How did the pork taboo come about?

Was there a practical rationale behind some cultures' avoidance to pork/meat of swines?

When it comes to the spread of disease, it can hardly be said that swines beat cows or sheep in its proneness to spreading disease.

I've discussed with my friends and they come out with three explanations:

1) Pigs' habit of bathing in mud gives people the impression that they are dirty, even though it's the swines' own method of keeping clean. (Mr.C)

2) Probably, pigs, as omnivores, eats everything they get from their feeders. And thus the "preparation of swine food"(stockpiling of dirty garbage) increases the chance of pandemic diseases in crowded Semitic cities without proper sewage system, like Ancient Jerusalem or Ancient Mecca. (me)

3) Swine's diet overlaps with that of humans, as both could consume roots, fruits, flowers, corn and soybeans. So in societies where resources are scarce, like the ancient near east, feeding the pigs by the wealthy means taking food away from the poor. Therefore they developed the pork taboo to avoid contentions between social classes. (Mr. L)
 
Usually it's because pigs are considered unclean, for a combination of the reasons you mention. It's such a common thing in the ancient Middle East I doubt you can avoid it.
 
I'd say a mix a 1) and 2) may have influenced. As you say, Pigs can eat everything, including forbidden elements, carrions, or even just soiled food.
Eating pork could have been lead to be soiled itself.

That said, I don't think you should read too much on rationalisation of the taboo in religion. If it was only based on that, consumption of pork would have been clearly more widespread, would it be only amonst desertic or semi-desertic dwellers, and we know that Egyptians (Herodotus mistook "being not a valid sacrifice" for taboo food) or Canaanites eat pork without real problem.
Pseudo-medical justifications appear only later, possibly when confronted with other monotheistic religions with different restrictions.

Explanations should be searched along religious ones : pigs were a common sacrificial animal, and refusing to even eat them may have been a way to distinguish oneself from heathens (it's really insisted on in Isaiah : pork is the meat of heathens), a bit like why horse-meat eating was frowned down in medieval Europe : because it was part of pagan sacrifice and religious feasts.

As for Islam, most probably the heir of judeo-nazorean and/or ebionite traditions (that insisted much on food taboo, would it be only to distinguish themselves from orthodoxs), the reason is probably simpler : it is forbidden because Islam is the reciever of a long tradition of religious food taboo.
 
Uncooked pork meat is more dangerous than beef as there is a high risk of parasitic infection (trichinose if I'm not mistaken).
I'm not saying it is THE explanation but it may be an explanation
 
Nasty worms come along with poorly cooked pork. You notice people you know eat it and die horribly one too many times its going to get a bad reputation.
 
Another theory postulates that an aversion to pork emerged in some cultures as a means of avoiding trichinosis infections.

Explanations should be searched along religious ones : pigs were a common sacrificial animal, and refusing to even eat them may have been a way to distinguish oneself from heathens (it's really insisted on in Isaiah : pork is the meat of heathens).
These two explanations might be more important than the three I listed above.
 
It's probably a combination of all of the above, with, in my opinion, a strong emphasis on the economic and religious aspects (since ancient monotheism embedded a "social justice" discourse in religious terms, the two are deeply entwined anyway).
I've also read two further explanations regarding pork meat being particularly badly preserved in hot dry climates of the arid Near East, and swine being a totemic animal in earliest proto-hebrew tribes, both of which, I have to say, don't sound very convincing in themselves (the totem animal thing sounds particularly strange as I don't know of any material evidence possibly relating to that).
 
one thing i've heard is that Pigs should be ecologically bad (in an unsustainable way) in the middle east due to its type of terrains, hence plausibly earlier tribes that depending on them suffered from detoriating land, it being connected with pigs, and in a search for a reason within their world-view, determating that the god(s) for one reason or another not liking them.
 
Notice the peoples who ban or harshly regulate the use of pork as a part of their history tend to be from very hot climates where its even harder to preserve meat then say central Europe or even Italy.
 
First of all: an interesting question.

Actually pigs being omnivores and having a diet which overlaps with humans, makes them quite suited to keep as a domesticated animal. Since one can also feed them leftovers.

There may be issues in the middle east, but more to the north in Europe pork was a vital part of the diet. Unsurprisingly the taboo on eating pork didn't exist there.

@ Sian: AFAIK goats and sheep aren't good for fragile environments either.
 
I've also read two further explanations regarding pork meat being particularly badly preserved in hot dry climates of the arid Near East,

one thing i've heard is that Pigs should be ecologically bad (in an unsustainable way) in the middle east due to its type of terrains,

Notice the peoples who ban or harshly regulate the use of pork as a part of their history tend to be from very hot climates where its even harder to preserve meat then say central Europe or even Italy.

I always tought this explanation to be quite weak, giving that there's a lot of desertic and semi-desertic cultures that eat pork : Egyptians, Phenicians, Cannanites, Mesopotamians, Berbers...
So what? Only Hebrews were clever enough to find out? ;)
 
As someone who lives downwind of a large hog operation, I can also imagine a high priest walking out on a warm summer day,taking a sniff and summarily declaring pigs , EVIL!
 
According to what was mentioned by my teacher in religious studies,pigs in the Middle East generally has a lot of worms in them.
 

Yuelang

Banned
Honestly, maybe the stupid agnostic answer has the greatest probability to be the "truth" afterall...

Moses choked on Pork when he was still the Prince of Egypt, so after rediscovering his hebrew root, he decides to enact a religion-wide ban on pork. :rolleyes: Same goes to the "unclean" lists of meat, Moses didn't like them, so he ban it... :D
 
I always tought this explanation to be quite weak, giving that there's a lot of desertic and semi-desertic cultures that eat pork : Egyptians, Phenicians, Cannanites, Mesopotamians, Berbers...
So what? Only Hebrews were clever enough to find out? ;)

Fair enough. I lean to a religious/economic explanation, as said above.
 
Another theory postulates that an aversion to pork emerged in some cultures as a means of avoiding trichinosis infections.

Which ignores the fact that goats and cattle have their own awful infections.

Tapeworms are not nice.

I always tought this explanation to be quite weak, giving that there's a lot of desertic and semi-desertic cultures that eat pork : Egyptians, Phenicians, Cannanites, Mesopotamians, Berbers...
So what? Only Hebrews were clever enough to find out? ;)

Actually, here's an interesting wrinkle--Egyptian priests didn't eat pork. I'd argue what happened with the Hebrews is that a priestly taboo spread amongst the people by either knowing imitation or unintentional influence. One things something similar with the Brahmins in India, with many imitating their vegetarian--or at least beef free diets.
 
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