Rational basis of religious rules
Some apparently strange religious rules can have a rational basis. The Jewish and Islamic ban on eating pork was probably very sensible in an age before meat inspection. More difficult to understand is the notion found in the Bible and the Koran that a menstruating woman is “impure”.
Leviticus states this unambiguously: “and anyone who touches her will be impure until nightfall (…) and everything on which she sits is impure (…) and anyone who touches her bed will be impure until nightfall (…) If a man lies with her (…) he will be impure for 7 days.”
Benificial for reproduction
According to the holy book, a woman has to make an offering and “purify” herself through a ritual bath, a mikvah, after every menstruation. I don’t understand this rule from a hygienic aspect, but it is beneficial for reproduction. Once a woman has menstruated, which usually lasts 5 days, she has to wait another 7 days to “purify” herself on the 8th day. Then she is in the 13th day of her cycle, and thus in the most fertile period. After this time of sexual abstinence, the chance of conception around ovulation is optimal. This is a rule with a clear advantage for maintaining the group. Could that be the clever idea behind this misogynistic rule?
In any case, the idea that people had to be wary of menstrual blood has remained powerful since Leviticus. Vincent de Beauvais (1478) felt that menstrual blood would prevent grain from sprouting, make grapes turn sour, wilt plants, make trees drop their fruit, rust iron, tarnish bronze, and cause rabies. This is not an outmoded, medieval idea. My mother-in-law was not allowed in the kitchen of her non-religious grandmother when she was menstruating if fruit from the garden was being processed. Women from Suriname are still not allowed into the kitchen when they are menstruating. According to popular belief, even today, bread and meat can spoil or plants die if touched or glanced at by a menstruating woman.
Severe neurological symptoms
Other rules have a better basis. Not only the Jewish dietary rules make shellfish like mussels “impure”, the North American Indians also forbid the eating of mussels. There appears to be a good reason for this. In 1987 within one day of eating mussels from the estuary of the Cardigan River on Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada, about 100 people suddenly fell severely ill. They not only suffered from nausea and vomiting, there were also severe neurological symptoms like confusion, headache and paralysis.
Seven patients ended up in a coma, and even after a year had passed, some victims still had serious problems with memory loss. They could not remember events that people just don’t forget, like their daughter’s wedding. A brain autopsy was performed on four people who died from the mussel poisoning, which revealed that the hippocampus and the amygdala, two structures essential for memory, were severely damaged.
Unusual weather conditions that summer in Canada had encouraged extreme algae blooms. The algae (the diatom Nitzschia pungens) were sieved and collected by the mussels from the water. The algae contained a substance that was poisonous for the central nervous system, domoic acid. This substance destroys brain cells by stimulating them strongly.
Pay attention
This effect is not limited to humans. In 1961 the puffin population in Rio del Mar, California, began to display strange behaviour. The birds flew at full speed against windows and lampposts. They pecked at people and regurgitated over them. Alfred Hitchcock requested articles about this strange bird behaviour from the local newspapers. Two years later he made the film “The Birds”, probably inspired by this story and naturally by Daphne de Maurier’s novel. In a similar epidemic in Santa Cruz, California, in 1991, when cormorants and pelicans suddenly began acting strangely, a high concentration of domoic acid was found in their bodies after death.
So we should pay attention to some of the rules in the Bible, but unfortunately we don’t know which ones are important. However, following all the regulations in Leviticus, just to be sure is not an option these days. Read the criminal code (Leviticus 20: 1-27) and shudder!
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This is the final column by Dick Swaab on this website.
zondag 19 april 2009, 21:49 uur
‘Religeous rules’ are not that at all, but indeed
practical rules as a result of existing knowledge, more specifically lack thereof, and/or of disastrous and other earthly events at the time they were made; but these rules became fixed as ‘religeous rules’ even though knowledge and circumstances changed; and some, like the seclusion of menstruating women, conveniently served males who regarded menstrual blood as ‘unclean’ to serve their fear of sex not to have sex, or mysogynist ends – to the extend that Khomeini advised muslims ‘to fck a goat rather than your menstruating wife’ – as the most highly possible offensive ultimate put-down remark for women – showing Khomeinis deep-seated (no pun intended) loathing of women.
Menstruating women were already suspect in ‘heathendom’ as that mysterious bleeding couldn’t be explained why it was frightening, ‘spooky’ why also ‘heathen’ tribes separated their women in special houses during menstruation. Conversely menstrual blood was allotted special, even sacred, powers. The mystery being that menstrual women didn’t bleed to death. Blood in those ancient times (perhaps still) was always associated with wars, with death, and of animal sacrifices and horrible ‘stuff’ like that.
‘Leviticus’ we are again confronted by ‘primitive’ minds that existed in the same time as ‘heathendom’
why I think that the abhorrence of menstruating women expressed in Leviticus shows lack of knowledge and expresses the same FEAR as in heathendom – and beyond. ‘What you fear you must oppress’ – or hide it where you – helpless male – are not confronted with your own fear.
