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Authors: Mark Essig
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blood.” Noah’s descendants were allowed to eat meat but never blood,which was thought to contain the “life force,” or nefesh in Hebrew. Because the life or soul of an animal resided in its blood, to eat flesh with blood was to mingle life and death, two things that should be kept separate:“Eat not the blood: for the blood is the life; and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh.”
Just as God’s people did not eat blood, they also did not eat animals that ate blood.Deuteronomy forbids eating carrion or “anything that dies of itself”—though it’s lawful to “sell it to a foreigner” (caveat emptor)—presumably because the blood had coagulated within its veins and could not be drained. This explains why certain animals came to be declared unclean: they are predators and scavengers that eat the flesh of animals from which the blood has not been drained. Unlike Adam and Eve, the Israelites were no longer vegetarians—even so, they could eat only vegetarian beasts.
In specifying that God’s people could eat only animals that chewed the cud and split the hoof, the priests displayed an intuitive sense of biological classification. Cud chewers, such as cows and sheep, are vegetarians. The pig didn’t “chew the cud” because its gut had evolved to digest high-energy foods, including meat.
Scripture expresses disgust for the two most common scavengers, pigs and dogs.In the Christian Bible Jesus advises, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” “Dog” is an insult in the Bible, reserved for the most despised of people and linked to the animal’s eating habits.“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly,” we learn from Proverbs.According to the book of Kings, “Thus says the Lord: ‘In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood.’” In the next chapter: “So the king died . . . and the dogs licked up his blood.” Such is the standard version of those verses.But in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Jewish Bible made in the second and third centuries bc , those dogs do not dine alone: “The pigs and dogs licked the blood of Naboth,” and “the pigs and dogs licked up the blood” of the king. Some scholars speculate that this was the original version of the text.
Uncleanliness, in the Bible, is a contagion: predators and scavengers become unclean by eating bloody meat; men become unclean by eating the unclean flesh of animals that have eaten bloody meat; unclean men contaminate the temple so that God can no longer dwell with his people. That is why pigs, lickers of blood and eaters of carrion, could not be food for those who wished to remain pure: they were a vector for the unholy and would pollute anyone who consumed them.
S criptural dietary rules grew more significant with time. When the laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy were set down, few people in the Near East were eating pork. Archaeologists find no pig bones at all, or just a scattered few, in settlements from this period.Then, starting in about 300 bc , pig bones begin to appear in great profusion. The Greeks had arrived—and pigs would soon enjoy a renaissance after some nine hundred years of persecution.
Greek rule spelled major changes for the Israelites. The Greek king Alexander the Great had conquered the Persian Empire in 333 bc and taken over all the lands Persia had controlled, including Palestine. Whereas the Persians had worked through local rulers and allowed local peoples to live as they wished, the Greeks forcefully imposed Hellenistic culture on their subjects. In 167 bc the ruler Antiochus IV, a successor to Alexander, invaded Jerusalem and tried to stamp out Judaism, a story recorded in the Books of the Maccabees. The first book relates how Antiochus demanded “that all should be one people, and that each should give up his
Just as God’s people did not eat blood, they also did not eat animals that ate blood.Deuteronomy forbids eating carrion or “anything that dies of itself”—though it’s lawful to “sell it to a foreigner” (caveat emptor)—presumably because the blood had coagulated within its veins and could not be drained. This explains why certain animals came to be declared unclean: they are predators and scavengers that eat the flesh of animals from which the blood has not been drained. Unlike Adam and Eve, the Israelites were no longer vegetarians—even so, they could eat only vegetarian beasts.
In specifying that God’s people could eat only animals that chewed the cud and split the hoof, the priests displayed an intuitive sense of biological classification. Cud chewers, such as cows and sheep, are vegetarians. The pig didn’t “chew the cud” because its gut had evolved to digest high-energy foods, including meat.
Scripture expresses disgust for the two most common scavengers, pigs and dogs.In the Christian Bible Jesus advises, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” “Dog” is an insult in the Bible, reserved for the most despised of people and linked to the animal’s eating habits.“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly,” we learn from Proverbs.According to the book of Kings, “Thus says the Lord: ‘In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood.’” In the next chapter: “So the king died . . . and the dogs licked up his blood.” Such is the standard version of those verses.But in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Jewish Bible made in the second and third centuries bc , those dogs do not dine alone: “The pigs and dogs licked the blood of Naboth,” and “the pigs and dogs licked up the blood” of the king. Some scholars speculate that this was the original version of the text.
Uncleanliness, in the Bible, is a contagion: predators and scavengers become unclean by eating bloody meat; men become unclean by eating the unclean flesh of animals that have eaten bloody meat; unclean men contaminate the temple so that God can no longer dwell with his people. That is why pigs, lickers of blood and eaters of carrion, could not be food for those who wished to remain pure: they were a vector for the unholy and would pollute anyone who consumed them.
S criptural dietary rules grew more significant with time. When the laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy were set down, few people in the Near East were eating pork. Archaeologists find no pig bones at all, or just a scattered few, in settlements from this period.Then, starting in about 300 bc , pig bones begin to appear in great profusion. The Greeks had arrived—and pigs would soon enjoy a renaissance after some nine hundred years of persecution.
Greek rule spelled major changes for the Israelites. The Greek king Alexander the Great had conquered the Persian Empire in 333 bc and taken over all the lands Persia had controlled, including Palestine. Whereas the Persians had worked through local rulers and allowed local peoples to live as they wished, the Greeks forcefully imposed Hellenistic culture on their subjects. In 167 bc the ruler Antiochus IV, a successor to Alexander, invaded Jerusalem and tried to stamp out Judaism, a story recorded in the Books of the Maccabees. The first book relates how Antiochus demanded “that all should be one people, and that each should give up his
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