Pigs, Purity, and Patrilineality: The Multiparity of Swine and Its Problems for Biblical Ritual and Gender Construction

Abstract

The biblical characterization of pigs as impure has been interpreted in a variety of ways. Most have focused on the anomalies of the pig compared with other domesticated animals, especially with regard to their alimentary processes. All interpretations, however, have neglected a primary feature of pigs that makes them radically different from all other clean land animals, namely, that they are multiparous, giving birth in litters. This article argues that the multiparity of pigs makes them incompatible with other ritually clean land animals in four ways: (1) All clean land animals are uniparous. (2) As multiparous animals, pigs do not bear a true firstborn male, which would make them different from all clean domesticated animals. This feature is most important because the sanctity of the domesticated firstling is recognized by all pentateuchal sources, and, furthermore, the ideology of the firstborn male is integrally related to the human practices of inheritance, lineage, and wealth management. (3) The multiparity of pigs highlights abundant female fertility in comparison with the more controlled and managed fertility seen in the biblical purity systems. (4) Multiparous animals are capable of bearing the offspring of multiple sires simultaneously, a phenomenon that conflicts with the biblical focus on paternity.(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The cultural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss famously stated that animals used in specific rituals are often chosen not because they are to eat but because they are good to think.1 By this he meant that many cultures use animals to act out concepts fundamental to their particular view of the world, especially various aspects of their structure. Following him, Howard Eilberg-Schwartz argues that this is especially true for rituals involving animals in the Hebrew Bible. In his view, animals, as well as other aspects of the natural world, become material on which the ancient Israelites and Jews played out fundamental social metaphors. Vital concerns about the world were acted out not only in society itself but also on the materials that intersected with it; the natural world in general was a mirror that both reflected Israelite experience of life and served as a model for what Israelite communal and individual life should and could be.2 According to Eilberg-Schwartz,A number of [biblical] rituals can be interpreted as acting out or living out the implications of those metaphors which dominate Israelite thought. This process ... is most obvious in the correspondence that one finds between some of the rules regulating the life of Israel and the rules governing the treatment of livestock and agricultural activity. If the flocks, herds and fields are metaphors for Israelites, then it follows that one should act towards the former in the same way that one acts towards the latter.3Eilberg-Schwartz shows, for instance, that the laws of the Torah specify that not only should the Israelites observe the Sabbath, but their animals should do the same (Exod 20:9, 23:12, Deut 5:14). Including animals in this scheme illustrates the fundamental nature of the Sabbath and the concept that the Sabbath is built into the very structure of the natural world. Other examples include the symmetry of the prohibition on trimming the edges of one's facial hair with the ban on reaping the edges of a field (Lev 19:9, 27), or the parallelism between keeping an infant animal with its mother for seven days before slaughtering it (Exod 22:29, Lev 22:27) and keeping an infant boy with its mother for seven days before his circumcision (Lev 12:3).In a similar vein, this study questions whether the biblical writers considered the pig to be impure because it is an unfit model for human societal behavior. Unfortunately, it is unclear which aspect of the pig makes it unfit. As is well known, the rationale for the prohibition of pork is enigmatic and unclear. …