Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Subcategories

Dietary Restrictions

8 of 368 entries in Beliefs & Restrictions. Click any to see everything it connects to.

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Rules about what may or may not be eaten, filed as belief because the entry records the rule and the tradition's own stated reason for it, rather than under practice, which would record the act of following it. Kashrut and halal are the best known examples, but the type spans traditions well beyond Judaism and Islam.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
Rules a tradition states about what may be eaten and how it must be prepared. They rest on unrelated logics and are not one rule: kashrut and halal are laws of permitted species and slaughter; Jain and much Hindu abstention follows from ahimsa, non-injury, and reaches foods those laws never touch; the Latter-day Saint Word of Wisdom rests on a nineteenth-century revelation. 2
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard analytic category in the study of religion 3
Directory
Category
Beliefs & Restrictions 1
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The dietary restrictions

This group holds dietary restrictions, the beliefs that govern permitted and forbidden food and drink, from the kosher and halal laws of Judaism and Islam to the vegetarianism of several Indian traditions. Food rules are a visible and daily marker of religious identity and obedience.

The browser will find the dietary restrictions the atlas gathers. The entries describe each rule and its rationale, noting the tradition that observes it.

Sources
2. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997View the Source
3. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
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