Kosher meat and Christians – Part 2
Original post here
Part 1 here
I have been trying to come to some conclusions as to why Christians are usually unconcerned about the way animals that they eat are killed. Acts 15 seems to suggest that they should be, 1 Cor 10 perhaps goes in the other direction. A few reports suggest that early Christians would not eat blood on religious grounds. We’ll get to the NT passages next time but I want to look at the origin of the prohibition about eating blood first. Feel free to join in – thoughts/corrections and otherwise are welcome!
The clean/unclean distinction predates the giving of the law at Sinai as does the prohibition on eating flesh with it’s blood/life. Both are more completely described in exodus and deuteronomy.
For example the Noah narrative presumes that Noah is aware of the clean/unclean distinction.
Genesis 8:20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
But we’re not particuarly interested in that. What is interesting is that the blood prohibition is stated for the first time right along side. Unlike the clean/unclean distinction we, the readers, along with Noah are told what is going on. Which makes sense in the logic of the Genesis narrative since this is the first time that God gives animal meat for food to man. Noah (and any later hearer) therefore needs to know what rules are going to attach to this new concession.
Genesis 9:2 The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
4 “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.
The principle appears to be at all life belongs to God whether it be human or animal. Of course the whole of a human or an animal belongs to God but a distinction is drawn between parts that make up the whole. Blood has a different quality to meat. Blood is life but meat is not life as such.
The two kinds of things in an animal are therefore able to be dealt with differently by God. He gives the meat to be eaten but not the life, that is the blood, since it is his and he’s not giving it away.
To summarise: God gives meat to eat, God does not give blood to eat.
There is no discussion here about eating a mother with its milk (as Sam has previously pointed out is the main concern in kosher eating, but i like the title so it i’m sticking with it).
Deuteronomy 12:23ff fills in some more of the details as does Leviticus 17:11ff. Leviticus is a bit easier to follow along with so we’ll go there, but the point I am going to make could equally be made from either.
The additional (and vital) piece of information that we are given is that God wasn’t going to keep holding back on giving the blood. It seems he had a particular purpose in mind for it:
Lev 17:10b …I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people. 11 For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. 12 Therefore I say to the Israelites, “None of you may eat blood, nor may an alien living among you eat blood.”
So blood wasn’t for eating. It was for cleaning…atoning…for dealing with sin. There is no need to go into it here but substitution is fairly clearly on view. God is giving a means for one life, figuratively encapsulated in the blood, to be substituted for another.
This process was an ongoing and repetetive one (multiple times per day it seems) animal ‘life’ would need to be substituted over and over for humans who forfeit their lives by their continual sinning.
Of course this practice was brought to a gruesome but glorious end when Jesus, the perfect righteous lamb, gave his blood for all the world on the cross. The writer of Hebrews goes on about this a fair bit (because it’s important!) but I wont (because this post is getting long)
The point that I am making is that as the Biblical narrative progresses:
1. God gives every plant for food (Gen 2:15-17)
2. God gives meat for food, but holds off on giving the blood (Gen 9:1-6)
3. God gives the blood i.e. life as a means to atone for sin (Dt 12:15ff, Lev 17:10ff)
4. God gives his own blood in the person of his Son as a once-for-all means to atone for the sins of the world
I’d say that this fairly decisively demonstrates that God’s gift of animal blood for atonement was only intended for a limited time. That is, until he gave his own blood – of such infinite worth – that the gift of animal blood was no longer needed.
What i’m proposing (let me know if you think it to be well founded) is that although God never explicitly gives animal blood to be eaten Jesus’ death implies that it no longer has any special purpose. Animal blood is still the ‘life’ but now no longer gives life. Jesus alone gives life by his blood. It is a small step from there to being free to eat it.
I couldn’t end this post with out this:
John 6:53Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.
God is exceedingly good.
More NT next time.
