3 ms·

"which was notoriously hard to make sanitary" Why were the jews unable to handle pork? Didn't their neighbours manage it?

by cess11 10mo ago

satvikpendem 10mo ago
Some historians speculate that it is a shibboleth to distinguish them from the pork eating gentiles.
em-bee 10mo ago
honest question, as i simply have no clue about this, is there evidence that they did? given that the koran also forbids pork i doubt that a way to make pork sanitary has been found before then.
- int_19h 10mo ago
  Pigs were domesticated (specifically for their meat) for several thousand years already by the time the earliest Jewish dietary restrictions took shape. There are many theories that try to tie it specifically to the conditions in the Middle East, but none that I'm aware of are particularly convincing.
- avadodin 10mo ago
  Pigs –being omnivorous– can acquire parasites that are harmful to humans at a higher rate than herbivorous ungulates. That was as true 1000 years ago as it is today. Cooking and salting the meat both greatly reduce incidence. It is possible that cultures which avoided pork altogether lacked adaptations against the parasites at the genetic level or simply that somebody among them noticed the relationship with illness whilst missing the link with undercooked meat.
  - cess11 10mo ago
    Let's say that was possible, why would it be likely, or even the most likely explanation? How do you square this against, say, the possibility that the early jews wanted to differentiate themselves from the egyptians? I'm not sure about the specifics of the archaeological record but perhaps it was the case that pork was an upper class thing in Egypt due to it being fat and tasty, and slaves and workers were instead fed beef. Then the rule in Leviticus might reflect this and conserve a part of an older identity. In early judaism at least some of the fat from mutton and so on was burnt as a cultic sacrifice, so maybe the idea was to keep tradition from before the exile to the Sinai.
    - avadodin 10mo ago
      I was indeed going off the premise that there was a scientific reason behind the dietary laws. Purely cultural reasons are plausible but pork is a staple meat in all cultures where it is allowed. It would be an inordinate sacrifice to make for tradition alone. If differentiation was the motivation, couldn't they make laws against eating peas or some other inconsequential crop? In context, pork was only one of many forbidden foods. Certain kinds of locusts being allowed while others not, certain kinds of seafood being allowed while others not. They have been debunked as being good heuristics for food safety with 21st century knowledge but that doesn't mean they didn't stem from observations of poison, parasites, etc. You could apply the same reasoning to the Jewish culture of cleanliness in general. It certainly differentiated them from many other contemporaneous cultures, but why would they wash themselves in the first place?
      - cess11 10mo ago
        What do you mean by "inordinate"? Reason as a main source of social norms is a much later ideological invention, usually considered a result of the dominance of the roman catholic church and its adoption of aristotelian philosophy. You're still defending possibility as such, and not arguing for relative likelihood. I find the lack of anchoring in early judaic society suspicious. If you read the Torah you'll find that it is not a collection of argumentative texts. To the extent that Leviticus makes an argument it stops at two criteria, cloven hoofs and rumination, without further explanation. This is also how more well-known early judaic legal norms were communicated, e.g. the noahide laws and the decalogue are presented as is without further argument. The context of early judaism was also quite deadly in itself, people died all the time from a variety of opaque reasons. Figuring out that someone died due to some meat-transmitted parasite rather than a disgruntled shedim wasn't very likely. The Torah is quite unconcerned with things like health or actions that are supposed to result in a long life, insisting instead that these things are decided by G-d. Dying isn't given a very prominent place in this early theology either, it just kind of shrugs it off with a vague idea about Sheol as a container for souls, in case they just don't stick around like some ancestral ghosts or something. Pork was widely eaten at the time, so the "good heuristics for food safety" thing seems entirely useless to me. People already knew how to prepare pork and did it, and pork isn't particularly insidious, if kept in a warm environment it'll ward off your nose and taste buds in no time. Beef (and mutton) is more likely to trick you into eating it even though it has gone bad, and it also carries a risk of giving you parasitical or bacterial infections.
- Rendello 10mo ago
  I recently watched a video about the anthropological origins of the pork taboo. The hygiene theory is popular, but not uncontested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI0ZUhBvIx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI0ZUhBvIx4
- cess11 10mo ago
  Jewish law on this topic is like a thousand years older than the prophet Muhammad, or more, it's not exactly clear when the contents of Leviticus first stabilised. As for pork as food, it's as old as neolithic societies. Wild boars were a very popular food source, hence why they were eventually domesticated. Now pigs don't produce tasty milk in the same way sheep, goats and cows do, but they produce a lot of meat and offspring without being picky about diet. Leviticus does not say 'pig meat makes your tummy ill and then you die, so obviously don't eat it', instead it says 'pigs don't chew cud, hence they're impermissible', and frames it as a cultic uncleanliness, similar to contact with menstruating women or somesuch. People don't get parasites and die from a hug with a menstruating woman, but there are still rules in early judaism about it and as far as I know no speculations about it being in any way health related. If pork wasn't a main meat in Egypt and the Levant in like the bronze age, then it would likely not have been a prominent diet rule in early judaism. G-d has this tendency to make up rules about stuff that people do rather than stuff that they already don't. When it's about things that people don't have to be constrained from doing or encouraged to do that they're already keen on doing, the genre tends to be poetry rather than law.

