human contribution.	DATED — accumulated

What the table shows. The direction of drift is one way. Scribes added fasting to four verses and removed it from none; councils added fast days and the total climbed from one to two hundred; and when Tertullian wanted mandatory fasts in 210 he had to argue against a church that still read Romans 14 the plain way. The corpus's rule that a datable doctrine is a human one does not merely permit this conclusion, it requires it.

Exhibit F — what the house rules do to it, including where that is inconvenient

The tradition has already committed to premises. Most of them point the same way on food, which makes the three that do not more important, and they are printed in their own section below rather than softened. The corpus rule is to address the texts directly and "stop dodging the issue" (TP 35.0.1).

The inconvenient part

1. Colossians 2:23 against TPG 4.9. The corpus's favourite social-technology argument says bodily self-denial strengthens the inhibitory pathways and thereby checks indulgence. Paul, in the passage this household greeted as "very good for techno puritanism," says self-chosen rules of "touch not, taste not" with their "neglecting of the body" are "of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh." That is a direct claim about training effect, and it is the opposite claim. The available reconciliation is real but partial: Paul's target is restriction held as religion ("will worship," "commandments and doctrines of men"), claimed as holiness, whereas TPG 4.9's claim is psychological and makes no holiness claim at all. But "of no value" is a strong phrase, 1 Timothy 4:8 concedes only "a little," and a tradition that applies the fruits test (TP 32.0) has to say which fruits it is counting. The honest position is that the corpus's thesis and this verse are not yet reconciled, and the tract has to do it.

2. TP 7.0 against the three great fasts. The mysticism tract lists "food deprivation" first among the tricks by which cult leaders manufacture visions of God, and this tradition holds that closeness to God comes "through logic, pragmatism, and efficacious action, not the pursuit of altered mental states" (TP 6.0). Yet the three longest fasts in scripture, Moses, Elijah and Jesus, all sit next to encounters with God. The text, read closely, is on the corpus's side: Moses is already with God when he fasts; Elijah is fed twice and walks on the strength of the meal; Jesus is led by the Spirit before the fast, and the only vision reported inside the forty days is the devil's. None of the three uses hunger to reach God. But the corpus should say this out loud rather than leave the three fasts for someone else to quote at it, and it should note that the Winwood Reade line it quotes approvingly, that "the saints and prophets were forced to practise long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them" (TP 2.0; TPG 9.0), is describing the very mechanism TP 7.0 warns against.

3. The blood rule survives, and nobody keeps it. Every route this tradition uses to retire a rule fails on blood. It is pre-Sinai and given to all humanity (Genesis 9:4), so the Israel-only argument of Deuteronomy 14:21 does not reach it. It is restated by the apostles specifically for gentiles (Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25), so the "cultus expired" argument of Hebrews 9:10 is answered by a bucket-2 council that knew the cultus was expiring and kept the rule anyway. Conservative reading (TP 20.0) keeps it. The Eastern church kept it for a thousand years. The only argument against it is Paul's "eat whatever is sold, asking no question" (1 Corinthians 10:25), which is bucket 2 against bucket 2 and, on the usual reading, about the market rather than the table. In practice the rule touches almost nothing in a modern kitchen, since commercial slaughter drains the animal; blood sausage and blood pudding are the live cases, and a tradition that tells people to stop dodging should say whether it eats them.

4. "Weak," and the status of self-denial inside the group. Romans 14 permits the voluntary restriction and labels the person keeping it weak in faith, and 14:22 tells him to keep it to himself. TP 19.0 says self-denial is a status marker within this cultural group. Both can hold if the status attaches to discipline in general and never to a menu, and if the discipline is not performed (Luke 18:12). But a group that admires fasting has to watch that it does not reinvent the Pharisee's Monday and Thursday, and this page cannot promise it will not.

The scorecard

Honest counterweights

The texts and arguments that fight this reading, kept in public and graded. Several land, and two of them land on the corpus rather than on the page.

1. Acts 15 imposed a food law on gentiles LANDS — on Q1 and Q2

The council that "laid no greater burden" still laid one, and three of its four items are about food. Anyone saying "the apostles imposed no dietary rule on believers" is wrong, and this page does not say it. The honest shape of the decree is a table-fellowship rule (15:21 gives the reason: Moses is read in every city, so Jewish believers are at the same table), and the blood half of it predates Sinai. It is the one place the apostolic layer does the thing 1 Timothy 4 condemns, which means 1 Timothy 4 has to be read as condemning diets imposed as holiness, not every food instruction ever given.

2. Genesis 9:4 is universal and never repealed LANDS — the survivor

Given to Noah, for everyone, before any nation or altar; restated in Leviticus 17 with the altar reason added; kept by the apostles for gentiles; enforced in the East to 692 and beyond. Every retirement route this tradition uses fails on it. Exhibit F, item 3, already concedes this; it is repeated here because a counterweights section that left out the one rule that wins would be dishonest.

3. Mark 7:19 is the narrator, not Jesus PARTIAL

On the better reading, "making all meats clean" is Mark's gloss, and Jesus's own words in 7:15 are about defilement, in a dispute about hand-washing. True. Two answers. The principle Jesus states, that nothing entering a man defiles him, is his, and it is wider than the fence it was aimed at. And the gloss is in Mark, which this tradition ranks above the other gospels on exactly the ground that Mark is earliest and least edited (TPS 71.2). A tradition cannot promote Mark and then discount Mark's own commentary.

