swine

• swine

61:1.945,000,000 years ago the con­ti­nen­tal back­bones were el­e­vated in as­so­ci­a­tion with a very gen­eral sink­ing of the coast lines. Mam­malian life was evolv­ing rapidly. A small rep­til­ian, egg-lay­ing type of mam­mal flour­ished, and the an­ces­tors of the later kan­ga­roos roamed Aus­tralia. Soon there were small horses, fleet-footed rhinoceroses, tapirs with pro­boscises, prim­i­tive pigs, squir­rels, lemurs, opos­sums, and sev­eral tribes of mon­key­like an­i­mals. They were all small, prim­i­tive, and best suited to liv­ing among the forests of the moun­tain re­gions. A large os­trich­like land bird de­vel­oped to a height of ten feet and laid an egg nine by thir­teen inches. These were the an­ces­tors of the later gi­gan­tic pas­sen­ger birds that were so highly in­tel­li­gent, and that one­time trans­ported hu­man be­ings through the air.

• swine

61:2.9The horse, an out­stand­ing ex­am­ple of evo­lu­tion, lived dur­ing these times in both North Amer­ica and Eu­rope, though his de­vel­op­ment was not fully com­pleted un­til the later ice age. While the rhinoceros fam­ily ap­peared at the close of this pe­riod, it un­der­went its great­est ex­pan­sion sub­se­quently. A small hog­like crea­ture also de­vel­oped which be­came the an­ces­tor of the many species of swine, pec­ca­ries, and hip­popota­muses. Camels and lla­mas had their ori­gin in North Amer­ica about the mid­dle of this pe­riod and over­ran the west­ern plains. Later, the lla­mas mi­grated to South Amer­ica, the camels to Eu­rope, and soon both were ex­tinct in North Amer­ica, though a few camels sur­vived up to the ice age.

• giant pigs extinct in Miocene

61:3.5The first deer ap­peared, and North Amer­ica was soon over­run by ru­mi­nants—deer, oxen, camels, bi­son, and sev­eral species of rhinoceroses—but the gi­ant pigs, more than six feet tall, be­came ex­tinct.

• evil of eating pork

84:4.8The so-called mod­esty of women re­spect­ing their cloth­ing and the ex­po­sure of the per­son grew out of the deadly fear of be­ing ob­served at the time of a men­strual pe­riod. To be thus de­tected was a griev­ous sin, the vi­o­la­tion of a taboo. Un­der the mores of olden times, ev­ery woman, from ado­les­cence to the end of the child­bear­ing pe­riod, was sub­jected to com­plete fam­ily and so­cial quar­an­tine one full week each month. Ev­ery­thing she might touch, sit upon, or lie upon was “de­filed.” It was for long the cus­tom to bru­tally beat a girl af­ter each monthly pe­riod in an ef­fort to drive the evil spirit out of her body. But when a woman passed be­yond the child­bear­ing age, she was usu­ally treated more con­sid­er­ately, be­ing ac­corded more rights and priv­i­leges. In view of all this it was not strange that women were looked down upon. Even the Greeks held the men­stru­at­ing woman as one of the three great causes of de­file­ment, the other two be­ing pork and gar­lic.

• became fetish animals

88:1.5When an­i­mals be­came fe­tishes, there en­sued the taboos on eat­ing the flesh of the fe­tish an­i­mal. Apes and mon­keys, be­cause of re­sem­blance to man, early be­came fe­tish an­i­mals; later, snakes, birds, and swine were also sim­i­larly re­garded. At one time the cow was a fe­tish, the milk be­ing taboo while the exc­reta were highly es­teemed. The ser­pent was revered in Pales­tine, es­pe­cially by the Phoeni­cians, who, along with the Jews, con­sid­ered it to be the mouth­piece of evil spir­its. Even many mod­erns be­lieve in the charm pow­ers of rep­tiles. From Ara­bia on through In­dia to the snake dance of the Mo­qui tribe of red men the ser­pent has been revered.

