Review of Price, Evolution of a Taboo

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: Review: Evolution of a Taboo.

Evolution of a Taboo: Pigs and People in the Ancient Near East
By Max D. Price
(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2020), xxii + 312 pp., 19 figures
(maps, graphs, plans, drawings, photos), $34.95 (hardcover)
Reviewed by Aren M. Maeir

As someone who has been studying the Philistine culture for some 25 years, I am greatly interested in the dietary patterns of the Iron Age Philistines and their neighbors—including who did and who didn’t eat pig. And this is one of the central issues addressed in the recent book by Max Price. An anthropologist and zoologist at MIT, Price explores the complex relations between pigs and humans in the Near East, focusing on ancient times but also providing perspective on the deep cultural ramifications until today.

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