Disquisitio philol. de Iudaeorum odio et abstinentia a porcina, eiusque c ausis

3. He asserts that the Jews were inflamed with such a great hatred of the pig because they were greatly incited by the customs and affections of other nations—that is, that they learned this from other neighboring peoples, the Phoenicians, Arabs, and Egyptians.

But Spencer here δουλεύει slaves to his hypothesis; for he does not prove with Bochart that the Gentiles were rivals of the Jews in this matter, but that the Jews learned their rites from the Gentiles, and that they embraced the dogmas and customs of the more famous peoples, approved by common consent, with fervent zeal. But those hypotheses of Marsham and Spencer, who attribute all Jewish rites, sacred and profane, to the Gentiles, have long been exploded by the learned world and banished to the farthest Thule. We leave those matters, therefore, to the Britons separated from the world. Authors who have refuted the most learned Spencer through individual chapters have been listed in great abundance by the Most Reverend PFAFF in the dissertation prefixed to the new Tübingen edition.

4. That the flight from and hatred of an animal so filthy was a testimony of a mind addicted to Judaism, and that its eating would be an argument of a man defecting from the law and Jewish worship to Heathenism. He further proves this by the fact that, although vexed by a thousand revilings and torments of the Gentiles, they could never be brought to lay aside their hatred of swine's flesh.

Here he applauds himself wonderfully, and [it is] not what Spencer thinks he has found, as children find [a prize] in a bean, which however collapses of itself; for the Jews had to hate the pig before they were first vexed by any Gentile for that reason. For then they were first forced by the Gentiles to eat swine's flesh, and they suffered extreme things instead, although they had already conceived a hatred of swine's flesh long before, and thus that hatred was prior and was not merely a sign of a man defecting from the Jewish religion.

5. He adds that this animal was used for most of the sacrifices, purifications, feasts, and the sanctification of treaties of the Gentiles, and in magical mysteries.