Notes
Notes PREFACE 1. The opening words of Stephen Tournai’s Summa on the Decretum, trans. Somerville and Brasington, Prefaces, 194. 2. Freidenreich, “Foreign food.” 3. Rosenblum, Food and identity. 1. GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS 1. Foster and Anderson, Medical anthropology, 268. 2. Throughout this work, I use the term identity to refer to the ideas about Us and Them employed by the ancient and medieval scholars whose works I analyze. This term does not function as category of analysis in its own right; as Brubaker and Cooper, “Beyond ‘identity ,’” demonstrate, “identity” is overly ambiguous as an analytical category and its application by academics tends to reinforce the very concepts which we seek to understand. In effect, I employ identity as a synonym for “collective self-definition.” 3. Fischler, “Food, self, and identity,” 280. 4. See Green, “Otherness within,” 49–51; J.Z. Smith, “Differential equations,” 232–34. 5. See Lev. 11.5, 7, 13 // Deut. 14.7–8, 12. 6. Robert K. Merton helpfully distinguishes between “manifest” functions of sociological phenomena, “which are intended and recognized by participants in the system,” and those functions that are “latent,” which is to say, “neither intended nor recognized” (“Manifest and latent functions,” 105). I also follow Merton in limiting my use of the term function as a reference to the “observable objective consequences” of laws in contrast to the “subjective dispositions (aims, motives, purposes)” of jurists (78). 7. On Islamic norms governing the consumption of birds of prey, see Cook, “Early Is227 lamic dietary law,” 251–52; Cook (258) notes that most Islamic authorities permit the consumption of rock badgers. 8. Foreign food restrictions, which limit Our ability to eat food associated with Them, are distinct from regulations governing Their consumption of Our ritual foods, such as rules about access to the Eucharist or other sacrificial meals. This study does not address laws of the latter type. 9. Lévi-Strauss, Totemism, 69. 10. W.R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 247, 257. 11. Grignon, “Commensality and social morphology,” 23–24. 12. Douglas, “Deciphering a meal,” 249. 13. Lévi-Strauss, Raw and cooked; for more condensed expressions of this distinction, see “Culinary triangle”; The origin of table manners, 478–79. The third pole of Lévi-Strauss’ culinary triangle, the “rotten,” constitutes “naturally” transformed food in contrast to the “cultural ” transformation called cooking. The “raw,” according to Lévi-Strauss, is of neutral valence . The sources examined in this study, however, tend to view both raw and rotten foods as “natural” and contrast them with culturally-mediated prepared (“cooked”) foods. 14. Fischler, “Food, self, and identity,” 287. 15. I claim no originality in applying Anderson’s definition in this manner; among numerous other scholars who do the same, see S.J.D. Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 5. 16. B. Anderson, Imagined communities, 6, emphasis original. 17. Carr, Writing on the tablet, emphasizes the role that education in a canon of traditional texts plays in the enculturation of elites within the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds; this role continues well beyond the period of antiquity. 18. Rosenblum, Food and identity, 6, emphasis original. I allude here as well to Peter L. Berger’s understanding of the three “moments” within the dialectical process of worldbuilding : externalization, objectivation, and internalization (Sacred canopy, 4). We will examine the applicability of Berger’s theory to foreign food restrictions in greater detail in chapter 12. 19. Abusch, “Hammurabi,” 401. 20. Hartog, Mirror of Herodotus. 21. Ewald, “Comparative jurisprudence.” 22. Ibid., 1947–48. 23. See Ewald, “Comparative jurisprudence,” especially 1949–50. I use intellectual context instead of Ewald’s favored term, philosophy, as he understands the latter in an especially broad sense. Although philosophy is an adequate term to describe the intellectual context of modern German law, Ewald’s primary test case in this essay, it is less applicable in the context of the medieval canon law case which Ewald addresses or the various religious legal traditions which I study. 24. J.Z. Smith, Drudgery divine, 51, emphasis original. 25. My use of the lens metaphor—and, indeed, my approach to comparison more broadly—is inspired by Doniger, The implied spider, 7–25, who distinguishes between a telescope (focusing on cross-cultural contexts), a microscope (focusing on specific texts), and the naked eye (which sees a text in its cultural context). Also significant in shaping my approach to comparison is the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, especially the essays collected in 228 notes to pages 6–12...
OR
