by cofty 203 Replies latest watchtower medical
My doctor got very upset with me after he told me to abstain from meat and I went ahead and had a liver transplant. 🙃
Watchtower acknowledges that blood transfusions are organ transplants.
The Bible makes it clear that it is sinful to transplant organs that contain billions of donor white blood cells....but since 1980 Jehovah Witnesses encourage disobedience to God's primary component laws.
As JW interpret the Bible....The JW gb interprets that to mean no bt.
Your comments reveal a large part of the problem people have with the WT.
Your first statement suggests individual JWs have carefully considered the matter but your second nails it down by saying the GB have actually made that decision for them.
..that a phrase like "abstain from blood," shorn of context, has an almost limitless number of possible interpretations.
I know some have meant well arguing alternative takes of the passage in Acts but personally, I don't think trying to redefine "and from blood" as meaning something other than this taboo regarding blood of a slaughtered animal, is being faithful to the text. The question for those who wonder what early Christians believed about this topic are encouraged to read the surrounding context in Acts and the unambiguous passages in Paul that elicited this story in Acts. Paul was preaching Chrisian freedom from all the religious taboos of the Jews and some new Jewish Christain converts around Jerusalem were taking offense. The suggestion to not abuse their liberty so as not to stumble these weak ones is a pretty typical message of the period. The church leaders at the time of the writing of Acts were revising history a bit to present the image of a united church. But regardless the motives of the work, the context clearly describes a situation very different from how the WT spins it.
One last thought. The prevailing Rabbinic approach to keeping the Law (described as 'building a wall around the Law'), that is, expanding definitions and legislating every possible scenario out of obsessive concern about rules is condemned by Christian theologians as oppressive. It's hard not to see this as an example of that.
When faced with a choice between following the Law or feeding hungry stomachs, the Jesus of the Gospels says: The (Law) was made for man, not man for the (Law).
Hi cofty,
Thanks for your interesting posts and threads on this subject.
I think I’ve explained the scriptures you reference on a previous thread. Your false derivative is based on wrong interpretation, namely what you personally conclude from the distinction between the 2 sorts of blood as explained in wt commentary.
According to your derivative, it was lawful for an Israelite to practice eating dead un-bled “kosher” animals and it was also lawful for those ancient Israelites to consume the blood of living animals just as long as they didn’t kill them, for example, in some places in Africa the natives extract blood from their living livestock and consume the blood. According to your interpretation, that does not violate the prohibition to keep abstaining from blood same as a bt which involves consuming large amounts of blood from living hosts. Inspite of your interpretation, I don’t see this lawfully practiced in the Bible as the Israelites surely abstained from this.
To the above, I would say, "Physician heal thyself"
The Decree did not say, "Abstain from blood."
It said, ἀπέχεσθαι....καὶ αἵματος -- "To keep abstaining....from blood"
It is very clearly a reference to an existing command.
The only way JW's can make their interpretation work is through semantic legerdemain.
--Either by paraphrasing the verse using words that no translator has any business using or by dispensing with the context entirely.
(Which is a helluva disrespectful way to a book they claim to respect.)
Hi TD,
“keep abstaining....from blood"
—“And from sexual immorality….” Jesus added to the meaning of adultery “on every sort of ground” so your rule doesn’t strictly apply. However, how are blood transfusions outside the scope?
( I correctly referred to the decree as “keep abstaining” in my post above.)
Ok, one last last thought. The simplest way to understand the passage is in it's entirety. There were a few issues that loomed larger in the mind of the Jewish converts in Jerusalem than some other stuff. Those were sexual morality, not eating blood of slaughtered animals, eating unbled animals and meat that had been used as a gift to other gods.
The sexual morality item might seem surprising, but the ProtoOrthodox church that wrote Acts was probably responding to Paul's confusing argument that sin isn't counted if there is no law. It seems many Pauline Christians had adopted the view kinda like the JWs before the 1950's. Nobody really made issues of such matters. But whatever the impetus was, it was one of a list of items bothering the Jews.
Next, the issues of eating blood, an unbled animal or those offered to other gods. Paul again is the issue. He specifically argues eating formerly 'unclean' foods was not an issue for Christians. Even expressly said the eating of foods offered to other gods (idols) was not an issue nor ought anyone to judge others regarding such things.
Clearly,the writer of Acts was addressing issues that were dividing the Jewish faction and Gentile church and encouraging consideration for the sensitivities of the Jews.
"21For Moses has been proclaimed in every city from ancient times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”
IOW, old traditions were hard to break free from and those still attending the synagogues (as many Jewish Christians did) were still getting Moses (the Pentateuch) read to them every week.
Acts 15:19,20 (KJV) Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: 20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
This applied to non-Jews (according to the verse) who may not have abstained from blood before this decree. How did early Christians apply this? According to WT commentary, early christians didn’t consume blood or use it for medical purpose.
( I don’t see how a christian bleeding profusely and facing immediate death short of a miracle can get around this. )
The decision of Acts 15 was that gentile Christians should not be forced to keep the Law of Moses.
The Law already contained rules on the minimum that was required of foreigners who were resident in Israel. These restrictions can be summarised as idolatry, fornication and blood. - Lev. 17-18
A non-Jew would customarily carry small idols with them on travels. This was not acceptable while resident in Israel. A non-Jew might marry close relatives or otherwise behave in a way that was offensive to their hosts. The Law prohibited such conduct. A non-Jew might kill an animal and eat it unbled. They had to be told that this was not permitted in Israel.
However - even non-priestly Jews were permitted to eat an unbled animal found already dead. The only downside was that they were then considered unclean until they performed cleansing rituals. Moses encouraged them to sell such an animal to a foreigner rather than eat it so as to avoid temporary uncleanness.
So it was decided by the meeting at Jerusalem that no more than these simple restrictions should be imposed on gentiles who were becoming Christians so as make fellowship possible between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians.
Eating the blood of animals found already dead was never encouraged. It always resulted in uncleanness. It was prohibited for priests. But it was never a sin. It never resulted in punishment unless cleansing rituals were neglected. But exactly the same applied to a Jew who decided not to eat the animal but bury it instead.
Blood is only scared in the bible to the extent that it represents a life that has been taken. Every reference to blood in the Old and New testaments can be understood in this context.
When the Watchtower insists that a child's life should be sacrificed because blood is intrinsically sacred in every context it has an extraordinary burden of proof. It has failed totally to meet this burden resulting in guilt in the premature death of untold thousands. All because of a dangerous combination of stupidity and arrogance on the part of generations of ignorant leaders.
Cleaning out my cloud drive archive, I came across Marvin Schilmer's excellent website material
that contains considerable documentation of BLOOD malfeasance.
Here is the pdf of his website (all that remains).
Excellent material contained therein:
file:///media/archive/Marvin-Shilmers-Website-Plus.pdf.zip/Marvin-Shilmers-Website-Plus.pdf
