Seminary Student Here. The really cool thing is that the Ancient Hebrew writing (One of the earliest in the world) started around the time of Moses. I have read many ANE (Ancient Near East) laws and papers and almost all of them had dietary rules and rules on just about everything. A person&#x27;s national identity was directly tied to one&#x27;s national religion. Reading other papers kind of shows that this isn&#x27;t some wacky crazy idea but a very common thing in the area.<p>I might say the academic integrity of most non-religious  disciplines is horrible and lazy. Academics will take text (for example The Epic of Gilgamesh) treat all the copies as one story and try to prove stupid things compared to the Old Testament that are just plain silly or they don&#x27;t know how to read dates. Heck the way academics had treated the New Testament was also just play lazy and stupid, but now things are improving.<p>PS As a seminary student I had several non-believing professors come and teach in my classes because they found looking for the answer to the question you asked worthy of a life long pursuit. Theology is really a great discipline and very enjoyable academic pursuit. It deepened my faith but I must say most are terrified at learning too much will change their faith, which they shouldn&#x27;t in m opinion.