Jean Soler
“A land of milk and honey” is the biblical phrase for the Promised Land, which is thus symbolically defined in terms of food. But what does the symbol signify, since no one has ever seen a place dripping with milk and honey?
The expression is first used in Exodus 3:8. After leaving Egypt, the Hebrews wandered in the desert for forty years before reaching Canaan. Roaming the parched wasteland with their famished livestock, they dreamed of a place where water would be abundant. Flowing streams would mean fodder for the animals, hence milk for man. In cracks in the rocks, underneath trees, and along riverbanks, flowers would bloom everywhere, so bees could make honey. Not milk or honey but water would flow in the Promised Land, and from this water everything else would come, not just in metaphor but in reality. The Promised Land was the anti-desert.
It was also the anti-Egypt. Egypt, from which the Hebrews had started out, was a fertile country, but it received little rain. All farming was at the mercy of the capricious Nile, which flooded mysteriously every year, normally in midsummer. If the river rose late or not high enough, however, famine ensued. In Pharaoh’s dream, interpreted by Joseph in Genesis 41, “lean” cows—without fat on their bones and unable to produce milk—stood for famine. By contrast, in Palestine water from the heavens supplied springs and streams. Rain was a blessing from on high, proof that the Almighty had selected this land for His chosen people: “But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven” (Deut. 11:11).
A “land of milk and honey”: milk was the basic food of the Hebrews during their years of wandering; as for honey, in a civilization without sugar, honey was what desserts and candies are for us. It symbolized the good life.
When Moses sent twelve men, one from each tribe, to “spy out the land of Canaan,” they returned from their mission with pomegranates and figs and, wonder of wonders, a bunch of grapes so big that it took two men to carry it hanging from a staff (Num. 13:23).
Such was the country of which the Israelites (descendants of Jacob, known in Hebrew as Israel) dreamed while wandering in the desert. Was this Heaven? The Garden of Eden regained? Yes and no. The Bible tells us that Moses, the very man who would lead the Israelites to the Promised Land, had already announced rules restricting or prohibiting the consumption of certain of the foods that awaited them there. For example, the juice of the grape, though it “maketh glad the heart of man” (Ps. 104:15), was declared suspect. Priests would not be allowed to drink wine, not just during services but even beforehand (Lev. 10:9–11). Honey could not be offered up to Yahweh as a sacrifice (Lev. 2:11). Even milk was subject to what might seem at first glance a minor rule but which turns out to be of great significance (it was repeated three times and would be considerably elaborated): “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk” (Ex. 23:19, 34:26; Deut. 14:21).
The most important aspect of the laws of Moses, however, was the prohibition on the eating of certain kinds of meat. Foremost among these proscribed animals, it is commonly believed, even by Jews, was the pig. In fact, pigs are mentioned in the Bible only in conjunction with other animals. It took centuries for the pig to emerge as the most taboo of all. This is usually explained by the fact that poorly cooked pork can serve as a vehicle for transmitting a serious parasitic disease, trichinosis. Underlying this assertion is the hypothesis that the real reason for dietary laws is hygienic. But this hypothesis cannot withstand scrutiny. It assumes that the ancient Hebrews possessed certain medical knowledge when in fact they did not (indeed, they had no doctors) and that they were more perspicacious than their neighbors, the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Greeks, all of whom raised pigs and even sacrificed them to the gods, to whom only the most prized foods were offered. Furthermore, if the hygienic theory were valid for pork, it would also have to explain why other animals were proscribed—the camel, say, which was eaten in those days (as it still is today) by nomadic Arabs. Yet no one claims that there was any danger in eating camel meat. Finally, the Bible says nothing about medical concerns. Pig meat is proscribed, it says, because “the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven footed, yet he cheweth not the cud” (Lev. 11:7). Another explanation must be sought.
Animals That May Be Eaten
If there is a rational basis for the dietary restrictions of the ancient Hebrews, we may be able to discover it by examining the Bible. The proscription of certain animals is discussed in two chapters, Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, the second of which is an abridged version of the first. Moses describes the distinctions invoked to prohibit the eating of certain animals as having been revealed to him by Yahweh on Mount Sinai. No explanatory principle is stated. The proscribed species are described as “impure.” Various fowl are enumerated without commentary. However, criteria are given for distinguishing “pure” animals that live on land: they must have “divided feet” and “cloven hooves” and “chew their cud.” As for the creatures of the sea, they must have “fins” and “scales” in order to be considered pure.
