Retrospective look at possible reasons why Abrahamic religions banned pork

Da Vinci

Elder Lister
Bacon might be the greasy gastronomical craze of the decade in the United States, but in the Islamic and Jewish communities of the Middle East, pork has been off the menu for centuries.

archeological and anthropological evidence shows that between 5,000 and 2,000 B.C., the domesticated animals were common in the Fertile Crescent, likely used as “a household-based protein resource”—in other words, they were kept on hand as a tasty, nutritious food source. Then, around the 1,000 B.C., the keeping and eating of pigs sharply declined.

Pigs need a fair amount of water to survive, which makes them poor travel buddies when a family needs to move—and this could be one factor informing their disappearance from the dinner table. But Redding doesn’t think that’s the primary reason. The blame for the change, his research suggests, can be placed on chickens, which took over pork’s role as a food source.


TWB
6 years ago

I was taught that the climate in the middle east started to change (drier, coming out of the last ice-age) at the same time of deforestation due to the increase in population. Pigs "rooting" in the soil were blamed for both. Pigs were also the hardest domesticated animal to keep confined and feral pigs were ruinous to crops. Remember the old testament is essentially a collection of stories/ lessons of how to live a healthy life without self inflicted tragedy. It taught things like how to wash your hands before handling food(aka sacrifice), how and where to build your house(on rocks, not sand and away from running water), marriage(and, yes, divorce), child rearing, etc.. So pigs were villainized by society for their "destructive" abilities and your neighbors took a dim view of anyone raising them. This, then led to the "teaching" against them by the only "educational" forum of the time, religion


Ian Beddowes David Stone
4 years ago edited

Many peoples after being conquered adopt, or partly adopt, the language and culture of their conquerors. to go into more detail. All our ancestors were hunter gatherers for a couple of hundred thousand years. In such cultures the men hunt and the women gather. There is approximate sexual equality. In some river valleys, women discovered that it was easier to collect seeds and plant them rather than search for edible plants. These became female dominated societies and were the beginning of civilization. In mainly drier areas, men found it easier to raise young animals than to chase them through the bush. These became male dominated herding societies. Pigs were raised in the female dominated societies to feed on crop residues. The herding societies did not herd pigs, they herded cattle, sheep and goats. In several cases, the male dominated herders who were tougher fighters, descended on the more advanced people and established themselves as a ruling class. This is exactly what most of the historical portions of the Old Testament are really telling us. Pork was looked down on by the nomadic herders as the food of the soft but civilized. This happened in ancient Palestine, in India and Greece, although it was Palestine and Arabia where the nomads put a ban on pork.



LB TWB4 years ago

Told to be by a Muslim. The reason why Muslims will no longer eat pork was due to the animals contacting some type of virus / contamination that spread making the meat inedible. All pigs were destroyed due to the spreading of the virus / contamination. Just like the bird flu and swine virus's that hit all through China and North America in the last 10 years and the animals were culled. Pork was banned temporarily within the Muslim culture and eventually banned completely. This is the only reason. However, stories got changed and now the Muslims think it is against their religion not to consume the product. However, saying consumed is one thing. The many Muslims coming into North America, Britain and Germany now think that since they cannot consume the meat they can no longer come in contact with it. The Muslims keep changing their laws as this was never in the first Quran and many are uneducated therefore cannot read or write and take the word of an Imam as god's word. Same thing as covering their faces. It says the women should dress modestly. It does not say, you must cover your face.


juaniflaco
6 years ago

I always thought it was due to the fact that pork, if not cooked properly, transmits trichinosis and other diseases and were therefore deemed to be "unclean". Without actual medical science or knowledge of germs or bacteria and having multiple different kinds of animals being eaten, how would they have known where the disease came from or that it even was a disease? They almost certainly would have thought it was a curse and came from God/the devil. Also, almost all animals when not cooked will kill a person because of some bacteria or other - not just pigs.

Domesticating the pigs caused them to "over-populate" small villages which left the area filthy and disease ridden and took a huge amount of water and regular garden foods from the people. Most of the old religious writings (OT and Qur'an), considered many illnesses a sin and those obtained from pig filth ranked right up there....so, eating pork became a sin unto itself.
 
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Anglututu

Elder Lister
The Muslims keep changing their laws as this was never in the first Quran and many are uneducated therefore cannot read or write and take the word of an Imam as god's word. Same thing as covering their faces. It says the women should dress modestly. It does not say, you must cover your face.

This is a description of Christianity not Islam.
Covering your face is not compulsory, dressing modestly has been described and explained many instances, people who argue it out are just trying to have their way.
In regards to pork, people have come up with different narratives just as you have copied them here.
The truth is it has been forbidden to us by the almighty, so we do not eat it, no other reasons.
By the way in cases of hunger without any other option, eating a pork becomes permissible.

The problem is many people speak about Islam from info gathered from non Islamic sources, then come claim it to be the truth.
 
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