The origin of Abrahamic dietary laws is not certain. There is no obvious benefit in terms of hygiene, also not in ancient times (they long predate “medieval” times). Keep in mind that poultry carries a significant risk of salmonella poisoning.
It has been suggested that the origin might have simply been that pigs are viewed as unclean due to their own diet including carrion. Another speculated reason is that rulers might have wanted to promote poultry due to it being a more economical way of raising livestock.
I am thinking of a Dollop episode that discussed pigs in early New York City. They were the trash clean up before there were people dedicated to the job. They were allowed to just run free and scrounge whatever offal they could find. It could have been less that pigs were unclean, rather pigs kept things clean. If people ate all the pigs, there would be corpses and fecal matter lying around for extended periods of time which would cause disease.
i have a specific unusual food allergy. I always presumed abraham or ishmael or jacob or moses or one of them mythical folk had a food allergy against pigs and said “you know what, if i started a religion about not eating pigs maybe i wouldn’t get the runs every time i went out to eat”
There was also the result of drawing a sharp line between the in-group and everyone else. If we have strict dietary laws but the people on the other side of the hill don’t share them, then it follows that they’re unspeakable barbarians, and that we should not trade or cooperate with them, let alone intermarry, and indeed, it’s acceptable to kill them and take their stuff, as surely such a barbarous people would do the same to us.
Why would they mention the cloven hoof as a district identifier of haram? Why wouldn’t they mention the cleanliness, if that is supposed to be the reason for the ban?
No, that’s just an ad-hoc rationalization. Before refrigeration, people didn’t just leave fresh meat lying around. Either it was consumed immediately after cooking it, or it was smoked, cured or dried right away after butchering (people used much more salt than they do nowadays for e.g. modern hams to make sure the meat lasted a long time). The climate doesn’t really matter - in temperate climates fresh meat goes bad rapidly as well.
Just going to point out that cold storage predates modern refrigeration by literal millenia, hell there was a Greek island that mastered it well enough to consistently manufacture ice cream. I think the term I’ve heard is lagen basically a stone basement with evaporation boxes that can be used to keep tempatures around 50°F. The problem was consistency and how much labor it took to actually build the things, also they’d sometimes just kinda break if the environment shifted too much or were only usable during certain seasons.
It reminds me of Northern Europeans stereotyping Southern Europeans as lazy. But Northern European don’t realise it is mainly because Southern Europe is very hot to work for longer hours. The Southern European “siesta” of course carried over to Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Before Cuba gained independence from Spain, they only work three hours a day, and this happened only about one hundred years ago.
Could also just be an exaggerated case of “ew, poor people food”, since pigs will eat damn near anything.
I guess chickens are similarly omnivorous and take up less space though (plus, eggs). And are arguably easier to transport and defend (a rooster can fuck you up)
The origin of Abrahamic dietary laws is not certain. There is no obvious benefit in terms of hygiene, also not in ancient times (they long predate “medieval” times). Keep in mind that poultry carries a significant risk of salmonella poisoning.
It has been suggested that the origin might have simply been that pigs are viewed as unclean due to their own diet including carrion. Another speculated reason is that rulers might have wanted to promote poultry due to it being a more economical way of raising livestock.
I am thinking of a Dollop episode that discussed pigs in early New York City. They were the trash clean up before there were people dedicated to the job. They were allowed to just run free and scrounge whatever offal they could find. It could have been less that pigs were unclean, rather pigs kept things clean. If people ate all the pigs, there would be corpses and fecal matter lying around for extended periods of time which would cause disease.
i have a specific unusual food allergy. I always presumed abraham or ishmael or jacob or moses or one of them mythical folk had a food allergy against pigs and said “you know what, if i started a religion about not eating pigs maybe i wouldn’t get the runs every time i went out to eat”
“Pork makes me shit so much that Moses could part it, that’s it! It’s banned”
i mean food that makes me shit a lot is banned in the religion i started that’s all
…i ate three bags of sugar-free gummy bears last week; that night was a religious experience…
Verily he hath done it unto himself.
There was also the result of drawing a sharp line between the in-group and everyone else. If we have strict dietary laws but the people on the other side of the hill don’t share them, then it follows that they’re unspeakable barbarians, and that we should not trade or cooperate with them, let alone intermarry, and indeed, it’s acceptable to kill them and take their stuff, as surely such a barbarous people would do the same to us.
That doesn’t match up with all the other teaching that all people are the same.
isnt mostly pork tapeworm they worry about.
Why would they mention the cloven hoof as a district identifier of haram? Why wouldn’t they mention the cleanliness, if that is supposed to be the reason for the ban?
Salmonella can be obtained just by touching chickens it doesn’t require eating them. Trichinella is obtained by eating pork, raccoons, foxes, etc
Conjecture: it may have simply been trichinella
Maybe they just thought pigs are too cute to eat.
Pigs of all animals?
Have you perhaps never seen a pig?
only in the city
Poultry eats carrion as well. Matter of fact, I’d wager pigs are more hygenic than poultry.
I thought it was due to the parasites, worms?, that pork gets in hot arid countries which is why both the Jews and Muslims don’t eat it
No, that’s just an ad-hoc rationalization. Before refrigeration, people didn’t just leave fresh meat lying around. Either it was consumed immediately after cooking it, or it was smoked, cured or dried right away after butchering (people used much more salt than they do nowadays for e.g. modern hams to make sure the meat lasted a long time). The climate doesn’t really matter - in temperate climates fresh meat goes bad rapidly as well.
Just going to point out that cold storage predates modern refrigeration by literal millenia, hell there was a Greek island that mastered it well enough to consistently manufacture ice cream. I think the term I’ve heard is lagen basically a stone basement with evaporation boxes that can be used to keep tempatures around 50°F. The problem was consistency and how much labor it took to actually build the things, also they’d sometimes just kinda break if the environment shifted too much or were only usable during certain seasons.
It reminds me of Northern Europeans stereotyping Southern Europeans as lazy. But Northern European don’t realise it is mainly because Southern Europe is very hot to work for longer hours. The Southern European “siesta” of course carried over to Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Before Cuba gained independence from Spain, they only work three hours a day, and this happened only about one hundred years ago.
Could also just be an exaggerated case of “ew, poor people food”, since pigs will eat damn near anything.
I guess chickens are similarly omnivorous and take up less space though (plus, eggs). And are arguably easier to transport and defend (a rooster can fuck you up)