Introduction
Commentators have long noted that God's commandment to Noah to bring all animals onto the ark exists in two intertwined versions in the biblical text. In the first version, Noah is told to bring two of every species: “And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female” (Gen 6:19 nrsv). In the second version, however, the animal kingdom is divided into pure and impure species: “Take with you seven pairs of all pure animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not pure, the male and its mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth” (Gen 7:2–3).Footnote 1 Noah then sacrifices some of the pure animals and birds after the flood (Gen 8:20).
The second version raised a number of questions for ancient and late ancient commentators, both Christian and Jewish. Why was Noah commanded to take two of some animals and seven of others? The biblical text seems to assume that Noah and the readers already know of a distinction between pure and impure animals, and does not explain in detail which species are meant, nor how Noah should distinguish between them. Yet the distinction between pure and impure animals is revealed to Moses only later, as part of the dietary laws in Leviticus 11. What, then, may be the function of this pre-Mosaic commandment? Does it imply that the impure animals were prohibited to Noah, and perhaps to the rest of his generation? Many Greek and Syriac exegetes of the first millennium, as well as a large number of Jewish sources, refer to these questions from various angles.Footnote 2
These questions were not only exegetical conundrums. The exegetical tradition on Noah's animals relates to a larger complex of ideas discussed by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers: the relationship between abstinence from certain animals as food and conceptions of nature.Footnote 3 This issue may be divided into three topics. The first concerns the identification of the dietary laws current in primeval and therefore “natural” and universal settings such as the garden of Eden, Noah's ark, or Abraham's tent, settings prior to the revelation at Sinai. According to most Jewish and Christian exegetes, Adam, in Gen 1:29, was allowed to eat of all the grasses and trees, but was implicitly forbidden the flesh of animals.Footnote 4 Following the flood, permission was granted to eat animals: “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything” (Gen 9:3 nrsv); their blood, however, was prohibited (Gen 9:4). Many Christian writers, and some Jewish ones, saw this verse as the basis for permitting all foods to non-Jews.Footnote 5 The second topic is related to the nature of animals: Do forbidden or impure animals have any essential characteristics that make them unhealthy or morally dangerous? In their more intellectual forms, discussions of this issue drew on tropes known from Greco-Roman disputes on the moral and spiritual status of animals.Footnote 6 The third topic concerns human nature: Do humans have a natural and essential inclination to abominate certain animals as foods and to be disgusted by them?
The relationship between dietary laws and nature had direct implications for interreligious polemic and boundary marking. For Jewish and Christian commentators in late antiquity, if certain dietary laws could be shown to reflect or conform to nature or to have been in force in primeval settings, this would indicate that they embodied universal and objective values. As Jews, Christians, and Muslims all practiced different dietary laws and frequently rejected the restrictions of the other religions as arbitrary, artificial, immoral, or theologically wrong, being able to demonstrate the universality of particular dietary laws would have clear polemical value. In practice, however, the interest of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers in deploying such polemical and exegetical strategies was historically contingent. For example, rather than naturalize dietary laws, some writers sought to enhance their value as identity markers by emphasizing the exclusive relevance of these laws to their own religious communities; this is seen especially in Jewish writers. In this article, I shall trace the exegetical tradition on Noah's animals in late ancient and early medieval texts in Greek and Syriac and the parallel Jewish traditions, and contextualize it in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theories on the relationship between nature and dietary law. I shall argue that the eighth century saw a shift in Jewish and Christian thought towards a more universalist discourse on impurity, in which arguments from nature were paramount. This shift may have been caused by the influence of Islamic discourse concerning dietary laws, which was essentially universalist, perceiving God's precepts as obligating all humans.
Nature and Law in Christian Exegesis of the Biblical Dietary Laws
The dietary laws of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, which designate certain animals impure and prohibit them as food, were widely perceived by early Christian writers to be one of the most salient features of Jewish religion and were therefore one of the foci of intellectual and practical debates between Jews and Christians in the first millennium.Footnote 7 The widespread Christian view that no animal is essentially impure and that all foods are permitted was typically supported by Jesus's declaration “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth” (Matt 15:11 nrsv).Footnote 8 Dietary observances were seen as a ritual and fleshy aspect of the Jewish law, which had been abrogated. Already from the early second century, the position that certain animals or foods are impure was linked by Christians not only to those who upheld the Jewish dietary laws, but also to groups that advocated extreme alimentary asceticism. These groups were stigmatized by the major Christian writers as heretical, and their asceticism was taken to imply that such animals were created not by the good God, but by an evil creator; this lent a theological foundation to the Christian rejection of dietary laws.Footnote 9 True impurity, argues Origen, is not a matter of nature (φύσις), but of opinions (δόγματα); it derives not from the essence of animals, which do not share moral statuses with humans, but from the human mind.Footnote 10 According to many Christian writers, the Jewish position was the opposite: the dietary laws were based on an essential and natural distinction between different animals and foods.
