The Origin of the Pork Taboo
Historical development and strictness
- Some argue that widespread, strict observance of dietary laws is relatively late (medieval/early modern), with earlier Judeans more religiously flexible; others counter that modern Judaism remains closely tied to practices from ancient Israel and that communities worldwide long shared similar norms.
- There is partial agreement that strictness intensified after crises (e.g., Roman wars, Diaspora) as law-observance became a core marker of group identity.
Identity, tribal boundaries, and survivorship
- A recurring theme is “us vs. them”: Israelites distinguishing themselves from pig-eating neighbors (Philistines, later Greeks/Romans).
- One view: some Jews ate pork and assimilated; those who didn’t are the ones whose descendants still identify as Jewish, creating survivorship bias.
- Taboos are seen as conspicuous “shibboleths” that are hard to hide and thus effective for boundary‑policing.
Practical explanations: health, environment, economy
- Popular folk explanations: parasites in pork, rapid spoilage in hot climates, pigs eating feces, water use, and pigs as inefficient/fragile in arid environments.
- Others push back: evidence that pigs aren’t uniquely disease‑risky, many dangerous animals remain permitted, and ancient observers lacked germ theory. Correlations between diet and illness are hard to infer; some “health” stories are seen as just-so rationalizations.
- Economic angles appear: pigs were cheaper and associated with foreign economies; bans could act as protectionism for Israelite herders.
Religious law and the wider system
- Several note that, in Jewish law, pigs are one case in a larger classification (chewing cud + split hooves; scales on fish; certain birds; insects like locusts allowed).
- Meat–dairy separation is debated: moral symbolism (mixing life and death), rejection of a neighboring ritual (“boiling a kid in its mother’s milk”), not food safety.
Disgust, pigs, and human similarity
- Many emphasize cultural disgust: pigs as filthy, manure‑eating, sometimes man‑eating “trash compactors.”
- Others mention anatomical/culinary similarity between pigs and humans and speculate about anti‑cannibal echoes.
Islamic and Abrahamic frames
- Muslim commenters present the pork ban as very ancient, tied to Abrahamic tradition, with Islam “resetting” to original rules and keeping only some Jewish restrictions.
- Jewish and secular commenters dispute Muslim narratives about the origins and moral status of Jewish dietary law.
Modern ethics and meta‑discussion
- Large subthreads veer into animal welfare, environmental impact of meat, labeling, and local vs. industrial farming.
- Several praise the article’s refusal to pick a single cause, warning that neat economic or medical stories under-explain messy cultural history.