These criteria primarily involve organs of locomotion: the feet of land animals and the fins of fish. Unlike plants, certain animals have the ability to move about on their own. In order to be considered pure, an animal must move. Aquatic creatures that station themselves on the bottom or cling to rocks are therefore proscribed. The Bible gives no examples of these, but Jewish tradition logically prohibits the eating of shellfish. Also branded as impure are land animals without legs: “And every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth shall be an abomination; it shall not be eaten” (Lev. 11:41).
Thus only animals with organs of locomotion may be eaten. Not all are acceptable, however. Animal species are divided into three groups according to the environment in which they live: land, water, air. Each group has characteristic organs corresponding to a specific mode of locomotion: walking for land animals, swimming for fish, flying for birds. To the Hebrews, land animals were made for walking, hence they were equipped with feet; fish were made for swimming, hence their fins; and birds were made for flying, hence their wings.
The connection between animals and their environment was especially strong because God created different species expressly for each element: “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven…. Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind” (Gen. 1:20, 24). In other words, each species belongs to one and only one element, from which it issued and in which it must live, moving about with organs appropriate to that element.
In the Name of Order
Jewish dietary laws turn out to have been associated with religious beliefs that helped to transform a group of related Semitic tribes into a unified people within a few generations of their exodus from Egypt (which is generally said to have occurred in the middle of the thirteenth century B.C.E.). Central to those beliefs was the idea that a particular god—who later became the one true God—entered into a pact with a chosen people. The terms of this pact were to be scrupulously observed by the parties.
When the Israelites began to think of this god as the creator of the universe, probably in about the eighth century B.C.E., it became even more imperative that they respect the order of the world He had created. That order was most fully set forth in the creation myth with which the Bible begins (whose redaction dates from the fifth or sixth century B.C.E.). The creation process began with the world in an undifferentiated state, described in the text as tohu and bohu (“without form and void”). This is not “nothingness,” as is sometimes maintained, since “darkness” and “waters” are already present (Gen. 1:2). The Creation is described as a series of divisions beginning with the separation of light from darkness (“God divided the light from the darkness” [Gen. 1:4]) and proceeding on to the separation of sky from water (“Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters” [Gen. 1:6]). Then dry land is brought forth from the water. Finally, the animals are created, in three categories, each associated with one of these distinct environments.
Hence the distinctions that man observes in nature are not arbitrary. They manifest the design of the Creator. It is a religious duty to respect them and, what is more, a condition for the continuation of the pact by virtue of which the Israelites enjoy the protection of the Almighty. Sacred and profane are thus conflated. Dietary rules have the same importance as other religious requirements. All social activities are subject to a series of obligations and prohibitions, which the Bible associates with the revelation on Mount Sinai and subsumes under the term Law.
The Mosaic Law, set forth in the first five books of the Bible (known in the Jewish tradition as the Torah, or Law), is based on one fundamental idea: that the abolition of distinctions is wrong. An animal that straddles two categories, blurring the distinction between, say, the animals of the air and the animals of the water, may not be eaten. The animals were created “each according to its kind.” Those which belong to different kinds are stamped with the sign of Evil (which enters into the creation myth of Genesis through the serpent).
If man were to eat these mixed creatures, he would become an accomplice of Evil and, incorporating it, would be contaminated by it. He would likewise become an accomplice of Evil if he were to negate the separation of kinds in any way. “Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind,” commands Leviticus 19:19. Furthermore, “Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together” (Deut. 22:10). A field must be planted in either barley or wheat, never in both: “Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed” (Lev. 19:19). A man may wear a garment of wool or a garment of linen but not of both fibers: “Neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee” (Lev. 19:19, Deut. 22:11).
These prohibitions beg comparison with the absolute condemnation of homosexuality (for which the sentence is “abomination”; Lev. 18:22). A human being is either a man or a woman. Being a man, he may not comport himself as a woman, or vice versa, for to do so would be to behave as a “hybrid” creature. This ban extends to clothing: “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment” (Deut. 22:5).
In incest, also punishable by death, two types of distinction are violated. Mother-son incest is prohibited by Leviticus 18:7: “She is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.” This might seem to be tautological: a man may not sleep with his mother because she is his mother. In fact, however, it should be interpreted as saying that no woman may be both mother and wife to the same man, for this would make her a hybrid creature. Sexual relations must not interfere with kinship relations. The order of the world is at issue. Medical considerations are no more germane to the incest taboo than to dietary laws.