• evil of eating pork

89:1.5The early food taboos orig­i­nated in fet­ish­ism and to­tem­ism. The swine was sa­cred to the Phoeni­cians, the cow to the Hin­dus. The Egyp­tian taboo on pork has been per­pet­u­ated by the He­braic and Is­lamic faiths. A vari­ant of the food taboo was the be­lief that a preg­nant woman could think so much about a cer­tain food that the child, when born, would be the echo of that food. Such viands would be taboo to the child.

• do not cast pearls before

140:3.18“Dis­cern the truth clearly; live the righ­teous life fear­lessly; and so shall you be my apos­tles and my Fa­ther’s am­bas­sadors. You have heard it said: ‘If the blind lead the blind, they both shall fall into the pit.’ If you would guide oth­ers into the king­dom, you must your­selves walk in the clear light of liv­ing truth. In all the busi­ness of the king­dom I ex­hort you to show just judg­ment and keen wis­dom. Pre­sent not that which is holy to dogs, nei­ther cast your pearls be­fore swine, lest they tram­ple your gems un­der foot and turn to rend you.

• dogs drove 30 into sea

151:6.6As the swine herders rushed into the vil­lage to spread the news of the tam­ing of the lu­natic, the dogs charged upon a small and un­tended herd of about thirty swine and drove most of them over a precipice into the sea. And it was this in­ci­den­tal oc­cur­rence, in con­nec­tion with the pres­ence of Je­sus and the sup­posed mirac­u­lous cur­ing of the lu­natic, that gave ori­gin to the leg­end that Je­sus had cured Amos by cast­ing a le­gion of dev­ils out of him, and that these dev­ils had en­tered into the herd of swine, caus­ing them forth­with to rush head­long to their de­struc­tion in the sea be­low. Be­fore the day was over, this episode was pub­lished abroad by the swine ten­ders, and the whole vil­lage be­lieved it. Amos most cer­tainly be­lieved this story; he saw the swine tum­bling over the brow of the hill shortly af­ter his trou­bled mind had qui­eted down, and he al­ways be­lieved that they car­ried with them the very evil spir­its which had so long tor­mented and af­flicted him. And this had a good deal to do with the per­ma­nency of his cure. It is equally true that all of Je­sus’ apos­tles (save Thomas) be­lieved that the episode of the swine was di­rectly con­nected with the cure of Amos.

• prodigal son desired husks of

169:1.7“Within a few weeks the young man gath­ered to­gether all his funds and set out upon a jour­ney to a far coun­try, and find­ing noth­ing prof­itable to do which was also plea­sur­able, he soon wasted all his in­her­i­tance in ri­otous liv­ing. And when he had spent all, there arose a pro­longed famine in that coun­try, and he found him­self in want. And so, when he suf­fered hunger and his dis­tress was great, he found em­ploy­ment with one of the cit­i­zens of that coun­try, who sent him into the fields to feed swine. And the young man would fain have filled him­self with the husks which the swine ate, but no one would give him any­thing.

• do not cast pearls before

186:2.2Be­fore the San­hedrist court Je­sus de­clined to make replies to the tes­ti­mony of per­jured wit­nesses. There was but one ques­tion which would al­ways elicit an an­swer, whether asked by friend or foe, and that was the one con­cern­ing the na­ture and di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. When asked if he were the Son of God, he un­fail­ingly made re­ply. He stead­fastly re­fused to speak when in the pres­ence of the cu­ri­ous and wicked Herod. Be­fore Pi­late he spoke only when he thought that Pi­late or some other sin­cere per­son might be helped to a bet­ter knowl­edge of the truth by what he said. Je­sus had taught his apos­tles the use­less­ness of cast­ing their pearls be­fore swine, and he now dared to prac­tice what he had taught. His con­duct at this time ex­em­pli­fied the pa­tient sub­mis­sion of the hu­man na­ture cou­pled with the ma­jes­tic si­lence and solemn dig­nity of the di­vine na­ture. He was al­to­gether will­ing to dis­cuss with Pi­late any ques­tion re­lated to the po­lit­i­cal charges brought against him—any ques­tion which he rec­og­nized as be­long­ing to the gov­er­nor’s ju­ris­dic­tion.