Genesis 9:1–4, a priestly text, bans the entire human race from ingesting animal blood:
God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fertile and increase, and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky, on everything that creeps on the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; into your hand are they Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all (these). Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”
Why does the priestly account concede meat to Noah rather than to Adam, who instead is explicitly described as a vegetarian (Genesis 1:29)? Was there a tradition that man the carnivore represented a later stage in the history of the human race? In my initial treatment of the blood prohibition (see “Seeing the Ethical Within the Ritual,”BR 08:04), I cited the Sumerian myth of Lugulbanda, which clearly indicated that such a transition, indeed, was widespread. There is another text, however, that was more likely known to the Israelites and that can be discerned in much of the Bible’s antediluvian epic. It is the Gilgamesh epic.
The key to this channel of influence is the expression “the fear and dread of you” (Genesis 9:2a), implying that heretofore man was not just a vegetarian but a friend of the animals; however, with the concession of meat, he became a hunter. Note the relevant passages from Gilgamesh:
On seeing him, Enkidu, the gazelles ran off. The wild beasts of the steppe drew away from his body…But now he had [wi]sdom, [br]oader understanding…[The harlot] says to him, to Enkidu: “Thou art [wi]se, Enkidu, art become like a god! Why with the wild creatures dost thou roam over the steppe?”…Food (meat) they placed before him. He gagged…nothing does Enkidu know of eating food.
I submit that biblical Adam was modeled on Mesopotamian Enkidu. Before each of them experiences sex, they are vegetarians (Genesis 1:29; Gilgamesh I, iv, 2–4), naked (Genesis 2:25, 3:7; Gilgamesh II, ii, 27–28) and friends and protectors of the beasts (Genesis 2:20, 3:1–4; Gilgamesh I, iii, 9–12). After sex, they eat meat (conceded to Noah, Genesis 9:3, but presumably illegally eaten by Adam and his progeny; Gilgamesh II, iii, 3–7), wear clothes (Genesis 2:25, 3:21; Gilgamesh II, ii, 27–29, iii, 26–27) and become enemies of the beasts (Genesis 3:15, 9:2; Gilgamesh I, iv, 24–25; II, iii, 28–32).
However, the most significant parallel between the heroes of the two epics is that sex makes them wise and thereby enables them to become civilized. “Thou art wise, Enkidu, art become like a god” (Gilgamesh I, iv, 34) is matched by Adam and Eve’s eating the forbidden fruit, the “source of wisdom” (Genesis 3:6), which empowers them to “know good and evil” (Genesis 2:7, 17, 3:4, 21). That the latter expression is a euphemism for sex is proven by Deuteronomy 1:39 and especially 2 Samuel 19:36 (see “Sex and Wisdom: What the Garden of Eden Story Is Saying”BR 10:06), by the more obvious euphemism that they were naked before they ate the fruit (another metaphor for sex) and immediately afterward realized their nakedness (Genesis 2:25, 3:7), and by the fact that the woman had her name changed to Eve, “the mother of all living,” only after she ate the fruit (Genesis 3:19), implying that previously she was a “helpmate (helpmeet)” (Genesis 2:20) but not a sexual partner.
After their expulsion from paradise, man and woman probably began to eat meat illicitly.2 With Noah, the carnivorous appetite of the human being is legitimized (Genesis 9:1–4). This concession forms part of the first law code (Genesis 9:1–6). Man will kill to have meat. Therefore let him do so only if he drains the animal’s lifeblood and returns it to its divine creator.
It is of interest to note the obsessive fear that permeates the pseudepigraphal Book of Jubilees (early second century B.C.E.) regarding the Noahide prohibition against blood consumption. The biblical text reads: “You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-blood in it. But for your own life-blood I will require a reckoning. I will require it of every beast” (Genesis 9:4–5a).
Jubilees interprets this passage, as follows:
But flesh which is (filled) with life (that is) with blood, you shall not eat—because the life of all flesh is in the blood—lest your blood be sought for your lives…And the man who eats the blood of the beasts or cattle or birds throughout all the days of the earth shall be uprooted, he and his seed from the earth.
Jubilees 6:7–8, 12b
Jubilees has artfully combined Genesis 9:4 and Leviticus 17:14a, 4b, 10 046sequentially; that is, blood should not be ingested because it contains life, so whoever ingests blood is guilty of murder, and he and his line will be cut off. Jubilees has applied the charge of murder, levied against one who slaughters an animal illicitly, that is, who does not sacrifice the animal on the authorized altar, to one who ingests blood. Moreover, Jubilees even condemns the person who does sacrifice the animal properly but allows any of the blood to splatter on his clothing to “be seen upon you” (Jubilees 7:30, see also 7:31–33).
Philo of Alexandria (first century C.E.) provides a rationale: “They prepare sacrifices which ought never be offered, strangling their victims, and stifling the essence of life, which they ought to let depart free and unrestrained, burying the blood, as it were in the body. For it ought to have been sufficient for them to enjoy the flesh by itself, without touching any of those parts which have a connection with the soul or life” (Laws 4.122).
The blood prohibition imposed on Noah, the progenitor of the entire human race, is theoretically binding upon Jews and non-Jews alike. Moreover, by the time Christianity was born, the term ger, which in the Bible means “resident alien,” was reinterpreted to mean “proselyte, convert.” Thus, the explicit command that neither Israelite nor ger (convert) is allowed to consume blood (Leviticus 17:10) was read by the church as commanding Christians (as converts to the “true” faith) to abstain from consuming blood. It is no accident that the New Testament endorses this prohibition (Acts 15:20, 29, 21:25) and that early church authorities, such as Tertullien, Eusebius and Jerome, maintained, at least until the sixth century, that animal blood should not be consumed but drained.3
This is my final column. After five satisfying years of sharing my insights with the wide BR readership, I must turn to other pressing pursuits. I cannot say farewell without thanking editor Hershel Shanks and managing editor Steven Feldman for solicitous and skillful midwifery throughout.
Genesis 9:1–4, a priestly text, bans the entire human race from ingesting animal blood: God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fertile and increase, and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky, on everything that creeps on the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; into your hand are they Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all (these). Only, you shall not eat […]
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See Ancient Near Eastern Texts, ed. James B. Pritchard (Princeton: Princeton Univ., 1969), pp. 75, 77.
2.
C.H. Brichto, “On Slaughter and Sacrifice, Blood and Atonement,” Hebrew Union College Annual 47 (1976), pp. 19–56.
3.
See M. Bockmuehl, “The Noahide Commandment and New Testament Ethics,” Revue Biblique 102 (1995), pp. 72–101, esp. 44–95; J. Taylor, Les Actes des Deux Apôtres (Paris: Gabalda, 1994), vol. 5, pp. 209–214; C.K. Barrett, “The Apostolic Decree of Acts 15:20, ” Australian Biblical Review 35 (1987), pp. 50–59; E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971).
