Why did certain religions ban pork?

[Bikewer]

While I find this hypothesis more than plausible, there is counter evidence. The poorest peoples in the world today very often raise pigs. In many third world cities where there is no garbage pick up, pigs roam neighborhoods doing the job of cleaning up anything organic in the garbage piles.

I would surmise that though impoverished, these folks might yet have access to the other resources that allow pigs to thrive...
Harris' point was that the hot/dry Middle East was poorly suited to pig husbandry.. He spent a whole chapter on same.

Of more interest to me is the proscription against shellfish. Tasty and readily harvested, eaten with gusto all over the world... Why did the ancient Hebrews forbid them?

I have wondered....We know that shellfish allergies are particularly deadly... Might the population back then have a larger incidence of such allergy than other peoples? It would only take a couple of severe illnesses or deaths among the members of a small tribe to cause a general prohibition....

 

[Zax63]

You are buying and selling a myth.

What ever applied to pork applied to every other kind of meat people at the time ate. The health aspect is a Christian apologetics myth.

Spoiled pork doesn't smell any worse than spoiled beef.

Look how easy it is we buy into and adopt some belief based solely on the fact it sounded logical at the time.

Come on people. Use those critical thinking skills. If you are going to explain it on the basis of heath, taste, economy, (did I miss anything?) then that same explanation should also explain other food taboos. But they don't.
The only hypothesis that fits both non-food rituals and taboos, and all different food taboos is the 'them' vs 'us' reinforcement of belonging to the group hypothesis.

I think you are giving religions too much credit for rationality. Do you think that all of the laws and restrictions were created at a single time and for a single purpose? A single person could have inserted the restriction on pork. How can you know that it wasn't a matter of their personal taste or for their personal financial gain? Or maybe the local pig farmer made a pass at the high priest's wife.

And while I'll admit that the health reason is unlikely, it might only take a perception of health risks to generate a taboo and not the sure knowledge of disease vectors that some people in the thread seem to think is necessary. Look at all of the home remedies and other medical woo we have today. Does anyone really expect the ancient Israelites to have been more medically sophisticated than modern people?

I'll stick with "We don't know and probably never will."

 

[joesixpack]

Then again, more parts of the cow can be used than pig. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Everything but the oink gets used. There's tasty head cheese, sublime souse, delicious scrapple, and crunchy chicherron.

 

[angrysoba]

I don't see why it should be strange for primitive-type people to realize that certain meat can make people sick. Especially in days when there was no refrigeration and people had to eat meat that was essentially off, it probably wouldn't take long for people to realize that certain meat causes more illness than other meat.

 

[Darat]

I don't see why it should be strange for primitive-type people to realize that certain meat can make people sick. Especially in days when there was no refrigeration and people had to eat meat that was essentially off, it probably wouldn't take long for people to realize that certain meat causes more illness than other meat.

It seems such an obvious thing to us - but the historic record shows that this particular understanding of cause and effect is very recent in our history.

 

[marplots]

It seems such an obvious thing to us - but the historic record shows that this particular understanding of cause and effect is very recent in our history.

Do you mean just disease or cause and effect in general. That's a very interesting notion either way. I'd love to read a couple examples.

 

[tsig]

I don't see why it should be strange for primitive-type people to realize that certain meat can make people sick. Especially in days when there was no refrigeration and people had to eat meat that was essentially off, it probably wouldn't take long for people to realize that certain meat causes more illness than other meat.

There's no proof that pork is any more likely to cause sickness than any other meat.

"Don't eat pork" is a divine command and any reason given for it is pure apologetics.

 

[tsig]

Do you mean just disease or cause and effect in general. That's a very interesting notion either way. I'd love to read a couple examples.

Bleeding for disease comes to mind immediately.

 

[marplots]

Bleeding for disease comes to mind immediately.

But wasn't bleeding thought to remove "bad humours" in the blood or something?

I'd say that was an example of a mistaken belief, but a good example of applying cause (bad blood) to effect (disease).

Perhaps I misunderstood Darat, but I thought the idea was that the form, "cause and effect" was only historically recent, which surprised me.

