Abstain from blood

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St_Gabriel

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Hello,

I would like to know what was meant in this passage by St James to abstain from blood?

Acts16:19

19"Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles,

20but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood.
 
The pasage seems to be a summary of the law of Noah. Those who were not Jews would be recognized as a righteous person by the Jews if they followed the law of Noah.

Note that it appears the new Christians were asked to do these things due to the Jewish culture around them, not because they were law as such, because we have for instance the example elsewhere where we are told that meat sacrificed to idols is nothing and a Christian is free to eat it as long as it does not trip up his weaker brother.

So we see the council in Jerusalem ask the new Christians to do those things which would have the Jews recognize them as righteous people. To not cause great offense.

JJ
 
St_Gabriel said:
Hello,

I would like to know what was meant in this passage by St James to abstain from blood?

Acts16:19

19"Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles,

20but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood.
Click to expand...
It means that Christians are not to drink/eat blood. The only blood that we drink is the blood of Christ, which is actually all of Christ, his glorified body, his soul and Divinity. This OT practice of abstaining from blood is still in force, though most of the other OT practices are not in force. OT teachings and the spiritual meaning of OT practices retain their force.
 
The Old Testament law is not in force with believers.

The Old Testament taught us to prepare us for the coming of Jesus. Take a step back a moment from the fact that blood was forbidden to why it was forbidden.

It was forbidden because the life was in the blood, and life belonged to God.

Now we are given everlasting life through the blood of Jesus. It is in perfect harmony with the Old Testament law, the blood contains the life and the life belongs to God. He gives us his life through a free gift.

Now, one could argue, if one insisted on turning the gospel into law that now one must partake of blood. The life giving blood of the lamb. But since law never gives life, we should understand it as the good news and receive God’s gift to us.

JJ
 
RE: Acts 15:20

“According to the Council of Florence in 1442, the apostolic decree was only a temporary measure to facilitate unity among Jews and Gentiles in the early Church. The binding force of its food restrictions was relaxed once the ethnic circumstnces that made them necessary passed away.” Ignatius Catholic Study Bible;commentary by Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch; Ignatius Press; San Francisco; 2002
 
does this abstaining from blood pertain to eating a rare steak as well?
 
agmoose02 said:
Is this personal opinion, or is there something definitive in your assertation?
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Banjo’s post above yours indicates that it was only for a time, and that time has passed. Thank God!!

He made all foods clean right?
 
BPW75 said:
Banjo’s post above yours indicates that it was only for a time, and that time has passed. Thank God!!

He made all foods clean right?
Click to expand...
That was how I had looked at it, but I wasnt sure after the quote given above. Was wanting clarification, thank you. Also, you are right, Thank God that time has passed, i like my steaks to moo.😃
 
Thanks for everyone’s reply.

Jolly Joe is there a place in the bible which refers to blood as the law of Noah? I do remember reading that he was a righteous man.

Good question agmoose02. Many people like rare meat. I know of cultures where they will kill an animal (such as a pig) and use up all of the meat as well as the blood as food. The blood is used to create sausages. I never ate them, but I wondered if it was a sin.
 
agmoose02 said:
Is this personal opinion, or is there something definitive in your assertation?
Click to expand...
Well if you can see blood oozing out of it you know you’ll be eating blood. The color you cook it to just depends on if you feel you are cheating or not. For example I cook my burgers and steak until brown, no red at all.

I often wonder why bloody beef is so appealing when bloody chicken for example isn’t.
 
BPW75 said:
Banjo’s post above yours indicates that it was only for a time, and that time has passed. Thank God!!

He made all foods clean right?
Click to expand...
Not really, he was saying that food doesn’t have magical properties to destroy your soul. It is how you eat it that destroys your soul. Do you wonder if maybe you are doing wrong by eating blood since Acts says not to? If so then blood may not be clean for you.
 
