Path: Supernews69!supernews.com!news-peer.spinne.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-xfer.netaxs.com!netnews.com!news.dx.net!news From: Ace Lightning Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals,talk.euthanasia,alt.animals,alt.consumers,alt.cows,alt.tasteless,talk.philosophy.misc,soc.culture.jewish Subject: Re: Pigs, Pork and Human Beings Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 08:28:28 -0400 Organization: Purple Pentagram Productions Lines: 39 Message-ID: <33C4D56C.4C6F@excaliber.com> References: <5o99p6$r8n@kudo20.kudonet.com> <33B4B92A.7BBA@concentric.net> <33c9279f.29545078@news.impulse.net> <33BAD1C0.35F8@hkstar.com> <33c0cb2d.716756694@news.idt.net> <33cd5ab9.8821060@news.demon.co.uk> Reply-To: acelightning@excaliber.com NNTP-Posting-Host: excaliber.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I) Xref: Supernews69 talk.politics.animals:103973 talk.euthanasia:6700 alt.animals:4307 alt.consumers:1797 alt.cows:378 alt.tasteless:129923 talk.philosophy.misc:84138 soc.culture.jewish:334962 > >Where on earth did you come up with this extraordinary idea? > >In thousands of years of Jewish literature, there is not the > >slightest hint that the prohibition has anything to do with > >any such considerations. Did you channel Moses to make this > >discovery of yours, or did you use a ouija board? > But then, that's how you'd naturally do things in a theocracy, isn't it? > If you give rational arguments against eating pork based on real facts > then people will dispute your facts, claim exceptional circumstances and > generally weaken your hold. On the other hand if you say don't eat Pork > because God says so, well there's no arguing with that is there? There is a persistent myth that the kosher laws have to do with food spoilage, and that somehow the ancient Hebrew tribes knew more about prevention of food poisoning than their neighbors. However, the truth behind the dietary restrictions is much less noble. Most of the foods, or food combinations, forbidden by Scripture are actually the sacred feasts of other religions with which Judaism was competing at the time. Pork - pigs were sacred to the Earth Mother Goddess, and a feast of roast pig was served at Her great festival. Shellfish - sacred to the Sea Goddess (why do you think Aphrodite is depicted as "Venus on the half-shell"?). And the very curious law that says "thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk" (the basis for the whole milk/meat dichotomy) seems to relate to the Orphic mysteries, in which baby goat meat stewed in goat's milk is eaten as a reference to spiritual rebirth. The priests of Yahweh wanted to make very sure that their followers didn't wander off and start worshipping other deities (whose rites were usually a lot more entertaining than Yahweh's). How better to enforce this than to say, "Oh, by the way, you can't have dinner with Those People, since the foods they eat are all forbidden. Yahweh says they're filthy." Keep telling people certain foods are "filthy" (whether they are inherently any nastier than any other foods or not), and they'll react with knee-jerk disgust at the thought of touching such a morsel to their lips. Kinda reminds me of a controversy a few years ago over the use of beef "lips and snouts" in hot dogs. I didn't understand the outrage at all. People will pay exorbitant prices for a nice rump steak, after all. So why is a cow's ass less disgusting than its lips or snout?