Why do Jews not eat pork?

Religions have guessed at a dietary prohibition in the Bible—but were they all wrong?

If you ask me why you shouldn’t eat pigs, I’d say it’s ’cuz they’re so darn cute. But what does God have against them? It seems He does.

Twice in the law of the Old Testament we read that pigs “unclean,” and eating them is forbidden. It’s been a great theme in religious life for millennia, and a puzzle.

Pigs are an enormously efficient source of food.

It wouldn’t seem smart for a deity to create such an amazing being and then ban it as a source of nutrition. Globally, some 1.5 billion pigs are butchered every year, made into pork, bacon, ham, sausages.

But for observant Jews and Muslims, pork is a big “no.”

Two verses in the Old Testament, Leviticus 11:7 and Deuteronomy 14:8, say the pig is “unclean for you.” So that’s that. God doesn’t give much in the way of explanation.

It’s actually a little more tricky. In Genesis 9:3, it seems to be okay to eat all animals. Then, in Mark 7:19, Jesus seems to say that pigs had become ‘clean’. Could God not make up His mind?