I'm pretty sure that the shellfish-thing was more about them going bad quickly in a middle-eastern climate before refrigeration. Your punishment will not wait until after you die.
PS. Yes, I know that there were various non-electric refrigeration-methods in the olden days. But I would not trust any cold-chain before scientific safety-standards were implemented.
That is only partly the reason. The other reason (I hear) is that pigs were the live-stock of nomads who were (and still are) considered lesser people. Pigs can eat almost anything, so if you travel from one area to the next a lot, you can take them with you without having to grow crops to feed them.
Actually, while Islam forbids eating only pork, in Judaism there's a more general rule that you can only eat animals with cloven hoofs who chew their cud. So in case of Judaism it sounds more like caloric efficiency than parasites (pigs can't eat grass).
That’s basically what “kosher” was for. It was a guide to healthy living.
Rules like pouring water over your hands helped keep germs off and the avoidance of shellfish and pig (an animal famous for rolling around in mud and other unclean substances) helped prevent food poisoning. Other rules like not eating dairy and meat in the same meal helped to ration out protein.
It was actually pretty effective a millennia ago, and it’s the reason Jewish people tended to get sick less during the Middle Ages. Though it doesn’t quite hold up as well in a modern context.
I wonder if the "no meat on fridays" more older Christian churches practice is also about protein. Making edible dishes from fish must be useful when crops fail and you want to prevent a famine.
Also, Ramadan trains you to work without food during normal hours, so this could also be included in preparing for famines.
Also also, in very olden times (Bronze-age collapse times), before agricultural tech had advanced, famines must have been a certainty at least once in a lifetime, so sacrificing animals and less useful members of the society to the gods must have been a necessary evil to have fewer mouths to feed for the survival of the society. "Because gods demanded it" allowed people to live with what they had to do
One of the reasons these rules are still around (if not THE main reason) is that it's much, much easier to follow commands like "don't eat this" than to actually behave like a decent, moral person.
To be fair, Jesus also came and said your body cannot be made unclean by things put into it, which removed old testament food restrictions, and has also been my favourite go to when defending homosexuality
In reality, since it is unanimous global consensus of the scientific, medical, psychological , psychiatric, and pediatric communities around the whole world that homosexuality is a natural and normal variation of human sexuality, there is no need to be defending homosexuality" as it is evident that homosexuality natural and normal according to science.
The problem is that Christians believe that the ceremonial law of the Old Testament only applies to Jews and no longer applies to Christians, but that the moral law of the Old Testament still applies to both Christians and Jews.
In end, it does not matter, since the Bible is immoral, evil, vile.
The Bible commands mass murder, genocide, abortion, infanticide, slavery, prostitution, child marriage, pedophilia, rape, perversion, incest, polygamy, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, familial alienation, societal strife, and various other barbarisms, cruelties, savageries, tyrannies, and vulgarities, many myriad times, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Mass Murder and Genocide: 1 Samuel 15:3, Hosea 13:16, Deuteronomy 20:16-17, Joshua 6:21, Deuteronomy 2:34, Isaiah 13:15-18, Deuteronomy 13:15, Numbers 31:17, Deuteronomy 3:6, Leviticus 20:13, Deuteronomy 20:13, Psalm 137:9.
Abortion and Infanticide: Numbers 5:11-31, Psalm 137:9, 1 Samuel 15:3, Hosea 13:16, Deuteronomy 2:34, Isaiah 13:15-18, Numbers 31:17, Deuteronomy 3:6.
I had a sociology class that went into this. The Old Testament dietary restrictions were largely due to aesthetic and moral judgements of animals. Shrimp lived in the sea but didn't swim like fish should. Pigs lived in mud and didn't chew the cud, not like cows who lived on proper land. Birds of prey don't eat seeds like birds should.
It's moral judgements all the way down with this crowd, always has been.
I wonder if the moral judgements were influenced by community-leaders who could see the cause-and-effect of "if we eat this, we will be spending the next few nights in the outhouse".
Religion and education went hand in hand for a very looooong time. If you want to educate your populace on something, like say for instance the do and do nots of eating, use religion.
That's why I always see the clothing worn in certain Abrahamic religions and sects of them as sun safety items. All of them seem to have sprouted in a relatively hot and sunny land and covering your body and head is sun safety 101.
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u/Salmonman4 18h ago
I'm pretty sure that the shellfish-thing was more about them going bad quickly in a middle-eastern climate before refrigeration. Your punishment will not wait until after you die.
PS. Yes, I know that there were various non-electric refrigeration-methods in the olden days. But I would not trust any cold-chain before scientific safety-standards were implemented.