Now we are in a better position to understand the only one of these taboos that is repeated three times: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.” This restriction is aimed at avoiding culinary incest: mother and son no more belong together in the same pot than in the same bed. Cooking fire and erotic heat are related: both can blur differences by inducing distinct elements to coalesce. To explain the expanded importance that this dietary rule assumed in postbiblical Judaism, nothing less than the incest taboo will do, the ban on incest being the strongest of all human prohibitions (as anthropologists and psychoanalysts are well aware). Over the centuries, the rule on milk and meat was broadened to prohibit eating not just the meat of a kid cooked in its mother’s milk but any kind of meat cooked in any kind of milk. More than that, to prevent the flesh of mother and child from mixing in the pot or, after eating, in the stomach, combining flesh with milk in the same dish or even in the same meal was also forbidden. If meat was served, no dairy product could accompany it, not even cheese.
Fidelity to Nature
If an animal is to be eaten, it must respect the place assigned to it in the plan of Creation. Furthermore, man, in feeding himself, must not disturb the order of Creation in any way. More than that, even if an animal belongs to a pure species, it may be proscribed if it is somehow anomalous with respect to the norm for that species: “And whosoever offereth a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the Lord to accomplish his vow, or a freewill offering in cattle or sheep, it shall be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no blemish therein. Blind, or broken, or maimed, or having a wen, or scurvy, or scabbed, ye shall not offer these unto the Lord, nor make an offering by fire of them upon the altar unto the Lord” (Lev. 22:21–22).
The point is not simply that only perfect animals were worthy of the perfect God. The “peace offering” was in fact a compulsory sacrifice if one wished to eat meat (Lev. 17:3–5). Thus only animals without physical flaws could be eaten. “Purity” meant that the animal had to be intact.
Hence to eat a castrated ox or sheep was an abomination. To castrate a bull was as grave a matter as mating a stallion with a jenny ass to obtain a mule. Both actions interfered with the will of the Creator.
Another consequence of this respect for Creation was the idea that the closer a plant-derived food was to its original state, the purer it was. Foods processed in such a way as to change their nature might be eaten but could not be used in sacrifices. This explains why honey, of which the Hebrews dreamed in the desert, could not be used as an offering. Honey was not created by God in the form in which it is consumed. The same goes for bread, whose preparation required the use of yeast to transform the natural grain. Flour and unleavened bread were suitable for burnt offerings but not leavened bread. Moreover, during Passover, a holiday that commemorates the exodus from Egypt, the birth of the Israelite nation, and the beginning of the religious year when the Jewish people are called upon to contemplate the intentions of the Creator, only unleavened bread may be eaten.
Rules specifying prohibited offerings mention leaven and honey together with fermented things (Lev. 2:11). Hence it is no surprise to find that priests are enjoined to shun wine and other “strong drink” (Lev. 10:9). Those called to perform sacrifices must keep themselves especially pure. They must be without physical defect or “blemish” (Lev. 21:17), like the animals they will immolate. Furthermore, they must not place any processed food on the altar and, when officiating, must refrain from consuming any strong drink that might affect their judgment.
Suspect Swine
While the foregoing analyses account for many Jewish dietary laws, they do not shed much light on the best known of these, namely, the restriction on eating pork. The swine (both the domestic pig and the wild hog) is a land animal with the cloven hoof that is, as we have seen, a mark of purity. The Bible recognizes this but adds that it “cheweth not the cud” (Lev. 11:7, Deut. 14:8).
To understand what this is all about, we need to return to the distinction between animal and vegetable in Genesis 1:30: “And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat.” This should be interpreted to mean: every green herb and nothing else. In the plan of Creation, animals, which, like man, were given “breathing souls,” were not supposed to kill and devour one another. Carnivores were not part of God’s plan. Hence they were the impurest of the impure. Indeed, the lists of proscribed fowl in Leviticus and Deuteronomy begin with birds of prey: “The eagle, and the ossifrage, and the osprey, and the vulture, and the kite after his kind; every raven after his kind” (Lev. 11:13–15). But how were the carnivores among land animals to be recognized so as not to be eaten? By a simple criterion, namely, rumination: familiar animals like cows and sheep were known to eat nothing but grass, and these animals chew their cud. Hence they are herbivores twice over, and thus doubly pure. Swine, on the other hand, do not ruminate, and this naturally makes them suspect; though indeed herbivores, they are also carnivores. But, as we saw earlier, Hebrew society had an aversion to such hybrid creatures, and this only compounded their impurity.
Having hit on this apparently universal criterion—all ruminants are strict herbivores—the Hebrews might have gone no further. Why, then, did they add the extra criterion of the cloven hoof? Probably because they needed a standard that could be applied to wild animals about whose diet little was known.
