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The book of Leviticus1 contains a prohibition against the consumption of pork. What is the reason for this prohibition?
“And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you”. “Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye not touch, they are unclean to you.” [Leviticus 11:7-8]
1 Pork is also prohibited in Deuteronomy and Isaiah
In the Hebrew Scriptures, death was "dirty." For example, contact with anything dead (whether animal or man) made the Israelite unclean in the ritual sense. Thus any scavenger was not appropriate for human consumption, since such animals consumed the refuse and/or carcasses of other animals. Only animals who chewed the cud (and split the hoof) were consumed for food, since they were vegetarians that consumed living grasses and plants (which included certain fowl and insects as well). Likewise, fish with scales and fins were consumed, because their principal diet consisted of consuming what was alive.
What cleaned away death in the ritual sense was water, which was not contaminated by things dead. For example -
Leviticus 11:35-37 (NASB)
35 Everything, moreover, on which part of their carcass may fall becomes unclean; an oven or a stove shall be smashed; they are unclean and shall continue as unclean to you. 36 Nevertheless a spring or a cistern collecting water shall be clean, though the one who touches their carcass shall be unclean. 37 If a part of their carcass falls on any seed for sowing which is to be sown, it is clean.
The running water of the spring, or cistern collecting water, is unending and continuing and therefore cannot become "dirty." (The water is eternal, because it is unending and continuing.) In the Hebrew Bible it was such water that was filtered through the ashes of the red heifer that was used to "wash away" the dirtiness of those who were ritually contaminated by things dead (Numbers 19:1-22).
In the Christian New Testament these guidelines of ritual impurity do not apply, since cleanliness with eternal life occurs from within. (External ritual impurity from without therefore is moot.) That is, the Christian receives eternal life, and this water (unending, and continuing eternal life) cleans away spiritual death, which was what was "dirty." Like the unending water of the spring or cistern (eternal source), anything dead on the outside becomes moot. Thus the Christian may enjoy all foods with an open and clean conscience before God, although such liberty may cause Jewish Christians to stumble, and therefore should be avoided (Acts 21:25-26).
This imagery of death-impurity cleansed by continuous-water transitions from the Hebrew Bible into the Christian New Testament as "living water" or eternal life that takes away spiritual death, which is what makes the man "dirty" (what is on the inside versus what is on the outside).
very nice human rationalizations, but none of these reasons is given in the Hebrew bible, because the simple reason is that this is a commandment from God. If a reason were given, then a person might come along some time later and give his own take on why that reasoning no longer applies as we see above. The same reasoning can be applied to all commandments until nothing is valid and people can do whatever they please and rationalize it with their own intellect.
Pork is/was prohibited because swine can't sweat and any poisonous substance it may have eaten will be stored in the fat of the animal:
Another issue with the pig is that it doesn’t have any sweat glands. Sweat glands are a tool the body uses to be rid of toxins. This leaves more toxins in the pig’s body.
Pork or rare meat was forbidden in the Bible, because for a simple hygienic reasons from long ago times when especially in the South, in hot countries and the desert you had no cooling or a veterinarian who told you the pork was healthy and free of any parasites.
But some religions have made an iron law out of it. E.g. in Jewish and Islamic law pork is one of a number of foods which are forbidden for consumption (See: Religious restrictions on the consumption of pork).
The conditions changed since then. Today we have cold stores, refrigerators and meat inspectors. There is no reason anymore for this order.
But still we should look if the animal has lived energetically positive and wasn’t suffering when killed or under stress.
According Rav Moshe Shapiro in his book Ma'amakim, Torah forbids consumption of all non-domestic animals, because their nature is so absorbed in them, that when it's eaten, it's transformed to the person's body and he became more animalistic.
t have access to it, and its also pretty recent so it can be found on hebrewbooks.org. I know it`s quite unprofessional to say something without referencies. :(
Hermeneutics 101: When God changes his mind on something, there is no moral component to it. It was used as a teaching aid. Likewise, Jesus dying on the cross did nothing to change the health aspects of pig. It was not a health restriction.
The clean animal ruminates. Eating is a metaphor for learning, and ruminating extends that to meditating on what you have learned.
Holiness is expressed by separation.
The clean animal is one who meditates on the word of God and it produces a holy walk (split hoof).
The Pharisees has the semblance of holiness (separated hoof) but it was not based in Gods word, but their own self-righteousness. They did not ruminate.
The Scribes meditated on the word all the time as they reproduced it, but it did not produce a holiness.
Mt 5:20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed [the righteousness] of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
The other clean and unclean animals, birds and fishes have similar metaphor.
The pig has no discretion about what it eats. Pr 11:22 ¶ [As] a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, [so is] a fair woman which is without discretion.
They are metaphoric teaching aids.
According to "Blood on the Streets," by Lord Rees Moggs and James D. Davidson, the prohibition did not pertain to the Bible per se, but was given solely by God to the Israelis (and through Mohammed, to the Muslims). The commonality between the two groups (and other Semites) was that they were living in the hot, dry Middle East. That is to say that the prohibition need not apply to say, Jews living in Europe or America.
The reason was that pigs sweat heavily, and use up a lot of water, relative to other animals of similar weight. Maintaining pigs and eating pork would therefore severely curtail the supply of water available to humans, in places like Egypt or Canaan.
