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The Origin of the Pork Taboo
- kmeisthax 2y agoAt this point, Leviticus seems like someone took a bunch of classical Levantine culture war grievances against the Greeks and Romans and just snuck them straight into the Bible.
- adamtaylor_13 2y agoThis blog post is the first time I've ever heard someone suggest that the Hebrew Torah was written so recently. It should be noted that Leviticus is part of the Torah, parts of which are included in the Bible but predate the Bible as we know it by several centuries. The oral tradition of the Torah is even older than the written version, possibly even older than the Greeks themselves (though I'm no historian, so I don't cling to that idea stubbornly.)
- PessimalDecimal 2y agoApparently the same is true for the modern form of male circumcision which removes much more of the foreskin than was done prior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_milah#Judaism,_Christianity,_and_the_Early_Church_(4_BCE_%E2%80%93_150_CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_milah#Judaism,_Christiani...
- bejdofk 2y ago[flagged]
- satellite2 2y ago[flagged]
- bananapub 2y agowhy would anyone be interested in you posting that?
- conorjh 2y agoman i wish there was a quick lil summary for this article
- satellite2 2y agoTo prevent unnecessary compute.
- MrMcCall 2y ago[flagged]
- conorjh 2y ago[flagged]
- conorjh 2y ago[flagged]
- MrMcCall 2y ago[flagged]
- fortran77 2y agoThe Hebrew Bible does not proscribe death or any punishment from man for eating pork for Jews (a punishment would come from G-d), and it's not prohibited at all for non-Jews. I'm not sure what other religions with pork prohibitions would do.
- adamtaylor_13 2y agoIndeed. Ritual "uncleanliness" was a problem having to do with Hebrew worship. Being ritually unclean did not result in killing people (except in rare cases, certainly not related to pork); it simply restricted your ability to participate in communal worship.
- o999 2y agoNeither Quran nor Hadith, non-muslims living under Caliphate were allowed to consume pork "Dhimmi communities were also allowed to engage in certain practices that were usually forbidden for the Muslim community, such as the consumption of alcohol and pork." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi Parent comment is hate speech
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- snapcaster 2y agoI think takes like this (that are roughly summed up as "everyone but me is dumb") are very self-limiting. Even if your take is "correct" in some super simplified high level sense it prevents you from learning anything about how humans work and how beliefs like this develop
- lordnacho 2y agoThe article seems to end where it gets interesting. Greeks and Romans were associated with pigs, so the Jews decide that not eating pork should be a symbol of national identity. But then it says people continued to eat pork in the area. Why? Islam naturally doesn't like pigs due to geography, but what about the Jews? How does it become pretty much the thing you remember every time you're out with your Jewish friends?
- intellectronica 2y agoReligion, and strict adherence to these laws by the general population, is a relatively late phenomenon. It only became as strict as it is now during the middle ages and more so in early modernity. Your Jewish friends are, to a large extent, a product of 18th-century Eastern European Jewish culture and Western / American homogenised understanding of religion.
- edgyquant 2y agoThis is entirely incorrect
- paride5745 2y agoIf this was the case, why Jewish practices from Eastern Europe and the Middle East/North Africa are so aligned? And even communities that are even further away like Ethiopia, Yemen, and India, are mostly following the same pattern? Modern Judaism is very much connected to the state of affairs of ancient Israel/Judah from 24 centuries ago.
- intellectronica 2y agoThey were not so aligned until the 20th-century when Jews from all communities mixed again. I am not disputing that Jewish practices today and for the last two millennia are connected to practices in Judea at the turn of the first millennium and to texts that had been written even earlier. What I'm saying is that strict and regulated adherence by large parts of the population came relatively late. That, as far as I can tell from the research, is not at all controversial.
- poink 2y agoAdam Ragusea made a pretty good video about this a few years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sew4rctKghY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sew4rctKghY
- btbuildem 2y agoI've always imagined the taboo originated in some practical reasons (like "pork spoils really quickly in the heat"), but or course that's simplistic, and trying to approach religious things with reasoned explanations is a fool's errand. This article's take is interesting: economic, environmental and cultural factors that gradually became codified as religious identity markers. The tribality of this tracks, the "us" vs "them" has always been and always will be, and people pick the most random things to differentiate the "us" from "them". It makes perfect sense that these desert tribes, indistinguishable cousins basically, would end up differentiating on something so arbitrary.
