Why Is Pork Forbidden?

this video is brought to you by noom humans eat a lot of pigs over 1.4 billion pigs are slaughtered each year to feed the world's pork industry but as popular and as tasty as pork might be pork is a polarizing topic in the world of religion if you feel disgust at the mere thought of eating pig meat it could be because you follow a religious pork taboo a religious dietary prohibition on consuming or even coming into contact with pork in any form judaism and islam are probably the most famous examples of religions with pork prohibitions but some branches of christianity ban eating pork too such as the eritrean and ethiopian orthodox churches as well as the seventh-day adventists for judaism the prohibition can be found in the hebrew bible leviticus chapter 11 verse 7 states that pigs are unclean animals that should never be eaten but that other mammals are fine as long as they have cloven hooves and chew the cud like a cow goat or sheep this is one of the rules of following a kosher diet jews muslims and others have been following pork prohibitions for centuries but where did this prohibition come from in this episode we'll explore the archaeology of the pork taboo let's start by going way back in time humans have been consuming pig meat for thousands of years long before the dawn of agriculture during the paleolithic period humans hunted wild boar this is when hunter-gatherers exploited natural resources in the landscape to survive following edible plants and animals with the seasons once humans settled down and started to grow their own food by the neolithic period around 9 700 bce they also began to raise wild pigs as an efficient source of protein and i say efficient because when it comes to managing herds domesticated pigs have certain advantages pigs breed quickly and produce many more piglets than wild boars they're also quick to wean fatten and sexually mature all within the span of 12 months these characteristics mean that a lot of pigs can be raised for their meat within a single year providing a stable and relatively reliable source of food moreover pigs are very useful because they aren't picky eaters they're omnivores that eat a lot of waste produced by humans like food waste and even human and animal excrement in other words pigs help to clean up after humans by eating their trash thus they're very useful to have in urban areas where waste can build up and spread disease if it's not managed so raising pigs in a city is actually an incredibly efficient way to get rid of trash while also fattening up a herd for their meat pigs do have some drawbacks though which have been used to explain the origins of the pork taboo by some scholars and zoo archaeologists archaeologists who study animal bones in order to understand the relationships between humans and animals we'll get into that theory shortly a landmark study in the late 90s developed a set of pig principles that help explain both the advantages and disadvantages of pig domestication from cultural and environmental perspectives max price a zoo archaeologist and leading expert on this topic has recently updated this list based on new findings in his book evolution of a taboo amazing book if you really want to understand this topic go buy his book after you finish this video let's take a closer look at some of these pig principles environment pigs are not very mobile and don't need big pastures like cattle or sheep this makes them ideal for raising inside a settlement or city plus they eat human trash but it makes them poorly suited for pastoralist and nomadic lifestyles number two society throughout history pig husbandry in cities is often associated with lower socioeconomic status number three settlement pigs are useful for helping people to settle a new area since they can reproduce quickly new herds can be started quickly with just a few starter animals and economy pigs can be harder to regulate than other domesticated animals for two reasons their litter sizes can vary drastically sometimes a female pig can have as many as 12 or 14 piglets but it's often much less moreover they don't produce secondary products like wool or milk which are also valuable sources of taxes and institutional wealth and pre-industrial societies thus governments might encourage raising other animals like goats sheep and cows and finally health pigs carry disease and are susceptible to parasites like tapeworm that can be transmitted to humans so how might these pig principles explain pork taboos in the ancient middle east why does the bible make such a big deal about pork specifically we know from archaeology that humans raised and ate pigs in the middle east from the beginning of agriculture so when and why did attitudes turn against the pig first let's focus on the last pig principle health for a long time it's been fashionable to explain the origins of pork taboos as a form of ancient hygiene or disease control in his book the guide for the perplexed the medieval jewish philosopher maimonides argued that god banned pork because it was unwholesome for human consumption the pig's habits and its food are very dirty and loathsome thus the law is there to protect god's people this ancient hygiene theory exploded in 1835 with the discovery of the parasite triconella spiralis which causes the disease trichinosis this is a round worm that can cause diarrhea vomiting inflammation and sometimes more serious complications like the inflammation of the heart or lungs pigs are a primary though not exclusive carrier of this parasite and you can get it into your system if you eat undercooked pork as the