Hacker News Reader

Comment by FergusArgyll | Hacker News Reader

The problem with this line of thinking is that - in Judaism at least - Pigs aren't special. Anything without split hooves or doesn't chew it's cud is prohibited. Pigs, Camels, Rabbits and the Hare (last 2 are speculative translations) are the only ones mentioned because they have one quality but not the other.

View on HN

>Pigs aren't special.

Apparently pigs can be possessed with sprints. I always assumed that was why they were considered unclean.

From Mark 5: So the demons begged him, "Send us among the pigs, so that we can go into them!" So he let them do this. The unclean spirits came out of the man and went into the pigs

https://biblehub.com/isv/mark/5.htm

But logically, there's no reason to believe that other animals can't be possessed by spirits. Maybe pigs were just the closest available thing.

>But logically, there's no reason to believe that other animals can't be possessed by spirits.

Logic has no merit when you're talking about the supernatural, because the rules can be whatever you want. Maybe animals can't be possessed by spirits because God only gave "true souls" to humans, and possessing spirits can only replace "true souls." Maybe they require a brain with a certain complexity which only humans possess. Maybe spirits just think it's gross, like bestiality.

> Logic has no merit when you're talking about the supernatural

Is the above statement true or false? It's about the supernatural, albeit indirectly, so we can't be sure shrug.

Is there any reference to pigs being possessed with spirits that predate the New Testament?

As a kid, I remember being taught by the (Catholic) church that my parents attended that the origin of restriction was due to trying to avoid getting the Tsetse fly parasite, which I guess could have been potentially contracted via poorly prepared pork. I have no idea how accurate this explanation is, but it always seemed at least plausible to me that some religious dietary restrictions might have been codified as a way to try to avoid collective health risks at a time; it doesn't seem crazy they might have noticed a pattern people getting sick after eating certain foods and made rules on how to avoid that, and over time they became part of the religious traditions. I'm not religious now though, so it's also possible that my view of what would be a plausible explanation for religious rules is biased.

Are you citing the New Testament to make an argument about Judaism?

> Anything without split hooves or doesn't chew it's cud is prohibited

I'm interested to know why these were picked out for prohibition.

Is this not addressed in the article? It mentions how the Greeks and Romans were fans of eating pig and discusses at length how that became a point of friction between those societies.

Even though you’re right, pork eating has a significant negative cultural value in Jewish culture

and locusts are totaly kosher... tasty and crunchy, too

Reply on news.ycombinator.com