It has often been said that the Jew’s prohibition against eating pork and oysters and lobsters originated in hygienic considerations; that these were climatically unsafe foods for him in Palestine. This explanation is more simple than true. Ancient Palestine was an arid country in which hogs could not be raised with economic profit, and so they were not raised; and the Philistine and Phoenician kept the Jew from the coast along which he might have obtained shellfish. Eating neither food he happened to acquire a distrust of them; having the distrust, he rationalized it by saying that it was foreign and wicked and irreligious to act counter to his habits—just like the Pueblo Indian [who will not eat fish and thinks them poisonous], and in the end he had the Lord issue a prohibition for him.2

2Kroeber, A.L.n/an/an/an/a, , 183–184 (Harcourt, Brace & Company. By permission).