I was reading Voltaire's philosophical dictionary and I noticed something strange. When Voltaire is writing about the need for laws to change due to circumstance and not be blindly bound by once rational laws due to tradition Voltaire brings up the Muslim prohibition of Pork and Wine as an example of this.
Link
*very first paragraph on the top of the page*
I understand what Voltaire was saying philosophically, so I suppose this isn't a really important question but I am quite curious.
Was there something about Arabian wine / pigs that was actually injurious in pre-islamic times that was unique to Arabia but not other areas to which Islam eventually expanded?
Is this simply a bad translation?
Did Voltaire just make it up?
Is this a case of a word's meaning changing over time and it meaning something else ?
Thanks an advance.
-Axeman