- trws 2y agoMuch as the article makes good points, I find it difficult to believe that the list of meats banned by kosher and halal matches the top allergies and disease risk factors as well as it does without some intent. Pork was, until very recently, the greatest risk for parasitic infection, insects in a similar spot. Shellfish are the top meat allergy, by a whole lot. Most of the rest of the rules about preparation amount to good practices for ensuring cleanliness or at least reasonable preservation and parasite prevention. There are exceptions, I can’t think of a practical reason for not allowing meat and dairy to come into contact, but the vast majority would have kept people healthier. Whether it originated from an us vs them ideology or not, there were practical benefits for a population that made those choices that would have reinforced it in pre-modern times.
- zappb 2y agoPreventing meat and dairy contacting is based on a moral argument against mixing products of life with products of death. I don’t think it was ever about health.
- MisterTea 2y agoThis is what I have heard as well. However, imagine the gastrointestinal distress one would have after consuming spoiled milk and not so fresh meat...
- MarkusWandel 2y agoI've always assumed that it's because pigs will eat human excrement. The article kind of, sort of, brushes on that. And that's gross and might be just the thing to push pork from a marginalized, lower class food to outright prohibited.
- _1tem 2y agoThis is the justification given in the Quran - pigs are called “filthy”. The pig remains a symbol of disgust even in cultures that consume it - see how Ukrainian memes portray Putin and Russian soldiers with pig caricatures.
- MarkusWandel 2y agoFact. Germans (I am one) are enthusiastic pork eaters, yet the pig makes an appearance in derogatory words e.g. "Schweinerei" for something messy/disgusting or "Sauhund" for a disliked person. Then again, it is also a symbol of luck, e.g. little marzipan pigs, or the expression "Schwein gehabt" for a lucky event.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y agoDer fährt wie 'ne gesengte Sau! / Drives like a pig on fire. Quiek! edit: also Sparschwein even more edit: I grew up in a part of Bonn Bad Godesberg called Schweinheim. Steep hillside up to the plateau of the Kottenforst. Has been used as so called 'Hütewald' in old times, because it wasn't good for much else, because too steep. Grunz!
- alexejb 2y agoit's the other way around - ukrainians are depicted as pigs. Сало уронили - героям сала!
- riku_iki 2y agoYour citation actually doesn't indicate Ukrainians are associated with pigs there.
- thrwwy001 2y ago[dead]
- jmclnx 2y agoI stand corrected, I was thinking some powerful ruler(s) did not like pork, thus the taboo. But seems I was way off, seems many possible reasons emerged and eventually politics may be the reinforcement that made it permanent.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- stared 2y agoAlso, I highly recommend this Kurzgesagt video on how paying just a bit more for meat or eggs drastically improves animals' living conditions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sVfTPaxRwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sVfTPaxRwk Additionally, while (pun intended) I am not religious about this, I try to avoid eating pork - as pigs are among the smartest animals humans eat (with intelligence comparable to dogs). For a similar reason, I avoid eating octopuses as well. Also, as a rule of thumb, "less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint", https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat.
- jampekka 2y agoPaying more of course doesn't improve animals' conditions automatically. Improved conditions would most likely increase the price. But even with quite hefty price increse, the conditions will still be a living hell. And for an individual eating animals and animal produce is about the most environmentally harmful thing conducted regularly regardless of the price.
- jghn 2y agoThis is a good thing to point out. I source most of my meat and eggs from local small farms where I know that the animals are raised in good conditions. Partially because I think it tastes better, partially for the ethics of it. Because of that, I pay more. But if one goes to the local supermarket, it's easy to find upbranded labels charging more for who knows what. Probably mostly to fund their marketing budget.
- stared 2y agoFor some products, like free-range eggs, there is the possibility of choosing more ethical options. With many others, the supply chain is opaque, and paying more gives absolutely no guarantee of better conditions. The only way to be sure is if you know a local farmer personally. So, I think there should be much better regulations about minimal living conditions (though this would face strong opposition). Additionally, it would be wonderful if every animal-derived product had a recent photo (within the last year) from the exact farm of origin. It would be even better if every food product included a CO2e per calorie estimate (see e.g. https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore).