The Christian position against the practice of dietary laws, however, was not as clear-cut as this. First, in practice, many Christians adhered to certain dietary laws, some of them similar to the Jewish dietary laws: abstinence from blood and food offered to idols were the most common observances.Footnote 11
Second, since most Christians upheld the validity of the Old Testament, the prohibitions of Leviticus had to be explained in a way that neutralized their practical significance. Three main types of explanations were proposed: allegorical, ascetic, and historical. Allegorical solutions interpreted the pure and impure animals of Leviticus as symbolizing various kinds of good or evil people. Such interpretations were found already in Jewish Hellenistic authors and were developed by Clement and Origen of Alexandria, Novatian, Augustine, and many other Latin and Greek authors; they were later dominant in the exegesis of medieval Latin writers.Footnote 12 These writers frequently pointed to certain traits of the impure animals (fierceness, sexual promiscuity, etc.) that made them suitable for symbolic interpretation. Novatian, who wrote a whole tract dedicated to the dietary laws, explains this through an argument ad maiorem: “If what an animal has from its own nature [ex natura] is stigmatized as a sort of defilement [quasi inquinamentum], then the same thing is more blameworthy when found in man against his nature [contra naturam] . . . a perverted will—never nature—always assumes the burden of guilt.”Footnote 13 In animals, vices can only be a “sort of defilement,” since they are natural.
The ascetic solutions of Christians generalized the biblical dietary laws by seeing them as pointers for a correct dietary regime rather than as injunctions on particular foods. They thus upheld the laws’ general practical validity while undermining their application according to Jewish law. For the few writers utilizing these solutions, the dietary laws did have a direct meaning, and the impure animals were not only symbols of certain vices but examples for types of food that should not be eaten for reasons inherent in the animals themselves. Thus Clement of Alexandria explains that swine and fish without scales are fat and fattening, and therefore forbidden in order to “discipline us” and “check our desires.”Footnote 14 Origen finds a different natural reason for the dietary laws: in Against Celsus, he argues that “the most rapacious wild beasts and other very wicked animals” are especially prone to possession and utilization by demons. The demons choose these animals because of their natural vices: “animals of this sort have something about them resembling evil, and although it is not evil yet it is like it.” According to Origen, Moses “understood the different natures of animals [φύσεις κατανοήσας ζῴων διαφόρους],” and prohibited those frequented by demons.Footnote 15
Many Greek and Syriac writers proposed historical solutions. These writers argued that God indeed commanded the dietary laws to the Israelites, but that they were a response to the specific historical situation of the exodus from Egypt and thus do not obligate Christians. Popular options were that the dietary laws were a punishment for the sin of the golden calfFootnote 16 or that they were attempts to educate the Israelites not to worship the zoomorphic gods of Egypt.Footnote 17 The distinction found in Genesis 7 between pure and impure animals would appear to challenge this historical reconstruction; it demonstrates that long before the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, animals were already divided into pure and impure categories.
However, some of these writers found natural reasons for the temporary prohibition of the impure animals. Justin Martyr, the earliest Christian exponent of a historical solution, says that these animals were “impure, harmful, and lawless [ἀκαθάρτων καὶ ἀδίκων καὶ παρανόμων].”Footnote 18 For Justin, though the prohibition of the animals only arises in a certain situation and for a specific nation, the natural impurity of the animals—linked to their violence and disregard for the natural law—is a permanent situation.Footnote 19 Though Justin does not mention Noah, his identification of impurity with harmfulness was to provide the way forward for the Christian understanding of Noah's animals.
Eusebius of Emesa, a fourth-century exegete, goes further. Following a citation of the historical solution, he adds another interpretation:
And the second reason is that common nature [κοινὴ φύσις] frequently abominates taking [animals] which are large or ugly or which eat carcasses, due to a preconception of aversion [πρόληψιν μίσους]. Therefore that which custom [συνήθεια] took before [to be abominated], the law did not overturn.Footnote 20
The dietary laws were therefore simply codifications of common sense, the natural sense of repugnance and disgust all people experience. At the same time, they were a codification of the particular customs of Israel. This natural interpretation was certainly not accepted by all. Thus Eusebius's younger and better-known contemporary, John Chrysostom, expounded to his congregation: “The swine therefore is pure. Why then was it forbidden as impure? It was not impure by nature; for, ‘all things are pure.’ Nothing is more impure than a fish, inasmuch as it even feeds upon human flesh. But it was permitted and considered pure. Nothing is more▒impure▒than a bird, for it eats worms. . . .”Footnote 21 Chrysostom appears to be responding here to an argument that the dietary laws have a universal or natural basis, since pure animals have a clean diet. While we cannot know whether Chrysostom is responding here to a contemporary Jewish argument, to the exegesis of Eusebius of Emesa, or to some other textual tradition, the first option is certainly possible in light of the known interaction of Christians with Jews in contemporary Antioch.
