angrysoba
Philosophile
No? I'm sorry you feel that way. My point was that Islam essentially is Judaism (via Christianity) with a few additions and subtractions here and there.
No? I'm sorry you feel that way. My point was that Islam essentially is Judaism (via Christianity) with a few additions and subtractions here and there.
xterra
So far, so good...
My, my. Almost all of you made the classic mistake: "Jews are specifically prohibited from eating pork."
Someone pointed out upthread that the dietary laws are much wider than that. This is true.
For instance, focusing only on animals, meat from animals that have cloven hoofs and are cud-chewers is permissible as food -- provided that the animal is killed and the meat is prepared as the rules specify. So deer meat is permissible, but not if the animal has been shot or speared.
The rules prohibit eating land animals with exoskeletons; thus observant Jews don't eat grasshoppers or other insects.*
Also prohibited are animals that live in water but do not have scales, so no lobster, or shrimp, or crawdads. No sharks, no whales, no walruses.
I seem to remember something about birds, but I don't recall what it is.
As for the reason, no rabbi or teacher in our religious schools ever suggested one; the law of kashrut just was. If you had mentioned the trichinosis hypothesis, they would have looked at you as if you had grown two heads, both of which were speaking nonsense.
Look at this Wikipedia article for a fuller explanation and discussion.
When I was growing up, in an orthodox Jewish household, we followed all of the rules -- pardon the pun -- religiously. We also didn't eat in the house of anyone we didn't know also follow the rules. In practice, this meant our relatives or other people who belonged to the same synagogue or Jewish social circles as my parents. We (my brother and I) were not allowed to drink even a glass of water in the homes of our non-Jewish friends, for fear that the glass had touched a non-kosher food item.
xterra, who is now an atheist, but some of whose eating habits still reflect some of the influences of my childhood.
*There is a very specific exception to this for the descendants of certain groups who lived in certain areas in Biblical times, allowing the eating of one particular insect on whose back was a pattern representing one particular letter of the Hebrew alphabet. However, even if a non-descendant of this group is shown the insect, according to most Orthodox or Conservative rabbis, that person is prohibited from eating that kind of insect.
Someone pointed out upthread that the dietary laws are much wider than that. This is true.
For instance, focusing only on animals, meat from animals that have cloven hoofs and are cud-chewers is permissible as food -- provided that the animal is killed and the meat is prepared as the rules specify. So deer meat is permissible, but not if the animal has been shot or speared.
The rules prohibit eating land animals with exoskeletons; thus observant Jews don't eat grasshoppers or other insects.*
Also prohibited are animals that live in water but do not have scales, so no lobster, or shrimp, or crawdads. No sharks, no whales, no walruses.
I seem to remember something about birds, but I don't recall what it is.
As for the reason, no rabbi or teacher in our religious schools ever suggested one; the law of kashrut just was. If you had mentioned the trichinosis hypothesis, they would have looked at you as if you had grown two heads, both of which were speaking nonsense.
Look at this Wikipedia article for a fuller explanation and discussion.
When I was growing up, in an orthodox Jewish household, we followed all of the rules -- pardon the pun -- religiously. We also didn't eat in the house of anyone we didn't know also follow the rules. In practice, this meant our relatives or other people who belonged to the same synagogue or Jewish social circles as my parents. We (my brother and I) were not allowed to drink even a glass of water in the homes of our non-Jewish friends, for fear that the glass had touched a non-kosher food item.
xterra, who is now an atheist, but some of whose eating habits still reflect some of the influences of my childhood.
*There is a very specific exception to this for the descendants of certain groups who lived in certain areas in Biblical times, allowing the eating of one particular insect on whose back was a pattern representing one particular letter of the Hebrew alphabet. However, even if a non-descendant of this group is shown the insect, according to most Orthodox or Conservative rabbis, that person is prohibited from eating that kind of insect.
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angrysoba
Philosophile
IOW you don't know either.
