Chewing the Cud and the Split Hoof

The Torah names the pig unclean in two separate places, Leviticus chapter eleven and Deuteronomy chapter fourteen, both of which set out the very same criterion for which land animals are permitted as food: an animal must both chew the cud and have a fully split hoof to be considered fit for eating. The pig fails the test on exactly one of the two counts, since it does have a split hoof but does not chew the cud, and both passages name the pig explicitly by name rather than leaving the case to be inferred from the general rule alone, a specificity biblical scholars have read as evidence of just how firmly established the taboo already was by the time the text itself was set down in writing. The prohibition covers eating the meat itself and, in later rabbinic elaboration of the biblical text, extends further still to deriving any benefit from the animal and to certain kinds of physical contact with it, placing the pig among a small number of animals singled out by name for an explicitness the Torah's wider dietary law does not extend to every other forbidden species. Some scholars have proposed that the rule reflects ancient near eastern public health concerns given the parasite risk of undercooked pork in a hot climate, though this hygienic explanation is now treated by most biblical scholars as insufficient standing alone, since other comparably risky foods were never prohibited and the text itself states no rationale beyond the cud and hoof criteria.