argument goes the origins of the pork taboo must have been inspired by ancient attempts to counter these parasites there might be a kernel of truth to this argument but archaeologists are not convinced first the biblical prohibition says nothing about health as the archaeologist max price says if ancient israelite priests had somehow cracked the epidemiological code for trichonosis why would they keep such a tight lid on their discovery why not write thou shalt not eat the pig for it will give you diarrhea instead of shrouding it with reasons like because it has a cloven hoof and does not chew its cud second this theory does not account for the fact that ancient civilizations worldwide thrived on pork as a main source of protein the greeks the polynesians people in new guinea and china even in the middle east during the bronze age everywhere pork was a vital source of protein that undoubtedly helped these civilizations to thrive any negatives of trichonosis presumably did not outweigh the positives that this extra source of protein provided pre-industrial societies remember from those pig principles pigs have several advantages within one year you can raise a pig from birth to your dinner table they can also dispose of your trash so in the end as price argues the health related explanations attempt to force fit the pig taboo into a functionalist framework rather than pursue scientific interpretations of the available historical information the archaeological and historical data points to a much more complicated origin rooted in bronze age economics and iron age social dynamics we'll start with the economics and then we'll get into the social dynamics but first speaking of efficient sources of protein i want to thank the sponsor of this video noom noom is a new and different way to get healthy and achieve your fitness goals using psychological tools from the field of cognitive behavioral therapy i don't know about you but i'm notorious for yo-yoing between being super into fitness and being very health-conscious for one week i'll be hiking every day and rock climbing but then for the next three weeks i'm sitting on my couch playing video games and shopping for beers and yes that's me shopping for beer brewed by sisters monks for a future video on monastery beer probably not the healthiest decision but noom is all 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you are trying to achieve then click the link in the description below to take their free 30-second quiz to get started thanks noom and with that back to pork so to get a better understanding of cultural attitudes towards pigs let's jump forward in time from the neolithic period to the bronze age the story of the pork taboo is a story of the steady decline of the pig's popularity from the early bronze age to the late bronze age according to archaeological surveys in the region in around 4000 bce pig bones made up about 30 to 40 percent of the total livestock at some of these settlements in the region by 3 600 bce it was around 16 to 30 percent and by 1600 bce pig bones at archaeological sites were really rare why the decline the first explanation is economic like i said earlier pigs are not conducive to wealth creation in pre-industrial societies horses and donkeys oh yeah they are wealth generators as beast of burden same with cattle they can plow fields and their manure helped to fertilize the crops so they were essential to the economy plus cattle goat and sheep all provide wealth generating secondary products like milk and wool like grain these commodities are easily stored and traded helping to fuel the rise of the big bronze age institutions that we see like temples and palaces in the 3rd and 2nd millennia bce both in egypt and the near east pigs don't have much going for them they don't really fit into the bronze age economy they're small so they're not useful for large-scale agriculture they don't really produce secondary products except for lard to make soap and they're harder to tax compared to other livestock it seems that over the course of the bronze age institutions started to dominate the wealth generating types of livestock while lower classes were stuck with raising pigs and were thus cut out of the best pathways to wealth this process was gradual though at first pigs were really popular both economically and religiously the early bronze age was the time of the swine a sumerian cuneiform tablet found at the site of zabala in southern iraq from around 2200 bce records 22 jars of pig fat which was probably used to make soap for processing wool into textiles each jar contained 18 liters of lard which translated to about 396 liters worth of the stuff according to price's calculations it would have taken at least 45 adult pigs to produce that much lard meaning that ancient mesopotamian institutions must have managed large swine herds earlier in the bronze age when it comes to religion a fourth millennium tablet from the sumerian city of uruk mentions two temples owning a herd of 95 pigs and at the site of telmozon in northern syria archaeologists discovered a huge sacrificial pit dating to around 2300 bce that contained 60 sacrificed piglets along with some other animals possibly as offerings to the underworld gods around the year 2000 pigs were being consumed at religious feasts in mesopotamia and egyptian temples sometimes accepted pigs as sacrifices it seems that the garbage eating tendencies of pigs was viewed as a good thing religiously just as pigs could absorb human garbage the pig could function as a ritual sponge taking on ritual pollution as a sacrifice for example a ritual