Origen's claim that impurity cannot be essential or natural must therefore be qualified. Many Christian writers, including Origen himself, did see some natural distinctions between animals and believed that these distinctions had implications for their dietary status, at least in the past. While Origen enlists demons to explain how this impurity is manifested, Justin and Eusebius of Emesa simply say that such animals are, or were, impure or disgusting.
Noah's Animals in Christian Exegesis
Origen is the author of the earliest extant attempt to understand the basis for Noah's distinction between pure and impure animals and to integrate it into a general conception of impurity. Asking how Noah knew about the distinction between pure and impure animals before the law had been given, Origen answers: “This should be understood according to what is said (Rom 2:14): ‘Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law’; Noah knew this law by his nature [ἀπὸ τοῦ φύσει νόμου ἠπίστατο ὁ Νῶε].”Footnote 22
Origen implements the “law by nature” idea in a gloss on Gen 9:3, which commands Noah that “every crawling thing that lives shall be food for you.” This verse was usually taken to permit the eating of all animals (see above n. 5), but Origen claims that it does not include “the snake family—for they are considered wild animals—but only those that are disposed to be eaten by nature [ἀλλ’ ὅσα ἐσθίεσθαι πέφυκεν], crickets and grasshoppers and the like.”Footnote 23 Crickets and grasshoppers are permitted by Leviticus while snakes are prohibited (Lev 11:22, 42); Origen is therefore suggesting that the nature of the animals permitted by Leviticus is to be eaten, and moreover that Noah and his generation practiced the Levitical law, at least concerning reptiles and “wild animals.” This gloss is especially striking as it clearly contradicts the simple meaning of the verse.
Origen's suggestion that the dietary laws could be known without a special revelation accords with his unique demonological explanation of animal impurity described above. Moses gained his knowledge of the connection between demons and impure animals “either because he had learnt from God about them and about the daemons related to each animal, or because he had discovered about them himself as he advanced in wisdom.”Footnote 24 If Moses understood this fact of nature, Noah could certainly have done so as well. However, Origen does not mention the demonological theory in these fragments, and it is more likely that he was thinking of a simpler distinction between wild and domestic animals.
Both Jewish and Christian thinkers advance the theory that the patriarchs had some innate understanding of God's law. Philo utilizes it widely in his attempts to universalize the moral import of the lives of the patriarchs and authorize the Mosaic laws.Footnote 25 Justin Martyr and Irenaeus build upon this tradition to undermine the authority of the Mosaic law as a holistic entity: the ritual part of the law was not performed by the patriarchs, who were nevertheless righteous because they performed its moral precepts, which are universal and still binding upon Christians.Footnote 26 In the case of Noah's animals, however, the matter is not that of a moral commandment, but a distinctly ritual issue, and it is thus surprising to find Origen invoking human nature to support it. Furthermore, the upshot of Origen's explanation is that impurity is in certain cases a natural phenomenon.
The difficulty was felt by John Chrysostom, who adapted Origen's explanation to the problem of Noah's animals. In his discussion in the Homilies on Genesis, Chrysostom attempts to bridge the nature-culture divide—to demonstrate that impurity is artificial and a matter of custom, but yet part of God's plan for the world:
To this point this distinction had never been made which Moses later prescribed for the Jews. So how did he come to know of it? By himself, under the impulse of the teaching implanted in his own nature [ἐν τῇ φύσει ἐναποκειμένης], and later at the dictate of reason [λογισμὸς] as well. You see, nothing of what was made by God is impure. . . . Now, however, nature under its own impulse [ἡ φύσις ἀφ’ ἑαυτῆς κινουμένη] gave evidence of this distinction. For proof that this is true, consider even now, I ask you, how in some places people abstain from some things as impure and not customary [ἀκαθάρτων καὶ μὴ νενομισμένων], while others in their turn partake of them, custom [συνηθείας] leading them to do so. So in this way in the present case also, innate awareness [ἡ ἐναποκειμένη γνῶσις] taught the good man what was useful for nourishment, on the one hand, and what was impure, on the other—not in fact but in people's opinion. On what basis, tell me, do we regard the ass as impure, even though it feeds on nothing but hay, whereas we consider the other kinds of animals suitable for eating even though their food includes impure items? This is the way the knowledge endowed by God on our nature becomes a teacher in these matters.Footnote 27
For Chrysostom, Noah's “pure” and “impure” animals correspond to animals that should and should not be eaten. His explanation distinguishes between animal nature, which cannot be the source for valid dietary laws, and human nature, which can. Chrysostom implies that Noah's distinction is a result of Noah's own cultural preferences and not a general human rule; at the same time, however, he emphasizes that the distinction is God-given, probably since he understands it to correspond to the laws of Leviticus.Footnote 28 He thus attempts to hold to both sides of the argument and to derive Noah's distinction both from culture and from nature in order to adapt Scripture to his belief in the artificiality of impurity.