The Pythagoreans were vegetarian for ethical reasons (they believed souls could migrate between humans and animals) but they also banned beans for reasons that aren't totally clear, but which also might relate to the soul business or for 'health' reasons ranging from avoidance of flatulence to the fact that certain beans can be positively dangerous if improperly prepared*.
It has also been suggested that the bean ban was down to the whim of Pythagoras himself. "It's my religion and I'll ban what the hell I like, and I hate beans" kind of thing. Maybe a top "founding" Jew also took a similar personal stance and slipped in some whacky rules?
(*How they spotted the connection with no laboratories or knowledge of biochemistry is a bit of a mystery
)ddt
Mafia Penguin
A fool can ask more questions than thousand men can answer.
It helps if you read the posts in the first place. The prohibition in Judaism as well as Islam (they're very similar) is not against meat in general, only certain meats. Beef, mutton and goat - to name the most popular ones - are permitted.
And the prohibition against other meats like pork in Islam is obviously derived from the Judaic laws. Muhammed was well acquainted with Judaism as well as with Christianity. And at the start of his religious career, he was very chummy with the Jewish residents of Mecca. (Later he fell out with them, and the portions of the Quran hostile to Jews date from after that).
ddt
Mafia Penguin
You're welcome, but it's not the end-all and be-all of it. When it comes to the archaeological evidence, the seminal paper on the subject seems to be Hesse and Wapnish, "Can pig remains be used for ethnic diagnosis in the Ancient Near East?". Unfortunately, various pages are missing on Google books.
The gist of the paper, though, is that from the archaeological evidence, pig husbandry was frequent in the 3rd millennium BC, and then steadily declined throughout the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age. A resurgence of the pig came with the Hellenistic age. An interesting anomaly are the Philistines, who settled the southern Canaanite shores around 1200 BC and show an abundance of pigs. Throughout the 1st millennium BC, pigs are rare, but there are occasional finds with large numbers of pig bones.
Economical and ecological reasons seem to have played a large role in the impopularity of pigs: they need more water than other animals - as mentioned upthread by others - and only provide meat; whereas sheep provide wool, goats provide milk, and cattle provides milk and labour (ploughing).
None of that, though, explains a prohibition against pigs, but only why they were not popular.
Another point that should be raised is the question how old the rule is, or rather, the (strict0 observance of the rule. It is too easy to simply cast everything Jewish back to 1000BC or even 1200BC, the mythical times of Moses. Much or most of Judaism is post-exilic or even later invention. So, while possibly a distinction from the Philistines, I'm very wary of that explanation.
All in all, I tend to the idea that the whole complex of Jewish dietary laws is a ploy to create an in/out-group distinction; see also xterra's childhood experiences, which show that strict observance of those rules strongly hinder interaction with "others".
Medical reasons for the Jewish custom of circumcision are baloney. See this history of circumcision. Originally, Jewish circumcision only entailed removing the prepuce. The Hellenistic world, on the other hand, placed a high aesthetic value on a large prepuce. The Romans thought any form of circumcision was mutilation and thus barbaric. So this posed a conflict when Judea came into the Greco-Roman cultural sphere. Many Hellenized Jews tried to restore their foreskins. In reaction, the rabbis modified the circumcision procedure to the current one, i.e., removing the whole foreskin. All medical reasons put forward for circumcision, AFAIK, center around the foreskin covering the glans, so they don't apply to the original Jewish circumcision procedure.
And AFAIK, rabbis have never tried a post-hoc justification of circumcision, other than "Abraham was circumcised", whereas with most other Jewish laws, various post-hoc justifications have been offered.
applecorped
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Hot salami bacon my brother. (say it fast a couple times).
Belgian thought
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You're welcome, but it's not the end-all and be-all of it. When it comes to the archaeological evidence, the seminal paper on the subject seems to be Hesse and Wapnish, "Can pig remains be used for ethnic diagnosis in the Ancient Near East?". Unfortunately, various pages are missing on Google books.
