SC - Pork or Boar in the Holy Land

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Some private conversants wrote, in the presence of my flapping ears,

> > > Pork would have been hard to come by in the Holy Land as neither the
> > > Moslems or the Jews were allowed to eat it. The Franks would have had to
> > > bring it with them.

<snip>

> > like them, and there have always been non-Moslem/non-Jewish peoples in this
> > same region who probably thought "Fine, more for the rest of us!" :-) when
> > it came to pork.
> 
> Seumas and I watched 'Stealing Heaven' this weekend- a movie about
> Abelard and Heloise that I greatly recommend- anyway, in it, Heloise
> stumps the Bishop by asking why there were even pigs in the area
> (discussion being about the swine that Christ put some homeless demons
> into- which immediately became piggy-burger at the bottom of a cliff)
> when the Jews weren't allowed to raise or eat them. He can't answer, but
> her first encounter with Abelard ends with his passing on the suggestion
> that the pigs belonged to the Romans, who did raise and eat pork.

These are referred to in the King James Bible, I think, as the Gadarene
swine. I can't find that in the regular dictionary, but if it is a place
name or a reference to some culture it may provide a clue as to who
these non-Kashrut-keepers might have been.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com