- jrd259 2y agoIn his book Cows, Pugs, Wars and Witches the anthropologist Marvin Harris tries to ground the pig taboo as a protection against the tragedy of the commons. As per Harris, pigs require excessive water, a scarce resource in the region. A flat ban on consuming pigs reduces the chance that people will divert water to pigs. The article hints at this where it calls the pig "an animal unfit for the harsh terrain and dry climate".
- cabirum 2y ago"They require less than half the amount of water needed by a cow or a horse, making them more drought tolerant" - it follows from the article that pigs help to conserve water
- aaronbaugher 2y agoMy pigs love to splash water out of their trough or tip it over so they can play in it. In hot weather, pigs will lie in mud to stay cool, and they really suffer if they get too hot. So while pigs may drink less than cows or horses, they may use more water to stay cool in arid regions without good shade. I doubt that had anything to do with the taboo, though.
- FergusArgyll 2y agoThe problem with this line of thinking is that - in Judaism at least - Pigs aren't special. Anything without split hooves or doesn't chew it's cud is prohibited. Pigs, Camels, Rabbits and the Hare (last 2 are speculative translations) are the only ones mentioned because they have one quality but not the other.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y agoand locusts are totaly kosher... tasty and crunchy, too
- esaym 2y ago>Pigs aren't special. Apparently pigs can be possessed with sprints. I always assumed that was why they were considered unclean. From Mark 5: So the demons begged him, "Send us among the pigs, so that we can go into them!" So he let them do this. The unclean spirits came out of the man and went into the pigs https://biblehub.com/isv/mark/5.htm https://biblehub.com/isv/mark/5.htm
- phendrenad2 2y agoBut logically, there's no reason to believe that other animals can't be possessed by spirits. Maybe pigs were just the closest available thing.
- krapp 2y ago>But logically, there's no reason to believe that other animals can't be possessed by spirits. Logic has no merit when you're talking about the supernatural, because the rules can be whatever you want. Maybe animals can't be possessed by spirits because God only gave "true souls" to humans, and possessing spirits can only replace "true souls." Maybe they require a brain with a certain complexity which only humans possess. Maybe spirits just think it's gross, like bestiality.
- phendrenad2 2y ago
- devJdeed 2y ago[flagged]
- calebm 2y agoMy grandparents are mostly vegetarian, but not for religious or ethical reasons. I asked her about it, and she said that her parents used to raise pigs, and she said she just couldn't get over the smell.
- lizknope 2y ago6 years ago I was driver from El Paso, Texas northwest on Interstate-10 I was running the air conditioning and after a few minutes I noticed a bad smell and then my eyes started burning. I saw tons of farms and cows for about 10 miles just to the west. The Rio Grande River literally goes in between with farms on both sides. Here's a link. https://maps.app.goo.gl/aRe98Eb2cm1ExjE58 https://maps.app.goo.gl/aRe98Eb2cm1ExjE58 I switched the air from "fresh" to "recirculate" but the smell was awful and my eyes kept burning. I finally got through it all and stopped at an exit and washed my eyes out with water for a few minutes. I don't know how people can live there. New Mexico Dairy Pollution Sparks 'Manure War' https://www.npr.org/2009/12/09/121173780/new-mexico-dairy-pollution-sparks-manure-war https://www.npr.org/2009/12/09/121173780/new-mexico-dairy-po... Advocacy group plans to fight mega farms in New Mexico https://sourcenm.com/briefs/advocacy-group-plans-to-fight-mega-farms-in-new-mexico/ https://sourcenm.com/briefs/advocacy-group-plans-to-fight-me... I'm a vegetarian too and I'm not trying to ban animal livestock but when the air is so bad and the ground water is polluted then I am in favor of restrictions on the size of farms and financial penalties for polluting.
- pstuart 2y agoMost people don't care, especially if it means cheap eats. Sad, isn't it?
- silisili 2y agoIf my memory serves right, it's actually the Vado area in NM than El Paso proper. Whole city stinks to drive through, and on windy days(which is almost every day), your car gets peppered with dung filled straw blowing across the road. Truly cursed drive.