Neither Origen nor Chrysostom provides any criteria for Noah's distinction; they appear to assume that Noah's impure animals were those of Leviticus. Ephrem, the father of Syriac exegesis, is the first to provide such criteria: “he called the gentle animals [besimta] pure [dekhita] and the vicious ones [sruhita] impure [dela dakhin]; for even in the beginning God had multiplied the pure ones.”Footnote 29 Ephrem does not clarify whether this gentle/vicious distinction corresponds to the pure/impure distinction of Leviticus or whether it is independent—or indeed whether the distinction has a dietary meaning or is simply a way of designating these animals. The biblical text does not afford any basis for this exegesis: the Syriac Peshitta translation here uses the same word to refer to both types of animals, be’ira, corresponding to the Hebrew behemah, both of which usually mean “domestic animal” or simply “animal.”
The third- and fourth-century Christian exegetes who have been discussed until now do not appear to have had a strong polemical motivation, but rather a relatively straightforward exegetical motivation to solve the textual problem of the source of Noah's distinction. The lack of an anti-Jewish polemical motivation is especially seen in Origen, who takes a somewhat dangerous “natural” position on dietary impurity. In the eighth century, however, these traditions were used much more radically and polemically by Syriac writers. This direction is taken most clearly in The Disputation of Sergius the Stylite against a Jew, a text purporting to document a dialogue between a Christian ascetic and a Jew in the region of Emesa in West Syria.Footnote 30
The Disputation's discussion of the Jewish dietary laws is extensive and intricate, part of a general debate between Sergius and the Jew on purity and impurity. The Jew's main objective in this debate is to prove that impurity is rooted in nature, and not in a specific revelation for Jews. He therefore highlights two issues concerning the status of the pig, both of which are direct challenges to the perception of impurity as artificial: the pig as a disgusting and non-hygienic animal, and the pig as impure according to Noah's distinction between pure and impure. Eating pork was probably a significant dietary difference between Jews and Christians in eighth-century Syria;Footnote 31 moreover, the perception of the prohibition of the pig as the central Jewish dietary law is common already in pre-Christian Greco-Roman sources and continued to be popular throughout late antiquity.Footnote 32 Sergius's objective is to prove the traditional Christian opinion on impurity: that it does not originate from nature but from the human mind.
First, the Jew reasons that the pig should be abhorred due to its appearance and food, i.e., its natural behavior: “Why do you eat the pig which is the most defiled and impure [mesib wetame] among the animals, and which the law also declares more impure and defiled than all animals. And also its appearance is abominable [nadid] to look upon. For its food is every impure thing on the face of the earth.”Footnote 33 Sergius responds with an answer modeled on that of Chrysostom's Homilies on Titus: aesthetic and hygienic principles cannot be the basis for prohibiting the pig, since pigs indeed eat disgusting things, but so do chickens and certain fish, which are permitted, while camels, donkeys, and horses eat pure grass but are forbidden to Jews.Footnote 34 Chrysostom's writings were widely translated, read, and used by late ancient Syriac speakers.Footnote 35
Next, the Jew raises the challenge of the distinction between pure and impure animals entering Noah's ark. Sergius responds as follows:
When they entered into the ark he called the pure by name [kara bishma dekhita], that is, the harmless [temimta], which are exploited for food both by men and those [animals] which are impure [dela dakhin], namely, the wild, rapacious, and bold [hableta wehasifta] beasts, which even until today are inferior in fertility—the lions, the leopards, and the rest. And again, behold, we see that these which are food are fertile. Even this pig, whose name is detestable in your sight, is not placed on the side of the impure by Noah's action. For it is not reckoned with the wild beast but with the driven and those which are eaten. And because it is exploited more than all animals, so God has increased its fertility. By this the creator has testified concerning it that it is not impure for men's food, for those whose conscience accepts it.Footnote 36
Ephrem's exegesis is at the core of this response, but it is much expanded. While for Ephrem Leviticus and Genesis are not clearly differentiated, here Noah's pure animals are pointedly not those of Leviticus 11 and can therefore include the pig. Sergius argues that the words “pure” (dekhita) and “impure” (dela dekhita) can have a technical, ritual meaning that indicates the essence of the animal, as in Leviticus, or a more general meaning of acceptance or opprobrium as food that is only its “name,” and that this latter usage is the one of Genesis. Thus the fact that the impurity of animals in Genesis is natural does not imply the naturalness of the impurity of animals in Leviticus. Sergius's alternative meaning of dietary purity and impurity is built on a perfectly circular argument: animals called “pure” by Noah are those that are eaten (by contemporary Christians), and therefore the animals that these Christians eat are those that Noah called pure. Noah is cast in the image of an eighth-century Christian, who would be ready to load the ark with seven pairs of pigs.
