B Marktauswahl und Markterschließung

Food Taboos and Biblical Prohibitions

“…-Leviticus 11 contains a longer and secondary section (vv. [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] dealing with impurity conveyed by different forms of contact with a carcass (nebelah) of both unclean and clean animals (cf. also Lev 11:8//Deut 14:8), and these verses provide instructions for purification.…”

“…The text of Lev 11 presents the more detailed and developed structure regarding food prohibitions, and, especially in the second section (vv. [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40], extends its concerns to include issues of pollution and purification deriving not only from ingestion, but also from the contact with dead animals (this aspect is not completely absent from Deut 14, which however provides a much shorter indication, cf. Deut 14:8, 21).…”

“…35 Finally, Arabian Bedouin tribes consumed camels. 36 Yet on the whole, these examples constitute exceptions: the greatest number of animals consumed -when they were consumed, given that meat constituted a high value and rare food throughout the ancient Near East, 37 it largely consisted of animals deemed acceptable in Lev 11 and Deut 14.…”

“…In a translated meaning, māmītu, was also used to indicate a spell or a cause of disease: see Maul 2004. These lines from Šurpu clearly show the mechanism of "contamination appraisals" at work: according to the Mesopotamian conceptualization of the world, "physical contact between the source and the target (of contamination) results in the transfer of some effect or quality (essence) from the source to the target." 37 In this case, eating prohibited meat could contaminate a person who in turn could become a source of contagion for other people, situations, or objects just by coming into contact with them. For this reason, a polluted person needed to be distanced from the cultic environment until he/she became pure again.…”

“…Failure in the observance of these proscriptions would make him/her an impure man/woman, and as a consequence the god would not listen to his/her invocations and prayers. 37 Feder 2016. 38 On the symbolic significance of such redistribution see Milano 1998, 120-27.…”