The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World

"A key component of this project is the history of interpretation of biblical dietary laws. As such, it is essential that the reader first becomes acquainted with what the Hebrew Bible says - and even more importantly, what it does not say. Chapter One therefore examines all of the biblical food laws and their justifications (or, almost always, their lack thereof), including: abstaining from certain animals (sometimes categorically and other times specifically), animals that die a natural death, animals killed by other animals, blood, the sciatic nerve, and slaughtering a mother and her child on the same day; sending away the mother bird from the nest before taking her eggs/chicks; and cooking a kid in its mother's milk. In discussing the supposed rationalizations for these regulations, I consider well-known anthropological and popular accounts (Mary Douglas, Jacob Milgrom, Marvin Harris, etc.)"--