Further evidence for [[2020-11-10 Pigs]]. #xref diet. I tweeted a response [here](https://twitter.com/EleanorKonik/status/1418174934585597953). ###### [Tweet](https://twitter.com/i/status/1418171835896811523) by [[Joel Baden]] on July 22nd, 2021. - Leviticus 11:1-2 - The kosher laws - Here we are, at one of the most vexed chapters of the Bible: the dietary restrictions that have served as an identifying mark for Jews, and for non-Jews, for lo these many centuries. Before the details in the days to come, some general remarks. - First, a reminder that the idea of some animals being “clean” and others being “unclean” isn’t unique to Leviticus, or to P. We saw it already in the non-P flood story, for example, where it was understood to be a natural categorization of the animal world. - It is likely that every ancient Near Eastern culture - like every modern one - had some broadly accepted food taboos. The phenomenon is typical; less so, maybe, is P’s attempt to retrovert those taboos into rules and categories. - Though one could imagine doing something similar for modern America: we do not eat any animal that has paws and walks on all fours, for example. (Other cultures don’t share this taboo, obviously.) - What we have in P, then, is potentially just a codification of cultural norms - but, crucially, put into the mouth of the deity as a law. This isn’t unique either - I suspect that most of the Covenant Code in Exodus is similarly descriptive rather than prescriptive. - So, second: the priestly dietary laws, like the rest of the priestly rituals and rules, should not be taken as the actual lived practice for ancient Israel. Not that they’re entirely disconnected from reality. But there’s no reason to think anyone was reading them. - The sacrifices work as an analogy: of course there were sacrifices in Israel, but not everyone sacrificed according to P’s particular regulations. So too of course there were dietary habits in Israel, but not everyone followed the precise list and categories of P. - It’s pretty clear, to go for the big one, that pig wasn’t commonly eaten in Israel. It’s also clear that pig was sometimes eaten in Israel. How is this possible? Because cultural norms are flexible in a way that divine law purports not to be. - And so, third: we should stop trying to figure out some overarching rationale for which animals are allowed and which aren’t. P uses categories, but they aren’t rationally developed; they are extrapolated from already established examples. - As in my modern analogy: we in America don’t eat animals with paws that walk on all fours, but not because there’s some obvious rationale for it. It’s just that cats and dogs and their relatives aren’t eaten. They are in other cultures - because there’s no inherent logic to it. - So we should be super cautious about coming up with reasons why categories are off limits - or at least we should be flexible in our thinking. The same rationale may not apply in all cases; and in many we may assume no rationale at all. - The key is to recognize that in the dietary laws P is not creating the concept of acceptable and unacceptable food, or clean and unclean animals, but is rather reifying, categorizing, and probably expanding on already extant cultural practices. (As it did with sacrifice.)