- throw4847285 2y agoI was pleasantly surprised that the article was such a nuanced overview of the topic, concluding (as is the consensus among archaeologists) that there is no single explanation. We are most confident explaining how pork became the focus among the broader dietary restriction around permitted and forbidden meats, due to the conflict between Hellenism and Judaism. Beyond that, like all cultural practices, a single psuedo-scientific explanation is uncompelling. I'm hoping that humanity lasts long enough for future armchair archaeologists to look back on our cultural practice and invent pseudo-scientific just-so-stories to explain the weird things that we do.
- o999 2y agoExactly, that is guesswork not a complete research.
- renewiltord 2y agoI believe it being somewhat accidental as posed by this article. It could also be somewhat coincidental that the Scottish pork taboo exists independently.
- roughly 2y agoGraeber & Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything"[1] pulls the thread a bit about how groups tend to build their identity as oppositional to their neighbors - that a tribe who lives next to one known for its ornamentation will tend to develop a culture that spurns such things. This isn't the first thing I've read about some core part of Israelite identity coming as a strong rejection of their neighbors' way of doing things - there was an article here a while back digging into the prohibition against mixed fibers, as well, and an awful lot of the Levitican proclamations seem to be ways to establish a group identity in opposition to the cultures in which the Israelites found themselves embedded in. Even the concept of God - Reza Aslan (yeah yeah) traces the evolution of the concept of a local god of a people to the capital-G God of creation to early Israelites attempts to keep their culture intact in the face of a military defeat by their neighbors. 1: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-dawn-of-everything-a-new-history-of-humanity-david-graeber/15873078?ean=9781250858801&next=t https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-dawn-of-everything-a-new-hi...
- phendrenad2 2y agoI'll see your carefully-reasoned scientific take and raise you my own anthropological take: Maybe one time head priest just didn't like Pork and his preference stuck.
- vishkk 2y agoTo supplement, this is quite a good read: https://longreads.com/2015/10/14/i-would-rather-be-herods-pig-the-history-of-a-taboo-2/ https://longreads.com/2015/10/14/i-would-rather-be-herods-pi...
- rfwhyte 2y agoAs with everything else to do with religion, it probably comes down to something to do with exerting power and control over other people, typically for the profit of the people writing down the "laws" in any given religious text. Chance are the dude who wrote the rules against eating pork was a beef farmer (Or more likely some kind of noble type who owned beef farms, but didn't do any actual labour themselves) and so the whole thing was just a way to force people to do the thing that made some particular dude or group of dudes the most money and that gave them the most power over other peoples lives.
- internet_points 2y agoand then you have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great#Chapter_Three:_A_Short_Digression_On_The_Pig;_or,_Why_Heaven_Hates_Ham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great#Chapter_Three... > similarities in appearance and flavor between pork and human flesh (I have no idea how likely that theory is)
- o999 2y agoJews and Muslims don't eat pork because their holy books tell them they cannot eat it. This article is really making up a fancy explaination to very simple subject, Jews and Muslims believe Torah and Quran are devine. Alcohol consumption was widespread among Arabs and early Muslims before it was discouraged and later prohibited in Quran, you should not play clever to try to explain that differently.
- ncr100 2y agoMy personal experience, essentially is that we smell like pork, our bodies, our flesh. So a taboo makes innate sense. I had surgery, and I was allowed to handle the part of my body that was resected. It was a bone and there was still some of my muscle. I smelled like the best piece of pork. Like if you had a piece of pork from a pig, which that pig clearly was loved so caringly before it was slaughtered: it was worshipped, and massaged, and fed all the best food. That's what my growth suggested, odoriuosly. (Cue the Mike Meyers joke about loving the smell of your own farts, from The Goldmember movie series..?) My conclusion is, humans smell like pork so it's just kind of yucky to lust after the taste of another person. There are still people who are cannibals, tribes. At least back in the '80s I understand there were active tribes in North Asia, according to a college professor's (of mine) direct experience.
- xarope 2y agolong pork: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100114139 https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority...
