To Eat Pork Or Not To Eat Pork

When the first Christians were trying to decide whether Gentile Christians should keep Jewish dietary laws, they weren’t just quibbling over doctrine. Just like we do, ancients were transferring their feelings about certain food onto the people who ate them. The very idea of a tablemate gobbling down pig meat was enough to send a good Jew scurrying for the latrine. We may be speculating here, but there is contemporary support for our claims.

Journalist Khaled Diab, who calls himself a lapsed Muslim, confesses that “long after my spirited embrace of alcohol, my ‘sinful’ attitude to…