Lucretius

...in the Bible
First of all sorry if this is the wrong place
Something that has intrigued me for a while is the reference to swine and swineherds in the Bible.
I have always wondered why the Jews would have had swine and swineherds as obviously they could not eat them what would be the purpose of actually keeping domesticated Pigs ? The fact that they have swineherds would imply they are domesticated and not just wild
Other than as a food source what possible use could they be ?

diana

To sell to their neighbors?

Of course, just touching a pig made them ritually unclean. But so did a woman getting her period, or a man touching her while she was on the rag, etc.

That's my guess, though: commerce and revenue. The Jews couldn't eat them, but God passed no law that said it was a sin for any of their neighbors to eat them, or for the Jews to profit from this fact.

d

BuffaloBill

Sounds like another "oops" by a fiction writer. I'm sure a fact-checker wasn't a avocation then.

Swine were maybe used to underscore the filthiness of the whole affair, such as when a host of demons inhabited an entire herd. They were guilty by association, and handily provided one more reason to steer clear of those animals.

Lafcadio

I don't think that jewish society in the first millenium BC was too homogenous, thinking of their warring, bloody history. Proably they were a mix of semites. Therefore, nor their cultural habits were homogenous.

IMHO, we can't say 100% if the swineherd keeper was a jew, or if the swineherd owner was a jew, or more if he was an obedient jew, an "orthodox" jew.

And about facts and their accuracy, ffs, Herodotus was a bigger liar than all Bible writers and he's the "father of history"

andrewcriddle

If you're referring in particular to the story of the swine rushing into the sea in Mark 5 and parallels it seems (see commentaries for problems of the precise location) to be set in the Decapolis region which had a large Gentile population.

Andrew Criddle

gregor

According to Koester (vol. 1), pigs were far and away the largest meat source in the ANE. I suspect they were ubiquitous, notwithstanding Levitical prohibitions.

Toto

Boro Nut and Chili s split off here

Clivedurdle

Could references to swine actually be code for Romans?

Vorkosigan

From my website:

Many New Testament scholars see a reference to a Roman legion occupying Palestine, either Legio 1 Italica, which had as its legionary standard a boar and was in the east in around 67, or more likely Legio X Fretensis, which had among its standards a bull, a tireme, a dolphin, and a boar, and was responsible for occupying Jerusalem after the Jewish War (ended 70 CE), staying into the fourth century. After 70 it was stationed in Gerasa for a while (Winter 1974, p180-181). Against this interpretation is the fact that Gerasa is in Gentile rather than Jewish territory, where the legion would not have been viewed so negatively (Donahue and Harrington 2002, p166). However, in the second century Legio X was made the sole occupying legion of "Syria Palestina" (Hadrian's abusive name for the Jewish homeland), so a later date for Mark might be indicated. In addition to the symbol of the pig itself, Myers (1988, p191) points out that this pericope is saturated with military terminology. The term agele that the writer uses for a "herd" of pigs is often used to denote a gaggle of new recruits for the military, the Greek term epetrepsen ("he dismissed them") echoes a military command, and the pigs' charge (ormesen) into the lake sounds like a military attack.

Cliff Carrington in his Flavian Testament has also pointed out some parallels between this and a passage in Josephus, where Jewish rebels, led by a rebel named Jesus (son of Shaphat), are chased into the nearby lake and killed by Titus' army. Myers (1988, p191) also sees possible Josephean parallels, with both War 4.9.1, and Antiquities 14.15.10. Joseph Atwill (2005) who in a forthcoming book uncovers a number of resonances between the fighting around Gadara and this passage, observes:

"In the Gadara passage in War of the Jews Josephus tells us the number of prisoners taken captive: ‘There were besides two thousand and two hundred taken prisoners’ Josephus also informs us that, ‘ A mighty prey was taken also, consisting of Asses, and sheep, and camels, and oxen’. Notice that there were no swine taken."(p49)

At the general level, enemy soldiers killed by drowning recalls the fate of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea.

Toto

Roman soldiers have been suggested. The boar (pig) was the symbol of the Legio X Fretensis (Consult the link for pictures and more links)