The gist of the paper, though, is that from the archaeological evidence, pig husbandry was frequent in the 3rd millennium BC, and then steadily declined throughout the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age. A resurgence of the pig came with the Hellenistic age. An interesting anomaly are the Philistines, who settled the southern Canaanite shores around 1200 BC and show an abundance of pigs. Throughout the 1st millennium BC, pigs are rare, but there are occasional finds with large numbers of pig bones.
Economical and ecological reasons seem to have played a large role in the impopularity of pigs: they need more water than other animals - as mentioned upthread by others - and only provide meat; whereas sheep provide wool, goats provide milk, and cattle provides milk and labour (ploughing).
None of that, though, explains a prohibition against pigs, but only why they were not popular.
Another point that should be raised is the question how old the rule is, or rather, the (strict0 observance of the rule. It is too easy to simply cast everything Jewish back to 1000BC or even 1200BC, the mythical times of Moses. Much or most of Judaism is post-exilic or even later invention. So, while possibly a distinction from the Philistines, I'm very wary of that explanation.
All in all, I tend to the idea that the whole complex of Jewish dietary laws is a ploy to create an in/out-group distinction; see also xterra's childhood experiences, which show that strict observance of those rules strongly hinder interaction with "others".
Medical reasons for the Jewish custom of circumcision are baloney. See this history of circumcision. Originally, Jewish circumcision only entailed removing the prepuce. The Hellenistic world, on the other hand, placed a high aesthetic value on a large prepuce. The Romans thought any form of circumcision was mutilation and thus barbaric. So this posed a conflict when Judea came into the Greco-Roman cultural sphere. Many Hellenized Jews tried to restore their foreskins. In reaction, the rabbis modified the circumcision procedure to the current one, i.e., removing the whole foreskin. All medical reasons put forward for circumcision, AFAIK, center around the foreskin covering the glans, so they don't apply to the original Jewish circumcision procedure.
And AFAIK, rabbis have never tried a post-hoc justification of circumcision, other than "Abraham was circumcised", whereas with most other Jewish laws, various post-hoc justifications have been offered.
Cheers Penguin! - solid!
Belgian thought
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ixolite
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I don't buy the health explanation, other animals carry parasites too (i.e. tapeworm) and their meat can be a potential health hazard (i.e. chicken). Since other tribes in the same area did eat pork, I don't buy the environment explanation either. I go with tribal marker of a nomadic tribe. Pigs are not herd animals so nomads typically do not use them and since Jews were nomadic once, that would explain why they don't eat pork, but their neighbours do.
(Islam prohibits pork because Mo wanted to pass himself off as a prophet to the jews.)
(Islam prohibits pork because Mo wanted to pass himself off as a prophet to the jews.)
As just-so stories go, I like this one. It reminds me of the cattle men vs. the farmers in the US West.
Elind
Philosopher
Ok, but we are back to the original question.
Elind
Philosopher
Your last point could be rational, for Muslims, although I suspect that would be something well known. Do you have any scholarly references to that?
As to the nomadic part, that sounds like fantasy. Maybe some were nomadic. I doubt all were, and in any case I can't find anything reasonable in the idea that the taboo arose simply as an expression of difference. Food was too important for survival to give up for such emotive reasons.
Finally, as has been said here already, pigs are prone to a particularly bad parasite for humans. Other domestic animals are not.
JabbaPapa
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No, it's not just about tapeworm and other parasites -- pork meat is actually very fragile, and it starts to deteriorate very quickly after butchering compared to other meats.
(this is the main reason why pork is so often salted for conservation, but most other meats are only rarely treated in that manner)
The invention of refrigeration mostly solves this problem, but even in 21st century, unsalted pork has a lower sell-by date than other meats.
This OTOH is quite true.
