I’m not sure the dietary and other rules of kosher can be reduced to simple utilitarianism. The main point seems to be about being “clean” ritually and spiritually. As far back as the legend of Noah animals are categorized as clean and unclean, and blood seems to be particularly “magic” in its spiritual implications. For example the story in the New Testament about Jesus healing a woman who had an issuance of blood, he wasn’t just solving a gynecological problem. Menstruating women were forbidden to enter the temple, and so she’d been unable to offer proper observance to God for years.
It might be enlightening to compare kosher rules on purity with an equally obsessive/compulsive tradition that’s completely non-Jewish; say, the rules Brahmans are supposed to follow.
I have a half-baked hypothesis that the founding of Bronze Age civilizations was in its day a sort of proto-Brave New World, in which the practices of civilization were considered inhuman by the standards of nomadic tribespeoples, and that Judaism largely defined itself as a reaction against it; which would fit the legend that Abram was originally a refugee from Ur.
Just to be clear, it’s not just a women thing. Men who have recently experienced an emission of semen (or some abnormal flow from the same area) are also forbidden to enter the Temple.
My half-baked hypothesis: Nomads are constantly on the move, searching for new pastures for their herds. Pigs have short legs, and minimal herd instinct. To raise swine, you build a fence around the pigs, and you bring food to them. To a nomad, that must have seemed utterly insane.
I remember a cartoon showing two cowboys on horseback herding pigs. One is saying, “Yeah I know, the bottom line is better and all that, but somehow it takes all the romance out of it.”
Even Marvin Harris, whose “cultural materialism” theory of anthropology is about as utilitarian as you can get, acknowledged that it couldn’t explain all aspects of people’s foodways. But it’s an excellent starting point, and I think does a much better job that trying to explain them on philosophical or magical grounds.
Correct, those two plus idol-worship are exceptions to the “your life comes first” rule. And it’s not just incest, it’s all sexual prohibitions of a certain punishment (when done willingly) level - the actual Biblical example is adultery.
That was before the Law was given to Moses. I assume the Noahide Laws would be the prevailing moral/legal code, therefore. One of those laws forbids adultery or sexual immorality. Is there a definition of sexual immorality that would cover things like that?
Personal theory (for the theory collectors): The OT has a general habit of taking the things that the Jews do and saying that they do them because it’s God’s commandment, and saying that the things which they don’t do but that other groups do (Greeks / homosexuality, Egyptians / eating pork, etc.) are bad and hated by God.
My assumption would be that this is all connected to the general idea that the Jews were special, powerful, destined for greatness, etc. because they had a covenant with God. Taking the reality of the cultural landscape as it was at that time and using that as a sort of “proof”, despite it just being the happenstance of time, helped to pull people in.
No offense to Judaism in particular, but I’m pretty sure the Tanakh mostly describes things like conquest and taking slaves. You would have to provide a cite for a generic, “make the world a better place”, rule. Even Christianity doesn’t really have that (that I’m aware of) and that was far more the “love and peace” spin on the religion.