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Iron age residents of Judea regularly eat non-Kosher fish like catfish despite it being strictly forbidden under Jewish dietary laws, a new archaeological study found.
Examining fish bones dating back thousands of years, found at 30 archaeological sites in Israel, let Ariel University in Israel researchers uncover the dietary secrets.
The team found no evidence of people following rules banning the eating of fish species without scale or fin until the Roman era in the 6th century CE.
The findings shed fresh light on the origin of Old Testament dietary laws still observed by Jewish people today, that mythology and religious history suggest were first introduced by Moses in the 12th century BCE.
Amanda Borschel-Dan is The Times of Israel s Jewish World and Archaeology editor.
Sharks swimming in the shark aquarium in the southern Israeli city of Eilat. October 7, 2014. (FLASH90/File)
A ray swims at the Israel Aquarium in Jerusalem, on September 5, 2017. (Isaac Harari/Flash90)
Catfish swim in Ein Afek Nature Reserve, east of Kiryat Bialik, Israel, on April 24, 2015. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)
A new study scrutinizing 2,000 years of fish consumption in the ancient holy land has found that despite clear Torah prohibitions non-kosher finless and scaleless fish were generally eaten by all peoples, regardless of ethnic and religious affiliation.
The requirement to eat only fish that has both fins and scales is found twice in the Bible: in Leviticus 11: 9–12 and in Deuteronomy 14: 9–10. In both cases, the proscription follows the more widely known prohibition against eating pig. Indeed, as one might infer from the Bible, there is scant archaeological evidence of pork consump
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Non-kosher fish was on the menu in areas that are now part of Israel and Egypt while Judaism was developing in the region and the Hebrew Bible was being written there.
The Torah – the first five books of the Hebrew Bible – states that certain foods, including pork and aquatic animals that lack fins and scales, shouldn’t be eaten. Modern, practising Jewish people are prohibited from eating these foods.
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To explore the origin of the custom, Yonatan Adler at Ariel University in the West Bank and Omri Lernau at the University of Haifa in Israel examined ancient fish bones from 30 archaeological sites in Israel and Sinai dated from about 1550 BC to AD 640. They found that finless and scaleless fish were regularly eaten during that 2000-year period.
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Ancient Judeans commonly ate non-kosher fish surrounding the time that such food was prohibited in the Bible, suggests a study published in the peer-reviewed journal
Tel Aviv.
This finding sheds new light on the origin of Old Testament dietary laws that are still observed by many Jews today. Among these rules is a ban on eating any species of fish which lacks scales or fins.
The study reports an analysis of ancient fish bones from 30 archaeological sites in Israel and Sinai which date to the more than 2,000-year span from the Late Bronze Age (1550-1130 BCE) until the end of the Byzantine period (640 CE).