The reason for the prohibition on drinking blood: it was believed that the life of the animal was in the blood. If a person drank the blood of the animal (or person) they received it’s life, strength, etc. Christians recognize that life comes from God alone, not from the created things around us.

Once people no longer believed that they could get life from drinking blood the prohibition was no longer necessary.
 
I always thought it was refering to animal blood which was used by pagans during sacrifices to idols. So eating rare meat and the pork sausages might be OK when they aren’t used in pagan sacrifices. I just want to be clear on what the Catholic Church teaches and not rely on my own interpretation.

The thing that also confuses me about this particular passage was the fornication bit. What does that have to do with idols?
Unless it too had to do with pagans thinking that it too was acceptable? :confused:
 
From A New Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture; Thomas Nelson Publishers……

“Blood was recognized to be the seat of life, and therefore something sacred and reserved to God. Even when not involved in sacrifice, the blood of an animal could not be consumed but must be poured out on the ground (Dt 12:16, etc). The prohibition of blood became one of the dietary laws of the Mosaic code, but because of its inclusion within the provisions of this covenant with Noah the later Jews considered it to be binding on all mankind. Hence the concession made to their feelings in the regulation imposed on Gentile Christians living in a Jewish environment according to Acts 15:20, 29. From this apostolic precedent, the custom of abstaining from blood was observed in some parts of the early Church.” 158b
“……the prohibition of eating blood lasted until the end of the second century (Tert. *Apol. *9:13).” 833i

From the Council of Florence, Session 11 (1442)…
“It firmly believes, professes and teaches that every creature of God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because according to the word of the Lord not what goes into the mouth defiles a person, and because the difference in the Mosaic law between clean and unclean foods belongs to ceremonial practices, which have passed away and lost their efficacy with the coming of the gospel. It also declares that the apostolic prohibition, to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled, was suited to that time when a single church was rising from Jews and gentiles, who previously lived with different ceremonies and customs. This was so that the gentiles should have some observances in common with Jews, and occasion would be offered of coming together in one worship and faith of God and a cause of dissension might be removed, since by ancient custom blood and strangled things seemed abominable to Jews, and gentiles could be thought to be returning to idolatry if they ate sacrificial food. In places, however, where the Christian religion has been promulgated to such an extent that no Jew is to be met with and all have joined the church, uniformly practising the same rites and ceremonies of the gospel and believing that to the clean all things are clean, since the cause of that apostolic prohibition has ceased, so its effect has ceased. It condemns, then, no kind of food that human society accepts and nobody at all neither man nor woman, should make a distinction between animals, no matter how they died; although for the health of the body, for the practice of virtue or for the sake of regular and ecclesiastical discipline many things that are not proscribed can and should be omitted, as the apostle says all things are lawful, but not all are helpful.”
 
St_Gabriel said:
Good question agmoose02. Many people like rare meat. I know of cultures where they will kill an animal (such as a pig) and use up all of the meat as well as the blood as food. The blood is used to create sausages. I never ate them, but I wondered if it was a sin.
Click to expand...
We did this when I grew up on the farm. We ate everything except the bristles, brains, lungs, and the squeal. Head cheese from the head meat, blood sausage from the blood, the intestines were cleaned and used as casing for sausage (you have seen skin-on weiners in the store?), heart, kidneys and tongue were cleaned up, boiled and pickled with vinegar and spice as were the feet. The bones eventually went to the dogs. Some people do eat the brains and lungs. We used the bladder full of air for a ball. The boiled tail was grandpa’s delicacy; ma always gave it to him and he ate it like a man playing a harmonica.

People don’t eat bloody chicken because the pieces of meat are so small that they easily take in e-coli and/or solmonella. In the larger prime cuts usually only the surface can be contaminated and that usually gets thoroughly cooked while the inside is still red. Hamburger is also easy to contaminate as the outside meat gets mixed with the inside during grinding. Sorry for the hijack, memories you know. 🙂
 
St_Gabriel said:
Thanks for everyone’s reply.

