Pagan Roots of Eating Blood.
The practice of eating blood has its roots in ancient pagan societies and cultures. Barnes notes, “The use of blood was common among the Gentiles. They drank it often at their sacrifices, and in making covenants or compacts.” And according to Ellicott, dishes prepared with blood “were common in the cuisine both of Greeks and Romans” at the time of the writing of the New Testament.
Yet, God expressly forbade the eating of blood from early history.
Forbidden by God.
Genesis 9:4 set the stage for God’s prohibition for eating blood — because it contained the life of the flesh. This prohibition is further defined at Mount Sinai and reiterated by the Apostles and the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. As a result, the early church faithfully refrained from eating blood. Gill says the law “was attended to with much strictness by the primitive Christians, who seemed to have observed this advice in the form of a law, and thought it criminal to eat blood.”
Accordingly, Gill writes that the strict adherence to the law by the early church “would have involved a frequent withdrawal from social life, or a conspicuous singularity.”
Despite the abstention of the early Christians, the modern church has largely abandoned the prohibition against eating blood, wrongly filing it as “ceremonial.” Gill writes of this law, “in process of time it was neglected; and in Austin’s time abstinence from blood was derided, as a ridiculous notion.” Yet we have repeatedly shown that this law is not ceremonial and should be adhered to today. Barnes agrees, noting the law predates ceremony. Continue reading “12 Practical Ways to Avoid Eating Blood”
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Scripture quotations taken from the NASB.
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