Transfusing blood is eating blood?

by Marvin Shilmer 13 Replies latest jw friends

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  King Solomon

  KSol-Is it your assumption that Noah and his family and their predecessors, prior to the Flood were carnivores? (Gen1:29) You emphasized "AFTER"..

  But, it was only after the Flood that Noah and his family, then all of mankind to follow, were permitted to use animals as a food source ( Gen 9:3) And so why would a Divine command have been necessary prior to them being permitted to eat flesh in the first place. So, your point regarding Adam, Abel blood transfusion seems flawed.

  The Bible doesn't explicitly mention whether they were strictly vegetarians, although it DOES mention that they were given fruits of the field to eat. However, a strict legalistic analysis of Genesis shows that there was no PROHIBITION against eating animals before the Flood, with or without their blood, so the Bible itself is mute on the subject.

  Granted, there's no doubt God gave His explicit permission to eat animals in Genesis 9 (with the condition that they be properly bled first), but there was no prohibition against the practice BEFORE the Flood. Theologians (and lawyers) will tell you that any action NOT explicitly prohibited is not a violation of God's will, AKA a sin, but a conscience matter, at best.

  Similarly, there was no prohibition against murder/manslaughter before the Flood, either: YHWH only demanded an accounting for spilled blood, animal and man, AFTER the Flood. Hence, Cain's murder of Abel was not a sin, and perhaps explains why YHWH let him off without demanding his own life in exchange for the blood he spilled. Remember: murder was only codifed as a sin AFTER the Flood, too, and hence YHWH was presumably patching the "evil thoughts in the hearts of man" defect of Genesis 3 fame with a legalistic fix, wiping the slate clean, but delegating the authority and giving the responsibility to humanity to create a judicial system for themselves.

  (In fact, the whole idea of sacrifice as atonement for sin doesn't apply to Cain and Abel's story, as the only sin on record at that point was eating the forbidden fruit; their sacrifice could only be as a blessing offering.)

  Of course, the Torah is a book of Hebraic law, so just like the story of Adam and Eve, the Flood is internal validation or a backstory of why civil and criminal law is needed (the Torah), and what happens when there are no laws (the evil that existed before the Flood).

  That's a functional legalistic analysis of Genesis and the Torah, similar to that used by cultural anthropologists who look at the motivations and benefits served by a particular belief to the society or culture which adopts it....
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  rip van winkle

  Ksol-"Granted, there's no doubt God gave His explicit permission to eat animals in Genesis 9 (with the condition that they be properly bled first), but there was no prohibition against the practice BEFORE the Flood. Theologians (and lawyers) will tell you that any action NOT explicitly prohibited is not a violation of God's will, AKA a sin, but a conscience matter, at best."

  ^Opinion not fact. v To quote you, Sol: "Says, who?"

  When the instruction was given by God to A&E, they were perfect. They hadn't sinned. Why then, would they have to be given instruction on what they COULD eat? v

  Gen 1:29 states: "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food." (NIV)

  *This explicitly pertains to what theycould eat. "They will be yours for food." That seems unambiguous.. A&E were also instructed what they could not eat at Gen 2:16 & 17.

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  *You have not convinced me that your argument doesn't lean to the side of a legalistic guessing game.

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  Edit- *Again Bold where I did not Bold
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  Marvin Shilmer

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  “Will a blood transfusion save the life of a starving man?”

  Moshe,

  What you write is true. But what’s been missing over the years is a sharing of the medical literature that documents this as a fact. The common reader has no idea where to find this or how to search for it. The sharing of this literature is a primary purpose of this article and the series it belongs too.

  I just added the second in this series of articles under the title Transfusing, Eating — Misrepresentation and available at: http://marvinshilmer.blogspot.com/2012/09/transfusing-eating-misrepresentation.html

  Marvin Shilmer

  http://marvinshilmer.blogspot.com
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  King Solomon

  RVW said:

  Ksol-"Granted, there's no doubt God gave His explicit permission to eat animals in Genesis 9 (with the condition that they be properly bled first), but there was no prohibition against the practice BEFORE the Flood. Theologians (and lawyers) will tell you that any action NOT explicitly prohibited is not a violation of God's will, AKA a sin, but a conscience matter, at best."

