Posted on 11/16/2016 8:54:25 AM PST by fishtank
You Are What You Eat: The Israelite Diet and Archaeology
Pig bones as an ethnic marker?
Jews don’t eat pork. Every kid knows that.
Much fewer people know that the abstinence from swine’s flesh is rooted in the Biblical prohibition in Leviticus 11:7 and Deuteronomy 14:8, which means that for the ancient Israelites, pork was also off the menu.
Only specialists, however, are aware of the fact that the Biblical ban on pork consumption from the Israelite diet can be interpreted from the archaeological or (more specifically) zooarchaeological record. In short: If people didn’t eat pork, they likely didn’t raise pigs—hence the expected absence in archaeologically excavated contexts of pig bones.
Indeed, modern excavations in the southern Levant (today’s Israel, Jordan and Palestine) show remarkable scarcity or total absence of pig bones at Iron Age (1130–586 B.C.E.) sites. The only apparent exception to this pattern is the sites occupied by the Philistines, one of the Sea Peoples who migrated to the southwestern Levant sometime at the dawn of the Iron Age.
This archaeological observation—supported by the Biblical prohibition—eventually led in modern scholarship to the establishment of the presence or absence of pig bones as an ethnic marker, one that would distinguish between ancient Israelites and Philistines.
Sounds reasonable, right?
yeah. they got to ham it up if they wanted.
They even had a debate on if it was ok to use the valve from a pig heart to do heart repair.
They concluded it was ok as the pig flesh was not being consumed and it was to save a life.
The forbidden food list in Leviticus was, I believe, tied to animals that were known from the captivity in Egypt or other surrounding Canaanite people to be used in pagan sacrifices. Abstaining from the flesh of these animals as foods would be insurance against falling into these pagan rituals. It seems arbitrary to moderns because we don’t know of many, if any, examples of pagan pig sacrifices.
They did not hold to the Levitical prohibitions. One of the many reasons the Jews hated them and considered them "unclean".
It’s unanimous: I need to go back to Sunday School! Thanks!
If you are what you eat, I’m chocolate.
It would be interesting to establish that even after the Jews embraced foreign gods, they maintained their aversion to pork.
>> Then who were the people tending these pigs? <<
Gadarenes, It says plainly in the text that he had traveled to their land, across the sea. That’s on the far side of the Jordan, south of Decapolis, near where it flows into the Sea of Tiberius/See of Galilee. It was largely Hellenist.
I mean, I get points for remembering there were pig handlers in the Gospels at least, right?
But it wasn’t a universal aversion, as evidenced by the Isaiah passage:
Isaiah 65
“2 I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts;
3 A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick;
4 Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which eat swine’s flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels;”
Gotcha! I knew something struck me wrong about the presumption that pork-eaters had to be gentiles.
Do Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox all have the same teaching on this?
It makes sense they would though if you think about it, the garments of the High Priest were to be partly of purple and scarlet, both colors which came from either a shellfish or insect not kosher for eating.
And pearls, also from a shellfish not kosher for eating, were worn.
So the prohibition was just on consuming, not touching or handling.
As far as I know they agree on it but the Rabbi was Conservative so I can not speak for every group. But I do know the agreement on the heart valve issue was from the council in Israel so that is probably pretty much universal.
Thank you.
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