The Origin and Development of the Prohibition of Eating Blood

Abstract

Abstract: Previous scholarship has generally assumed that all prohibitions of eating blood in the Hebrew Bible have the same basic meaning and refer to the same real practice in ancient society. This essay calls attention to the substantial differences in phrasing (blood as a direct object or with four different prepositions). There are also differences in the reasons to and not to eat blood (decorum, local altars, divine property, life force, ransom, divination, and idolatry). The consequences also differ substantially (scolding, forfeited blessing, excision, exile). In this essay, I suggest a model for how the variation could have resulted from well-studied processes of adaptation of received traditions to new theological and social contexts. Finally, it may be suggested that the reception and adaptation could have occurred entirely within the abstract tradition of legal revision. There may have been no contemporary practical social concern motivating the adaptation of the prohibition.