described on a babylonian tablet explains how to slaughter a pig as a form of supernatural protection in the prayer the pig functions in part as a substitute transferring evil to itself instead of the human so pigs were quite common in the near east for a long time during the bronze age but this popularity slowly eroded over the centuries by 1600 bce around 400 years before our earliest archaeological evidence of the israelites the cuneiform record indicates that elite institutions mostly stopped raising pigs including religious institutions the hittites in anatolia banned them from temples people in mesopotamia also banned them from their temples and the egyptians also seemed to develop an aversion to them the famous egyptian book of the dead includes a passage about the god seth attacking horus in the form of a pig thus came about the pig abomination for horus's sake it was around this time that society started associating them with filth and pollution while in earlier centuries the pig's tendency to eat garbage was viewed as a good thing now it was seen as an abomination moreover as low-class low wealth generating animals apparently they were not fit for temple sacrifice now this is not to say that pigs disappeared entirely people were still raising and eating pigs but at much lower rates than earlier centuries in late bronze age mesopotamia animal bones excavated from archaeological sites show that pigs comprised only around 20 of the livestock but even then these pigs were probably used by the lower classes and not by elite institutions pigs were even less common in levant compared to mesopotamia making up only 5 of the total livestock in other words pigs were vanishingly rare in the regions that would eventually form the heartland of the israelite kingdoms pigs were also rare in canaanite cities during the late bronze age cities such as megiddo telhalif and baitshan raised very small numbers of pigs ranging from only 2 to 11 percent of the total livestock this is complicated by the fact that one of the most revered canaanite gods ball was associated with wild boar which is a dangerous and powerful creature with tusks that can easily gore a hunter so this was probably a positive connotation perhaps meant to emphasize ferocity danger and fertility as well as the masculinity of boar hunting but largely the late bronze age is a turning point in the development of the pig taboo pigs were no longer associated with the urban elite but instead with the urban poor perhaps creating a social stigma around raising pigs when it comes to religion pigs used to be viewed positively and might even have been valued for their ability to absorb filth and pollution but now that filth and pollution was unsuitable for cultic sacrifice to make matters worse for pig economics urban living started to contract during the late bronze age more and more people lived in small towns and villages thus the only niche that pigs were particularly good at eating trash in urban centers started to disappear as well price argues that these economic realities excluding pigs as sources of wealth set the wheels in motion for pig's cultural evolution into an under-appreciated animal as temple and palace institutions abandoned them all this to say by the time the israelites arrived on the scene they found themselves living in a world where pig husbandry was already rare they emerged out of cultures that for centuries associated pigs with the lower classes as well as dirty urban living and now that we've discussed the economics it's now time for the ancient social dynamics specifically the rivalry between the biblical arch enemies the israelites versus the philistines this rivalry may have inspired the israelite pork taboo because the philistines ate a lot of pork these two people groups arrived on the scene during the late bronze age collapse a time when the status quo began to crumble across the eastern mediterranean the palace economies that we've been talking about and the long-distance trade that supported these economies disintegrated the imperial superpowers of the time egypt and the hittites retreated or collapsed entirely during this time the israelites emerged gradually from indigenous canaanite populations in southern canaan sometime around 1200 bce around this time tiny farming villages started popping up in the highlands which archaeologists now interpret as the earliest israelite villages possibly a mix of nomadic and city-dwelling canaanites that had moved into the hilly and sparsely populated interior eventually forging a new ethnicity through a process called ethnogenesis the philistines on the other hand originated from a diverse group of people who migrated from greece and the aegean islands to settle along the southern coastal plain also around 1200 bce they brought with them aegean-style architecture aegean-style pottery and aegean-style cuisine including pork pork was part of the typical aegean diet so it was also part of the diets of the early philistines excavated philistine sites show higher rates of pig consumption during the iron age one period compared to the surrounding cultures for example at the biblical city of gath people apparently ate a lot of pork where it made up around 13 of the meat in their diets throughout the iron age meanwhile pork consumption is nearly completely absent from israelite sites during the iron age one period pigs comprised a paltry one percent or less of the total livestock remains at most of these sites so even though only a few kilometers separated some of these philistines and israelite towns we see a striking difference in the amount