(September 4, 2013 at 4:32 pm)Captain Colostomy Wrote: I've heard a reasonable argument that undercooked pork, and the illnesses from consuming it, are the likely, ahem...'genesis' of a divine prohibition.
I've heard similar arguments, though I do not know whether they stand up to scrutiny.
There could be something to it, however - historically, there have been health issues regarding undercooked pork. Shellfish under certain conditions can carry deadly toxins that do not afflict finned fish. Rabbits often carry diseases. At one point, I went through Leviticus and Deuteronomy to try and make sense of the prohibitions from a non-theological POV (i.e. might there be practical reasons beyond godforbidsit). It's been some time, so I don't recall many of the forbidden foods off the top of my head, but as I recall many made some kind of sense.
It would not be unreasonable to suppose that ancient people might have noticed that people sometimes got sick after eating certain foods, and superstition being what it is, concluded that (the) god(s) must be angry. Hardly conclusive, absent any scholarship which I certainly do not feel like doing.
