SC - Pork or Boar in the Holy Land

[Laura C. Minnick]

Wanda Pease wrote:
> 
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > Dan Cushenan Cameron wrote:
> > >
> 
> Wouldn't the Jewish and Moslem prohibition about pork made it even _more_
> available?  At least if you were willing to go and hunt it down yourself?
> The very prohibition shows that pigs existed in the region.  Wild boar
> didn't just disappear from the landscape because two religious sects didn't
> 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.

Also, there were Franks in the Holy Land long before the Crusades.
Protecting pilgrims, etc., was after all the first on wany exvuses for
much warfare.

*yawn*
I'm tired. Need a nap!

'Lainie