Let me share a few thoughts on Peter’s vision of a great sheet descend­ing with all kinds of ani­mals in it. Did the vision meant the abro­ga­tion of the food laws as tra­di­tional Chris­t­ian the­olo­gians claim? Or per­haps the pas­sage was meant to com­mu­ni­cate a dif­fer­ent idea. Let us read it:

Acts 10:9 The next day, as they were on their jour­ney and com­ing near the city, Peter went up on the house­top to pray, about the sixth hour. 10 And he became hun­gry and desired some­thing to eat; but while they were prepar­ing it, he fell into a trance 11 and saw the heaven opened, and some­thing descend­ing, like a great sheet, let down by four cor­ners upon the earth. 12 In it were all kinds of ani­mals and rep­tiles and birds of the air. 13 And there came a voice to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” 14 But Peter said, “No, Lord; for I have never eaten any­thing that is com­mon [koinon] or unclean [akathar­ton].” 15 And the voice came to him again a sec­ond time, “What God has cleansed, you must not call com­mon [koinon].” 16 This hap­pened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven.

Well, the first thing you shall notice is that the sheet did not only have unclean ani­mals in it. It had “all kinds of ani­mals and rep­tiles and birds of the air”, not only unclean. God did not say that every­thing on the sheet was clean!

We also find that two terms are used here: “com­mon” [koinon — e.g. koine Greek mean­ing “com­mon Greek”] and “unclean” [akathar­ton]. The for­mer means pro­fane, being defiled by touch­ing the unclean, there­fore, becom­ing rit­u­ally unclean, while the lat­ter is unclean because the law declares it so. Thus, a Gen­tile would be called “com­mon” because he ate unclean meat (or touched unclean things), and for this rea­son a Jew could not eat with him at the same table.

Now let us exam­ine a few pas­sages where the Greek term for “com­mon” appears.

Acts 10:28 and he said to them, “You your­selves know how unlaw­ful it is for a Jew to asso­ciate with or to visit any one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man [i.e. believ­ing Gen­tile] com­mon [koinon] or unclean [akatharton].

The term “unclean” when refer­ring to peo­ple or things it often means (lep­rous) dis­ease in the law.

Acts 11:8 But I said, ‘No, Lord; for noth­ing com­mon [koinon] or unclean [akathar­ton] has ever entered my mouth.’

Heb 10:29 How much worse pun­ish­ment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and pro­faned [koinon] the blood of the covenant by which he was sanc­ti­fied, and out­raged the Spirit of grace?

In the fol­low­ing verses the term is mis­trans­lated. The trans­la­tors should have used “com­mon” or “pro­fane”, rather than the incor­rect “unclean”. This proves a the­o­log­i­cal bias.

Rom 14:14 I know and am per­suaded in the Lord Jesus that noth­ing is unclean [koinon] in itself; but it is unclean [koinon] for any one who thinks it unclean [koinon].

Rev 21:27 But noth­ing unclean [koinon] shall enter it, nor any one who prac­tices abom­i­na­tion or false­hood, but only those who are writ­ten in the Lamb’s book of life.

So, return­ing to Peter’s vision in Acts 10, there were some ani­mals in the sheet that were clean ani­mals that could be eaten. So why didn’t Peter eat those? Three times Peter refused to do what God com­manded. It was because Peter thought these clean ani­mals had been made pro­fane, rit­u­ally unclean by being near the unclean ani­mals that were also on the sheet.

Sim­i­larly, Peter and other believ­ing Jews had been observ­ing rab­binic rules of avoid­ing being near all non-Jews. God was telling Peter that Gen­tiles who were believ­ers were no longer pro­fane, for God had made them clean. This whole chap­ter is about accep­tance and fel­low­ship­ping with the believ­ing Gen­tiles. It is not about food laws.