  ^Opinion not fact. v To quote you, Sol: "Says, who?"

  Are you not familiar with the basic definition of sin, being any action or behavior in violation of God's Expressed Divine Wil? It's a part of basic Abrahamic theology of all the (3) branches, and is hardly controversial. Google for 'sin definition' and you'll see the basics, whether it's written by Catholics, Jews, Evangelicals, Protestants, Muslims, etc.

  In Genesis, the first negative commandment (i.e. a prohibition) is the one given to Adam and Eve: "thou shalt not eat of the forbidden fruit". Violating that restriction was of course, the original sin. There were other positive commandments given (such as "multiply and fill the Earth, you may eat of all of these fruits" etc.) but there are other behaviors that were not defined by YHWH or recorded in the Bible, and hence not a violation of His Divine Will (or not considered important enough to mention in the introductory story of the Torah). Saying they ate animals or not is pure speculation, and besides, it's not important to the moral message that the story was intended to convey (namely, what happens when people don't follow the instructions of God to the tee).

  When the instruction was given by God to A&E, they were perfect. They hadn't sinned. Why then, would they have to be given instruction on what they COULD eat?

  NOW who's offering opinion?

  The idea that they were created as "perfect" doesn't appear anywhere in the Genesis account itself, and is an element that was added in later scriptures to justify the Xian concept of "original sin", and the need for redemption by Jesus Christ. Leolaia has written on that subject recently, but it's a relatively late element added to the polt, and one used by JWs, but hardly universal amongst all Xian faiths.

  Gen 1:29 states: "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food." (NIV)

  *This explicitly pertains to what theycould eat. "They will be yours for food." That seems unambiguous.. A&E were also instructed what they could not eat at Gen 2:16 & 17.

  Again, the dietary restrictions against eating animals would be in a grey area, since it's not stated one way or the other. Realize that Abel offered an animal sacrifice to God, but how wasteful would it be for him to raise animals for only sacrificial purposes, and not as a food source for human consumption? What a heavy toll and wasted labor that would be on an agriarian society, esp. if there were so few humans alive (and here's the point I feel compelled to mention that I don't believe ANY of it as historical truths: it's an interesting myth handed down for several millenia via oral and written form).

  However, the dietary element was only a minor point I was making: I was focusing on the lawlessness that existed pre-Flood, where anarchy ruled (like the Wild West), where a lack of laws given by YHWH meant people were allowed to do as they wished. Why? God hadn't delegated to men the authority to self-govern, to hold each other accountable for their crimes and for spilled blood.

  There are parallel times in human development found in pre-historic human cultures, where the strongest survived, and might made right. Code of Ur-Nammi is the oldest extant law known (and it refers to earlier law tablets), and it dates to 2100 BC, so the time period referred would be before this:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu

  Fascinating reading, as it is a precursor to laws found in the Torah, and has laws pertaining to slavery, adultery, monetary damages for injury (vs lex talionis), etc. Realize there is older remaining references to the Code of Urukagina, written laws which existed circa 2800 BC.

  Here's an excerpt:

  The laws are arranged in casuistic form of IF (crime) THEN (punishment)—a pattern followed in nearly all later codes. For the oldest extant law-code known to history, it is considered remarkably advanced, because it institutes fines of monetary compensation for bodily damage, as opposed to the later lex talionis (‘eye for an eye’) principle of Babylonian law; however, murder, robbery, adultery and rape were capital offenses.

  The code reveals a glimpse at societal structure during the "Sumerian Renaissance". Beneath the lugal ("great man" or king), all members of society belonged to one of two basic strata: The "lu" or free person, or the slave (male, arad; female geme). The son of a lu was called a dumu-nita until he married, becoming a "young man" (gurus). A woman (munus) went from being a daughter (dumu-mi), to a wife (dam), then if she outlived her husband, a widow (nu-ma-su), who could remarry.