Building on Ephrem's short comment, Sergius establishes a scientific measure for his dietary purity system: highly fertile animals must have been created to be domesticated and eaten. The notion itself is ancient: Herodotus claims that, thanks to the wisdom of divine providence, timid animals that are a prey to others produce many offspring so the species are preserved, while savage and dangerous creatures are unfruitful.Footnote 37 The connection between Noah's animals and the fertility arguments is explained more satisfactorily by Theodore Bar Koni in his Book of Scholia, written at the end of the eighth century. Theodore says that Noah distinguished between the animals “by their number, few or many . . . those which were created seven by seven were pure—those which we eat were called pure, in comparison to those which are not eaten, all the carnivores—and the two by two impure, having taught us this by the terms of purity and impurity.”Footnote 38 It is not only that Noah was commanded to take seven of all edible animals, but rather that the edible animals were created “seven by seven,” naturally making them more numerous.Footnote 39
A commentary on Genesis attributed to Ephrem and extant in Armenian, probably written in Syriac in the eighth century,Footnote 40 provides a very similar explanation to that of Sergius:
It is not that [God] had separated for [Noah] the pure from the impure. Rather, those [animals] that by habit could not satisfy their needs and [those animals] at which they were disgusted and abhorred [God] called “impure.” And those [animals] which were acceptable in their minds—I speak here of Noah and those who were like him—these [God] designated “pure.”Footnote 41
At the same time, pseudo-Ephrem cites a natural basis for this customary distinction: the pure are “those who will not eat the flesh of their companions,” while the impure are the “savage ones.” As in Sergius, the proof is found in numbers: “if you do not believe this, see which type is more numerous, those that are eaten or those that are not eaten: be convinced by what you can observe and not by the word.”Footnote 42 Though pseudo-Ephrem does not mention the pig or a Jewish interlocutor, this last phrase indicates that his motive, too, is polemical: the writer imagines himself as arguing with another reader of Scripture who would prefer to be convinced “by the word” and think that God had distinguished pure from impure as a dietary law, and had not just used conventional language.
The Christian exegetes surveyed in this section all express a tension among animal nature, human nature, and dietary law. On the one hand, the biblical dietary laws should not be rooted in nature, as that would indicate an essential impurity in creation; on the other hand, linking contemporary dietary laws to nature and to the Bible makes them less arbitrary. While Origen is prepared to hint that Noah's common sense may have led him to keep the Levitical dietary laws, later commentators are more careful and attempt to extract Noah from adherence to these laws, and his animals from possessing essential dietary purity and impurity. Chrysostom attempts to endow Noah's customary distinctions with divine approval, and thus to indicate that it was these distinctions, and not essential differences in animals, that were the source of the impurity. Ephrem does locate natural criteria, but in order to support a concept of purity and impurity independent from that of Leviticus, which may not be dietary at all. Eighth-century Syriac writers use these same natural criteria to form the basis for an alternative dietary regime to that of the Jewish dietary laws.
Rabbinic and Post-Rabbinic Jewish Sources
Rabbinic texts, as opposed to Hellenistic-era Greek Jewish texts, do not show much interest in linking divine law to nature: “Whether nature bears out the truth of the law is neither here nor there: what matters is the divine commandment.”Footnote 43 This is commensurate with the tendency of many rabbinic texts to limit the significance of the commandments to Israel rather than to universalize their import.Footnote 44 This is true also of the dietary laws: they are described as benefitting Jews who fulfill them in the world to come, rather than in the present life,Footnote 45 and neither animal nature nor human nature is invoked to support them. To the extent that explanations are provided for the dietary laws, these are social or symbolic, not hygienic or aesthetic.Footnote 46 One saying cited in the Babylonian Talmud appears to claim that Gentiles are in fact healthier because they eat impure animals.Footnote 47
Nevertheless, there are some counterexamples in rabbinic texts, which attempt to show that the impurity of certain foods is linked to natural distinctions and to inherent disgust. A saying cited in the name of late third-century rabbis provides a natural moral reason for the selection of animals used for sacrifice in the Bible: “God said, the bull is pursued by the lion, the goat by the leopard, the sheep by the wolf; do not sacrifice to me of the pursuers but of the pursued.”Footnote 48 In the Babylonian Talmud (redacted between the 6th and 8th cents.), the importance of the prohibition of consuming crawling animals is explained by the claim that “they are disgusting [
] to eat,”Footnote 49 and Gentiles are said to be “polluted” (
) because they eat abominations and crawling animals.Footnote 50 These sayings, however, merely indicate that Jews saw prohibited animals as disgusting, not that this disgust was perceived to be the reason for their prohibition.
