A number of studies from Tel Aviv date the rise of the pork taboo in Israel as early as the Iron Age I in order to salvage the notion that the taboo was a reaction to the pork-consuming habits of the hated Philistines. Though neither DNA analysis nor pig bone ratios support this scenario, these studies explain how the abhorrence of Iron Age Israelites for pork was eventually canonised in the Persian era. The present paper challenges the validity of each stage of the proposed scenario, arguing that the Hellenistic-era ethnic differentiation based on pork consumption cannot be pushed as far back as the Iron Age.
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