of pig bones at these respective sites now to be clear the pork tabu was likely not fully formed at this time remember those pig principles from before there are many practical reasons why the early israelites did not consume much pork this is why max price reminds us that the pig taboo was an evolving cultural element it did not emerge fully formed having said that some scholars have theorized that this discrepancy between philistine sites and israelite sites demonstrates that the israelite pork taboo was inspired by philistine pork consumption outlawing its consumption was a way to distinguish us versus them those evil bad guys eat pork and we don't price essentially agrees with this argument that philistine pork consumption may have inspired the initial israelite taboo but we need to add a few caveats here first while avoiding pork may have been an ethnic marker for israelites it does not seem to have been an ethnic marker for philistines we see variability across philistine sites for example check out the site of telcasil a small ancient village here pig bones barely registered for archaeologists making up only one percent of the total animal remains if we go by the logic that israelite sites have very few pig bones and philistine sites have a lot of pig bones we'd identify this site as an israelite town but we'd be wrong telcasil was a philistine town so while it's true that areas with higher proportions of pig bones are usually philistine settlements sometimes as high as 20 of the total livestock this is not true across the board however it's worth considering that 20 that upper ceiling of pig bone frequencies at philistine sites was still a relatively low proportion of the diet overall remember that back in the early bronze age pigs comprised upwards to 40 percent of the total livestock at some of these cities so the data indicates that pork might not have been all that meaningful for differentiating philistines from everybody else including the israelites from the philistine perspective it might have just depended on the cuisine of a particular city so a pig taboo might have been integral to forming a specific israelite ethnic identity even if pork wasn't necessarily central to philistine identity but this is not the whole story in the previous section about the philistines and the israelites we'd been hanging out in the iron age one period but the prohibition against pork in the book of leviticus is much later dating to the eighth or seventh centuries this is hundreds of years later than the first israelite settlements that we were just examining it would be bad historical methodology to project findings backward from an 8th century text back in time to try to explain 12th century realities from decades of archaeological discoveries it's clear that the people composing and compiling the hebrew bible had very little awareness of what had happened that far back in time granting that the philistines may have inspired the initial move toward a pork taboo do we have any evidence from closer to the 8th and 7th centuries that might explain why it ended up in the bible the answer may lie in yet another ancient rivalry the rivalry between the southern kingdom of judah and the northern kingdom of israel the two hebrew-speaking kingdoms of the iron age by the time leviticus was being compiled it seems that the philistines were no longer eating pork over the course of the iron age 2 and iron age 3 periods the proportion of pig bones declined at philistine sites at the ancient philistine city of ekron pig bones dropped from a high of nearly twenty percent of total livestock in the iron age one period to less than two percent by the iron age three period huge drop at ashkelon another major philistine city less than one percent of the bones belong to pigs scholars have hypothesized that this is because the philistines acculturated into life in this region where as we know historically pigs were not as popular but it's a different story with the hebrew speaking kingdoms while the general picture showed that israelites consumed very little pork there were some important regional differences as is often the case there were some exceptions to the rule even among the israelites at some major cities in the northern kingdom of israel such as megiddo and beijan pig husbandry actually increased during the iron age 2 period reaching nearly 8 of the total known livestock population that's a higher proportion of pig bones than at some contemporary philistine sites i'll say that again by the iron age 2 period northern israelites living in the major cities like megiddo and baitshan were raising and eating more pigs than many philistines were archaeologists have observed similar patterns at other israelite cities such as hatsur where pig remains make up around three to five percent of the total livestock these remains all date to before the assyrian empire conquered the northern kingdom a totally different pattern emerges in the kingdom of judah to the south at the major cities of lakeish tel halif and jerusalem pig remains were virtually absent so the pattern that emerges is not so much a clear-cut dichotomy between israelites versus philistines but rather the data might point to a stronger dichotomy between israelites versus judahites the lowland urban centers of the northern kingdom of israel who sometimes raised and ate pigs versus those residing in the southern kingdom of judah so how do we explain this unexpected pattern since it doesn't seem to fit into the biblical model of israelite identity were some israelite city dwellers purposely violating the pork taboo or had