The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-04-10
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

If you will turn to Levitcus, you will find where the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, telling them to speak unto the children of Israel, setting out the meats clean and unclean."
 the eleventh chapter and the seventh verse, they were told And the swine, though he divide the noof, and be cloven footed, yet he cheweth not the cud, he is unclean unto you.'
 Thus the Israelites were specially for bidden to eat swines flesh, and came to look with adherence on such prac- tce. Both the flesh and the blood were thought to be exceptionally repulsive to Jehovah, but swine were eaten and of fered in sacrifice by the Canaanites.
 Though the Jews, themselves did not keep swine, they were largely kept by others for the heather market. The pop ulation of Gallilee, and of the districts beyond Jordan, were largely foreign and heather, and created demand for swine flesh. The herds, fed on the hills and wastes, seem often to have become half wild
 Domesticated swine were probably kept in the east in the earliest historic times, when they appear to have been regarded as sacred In a cave associated with the earliest place of sacrifice at ancient Gezer, in use certainly before B. C. 2O00, large quantities of pig bones were found. Some think that it was the sacrosanct character of swine that lay in the proh- bition in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and the eating of swines flesh and off, fering of swine.s blood Gin Isaiah) is clearly regarded as a lapse into pagan ism.
 That the heather frequently tried to make the Jews eat swine flesh, we have but to be familiar with the Maccabean times. In the Talmudc writings the pig appears as the emblem of uncleanness, and those who keep swine are regarded with aversion. The contempt felt for swine is shown by the Proverb: "As is a woman which is without discretion"
 The same ideas of degradation color the parable of the Prodigal Son, that matchless story in Luke. where he is depicted as reaching the lowest depth of infany in being sent to feed swine, and actually being reduced to covet their food. He fain would have "filled his belly with the food that the swine did eat'' is the graphic way it is put in the gospels.
 We learn from the learned Edersheim that the food so greatly desired by the wastrel was the carob-pods that the swine did eat in the time of the great Teacher who was showing Gods love in His parable. The fruit of the carob-tree is regarded in Jewish literature as we'll as in heather literature as the poorest. and indeed, only fit for animals. though some think 1t was the food of ascetics, and particularly so of John the Bap- tist.
 Yes, tho swineherd was depised among the Jews. for the record truly says And no man gave unto him." He was an outcast and pariah. The Gadarene in. cident further shows how the man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit coming into the presence of the Miracle Worker, was rid of his trouble of the unclean spirits, for the devils besouglft that they might enter the swine, and the herd ran down steep place and were choked in the sea.
 But in modern Palestine very much the same feeling against the swine pre- walls. We are told that Chanzir (pig) lis very common but opprobrious appel- lation. Now comes strange thing. Pigs aro not common in Palestine; they are kept by German colonists and in few