Rumination is difficult to observe at a distance. We know this because the Bible classifies hares as ruminants when in fact they are rodents. What very likely happened was that the Hebrews cast about for an anatomical criterion that could serve, on the dead animal, as a visible analogue of the physiological criterion, which can be reliably observed only in domesticated species. They deduced a logical relationship between the nature of the foot and diet: because cloven-hoofed animals lack claws for seizing prey, they were believed to be herbivores. But was this criterion sufficient? Almost, but not quite: it failed to exclude swine, which are omnivorous. Hence both criteria—the cloven hoof and the chewing of the cud—were invoked to identify the pure herbivores.
This prudent definition eliminated some animals that eat only plants, like the hare and camel, because they did not conform exactly to the standard established by the hooves of domestic livestock: a divided foot covered by a cleft shell (“Whatsoever parteth the hoof and is clovenfooted” [Lev. 11:3]). Any deviation from this standard was considered a blemish, and the animal was proscribed.
The Blood Taboo
Yet if an animal belongs to a species declared to be pure and exhibits no abnormality, it may be eaten only if no blood is consumed with its flesh. What is the reason for this?
The key, once again, is to be found in the myth of Creation. The Lord decrees not only what the animals should eat but also what man should eat. Man had this advantage over the animals, that while they were required to eat “green herbs,” he was permitted to enjoy grains and fruits (Gen. 1:29). Yet man was not supposed to eat living things any more than animals were. Adam and Eve were created vegetarians. In addition, they were forbidden to partake of the fruit of two trees. But they violated this prohibition after the serpent tempted them by saying, “Ye shall be as gods.” Then “the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” (Gen. 3:22).
In order to grasp the import of this passage, one needs to know that the Jewish religion, unlike religions that assert the proximity of man to divinity and seek to meld the former with the latter, insists that man is separated from God by an abyss. Indeed, the Ten Commandments state that God cannot be represented. Life is wholly God’s possession (He is sometimes called the Living God, and oaths were sworn on “the life of Yahweh”). Men and animals received but a temporary spark (the idea that there might be life after death did not appear in Judaism until a thousand years after Moses; it was a postbiblical conception).
Now we can understand why Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat of the tree of life and why they were forbidden to eat meat. Had they killed beasts in order to eat them, they would have encroached on the preserve of the Living God. Only the deity who gave life could take it away. The commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” though intended to prohibit murder, actually stemmed from a more primitive taboo against killing any living creature, man or animal. Not until after the Flood, which marks a new beginning for humankind, almost a second Creation, is man permitted to eat meat (Gen. 9:3). This permission is granted not as a reward but in recognition of the evil instinct that dwells within the human breast (Gen. 8:21).
Even so, eating meat was permissible only if two rules were respected. The first was that the eating of meat had to be accompanied by a ritual sacrifice, for otherwise the killing of the beast would count as murder. If a man bent on eating meat failed to observe the prescribed ritual, he would be killed just as the animal was. The law of retribution, “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Ex. 21:23–24), would apply to him. “He hath shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people” (Lev. 17:4). Second, the blood of the slaughtered animal, which for the Hebrews was the principle of life, was supposed to be poured on the altar as an offering to God. What the Living God gave had to be returned to Him. When God granted Noah permission to eat animals, He added: “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat” (Gen. 9:4). Thus the fundamental distance between man and God was reaffirmed. The taboo against eating blood is one of the most powerful in Judaism. Even today, for meat to be kosher, it must be drained of every last drop of blood.
Deciphering these Hebraic dietary laws reveals the logic behind them but tells us nothing about the degree to which their elaboration over the course of several centuries was a conscious or unconscious process. There can be no doubt that the people who honored these laws did not know or try to find out why they existed. For them, to obey the law was enough to demonstrate their faith in God.
There are other ways to honor God, however. What was the purpose of all these rules about eating? The Bible is explicit: “I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people. Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean; and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean” (Lev. 20:24–25).
Given a world order based on a series of “separations,” the Hebrew people were enjoined not to mix with other peoples. “Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations” (Num. 23:9). Hence the Israelites were not allowed to share meals with goyim. The food they were required to eat isolated them. The prohibition of “impure” foods played the same role as the prohibition of “mixed” marriages, that is, marriages between Hebrews and non-Hebrews (Deut. 7:3). Ultimately, it mattered little what kind of diet was prescribed, provided it was different from what neighboring tribes ate. That said, it remains true that the criteria selected were not arbitrary: they were based on a conception of the world that gave the Hebrew people their identity.
The diet of the Israelites, then, was not shaped by nutritional, medical, or gastronomic considerations. It was, as Leonardo da Vinci said of painting, essentially a “mental thing.”