If there are few attempts in rabbinic literature to root the dietary laws in nature, we may also expect few arguments for the validity of these laws from primeval settings such as Noah's ark.Footnote 51 Indeed, though the question of Noah's animals does come up, it is rarely linked to the practice of the dietary laws. For most Amoraic rabbinic sources (4th–6th cents.), the challenge is not to anchor impurity in nature, but rather the opposite: to restrict impurity laws to Jews by denying Noah, seen as an archetypical Gentile, any involvement in them.Footnote 52 Here, the concern for maintaining Israel's uniqueness appears to overcome polemical interests. However, in poetic texts of a similar period (5th–7th cents.), in a later midrash (8th cent.), and in even later Karaite tracts (9th–10th cents.), polemical interests appear to come to the fore, and we find arguments for the naturalness of the dietary laws linked to the primeval context of creation or of Noah's ark, without regard for the problem this may create for the status of the dietary laws as intended for Jews only.
What may be the earliest tradition on Noah's animals is handed down in the Palestinian Talmud, edited by the end of the fourth century; this tradition does attribute to Noah's time a differentiation between pure and impure animals, but regarding sacrifice and not human consumption. Seeking proof for a tradition that only pure species were allowed to be sacrificed on a private altar, the Talmud turns to Noah: “R. Abba, the son of Rabbi Papi, R. Yehoshua of Sikhnin in the name of R. Levi: Noah concluded a teaching from a teaching. He said, I was already told ‘all is given to you as green grass’; for what purpose did the verse require a large number of pure animals? It must have been for sacrifice!”Footnote 53 For this tradition, although Noah infers that God requires pure animals for his own “consumption,” a special diet is not yet required of humans. Noah's animals are not utilized for the universalization of the dietary laws, even though Noah is said to recognize the distinction between them.
Another tradition is cited in the Babylonian Talmud in the name of third- and early fourth-century figures. Here the Talmud directly addresses the meaning of “pure” and “impure” in Noah's time: Footnote 54
But were there pure and impure at that time? R. Shmuel son of Nahmani said in the name of R. Yonatan: [the pure were] of those that would be made pure in the future [
].
How did they know [which would be pure]? According to [the saying of] R. Hisda, who said: he passed them in front of the ark; any [animal] which was accepted by the ark was known to be pure, and if not—it was known to be impure.
R. Abahu said, the verse reads: “and those who came, male and female”: those who came by their own will.Footnote 55
Although R. Yonatan's answer identifies Noah's animals with those of Leviticus, it would appear that their purity or impurity did not have any dietary implications for Noah or his generations; such implications would only be actualized “in the future.” As opposed to the tradition in the Palestinian Talmud, R. Hisda and R. Abahu do not give Noah's reason any role in choosing the animals. Future impurity was simply revealed by God through the agency of the ark or the animals themselves, and human reason or animal nature did not determine it in any way.
In texts of a poetic genre and probably of later provenance, we start to find an assertion of the natural background of the dietary laws together with a particularistic attitude. The earliest evidence of such an attitude is found in the piyyutim of Yose ben Yose, written in the fifth or sixth century, which note a distinction between pure and impure animals already at the time of their creation.Footnote 56 The main emphasis in these descriptions is that dietary distinctions were created for Israel, who will be rewarded in the eschaton for keeping them: “you marked out scaled fish for those who acknowledge you [=Israel] / and the bariach serpent for an everlasting meal . . . you made known dietary signs for purity / and to the righteous assembly you prepared the behemoth”;Footnote 57 or, “he made good things as food for the chosen people / and all as grass for those he despised.”Footnote 58 In these texts, the dietary laws are a token of Israel's uniqueness and closeness to God. Gentiles can eat whatever they wish, and this expresses their distance from God. Although the dietary laws are primeval, this does not serve to demonstrate the universal potential of the laws, but rather to emphasize God's choice of Israel as an event deeply rooted in biblical cosmology and encoded in creation.
The traditions found in piyyut form the backdrop for the approach of the Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer, an eighth-century midrash written in the vicinity of Palestine. In his retelling of the story of Genesis, the author of this text separates the creation of pure and impure animals, without special mention of Israel.Footnote 59 Furthermore, the text comments on Noah's animals, claiming that prior to the flood impure animals were more numerous than pure ones; God, wishing to reverse the situation, commanded Noah to take more of the pure animals.Footnote 60 Here the distinction between pure and impure is assigned a primeval, natural context, and its significance is not restricted to Jews. Still, even here there is no claim that Noah actually maintained a dietary distinction between the animals. For both the Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer and for the piyyutim cited, the existence of primeval and natural distinctions between animals goes hand in hand with a particularist conception of the dietary laws.