- ncr100 2y agoYup. I'd be delicious. https://youtu.be/gOE-q20RcDM?si=CrT9aV6SwutgZsAG https://youtu.be/gOE-q20RcDM?si=CrT9aV6SwutgZsAG
- RachelF 2y agoYes, pig organs can be used for human transplants, the tissue types are similar. Perhaps the pork prohibition also has some anti-cannibal echos in it. You're never sure if your pork stew is grandma?
- meitham 2y agoThe Quran hints on that similarity in a verse about punishing people by converting them to pigs and apes. Though this is not given as a reason of why pork is forbidden, but Islam places itself as a continuation of Abrahamic religion of Judaism and Christianity so most rules are kept and followed.
- teleforce 2y ago> “The Hebrew Bible equally bans eating the pig, the camel, the hare, and other animals,” he says. Fish without scales, rock badgers, and certain birds were also off-limits. > Muslims took a middle ground, rejecting most Jewish dietary restrictions but accepting the prohibition on pork. The Koran says the pig is unclean and therefore forbidden, along with blood, dead animals, and animals not dedicated to Allah. The discrepancies can be traced back to the house of Abraham, where both Jews and Muslim claimed the lineage of their religious authority and laws. According to Muslim traditions eating pork prohibition is existed since the very early beginning of human and perhaps can be traced back to prophet Noah time. The thing with the Jews is that regarding the many dietary constraints because they have three approaches for prohibitions: 1) Original prohibitions from their one God (similar to Muslim since they're both from the house of Abraham) and eating pork prohibition is part of the original commandmends 2) Extra or additional dietary constraints from their one God as form of punishments for their corrupt and evil deeds 3) Self imposed dietary constraints not ordained by their one God but by their very own pundits These 3 dietary things become accumulated, mixed and covoluted by the scribes of Jewish religious books as if they were all comes from their one God commandments When Islam come it reverted back to the original dietary constraints of the house of Abraham. Please note that he is not a Jew but a prophet sent to the Semite people, and the father of Ishak and Ismail, whereby both are also prophets, and the progenitors of Jewish and Islamic faith, respectively.
- leftofright 2y agoJust to be clear, your entire comment is the Muslim view on why Jews have these laws. Jews don’t consider themselves evil. Also the Torah has no view on Muslims because Islam didn’t exist yet when the Torah was written.
- teleforce 2y ago>Jews don’t consider themselves evil For the record I'm not saying that Jews are evil, but if they happened to do any wrongdoings or evil deeds, for example worshipping other fake god in the form of false deity/human/cow/idols/etc beside their one true God they'll be punished accordingly whether in this world or hereafter, or both. This fact is mentioned in Jewish own holy books including Torah and the Bible namely Old and New Testaments (Jesus is a Jew speaking Aramaic - an Arabic like language spoken around Jerusalem during Roman time). This universal God's rule is also applies to Muslim and everyone else as far as Muslim are concerned.
- la64710 2y agoIt is one of the most stinky kind of meat available.
- trhway 2y agoTo me the foundation of those rules - not eating pork, non-scaled fish, shrimp, etc - lies in the practical aspect of what happens with food in warm climate without refrigeration. Lean meat, scaled fish more probably dry than rot. Whereis fat meat, non scaled fish like sturgeon, shrimp, etc. will sooner rot than dry. Getting for example regular fish dry salted is easy, where is attempting to get sturgeon dry salted you'd more probably end up with rotten dangerous to eat fish. The similar about mixing dairy and meat - dairy in warm climate is easily gets populated by bacteria which gets nasty if added with meat.
- djaouen 2y agoHumans have really made a mess of this world. I hope the machines do better. :(
- pazimzadeh 2y agoChristopher Hitchens makes the case that certain similarities between pigs and humans, including intelligence and a dying made them revered early on, so eating them was forbidden or restricted to particular rituals or celebrations. https://www.26reads.com/library/10164-god-is-not-great/3 https://www.26reads.com/library/10164-god-is-not-great/3
- DrNosferatu 2y agoOink!
- afroboy 2y ago> The Koran says the pig is unclean. That's actually wrong it never says that, it's just say it's Haram and nothing more.
- yamrzou 2y agoIt does say it's رِجْسٌ in 6:145[1] which is interpreted as “filth” or as “impure”. [1] https://quran.com/6/145 https://quran.com/6/145
- kazinator 2y agoBasically, just the familiar old contempt culture at work.