 

[crhkrebs]

There's no proof that pork is any more likely to cause sickness than any other meat.

Are you sure? Then why is there no pork or chicken tartar? Why no raw shrimp at the sushi bar?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Save us some research since you know this so well. In fact you give no reason worth mentioning. The them v us doesn't make any sense on its own.

It is a fact that pork can be more prone to parasites. It is a fact that it spoils faster, as does shellfish faster than fish. In the case of Islam, the religion has many commands that are directly related to hygiene among other things. Why would this one not be one of them?

Your food facts are false, people back in that day had no clue about trichinosis, and trichinosis isn't symptomatic in a lot of cases so it would be impossible for even a keen observer to notice there was a connection to eating pork. I don't know how you figure pork spoils faster than beef. Pork chops seem to last longer than steak in my fridge.


Us vs them is a well known socio-cultural phenomena.

This is a fairly thorough discussion of causal factors in food taboos and I see an interesting point. The health risk would have had to be immediate and if a person had a shellfish allergy, that could explain the development of the shellfish abomination.

Food taboos as a factor in group-cohesion and group-identity
Finally, it ought to be mentioned that any food taboo, acknowledged by a particular group of people as part of its ways, aids in the cohesion of this group, helps that group stand out amongst others, assists that group to maintain its identity and creates a feeling of "belonging". Thus, food taboos can strengthen the confidence of a group by functioning as a demonstration of the uniqueness of the group in the face of others.

Food taboos and food habits can persist for a very long time and can be (and have been) made use of in identifying cultural and historical relationships between human populations [76,77]. It has, for instance, been suggested that the food taboos of both Jews and Hindus reflect not the nutritional needs, but the explicit concerns of the pastoral peoples' that they once were [78].

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Are you sure? Then why is there no pork or chicken tartar? Why no raw shrimp at the sushi bar?

Tartare is not safe to eat. Raw shrimp doesn't taste good, I don't think eating it is particularly hazardous. Raw oysters, OTOH, can transmit all sorts of things.

Steak Tartare

Raw beef can become contaminated with pathogens during
slaughter. According to the 2009 Food Code published by the
United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), hazards
in raw beef products such as steak tartare include Salmonella
spp. and Escherichia coli O157:H7.
Steak tartare is often prepared with raw egg yolk. Eggs can be
contaminated with Salmonella serotype Enteritidis through
transovarian transmission, and are a major source of S.
Enteritidis infection in humans. According to Health Canada,
foods containing raw eggs may be harmful to vulnerable
people such as young children, the elderly, pregnant women
and people with weak immune systems.
Listeria monocytogenes may also be present in raw beef. In a
study examining the occurrence of pathogens in raw and
ready-to-eat meat products offered for sale in supermarkets in
Edmonton, Alberta, L. monocytogenes was found in 52% of
100 raw ground beef samples collected (Bohaychuk et al.,
2006).

 

[Belgian thought]

Are you sure? Then why is there no pork or chicken tartar? Why no raw shrimp at the sushi bar?

Had chicken sushi last time in Tokyo - not pre-cooked in any way, soaked in wasabi, but raw in every other sense.

Going back to the OP - The role of the pig must play a part surely.

Why were we keeping pigs in the first place?

Since if deemed so bad according to religion they would have been wiped off the face of the Fertile Crescent and further afield too?

 

[Elind]

It seems such an obvious thing to us - but the historic record shows that this particular understanding of cause and effect is very recent in our history.

Would you care to clarify what you mean by very recent in our history?

 

[angrysoba]

It seems such an obvious thing to us - but the historic record shows that this particular understanding of cause and effect is very recent in our history.

It seems that some ideas of cause and effect occurred, if only "We displeased the Lord and the harvest didn't grow: let's sacrifice a Virgin to make him happier". I am not talking about human societies knowing about germs and why food spoils but rather something along the lines of "The Lord doth punish the eater of the swine and sicken him unto death for the swine art cloven-hooved yet of the cud doth not chew and such combination art abomnible in the sight of the Lord...etc..."

While the actual underlying physics, chemistry and biology would have been opaque they knew enough about cause and effect to make fire, domesticate animals, grow non-poisonous crops from formerly poisonous ones. I'm just saying that some extension of that to pork meat doesn't seem out of the question.

