Religious restrictions on the consumption of pork
Pork is a food taboo among Jews, Muslims, and some Christian denominations. Swine were prohibited in ancient Syria and Phoenicia, and the pig and its flesh represented a taboo observed, Strabo noted, at Comana in Pontus. A lost poem of Hermesianax, reported centuries later by the traveller Pausanias, reported an etiological myth of Attis destroyed by a supernatural boar to account for the fact that "in consequence of these events the Galatians who inhabit Pessinous do not touch pork". In Abrahamic religions, eating pig flesh is clearly forbidden by Jewish (kashrut), Islamic (halal) and Adventist (kosher animals) dietary laws.
Although Christianity is also an Abrahamic religion, most of its adherents do not follow these aspects of Mosaic law and do consume its meat. However, Seventh-day Adventists consider pork taboo, along with other foods forbidden by Jewish law. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Church do not permit pork consumption. Hebrew Roots Movement adherents also do not consume pork.
The pig tended to be regarded as a dangerously liminal animal. With the feet of a cud-eater, the diet of a scavenger, the habits of a dirt-dweller and the cunning of a human, it exhibited an unsettling combination of characteristics, rendering it culturally inedible for some (but not all) southern Levantine peoples, for whom pigs were often associated with the underworld or malevolent supernatural powers.'
Stavrakopoulou, Francesca,