Disquisitio philol. de Iudaeorum odio et abstinentia a porcina, eiusque c ausis (1740) - Page 14

DECKER on Maimonides on Kings, chap. VIII, pp. 115–117, in the Crenian collection.

§. VIII.

Now let us see what weight there is in the arguments brought forward by the most learned SPENCER, who on page 135 gave 6 reasons why the pig was considered so impure and abominable.

1. The First Reason is the primary institution of God, according to the law, because it does not chew the cud, even if it has cloven hooves. Leviticus XI, 7. a)

Reply: This reason, taken from the force of the law, is true, and it is the greatest, which no one alien to the sacred scriptures will deny; but we shall see now that there is little solidity in the remaining five arguments.

2. A certain natural filth and uncleanness of the animal, by which it is infamous and delights in above the rest.

But why did not this filth deter other peoples also from eating them? Since its flesh is so palatable to the human palate, who would believe that filth alone would have called them away from this animal more than from the others, which the Law forbade? Meanwhile, this reason is easily tolerable, and in a way true, since from that filth those pustules and leprosy arise, so that it is not necessary for Spencer to reject the cause taken from vitiligo and leprosy. 3. Af-

a) That same precept is repeated in Deuteronomy XIV, 8. Therefore, the error of FR. VALLESIUS, which he committed in his book On Sacred Philosophy, chap. XVII, p. 116, must be corrected, when he interpreted the passage of Leviticus: And the pig which does not divide the hoof, does NOT chew the cud. He falsely inserted the particle of negation, which is not read in the Hebrew text. For this reason, he also brought forward a passage from Aristotle concerning solid-hoofed pigs to reconcile these two places of the Holy Scriptures, which had previously tormented him for a long time. PLINY refers to pigs of the same type, Natural History, Book XI, 46: In Illyria, in certain places, pigs have solid hooves—pigs are considered to be of both kinds (that is, solid-hoofed and cloven-hoofed). ALEX. ab ALEX. Days of Genius, p. 308.