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

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Thus the prodigal son in the parable is said to have fed pigs, Luke 15:15. Learned men on this passage explain that this was done in a region situated outside the land of Judea, just as the Evangelist himself expressed it as a distant region. But the history of the demons obsessing pigs in the borders and region of the Gergesenes and Gadarenes by the permission of Christ is of deeper inquiry. Matthew 8:30; Mark 5:12; Luke 8:32. Some, with BARONIUS, suppose that these peoples were Jews; others, with TOSTATUS ABULENSIS, say that the Jews raised pigs to that end, that they might sell them to foreigners, which, however, falls to pieces of itself when one only considers the most infested hatred of the Jews for that animal, such that it is even held as an anathema to raise pigs. a) In the Gemara: ארור האיש שיגדל חזיר Cursed be the man who shall raise pigs. LIGHTFOOT brought forward the Canons of the Talmudists, by which it is prohibited under curse to nourish pigs, Works, Vol. II, p. 27 and 308. The Jews in the book Kuzari, p. 224, think otherwise. On the contrary, to them (the Karaites) the USE OF SWINE FLESH is a grave sin, even for medicine, although (its use) is in truth among the lighter sins, which are punished by nothing other than scourging (מלקות). Therefore the opinion

a) Yet the celebrated J. BUXTORF was not moved by these reasons in Philological-Theological Collections, § 35, p. 36, to stop defending the opinion of Abulensis and his followers, while he proposes the Jewish nation as very perverse and dissolute, prone to crimes of every kind, and a contemner of many divine precepts, and concludes from there that they very easily violated the decrees of the Talmudists as well. But whoever considers how tenacious the Jews have always been of their own traditions, even while scorning divine laws, will the more willingly bid farewell to this opinion, since that one concerning foreigners living in that region stands on a much firmer footing, not to mention that most of the observations of the celebrated BUXTORF in this book are youthful and tumultuous, from which, however, I would not wish to detract anything from the honor and erudition of this learned man. Both the opinion of Baronius and Abulensis is rejected by ISAAC CASAUBON, Exercises 13, on Baronius, chap. 34, p. 267.