Jolly Joe is there a place in the bible which refers to blood as the law of Noah? I do remember reading that he was a righteous man.

Good question agmoose02. Many people like rare meat. I know of cultures where they will kill an animal (such as a pig) and use up all of the meat as well as the blood as food. The blood is used to create sausages. I never ate them, but I wondered if it was a sin.
Click to expand...
It’s not called that in scripture, though you can see some of them directly mentioned between God and Noah, in Genesis 9. In the 4th verse the eating of flesh with the blood was forbidden immediately after God tells Noah he may eat of any animal. Verse 6 forbids murder.

But where we know the most of what the Jews thought is from the Talmud, their Tradition. Wikipedia actually has a good article on it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noahide_Laws

As you can see the Jerusalem Councils decree was basically a subset. I assume things like murder weren’t a big problem with the Christians getting along with the Jews. Always wondered about the sexual things that were evidently potentially causing problems but I kind of decided I didn’t want to go into learning about that.

I’ve always been a bit surprised that the Catholic Church seems to pretty well completely ignore the sacred traditions of the Jews. It would seem to me if scripture is just a part of Tradition, it’s unlikely that started with the New Testament. Anyway that’s not what this thread is about.

And there is no prohibition against rare meat. Either the animal was sufficiently bled and it was okay to eat, or it wasn’t sufficiently bled and it didn’t matter if you cooked it to shoe leather. Cooked blood was still blood.

Now of course there were standards for how to do the bleeding but the text tells you the basics. The blood contained the life. If you bled an animal to death, the life being gone was evidence of sufficient bleeding. God wasn’t saying one red blood cell and you are condemned. The focus was on the life not blood biology.

We don’t worry about the dietary laws anymore because now they have been fulfilled, to go back and try to observe them as matters of faith would dishonor Jesus.

JJ
 
banjo said:
From A New Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture; Thomas Nelson Publishers……

“Blood was recognized to be the seat of life, and therefore something sacred and reserved to God. Even when not involved in sacrifice, the blood of an animal could not be consumed but must be poured out on the ground (Dt 12:16, etc). The prohibition of blood became one of the dietary laws of the Mosaic code, but because of its inclusion within the provisions of this covenant with Noah the later Jews considered it to be binding on all mankind. Hence the concession made to their feelings in the regulation imposed on Gentile Christians living in a Jewish environment according to Acts 15:20, 29. From this apostolic precedent, the custom of abstaining from blood was observed in some parts of the early Church.” 158b
“……the prohibition of eating blood lasted until the end of the second century (Tert. *Apol. *9:13).” 833i

From the Council of Florence, Session 11 (1442)…
“It firmly believes, professes and teaches that every creature of God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because according to the word of the Lord not what goes into the mouth defiles a person, and because the difference in the Mosaic law between clean and unclean foods belongs to ceremonial practices, which have passed away and lost their efficacy with the coming of the gospel. It also declares that the apostolic prohibition, to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled, was suited to that time when a single church was rising from Jews and gentiles, who previously lived with different ceremonies and customs. This was so that the gentiles should have some observances in common with Jews, and occasion would be offered of coming together in one worship and faith of God and a cause of dissension might be removed, since by ancient custom blood and strangled things seemed abominable to Jews, and gentiles could be thought to be returning to idolatry if they ate sacrificial food. In places, however, where the Christian religion has been promulgated to such an extent that no Jew is to be met with and all have joined the church, uniformly practising the same rites and ceremonies of the gospel and believing that to the clean all things are clean, since the cause of that apostolic prohibition has ceased, so its effect has ceased. It condemns, then, no kind of food that human society accepts and nobody at all neither man nor woman, should make a distinction between animals, no matter how they died; although for the health of the body, for the practice of virtue or for the sake of regular and ecclesiastical discipline many things that are not proscribed can and should be omitted, as the apostle says all things are lawful, but not all are helpful.”
Click to expand...
Thankyou for this info and your previous post.
 
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