The universalist trend becomes significant only in texts written by ninth- and tenth-century Karaites. The Karaites were a Jewish sect that flourished in the East in this period, who believed only in the written Torah and rejected rabbinic interpretations of it. Among their writers, we find a sustained discussion of the status of the commandments before the revelation at Sinai, with a multiplicity of views.Footnote 61 Some believed that the whole Torah was already known to Adam, others that Adam knew only the more “rational” commandments; still others thought that the commandments were revealed little by little, according to the needs of each generation. A fragment of an anonymous Karaite commentary found in the Cairo Genizah, dated to the ninth century, uses Noah's animals as proof that the dietary laws were already commanded to Adam: “The purity and the impurity of animals and birds is ancient; from the day Adam was created he knew what is pure and what is impure, as is written, ‘of the pure animals you should take seven each.’”Footnote 62 Another fragment reads the verse “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you” (Gen 9:3) against its simple meaning, and glosses “that lives” as “that is pure”;Footnote 63 it thus restricts Noah's food to pure animals only.
To my knowledge, these fragments are the only Jewish sources of the period that place the distinction between pure and impure already in Adam's time and accordingly claim an obligation for Gentiles to keep some of the dietary laws. For the writers of these texts, naturalness and universalism are necessarily linked to each other.
The sources surveyed here demonstrate that, as opposed to Christians, Jewish writers of the first millennium rarely saw a need to link the purity or impurity of Noah's animals with either human or animal nature. Though the exegetical difficulty they encountered was similar to that encountered by Christians, they typically preferred a solution from revelation rather than reason or nature, making Noah not a precedent for dietary laws but a temporary anomaly, occasioned by the need to sacrifice pure animals after the flood. While later sources do have a tendency to anchor Jewish dietary laws in the facts of creation, this does not entail a universal application of the laws but rather validates Jewish practice. The more polemical Christian perspective on the dietary laws in eighth-century texts is paralleled to some extent by the link to nature found in contemporary Jewish texts; however, even these later texts are more reserved, and certainly less explicitly polemical, than the arguments of the Jew portrayed in the Disputation of Sergius.
Islamic Sources
The turn to nature for supporting dietary positions in eighth-century Christian and Jewish texts should be seen against the background of the religious upheaval of the period: the rise and spread of Islam, which saw itself as both continuing and challenging Judaism and Christianity.
In early Islam, as in Christianity, dietary laws were linked to conceptions of human nature, animal nature, and primeval precedent. The universalist aspirations of Islam, for which Islamic revelation and law is intended for all humankind, made such natural foundations expedient.Footnote 64 Islamic dietary law is based on the precepts of the Qur’an, which prohibits the consumption of blood, improperly slaughtered meat, animals not slaughtered in God's name, and pigs (2:173, 5:3, 6:145, 16:115). Among these, only the pig is said to be abominable (rijs, 6:145), and it is the only animal categorically prohibited for consumption. Though the special status of the pig would indicate that it was seen as naturally impure, this is nowhere spelled out.Footnote 65 However, the Qur’an emphasizes that livestock were created by God for food, for clothing, and as beasts of burden (16:5–8, 39:6), and that only those that were created for food should be eaten (6:142–3). The sea, too, was created to produce tender meat (16:15). Thus the facts of creation are linked directly to Qur’anic dietary conceptions, even if not to all dietary law.
As in Christian tradition, the Qur’an claims that the Levitical dietary laws are not rooted in nature: they are God's punishment (4:160, 6:147)Footnote 66 and human rather than divine: “All food was lawful to the Israelites, except what Israel made unlawful for himself before the Torah was revealed.”Footnote 67 In any case, here the Jewish laws are the result of a specific and temporary occasion and do not reflect universal law; natural Qur’anic law is therefore opposed to artificial Jewish law.
Eighth- and ninth-century legal discussions of dietary issues in Islam examine possible expansions to the list of prohibited animals. Thus, all Islamic legal schools agree that wild animals “with a canine” and domestic asses are prohibited, with a near-consensus on the mule, birds of prey “with a talon,” creeping animals, serpents, and foxes.Footnote 68 These prohibitions are frequently based on the prophetic tradition without much explanation, but when discussing more controversial cases, certain reasons are invoked. This allows some insight into possible considerations behind the prohibitions, some of which are quite similar to ideas found in the Christian tradition.
First, carnivorousness is clearly the criterion behind the prohibition on wild animals with canine teeth and birds with claws, and this is brought out by Al-Shafi’i, an important jurist of the late eighth century.Footnote 69 Second, a scriptural basis for further prohibitions is found in the Qur’an's general statement that the Prophet “makes lawful the good things [al-tayibat]” for the believers, but prohibits “the disgusting ones [al-khaba’ith].”Footnote 70 The lack of determination as to which foods are “disgusting” allowed widely varying interpretations. Al-Shafi’i explains that this should be read in its historical context: the “disgusting” things are those that the Arabs of the time saw as such.Footnote 71 The Maliki school, however, restricts the application of this verse only to foods prohibited by the Qur’an in any case, while other schools apply it much more widely. Third, some traditions relate that the Prophet forbade eating camels and other permitted animals that habitually eat dung,Footnote 72 though chickens are permitted despite their acknowledged tendency to do so.Footnote 73 As in the Christian exegetical tradition, carnivorousness, human disgust, and an animal's diet are all significant criteria.