4. Leviticus 11's reason is holiness, not the sanctuary CONTESTED

"Ye shall be holy; for I am holy" (11:44) is a moral-sounding reason, not a cultic one, and someone can argue the list is about Israel's character, not its altar. The reply is Deuteronomy 14:21 in the same breath as the same reason: "for thou art an holy people" is immediately followed by permission to sell the forbidden carcass to the stranger. Holiness here is separateness, a marker of a people, which is what TPG 17.2 says and what Hebrews 9:10 assumes. But the reader should know the verse says "holy," not "sanctuary," and decide.

5. Daniel and the Rechabites show God honoring restriction PARTIAL

Daniel refuses the king's food and prospers; the Rechabites keep a wine ban and are promised a line forever. Real, and kept in Exhibit B. What is honored in each case is named in the text: Daniel's refusal to be defiled under an idolatrous king, and the Rechabites' obedience to a father. Neither passage commends the menu to anyone else, and Jeremiah's point is to shame Judah with a clan that obeyed. They support Q3 (you may) and do nothing for Q2 (you may impose).

6. "Then shall they fast in those days" is more than permission LANDS — on Q4

Mark 2:20 is a prediction in the mouth of Jesus, in the house's top gospel, and a prediction by him carries the weight of an expectation. A reading that treats Christian fasting as merely tolerated undersells it: Jesus expected his followers to fast after he was gone, and Acts shows them doing it. The page's claim is narrower and survives this: expected, yes; commanded, scheduled or given a method, no. And the sayings he attached to it, new cloth and new wine, warn against making it a patch on the old calendar.

7. 1 Timothy 4:8 concedes bodily training a profit PARTIAL — and it helps the corpus

"Profiteth little" is pros oligon, "for a little," and it is a concession, not a dismissal. It is the one New Testament sentence that gives TPG 4.9 anything, and the page records it as such. It also caps the claim at "little," which is well short of the Pragmatist's Guide's "critical role in mental wellbeing."

8. Colossians 2:23 against the corpus LANDS — on TPG 4.9

Printed in Exhibit F. The verse the household welcomed says that severity to the body is worthless for checking the flesh, and the corpus's central argument for fasting says the opposite. The reconciliation (religion versus training) is available and partial. This is the one place on the page where the text fights the corpus rather than the page, and it is left standing.

9. Romans 14 calls the restrictor weak LANDS — on making diet a badge

The tradition admires self-denial and ranks it as status (TP 19.0). Paul tolerates the man who "eateth herbs" and calls him weak in faith, and tells him to keep it between himself and God. A group that turns a food restriction into an in-group marker has walked into the thing Paul was managing in Rome. The way through is the one already stated: status for discipline, never for the menu, never performed. It is a path, not a guarantee.

10. Isaiah 58 defines the fast as feeding others LANDS — on "what is it for"

Cuts against any fast kept purely as self-training. The fast God "has chosen" is to "deal thy bread to the hungry" and "bring the poor that are cast out to thy house"; the bulrush posture without that is the thing mocked. The Shepherd of Hermas took it literally in the second century: fast, and give what the fast saved to a widow or orphan. A tradition that asks what every command is for (TP 8.0) has its answer for this one, and it is not inhibitory control.

11. Dropping Matthew removes the method, not the practice CUTS BOTH WAYS

Someone could argue that a tradition which loses Matthew 6:16–18 loses the clearest statement that Jesus assumed his followers would fast ("when ye fast"). True, and Mark 2:20 covers it. But it also loses the only verse that tells you how, and the page's finding that this tradition has fewer fasting rules than its neighbours, not more, follows directly. Whether that is a cost or a feature is the tract's call.

12. The scribal insertions were by believers who fasted PARTIAL

The four additions in Exhibit E are evidence that the churches of the third and fourth centuries fasted and thought it belonged in the text. That is a real witness to early practice. It is not a witness to the text. The corpus's own method for Matthew 24:36 (This Generation) was to prefer the reading the scribes found uncomfortable; the same method here prefers the reading with no fasting in it, because nobody ever removed the word.

What this does and does not license

The claim is narrow and hard to get around: no food restriction binds a believer except the one about blood, nobody may impose one or judge by one, you may keep one yourself as long as you keep it to yourself and it does not hurt you, and fasting is expected, occasioned and uncommanded. That is the text, in both buckets, with the counterweights standing. It is also, nearly word for word, the position the mainstream church held in 210 before the calendars were built.

What the evidence refuses is the comfortable middle position in both directions. It refuses the kosher-adjacent Christian who keeps Leviticus 11 as holiness and reads Deuteronomy 14:21 past the clause that sells the carcass to the stranger. And it refuses the liberated Christian who says "no food law survives" while eating blood pudding, or who dismisses fasting as Pharisaism when Jesus said his followers would do it. You can keep no diet, with 1 Timothy 4 in hand. You can keep one, with Romans 14 in hand, and the label that comes with it. The one thing the file does not leave open is telling someone else what to eat and calling it the faith.

For this household specifically, the file converts the five scattered positions into one. The Pragmatist's Guide's self-denial is permitted as culture under Romans 14:5 and is forbidden to become law under 1 Timothy 4:3. The mysticism tract's warning is confirmed by the gospels' own fasts, none of which uses hunger to reach God. The sins tract's "pork has no externalities" is Colossians 2:22. The Sabbath episode's "very good for techno puritanism" has to be paid for by answering Colossians 2:23. And the one food mandate the corpus ever named, to build the laboratory that makes the question obsolete, is the only one on this page that no text argues against.