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I believe a lot of it had to do more with the concept of ritual cleanliness. The Hebrews were fairly obsessive about ritual cleanliness, and as an earlier poster noted; a hog's omnivorous diet also allows for a certain amount of scavenging, in hot climates they will find the nearest water, mud, or mud-like substance to keep themselves cool. Note the prohibition of carrion birds as well.
As far as the notion of cloven hooves and the devil, that's entirely a European invention based on a faun without any Biblical basis whatsoever.
Well.....now that you mention it, Trichinosis is the first thing that springs to my mind.
Exactly. All superstitions aside, Trichinosis can (and does) easily make the transition from its porcine hosts to humans. All that is required is the incomplete/improper cooking of an infected porker and -- Voila! -- Human Trichinosis. It can be passed from raw pork to other animals too, such as bear, coyote, etc.
A minor course correction, if I may. Rats are ONE of the trichinosis vectors. Since pigs are omnivores, should they ingest ANY infected muscle tissue (pigs, bears, coyotes, humans, rats, mice, etc.), they will quickly "import" the disease into their own musculature.
As you so aptly pointed out, the key is strict control of what domestic pigs eat.
Still, largely due to habit or firmly ingrained teaching, I simply won't eat pork that hasn't been fully and thoroughly cooked. And pork, btw, is a core food for me and my ancestors.
Well.....now that you mention it, Trichinosis is the first thing that springs to my mind.
that was my first thought. As a child, I always heard about being careful of undercooked pork....it would give you worms. The slightest pink was cause for alarm. (I am a southerner) My DH, who is from PA, said that one of his grandmothers was so afraid of not getting pork done that she would cook it so hard, it rattled and bounced when it hit the plate......LOL
The real devil doesn't really have cloven hoofs. That's just the way he is perceived among people who already think that the cloven hoof is a mark of evil. Fear of the cloven hoof preceded the depiction of the devil in that guise.
It is because pigs are vile wicked animals and God hates them.
Never mind the fact that He created them,
This is the same guy after all who created Satan
God created Satan to give himself plausible deniability for all the evil He created.
Among God's more serious mistakes was to create a world in which all values are relative, but a world with only Good and no Evil would have no referent by which to define Good within that relativistic dichotomy.
I wonder what the world would be like if God had given a little forethought to what he was going to create. Maybe 6 days was unrealistically ambitious. In any case, after the world is gone, I bet He'll never try anything like that again.
The Food & Drug Administration recently revised down the recommended minimum "safe-cooking" temperature of pork from 165F to 145F.
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