Another example of a secular/practical custom that got stuck as ‘a religeous rule’ is the headscarf, merely a mini-issue niqaab which is ordered in the Koran, but that ‘holy book’ is but a confirmation of how those Arabs lived, wanted to live, and wanted to see and treat their women who they regarded as their properties which had to be protected against slave traders, robbers, rapists, cavaran trains that loaded up disappearing in the dessert in the night – and a stolen woman couldn’t be seen covered up under a cloth on top of a camel.
In short that Arabia of Muhammed was a highly dangerous place to live in for women; the Arabs have an intense sense of ‘honour’ and of ‘shame’ and amongst their possessions their women – why they had to be covered up not to be seen ‘by coveting eyes’ of robbers, slave traders, enemy tribes ….’great idea’ said ‘Allah’- naturally to please his Arab Mohammed.
as high-class and middle-class women wore the niqaab in Zoroaster Persia; and equally Christian Byzantine women who also wore the niqaab but nowhere in the New Testament are christian women ordered to ‘cover your hair’ – why the Islamic headscarf/niqaab is but a practical secular rule that got stuck and was declared ‘a holy rule’but to serve Muslim males.
Not being allowed to eat pork is understandable as pigs lived – still do – under unhygienic circumstances and must have caused epedemic disease why pork was forbidden; and alcohol was forbidden as intoxication sets in much quicker in hot climates with delirium not uncommon together with sun-stroke.
We can still get sick from eating pork, but also from eating chickens, and mad or not cows; and indeed mussels that live in unclean to sewer outlets – not to speak of delicious oysters that can make the stomach turn upside down and back and around again – as poluted shrimps can do – but are not forbidden (?) which shows that ‘religeous rules’ have nothing whatsoever to do with ‘God’.
And of course ‘religeous rules’ were conveniently appropriated by religions to enhance ‘our specific identity’. But you don’t wannabe a ‘Muslim if you are in a hurry as there are at least 1000 + rules to follow and despite ‘no guarantee given to reach paradise’.
dinsdag 21 april 2009, 18:09 uur
The hazard with improperly cooked pork is that of Trichinosis, which can be fatal.
During World War Two, many uncircumcised New Zealand soldiers fighting in the deserts in North Africa found out that a foreskin is not such a good thing to have in the desert. Sand under the foreskin can cause severe irritation and ultimately phimosis. This is the probable explanation why Islam and Judaism, both religions which developed in desert areas, call for circumcision.
The fear of menstrual blood, on the other hand, appears to be irrational and misogynistic. As Joke Aarts says, men probably just found it frightening that women could bleed and yet not bleed to death. Combine that with the ability to grow new humans within your own body, and create milk for them to suckle from your own body, and woman is a frightening creature who must be repressed by the fearful man.
woensdag 29 april 2009, 10:44 uur
In addition to what Joke Aarts writes about the headscarf issue it can be said that hair was and still is a (sexually) charged feature for us humans, not only in the Arab world and Islam.
Up until the end of the 1960′s it was rule rather than exception in the Western world that an honorable woman did not show up in public without some sort of head gear.
Some Christian monastical orders conduct cutting of the hair of the women that enter the order. I can’t think of any monastic order that does not prescribe that a nun’s head hair is to be completely covered up.
When it comes to men it is funnily enough quite the opposite, even though also a Western man was expected to wear a hat outdoors up until the 1950′s. Orthodox Christian priests, Muslim men, Sikhs, orthodox Jews – there are many examples of how men are supposed to sport their hair growth in different ways and that male hair is considered holy.
After a visit to the open air museum of Zaanse Schans, I realised that the burkha, which by many is viewed as something utterly inhumane and degrading here in the West, very well could be viewed as positively liberal in comparison to how women were dressed up here in the Netherlands just a couple of hundred years ago. In a room one can see how a young woman is being dressed up in traditional, festive clothing. Her hair is completely tucked away under a bonnet. But what struck me was the gilded silver device (“oorijzer”) that was attached to the back of her head which came forward to form “blinkers” with the possible intent to make it impossible for her to look sideways without having to show her intentions and turn her head. We usually connect this device with horses, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this device was introduced by the very harsh Calvinists back at the time of the Reformation to make sure “their” women were forced to look straight ahead.
maandag 4 mei 2009, 17:10 uur
Christopher Hitchens book “God is not Great” (2007) is loaded with notions about the origin of retarded religeous rules as mentioned by Swaab. Progress in science is our only hope of getting rid of all the nonsense uttered in our ‘holy’ labelled’ books.
I truly can recommend this mindblowing former number 1 New York Times bestseller, yes, I even think Swaab could find some interesting info in Hitchens treasure trove.
Good luck with the remainder of your carreer, proffesor Swaab, for some of us reach the pinnacle of their talent late in life (I sure as hell hope I will;)