 

[ddt]

I don't see why it should be strange for primitive-type people to realize that certain meat can make people sick. Especially in days when there was no refrigeration and people had to eat meat that was essentially off, it probably wouldn't take long for people to realize that certain meat causes more illness than other meat.

Didn't people back then either eat the meat immediately after slaughter, or preserve the meat (e.g. by salting, or by making sausage out of it). Or is my timeline off?

 

[angrysoba]

Didn't people back then either eat the meat immediately after slaughter, or preserve the meat (e.g. by salting, or by making sausage out of it). Or is my timeline off?

I'm afraid I really do not know. I suppose if some form of preservation of meat was done then it implies more than a rudimentary understanding of cause and effect when it comes to food and presumably health.

 

[angrysoba]

I've mentioned this before..... Anthropologist Marvin Harris wrote a little book some years ago called "Good To Eat"... About the various dietary foibles of various groups and peoples.

Pig hate, says he, had sound economic underpinnings. In the Middle East, pigs require a lot of resources that are hard to come by. Water, shade, etc. Additionally, they eat foods that are eaten by humans.
In areas with limited amounts of all three, pig husbandry becomes too expensive... Goats require none of them.. They'll eat almost anything.
What better way to keep people from raising a piggie or two on the sly than a religious proscription?
Same with Hindu cow-love.... The Brahmin cattle are much more valuable to the Indians alive than they are as a food source. They eat scraps, produce manure which used for fuel, etc. etc. There are not near enough of them to feed the Indian millions (billions now), and when the cow finally does snuff it, the lower castes can use the leather, body parts, etc. for rendering.

I've managed to find some of Marvin Harris' "Cows, Pigs and Watches" here on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/Cows-Pigs-W...=UTF8&qid=1364969056&sr=8-1#reader_0679724680

So, the idea is that Maimonides' theory that it was a public health issue is basically right but in Harris' case the public health issue is not just related to food hygeine but rather that, as you say, pigs have to keep cool and will either use scare water or their own excrement, neither of which will endear them to people. And, as you say, they eat the same food as humans, so they damage the supply of resources human societies need. The taboo is there to warn everyone else not to drain supplies with their extravagant animals.

Hmmm...interesting. Thanks for the heads up on that, Bikewer.

 

[Brainache]

Tartare is not safe to eat. Raw shrimp doesn't taste good, I don't think eating it is particularly hazardous. Raw oysters, OTOH, can transmit all sorts of things.

Steak Tartare

OK. It might have been an "Us" v "Them" rule, I accept that. The question then becomes: What is it about pig-meat that caused the ancient Hebrews to shun pork?

In answer I would say: According to the consensus around here that the ancient Hebrews were Goat Herders, they harboured a resentment for the affluent Pig Farmers who weren't nomadic and lived in big fancy cities (with all their wicked city ways). The Hebrews were out on the hillsides and parched hinterland trudging around from season to season with their scruffy herds of scrawny goats, while the big-city pig-farmers gorged themselves on baconfat kebabs. (No doubt they were also rogering themselves senseless and enjoying it way too much because of their intact foreskins).

So what do the ancient Hebrews do?
They make a virtue of necessity and then get thoroughly carried away with it, as usual.

 

[Darat]

The "cause and effect" I am speaking of is limited to the actual conceptual underpinnings of disease. (See my original post.)

Our understanding of disease today seems so clear and so "obvious" to us that we think it is something almost trivial and just a matter of "common sense" to have worked out - the historic evidence shows that it was anything but obvious and needed a lot of very uncommon sense to work out.

Recent in terms of human soceities examples that relate to this:

We were still building hospitals (and in the UK many are still in use!) in the 19th century designed with the "Miasma" theory of disease in mind. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory).

Even the spoiling of food was not understood - so we have the idea of "spontaneous creation", with its roots back in the time of Aristotle, lingering into the 19th century.

There is no evidence in the holy books of the Jews that they had ever made the conceptual leap that would have meant they could have based their taboo of pork on the incidence of say trichinosis.