In order to find natural and primeval explanations for the pig's unique status in Islamic culture, we must turn to early Islamic folklore and zoology. Al-Jahiz, a prolific writer of the ninth century, dedicates a large section of his compendious Book of Animals to the pig.Footnote 74 For Al-Jahiz, the primary indication of pigs’ negative nature is that God chose them (together with monkeys) as objects for the metamorphosis of sinners, even though other animals (such as flies or mosquitoes) would have been a fitting punishment as well. This proves that abstinence from pigs’ meat is not simply a matter of accepting God's will, but reflects the essence (jawhar) of the animal.Footnote 75 Two further explanations are provided for the abomination of pigs rather than monkeys. First, the pig was commonly eaten by the pre-Islamic Arabs and by other peoples (such as Christians) as well, and indeed prized as a delicacy, while the monkey was not commonly eaten; therefore only the former required prohibition.Footnote 76 Second, the pig's characteristics set it apart: it is especially ugly, sexually depraved, eats dung and vermin, and is also dangerous and harmful to crops.Footnote 77 Thus the prohibition of the pig is rooted in its nature and behavior.
The pig's eating habits and ugliness were, moreover, reflected in Islamic traditions on Noah's ark. The Qur’an, which refers several times to the deluge story, only states that all species were summoned and that each was to be represented by a male and a female.Footnote 78 Islamic folklore, however, greatly expands the Qur’anic narrative. A story first cited by Al-Jahiz in the name of “certain commentators” runs as follows:
The passengers of Noah's ark were inconvenienced by the great number of mice. . . . God told Noah to order the lion to sneeze, which he did; out of his nose came a male and female cat . . . but the odor of the cats’ dung bothered the passengers, who turned again to Noah. He further beseeched God, who told him to order the elephant to defecate. Out of the elephant's dung were born a pair of pigs, who eliminated the odor of the cats’ dung.Footnote 79
The pig did not exist before the flood; it was created on the ark in a strange and disgusting metamorphic act. This secondary creation of the pig is closely connected to its despicable food; its food is the very reason for its existence. While there is no explicit link between the ignominious origin of the pig and its contemporary prohibited status, this is clearly in the background. Later iterations of the story include such a link. Thus, in the rather more colorful version appearing in Hermann of Carinthia's Book of the Teaching of Muhammad, a twelfth-century Latin translation of an apocryphal tenth-century dialogue between Muhammad and a Jew, the story is told specifically to explain why pigs are prohibited to both Jews and Muslims.Footnote 80 Here, more forcefully than in the Jewish tradition, the pig's “natural” source and behavior are the reason for its special dietary status.
Both legal texts and folklore from eighth- and ninth-century Islamic writers link the dietary prohibitions of animals with their natural and primeval characteristics. For Muslim writers, the turn to nature was less problematic than for Christians or Jews: they did not inherit an antinatural position on impurity as did the Christians, or perceive the dietary laws as relevant to Jews only, as did most Jewish sources. The utilization of nature by the rising religious force may have led writers of other religions in the region to perform a similar move.
Conclusions
The question posed in the title of this article was answered in a surprising number of ways by commentators in late antiquity—a pair of pigs, seven pairs, or no pigs at all. In the period between the seventh and ninth centuries, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim writers sought to anchor their dietary observances in conceptions of nature, allowing them to justify these observances to themselves and to external disputants. Nature could be approached in three ways: through an early sacred history of patriarchs universally accepted as role models—in this case, the story of Noah's ark; through the observable behavior of animals—in this case, their eating habits and fertility; or through human nature or feelings of disgust, which were seen as universal. Christians and Muslims sought to integrate these dimensions of naturalness so that the source for animal behavior could be found in sacred history; Jews were less eager to do so.
Confronted with the need to explain the diversity of animal behavior and dietary practice, late ancient religious traditions postulated (to a greater or lesser degree) a second creation or value ascription in Noah's ark, which was conveniently located in an ambiguous point in time: it is primeval enough to have decisively influenced the animals’ natures but historical enough not to pose a problem of evil creation by a good God.
While there is evidence for Jewish participation in this discourse on nature, there is an inherent ambivalence between a particularist and universalist approach: the argument from nature or from Noah is useful for justifying the dietary laws, but it leads to the problematic conclusion that they are valid for all humans and not only for Jews. No such ambivalence is found in the Islamic or the Christian sources, which are unashamedly universalist. In many Christian and Jewish texts, as opposed to the Islamic tradition, we find attempts to steer away from a direct commandment to Noah concerning dietary observances, giving more room for his personal agency; this allows interpreters more freedom in particularizing Noah's situation to his culture and time.
