A quick glance at the NT Greek dictionary (see Bauer) for the verb απεχω, confirms that this verb, has the meaning of: 1. "terminus technicus" of the business world, expressing the receipt of a sum of money (see Matt 6:2: "they have their wages")... 2. expressing a geographical/physical or abstract (see Matt. 15:8) distance from something to something (Lk. 24:13: "a village 60 stadia from Jerusalem") and 3. to keep away or abstain from something (1 Tim. 4:3: "...abstain from the food that God has created...").
The meaning of απεχω in Acts 15:29, as abstaining from eating blood, is well attested, both in the NT and in extrabiblical literature (cf. απεχω in Joseph Flavius).
I will now deliberately avoid examining what abstinence from "blood" means, or what abstinence from blood meant in ancient Judaism. I commend to all the excellent commentary on the NT by Strack-Billerbeck (Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Midrash) on the passage Acts 15:20.
If I look at the context of chapter 15, from the beginning (Acts 15:1) it was about circumcision according to the Mosaic custom, without which - according to some - no one can be saved. In Acts 15:5, the argument of the Pharisees who became believers is repeated, who argued that it was necessary(!) for new Christians to be circumcised. The Pharisees demanded that the Law(!) be kept as well.Peter takes up the word and finds that God makes no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, for He has given His Holy Spirit, both "to them...and to us" (Acts 15:8). Circumcision, like the requirement to keep the Law(!), is evaluated by Peter as a burden (a yoke on the neck) that neither the forefathers of the Jews nor the Jews themselves who became Christians were able to keep (Acts 15:10). It is only by believing in the grace of Jesus that the Jews, as Gentiles, can be saved (Acts 15:11).James speaks last and judges that they are not to make trouble for those who, as Gentiles, have turned to God and formulates four areas from which Gentile Christians are to keep their distance (Acts 15:20). He adds the argument that the Law of Moses is read everywhere and every Sabbath - my understanding is that James was referring those possibly interested in the details of the Law of Moses to a local synangogue where they could learn what all Christ had delivered them from.
Transferred to the JWs, who draw their position from Acts 15:20ff: to fulfill James' request, then the BG would have to repeatedly urge its members to go to a Catholic church from time to time, if they wish, and hear a Latin Mass, and thereby learn that this, is not for them...
The covering letter of the Apostles from Jerusalem to Antioch and other cities, declares again - for the third time (Acts 15:28) - that the aim was to avoid additional, unnecessary burdens for Gentile Christians, outside those four necessary areas. The original controversy over circumcision and other requirements for keeping the Law is no longer explicitly mentioned in the letter. That is, the original requirement about circumcision and other rules of the Law, is reduced to four "tolerable" requirements, and anyone could see for themselves in any synagogue among Jews who wanted to continue to keep the whole thing...
I understand the temporariness of the whole ordinance from the meaning of abstaining from a "strangled" animal. This is commonly explained using the OT, where the animal, whether it died by accident or predator, or was ritually killed, had to be bled. Strack-Billerbeck, in my opinion, correctly reason that the prohibition against eating a "strangled" animal must have applied to a dead or torn animal, since the rabbinic requirements for bleeding an animal were beyond the OT, and certainly those requirements, in themselves, were a burden.
The NT describes (Mk 5:13) the case of the 2000 "strangled" pigs who threw themselves into the sea. These drowned pigs, according to the literal interpretation of Acts 15:20ff, would have been inedible. But if you look more closely at the Greek NT, you will find that the verb "to strangle"/"to choke" does not refer only to animals. In Mat 13:7, the term "choked" plant appears. If I were to update - in the JW sense - also the prohibition of eating "strangled" to plants and their fruits, then I would have to examine whether, for example, an apple, grew on a tree that was not girdled by some weed. A must, compote or even cider, made from apples I picked from old apple trees that were covered with creepers, would be as serious a sin as having a blood transfusion...
For me, Christ is the end of the Law (Rom. 10:4) and the Law is as dead as dead can be (Rom. 7:2-4).
