#  Food, Law, and Identity 

 



 ##  

  expand\_more  

 
  

 

Food and dietary laws were integral to the history of ancient Israelite religion and the emergence of early Judaism. Of all the biblical food customs, the prohibition on consuming pork is arguably the most famous and well-studied. Commonly, this has been considered evidence of the importance of dietary prohibitions in establishing boundaries between Israel and neighboring groups in antiquity. In my article [“The Jewish Pig Prohibition from Leviticus to the Maccabees”](https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/sblpress/jbl/article-abstract/142/2/221/379272/The-Jewish-Pig-Prohibition-from-Leviticus-to-the?redirectedFrom=fulltext), which was awarded the [2021 David Noel Freedman Award for Excellence and Creativity in Hebrew Bible Scholarship](https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/2021FreedmanAwardAnnouncement.pdf), came runner-up of the [2023 Sophie Coe Prize for writing in food history](https://sophiecoeprize.wordpress.com/previous-winners/judges-report-2023/), and was featured in the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/health/pig-transplants-jews-muslims.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mU8.aGY4.DgrrUze0EM1Y&smid=url-share), I argue that differentiation from other ethnicities by means of diet was not the only function that the pig taboo served in ancient Israel. In fact, the relevant biblical texts are as much, if not more, concerned with using the pig prohibition to standardize cultic norms as well as dietary customs *within* the Israelite community.

   ![Julia Rhyder](/sites/g/files/omnuum4711/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/juliarhyder/files/6ff600ba-c97c-4f01-bce7-15c1b1c0df25_0.jpg?itok=H8P42aes) 

 

Julia Rhyder presenting her research on the pig prohibition at the David Noel Freedman Award session of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, November 2021.Within the accounts of the Maccabean rebellion in the second century BCE, the pig assumes a greater significance in identity formation, but even in these traditions, the relationship between the pig and ethnic boundaries is more complex than is often assumed. A further piece [“Le porc et les interactions d’Antiochos IV avec les Juifs : une comparaison nouvelle des sources”](https://www.academia.edu/102711952/2022_Le_porc_et_les_interactions_d_Antiochos_IV_avec_les_Juifs_une_comparaison_nouvelle_des_sources_Revue_de_Th%C3%A9ologie_et_de_Philosophie_154_383_49) develops this line of research by exploring the changing role of the pig in additional Hellenistic and Roman sources that recount the confrontation between the Seleucid king Antiochus IV and the Jews.

My research on food, law, and identity has also extended to include biblical passages that deal with other prohibited meals not involving the pig. [“Blood, War, and Ritual Meals: Transgressive Consumption in 1 Samuel 14:31–35”](https://doi.org/10.1353/cbq.2024.a940005) provides a close reading of a curious story within the story of Saul’s battle at Michmash in which the king’s troops engage in a ritual meal, which I argue most likely involved chthonic forces with the intention of soliciting divinatory messages. This finding has important implications for the scholarly tendency to use 1 Sam 14:31–35 to reconstruct norms surrounding butchery in early Israel: this text, I argue, is not about butchery per se, but rather about the use of blood to solicit oracular messages from the dead.