the pork taboo not been fully established in this region one explanation is that the pork taboo developed in the southern kingdom of judah in practice and in writing during the 8th and 7th centuries during this period religious reforms were being carried out under kings like king hezekiah and king josiah and the northern kingdom of israel became a favorite target of the biblical authors who were based in judah these authors frequently villainize their northern neighbors from the perspective of the cultic and political leaders in judah eating pork was one of the many egregious transgressions committed by those wayward israelites up north during the iron age 2 period and all the way past the babylonian exile the pork taboo became important enough to the authorities in judah that it became enshrined in the torah so pork consumption could have been one of the things that the biblical authors latched onto in order to highlight the supposed moral failings of the israelites which led them to outlaw it forcefully in writing in this line of reasoning the pork taboo as an idea emerged in late iron age judah as a reactionary backlash to the behavior of the northern kingdom perhaps related to the ways those practices resembled their ancient rivals the philistines even though pork consumption was already relatively low even among the philistines the creation of a religiously mandated prohibition on eating it marked a moral religious and ethnic contrast between the judahites and everybody else it was a line in the sand in this model judah was the center of identity formation in the iron age 2 and iron age 3 periods the religious reforms and prohibitions including the pork taboo reflected the world of judah rather than the realities of daily life in the northern kingdom these ideas stuck around and are still with us today because they were written down in the text of the hebrew bible but the taboo really crystallized a few hundred years later during the culture wars of the hellenistic period when pork was a wedge issue dividing jews from non-jews especially the greek population after the death of alexander the great judea fell under the control of the hellenistic seleucid empire when the king antiochus iv came to power he persecuted the judeans suppressing jewish practice like circumcision and desecrating the temple in jerusalem by sacrificing pigs on the altar 2nd maccabees chapter 7 tells the story of king antiochus arresting a jewish mother and her seven sons and trying to force them to partake of unlawful swine's flesh when they refused he subjected each one to unspeakable torture killing them one by one though the story might be apocryphal it demonstrates how the pork taboo now played a central role in early jewish identity politics a rallying cry which culminated in the maccabean revolt when jewish rebels overthrew the hellenistic rulers and established their own government the hasmonean kingdom which lasted from around 167 to 40 bce so if a rivalry with the philistines inspired an initial move toward a taboo and the rivalry between judah and the northern kingdom sharpened that taboo leading to its codification in the torah then it was the clash between the jews and the seleucids that crystallized it for the rest of time so to summarize although pig consumption in the middle east was initially very popular around the year 4000 over the course of the bronze age until around 1600 bce pork slowly but surely became less and less popular in the region both political and religious institutions seemed increasingly disinterested in raising pigs and focused instead on more lucrative animals like horses donkeys cattle goats and sheep raising pigs continued but generally by the lower classes around the year 1600 bce around 400 years before the israelites emerged as a people there was a major drop-off in pig husbandry possibly because it carried a stigma for being associated with the lower classes also because pigs were not associated with wealth generation and also because people started associating the garbage eating tendencies of pigs as something bad instead of something good the israelites emerged from this cultural context of pig avoidance but it wasn't part of their ethnic identity at first until they started to distinguish themselves from philistines who did occasionally eat pork it finally became a codified pig taboo in the hebrew bible sometime in the religious reforms of the 8th and 7th centuries some urban dwellers in the northern kingdom of israel raised and ate pigs while those in the southern kingdom of judah almost entirely avoided pigs written from the perspective of the judah height religious elite it makes sense that the hebrew bible thus codifies something that they resented the northerners for consuming all this to say the pig taboo is not a static thing it changed over time the earliest israelites in 1200 bce probably did not care as much about avoiding pork when compared to the writers of second maccabees where it was a central feature of jewish identity what started as a passive avoidance because of economic or social stigma evolved into a key religious prohibition an ethnic marker by the hellenistic period now this is a complicated topic and research is still ongoing so if you'd like to learn more i'm including the bibliography in the description below and stay tuned for future episodes on how this taboo developed in early islam thanks for watching you

Channel: ReligionForBreakfast

Views: 2,617,688

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Id: pI0ZUhBvIx4

Length: 28min 59sec (1739 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021