"which was notoriously hard to make sanitary" Why were the jews unable to handle pork? Didn't their neighbours manage it?

by cess11 10mo ago

"which was notoriously hard to make sanitary" Why were the jews unable to handle pork? Didn't their neighbours manage it?

satvikpendem 10mo ago

Some historians speculate that it is a shibboleth to distinguish them from the pork eating gentiles.

em-bee 10mo ago

honest question, as i simply have no clue about this, is there evidence that they did? given that the koran also forbids pork i doubt that a way to make pork sanitary has been found before then.

int_19h 10mo ago
Pigs were domesticated (specifically for their meat) for several thousand years already by the time the earliest Jewish dietary restrictions took shape. There are many theories that try to tie it specifically to the conditions in the Middle East, but none that I'm aware of are particularly convincing.
avadodin 10mo ago
Pigs –being omnivorous– can acquire parasites that are harmful to humans at a higher rate than herbivorous ungulates. That was as true 1000 years ago as it is today. Cooking and salting the meat both greatly reduce incidence. It is possible that cultures which avoided pork altogether lacked adaptations against the parasites at the genetic level or simply that somebody among them noticed the relationship with illness whilst missing the link with undercooked meat.
- cess11 10mo ago
  Let's say that was possible, why would it be likely, or even the most likely explanation? How do you square this against, say, the possibility that the early jews wanted to differentiate themselves from the egyptians? I'm not sure about the specifics of the archaeological record but perhaps it was the case that pork was an upper class thing in Egypt due to it being fat and tasty, and slaves and workers were instead fed beef. Then the rule in Leviticus might reflect this and conserve a part of an older identity. In early judaism at least some of the fat from mutton and so on was burnt as a cultic sacrifice, so maybe the idea was to keep tradition from before the exile to the Sinai.
  - avadodin 10mo ago
    I was indeed going off the premise that there was a scientific reason behind the dietary laws. Purely cultural reasons are plausible but pork is a staple meat in all cultures where it is allowed. It would be an inordinate sacrifice to make for tradition alone. If differentiation was the motivation, couldn't they make laws against eating peas or some other inconsequential crop? In context, pork was only one of many forbidden foods. Certain kinds of locusts being allowed while others not, certain kinds of seafood being allowed while others not. They have been debunked as being good heuristics for food safety with 21st century knowledge but that doesn't mean they didn't stem from observations of poison, parasites, etc. You could apply the same reasoning to the Jewish culture of cleanliness in general. It certainly differentiated them from many other contemporaneous cultures, but why would they wash themselves in the first place?
    - cess11 10mo ago
      What do you mean by "inordinate"? Reason as a main source of social norms is a much later ideological invention, usually considered a result of the dominance of the roman catholic church and its adoption of aristotelian philosophy. You're still defending possibility as such, and not arguing for relative likelihood. I find the lack of anchoring in early judaic society suspicious. If you read the Torah you'll find that it is not a collection of argumentative texts. To the extent that Leviticus makes an argument it stops at two criteria, cloven hoofs and rumination, without further explanation. This is also how more well-known early judaic legal norms were communicated, e.g. the noahide laws and the decalogue are presented as is without further argument. The context of early judaism was also quite deadly in itself, people died all the time from a variety of opaque reasons. Figuring out that someone died due to some meat-transmitted parasite rather than a disgruntled shedim wasn't very likely. The Torah is quite unconcerned with things like health or actions that are supposed to result in a long life, insisting instead that these things are decided by G-d. Dying isn't given a very prominent place in this early theology either, it just kind of shrugs it off with a vague idea about Sheol as a container for souls, in case they just don't stick around like some ancestral ghosts or something. Pork was widely eaten at the time, so the "good heuristics for food safety" thing seems entirely useless to me. People already knew how to prepare pork and did it, and pork isn't particularly insidious, if kept in a warm environment it'll ward off your nose and taste buds in no time. Beef (and mutton) is more likely to trick you into eating it even though it has gone bad, and it also carries a risk of giving you parasitical or bacterial infections.
Rendello 10mo ago
I recently watched a video about the anthropological origins of the pork taboo. The hygiene theory is popular, but not uncontested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI0ZUhBvIx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI0ZUhBvIx4
cess11 10mo ago
Jewish law on this topic is like a thousand years older than the prophet Muhammad, or more, it's not exactly clear when the contents of Leviticus first stabilised. As for pork as food, it's as old as neolithic societies. Wild boars were a very popular food source, hence why they were eventually domesticated. Now pigs don't produce tasty milk in the same way sheep, goats and cows do, but they produce a lot of meat and offspring without being picky about diet. Leviticus does not say 'pig meat makes your tummy ill and then you die, so obviously don't eat it', instead it says 'pigs don't chew cud, hence they're impermissible', and frames it as a cultic uncleanliness, similar to contact with menstruating women or somesuch. People don't get parasites and die from a hug with a menstruating woman, but there are still rules in early judaism about it and as far as I know no speculations about it being in any way health related. If pork wasn't a main meat in Egypt and the Levant in like the bronze age, then it would likely not have been a prominent diet rule in early judaism. G-d has this tendency to make up rules about stuff that people do rather than stuff that they already don't. When it's about things that people don't have to be constrained from doing or encouraged to do that they're already keen on doing, the genre tends to be poetry rather than law.