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JabbaPapa
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erm ... No. Just, NO.
Islam is deeply incompatible with both Judaism and Christianity.
angrysoba
Philosophile
"Incompatible"? I'm not sure what you mean by that. It could mean many things. But Islam is an Abrahamic religion that takes a vast amount of its belief system from Judaism and Christianity which is why Muslims consider Jews and Christians as "people of the book". That much is indisputable and saying "No...no!" in capitals and italics doesn't change that.
Problem with your contention is:
- that all other domesticated animals (never mind wild) are prone to "particularly bad parasites for humans"
- there is no evidence that the Jews had any knowledge of the "particularly bad parasite for humans"
- there is no evidence that they had an accurate (even if very sparse) understanding of disease, disease vectors and so on
- other groups living with or congruously with Jews did not adopt the same practice
What I fear you are doing is looking for a rational reason for adopting such a practice - and there is nothing wrong with that in principle but it has to be a rational reason that the group you are making your contention about could also have used. It's like the idea that hygiene is "the reason" why some groups circumcise their women and men; we know that can't be true since that's applying a modern understanding based on very recent scientific knowledge about disease, infection to the reasoning a group may have used long before those concepts were even known about never mind understood.
JabbaPapa
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This is only superficially accurate -- and it's a claim of Islam and secularists only. It's certainly not "indisputable" !!!
Islamic cosmology and its concept of God are both straightforwardly incompatible with Judaism and Christianity -- Islam dogmatically positing that everything that is material in nature is inherently hostile to God, and that God is a perfectly transcendental Being with no qualities of immanence whatsoever.
Religiously, Islam is starkly and clearly based on the concept of "good practice", as well as sometimes claiming that Islam is a philosophy, rather than a religion. Whereas Judaism and Christianity are centred on the concept of Faith, which has no real meaning in Islam.
Scripturally, Islam claims that the Koran is the literal Word of God as dictated to Mohammed by an angel, whereas mainstream Judaism and mainstream Christianity (with the exception of a few minority fundamentalist sects in each) are NOT religions "of the book" from that literalist point of view, as both religions have a very different understanding of the nature of Scripture.
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JabbaPapa
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Granted, but there need not be a singular cause, such as this one, for the taboo.
The existence of the taboo is evidence of this. There is no evidence that the Jews were idiots, and unable to understand the provenance of that parasite.
Did their understanding *need* to be "accurate" ? All that was needed was just a vague understanding of the cause to the effect -- in fact, Scripture seems to show that the understanding that they had of which foods were "clean" and which "unclean" (healthy/unhealthy) was exactly that : vague.
Non sequitur.
What I fear you are doing is looking for a rational reason for adopting such a practice - and there is nothing wrong with that in principle but it has to be a rational reason that the group you are making your contention about could also have used.[/QUOTE]
One could contend that you are looking for a justification of the idea that the taboo can only have been irrational.
ddt
Mafia Penguin
Do you have a link to support that? I quoted upthread a 1836 French study that showed that pork and beef keep well equally long outside the fridge, while sheep and lamb was worse. This link says that pork and beef and lamb keep well equally long in the fridge. Not exactly what you claim, but it comes closest by your claim what I could easily find.
So why the Jewish prohibition on pork while Egyptians, Philistines, Phoenicians, Assyrians etc. had no such prohibition? If you are arguing that that parasite is the (main) reason for the Jewish taboo, you're essentially claiming all the neighbouring peoples were idiots.
And if the choice were (*) between arguing the Jews were idiots or their neighbours were, I'd go with the first. Various neighbouring peoples show a rich material culture from an economy that generated a surplus beyond mere survival before the Hebrews even came onto the scene. Much more likely that such a culture would find out about health hazard from certain foods than a bunch of illiterate goat herders living on survival.
My conclusion from the evidence is that trichinosis played no part at all in the Jewish prohibition on pork.
(*) But that choice is a false dichotomy anyway.