What the crap does this thread have to do with comparative Religion?
Christians, Muslims and Jews are murdering each other in great numbers every day. A hundred thousand have already been killed in the Syrian civil war, and that's just one country! Look at Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Egypt, Mali, Iraq, Pakistan . . . .So being a muslim myself, I call all my fellow brothers and sisters that no matter how hard others sear at you never swear back.
Al Mighty God is all knowing and hearing and they would be judged according to their actions on the last day.
Now question: Explain to me how you justify you eating pork from the biblical texts without having Jesus break the law and cause a cascade of other problems which I just listed above.
8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’[c]”
The original rule not to eat pork was based on empirical evidence and was good in its day. But when Jesus came, he said it is not about the outward man mimicking procedures for salvation; children of the bondwomen, but rather salvation came from within; children of the promise.
They take it a lot more seriously than the Muslims. Christian preachers, particularly in the fundamentalist churches, routinely quote from it; that's why we call those guys "fire-and-brimstone preachers." Is it ever quoted in Islamic services? For that matter, do they even quote from the New Testament?Christians don't recognize the Old Testament.
Pigs are scavengers. Like bears, hyenas, coyotes, raccoons and other scavengers, they will happily eat the flesh of a dead animal that's been lying around for a week. These carcasses can be infected with all kinds of parasites, most famously the trichina worm. Scavengers are very likely to have trichinosis. Every year somebody out in the boondocks goes out hunting for bear or raccoon and comes down with trichinosis. There are an average of ten cases a year in the USA. It's difficult to diagnose, harder to cure, and very unpleasant to live with. (Imagine having fibromyalgia, except you know the reason you feel so bad is that there are worms living inside you!)The original laws concerning eating of pork were based on practical observation. In modern times, we now know that pork contains parasites and if it is not fully cooked it can make one sick. Good ancient observations saw this cause and effect between pork and sickness and outlawed pork to protect the group. They did not know why people got sick from pork, only that the pork was a common variable; correlation. In modern times, we know how to prepare pork safely, so the taboo has been lifted for the Christians.
Jews in Reform congregations happily eat pork. Many in Conservative temples do too, although many others keep the old traditions as a way of maintaining solidarity and a link to their ancestors.What has happened in some cultures is ancient taboos which made practical sense, like pork, are still blindly followed in the dark, even though the original intent was based on the light of good judgement.
It almost certainly goes back beyond the Iron Age empires of Rome and Greece. If I'm not mistaken, avoiding pork has been identified as a common tradition among all the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia, Arabia and the Levant. This could place it in the Bronze Age, or even the late Neolithic Era when the first Stone Age cities were built.What's really insane about this is the assumption that the Supreme Commander of the Universe gives a damn about what humans eat, that a superstition as ancient as the ruins of Rome and Greece is still alive today in the minds of people who are posting here using the otherwise modern ideas and technology.
The various species of swine are artiodactyls, the suborder of even-toed hoofed mammals that also includes the goat, sheep, camel, deer, giraffe, cow, hippotamus, and certain other grazing herbivores with multiple stomachs. The pigs are almost unique in their ability to eat almost anything; goats are also omnivorous, although they prefer vegetable matter. (Horses and rhinoceros are perissodactyls, odd-toed hoofed mammals, and elephants are in a completely different taxonomic group. Oddly enough the cetaceans were recently discovered to be in the same group as the artiodactyls, probably the descendants of primitive hippos who swam all the way down the river to the sea and liked it there.)And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.