I think Hebrew dietary restrictions may be more instructively viewed as a mechanism to enforce group cohesion than as a primer on suggested health practices. It is difficult to mix with other groups when you cannot eat with them. Matrilineal line of descent serves the same function. Children fathered by in-group men with women outside the group are simply excluded, while in-group women face censure for the same behavior. There are structural reasons why Jewish culture has remained distinct in diaspora, while many other disjoint populations are absorbed by host populations over time.
Longstanding practices are often multiply-determined, and the relative balance of benefits may change according to the situation. (In high-sanitation environments, the rules help enforce cohesion/segregation; in low-sanitation environments, the rules provide protection from endemic parasites.)
Agreed, there are always reasons for specific decisions. In the three cases you've mentioned, the banned flesh is from animals that are carrion eating scavengers.
Pork production in the United States is monitored and tapeworm free. You're much safer eating American pork than you are eating fish.
As noted in the article, the discussion is about human to human spread of this parasite. The solution there is even simpler, though more difficult: wash your hands regularly and thoroughly.
Agreed. Sanitation practices that seem obvious in the developed world assume infrastructure not available in many other areas. People who live in these places are not stupid, and I, for one, am glad that my morning ritual doesn't involve hauling fresh water from a mile away.
This was figured not by Hebrews (ancient Israelites), but by ancient Egyptians.
Cysticercosis was endemic in ancient Egypt. Pork was a
staple food for common people in Egypt, but priests had strict dietary laws and they knew that Cysticercosis caused by tapeworms from swine.
Ancient Israelites just adopted a lot of customs from Egyptian Priestly caste, like circumcision, calendar and dietary laws. Not surprising, considering Moses was raised as Egyptian.
>...priests had strict dietary laws and they knew that Cysticercosis caused by tapeworms from swine.
> Ancient Israelites just adopted a lot of customs from Egyptian Priestly caste...Not surprising, considering Moses was raised as Egyptian.
Even allowing the existence of Moses (which, if we're feeling skeptical we can reinterpret as the long cultural shadow of Egypt), this still seems like a "just so" story.
Do you know if there's any evidence that Egyptian priests actually had medical justifications for their taboos? Similarly, how do we know that ancient Israelites adopted certain beliefs due to direct Egyptian influence, rather than participating in widespread regional practices also found in the Canaanite populations from which they emerged?
I don't think at the time there was distinction between religion, astrology, science, medicine and healthcare.
The priests had the knowledge, while the commoners were mostly illiterate.
During the Predynastic Period pigs were considered unclean in Upper Egypt but were domesticated and eaten in Lower Egypt. During the Dynastic Period Pigs were thought to be unclean in some areas and among the wealthier classes. Herodotus states that people who raised and ate pig were shunned but archaeological evidence suggests that although technically unclean, pork was still popular with many poorer Egyptians.
Moses or not, the word "Israel" was found in Egyptian scripts. "Hapiru" king "Yakubu" also mentioned in Egyptian sources - cognates with Hebrew Yaakov.
There are enough evidence, that ancient Egyptians and ancient Israelis had a contact.
I took a biblical archaeology class as an undergrad and both our teacher and every text we read were very cautious about making this link. There simply isn't very much evidence for who the 'PRW (apiru or whatever) were; we don't even know if it's a particular tribe/identity or just a catch-all for brigands and outlaws. Similarly, we don't have any historical evidence for what Israelite society was like before ~1000BC and definitely nothing about 2000BC (when the word apiru starts appearing).
I agree that the ancient documents about marauding apiru might be referring to Hebrews, but we really should keep our Bayesian hats on when evaluating archaeological evidence.
As for "Yakubu" and "Israel", any citations? Are those in one of the Amarna letters?
"Humans are T. solium reservoirs. They are infected by eating undercooked pork that contains viable cysticerci."
They are infected -> they get a worm by eating undercooked pork. Not cysticercosis
Normal lifecycle: Pork eats tape worm eggs -> the pork gets cysticercosis -> Humans eat pork meat -> humans get tape worm -> worm releases eggs in human faeces -> back to step one
Cysticercosis happens when the human plays the role of the pork
This parasite can be eradicated worldwide. We need pigs to be penned where they cannot eat human feces - its that simple.
Not simple at all. A trip outside the first world will tell you that raising pigs is not as easy as you make it. Not every family has land and resources avail to raise pigs as you said it.
Moreoever pigs are in direct competition with humans for food. That's almost certaily why ancestral middle-eastern tribes had taboo on raising pigs and favoured goose and cows that feed on herbs (humans and pigs can't digest grass wich is based on azot).
Not really -- pigs are really useful for cultivating land. You pen them in an area and they turn over the soil when they go "rooting" (foraging for roots and bugs).
Historically, pigs are a recycling engine as well. You set them loose on garbage pile and they eat all sorts of stuff, producing rich fertilizer in return.
This stuff all originates from the ancient Egyptian practices, and the reasoning for the taboos aren't precisely known. I always thought they had more to do with the people who kept the pigs -- who were (and still are today in Egypt) non-Muslim/Jews who are associated with garbage.
Agree with your premise, but fault the probability of your conclusion due to the written record left by Hebrew scholars who described pigs as "unclean". Its easy to see how an animal that eats human feces could be viewed that way.
> Its easy to see how an animal that eats human feces could be viewed that way.
Not necessarily that easy. For example, they didn't think farmyard manure was unclean but nonetheless used it to grow vegetables. My intuition is that it's easier to remember pig as "filthy", "unclean", "kosher", "forbidden" than their place in a complex and ever moving ecological system. Written record left by scholars could be deductions made about the current state of things and its lost meanings (that's actually part of my intuition).
> Its easy to see how an animal that eats human feces could be viewed that way.
Pigs were considered unclean more for their consumption of human flesh than for their consumption of human feces. Geological conditions in the Levant meant that bodies were typically interred in crypts or caves rather that being buried 'six feet under' where the decomposition couldn't be smelled by scavengers.
Chickens eat human feces too, but they are not considered "unclean".
Plus, the one doesn't exclude the other. The taboo could be because of the reasons the parent mentioned, and the "unclean due to eating feces" could just be a post-fact rationalisation of it.
Who else thinks that if the Hebrews had figured that out long ago, then Hebrew and Muslim diet restrictions might today be more permissive?