Greetings again Delta
I understand exactly what you are saying, but you are placing the word *eating* there as the necessary verb, without that word being necessary at all.
?Eating? ?Tasting? ?Drinking? ?Consuming? etc. are the only words supported by both the context and historical setting of the Decree.
The backdrop of the Apostolic Decree was a dispute in the early history of Christianity over the necessity of circumcision and adherence to the Law. This is clear not only from Acts chapter 15 and Galatians chapter 2 but from James? words to Paul in Acts 21: 20-25
?Then they said to Paul: ?You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. 21They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. 22What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, 23so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. 24Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everybody will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. 25As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.?
The context is clearly the Law and that which was prohibited in the Law. Do you disagree?
Again, I know of no commentator, translator or translation anywhere up to and including the JW?s themselves who agree with the idea that the equivocal terms needed to support the transfusion medicine taboo are legitimate interpolations that may be made during translation. If you know of one, by all means bring it forth.
But lets suppose you are right. Let's just say that the bible indeed says that you shouldn't eat blood. I agree with you that if one shows that bloodtransfusion is prohibited in the bible then we are done with this discussion. Now, we already agreed on the fact that the bible states it is prohibited to eat blood. Now, what is the definition of eating? I read your post just before i want to class, and I didn't have time to reply then, but I came across a medstudent at my Uni and I started a discussion with her about this. Basically, when you eat something, the body will absorp some of the components of what you eat into the bloodsystem. This happens in the small intestines. If you want more information about that, you should visit: http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/smallgut/absorb.html.. It features a lot of information about the digestion system.
Thank you, but I am very familiar with this subject. Prior to absorbtion, your digestive system must break the food you eat down into four water soluble materials
These are:
1. Simple sugars
2. Fatty acids
3. Amino acids
4. Trace elements.
This is accomplished by three groups of enzymes: Proteases break down proteins, lipases break down fats and amylases break down carbohydrates.
All proteins coming into contact with protease enzymes are ?exploded? into polypeptides. The process is roughly analogous to taking a building apart brick by brick, loading the bricks on pallets, putting the pallets on trucks and sending the trucks in all different directions to other jobsites. Although individual bricks (amino acids) appear in many new buildings, (proteins) the original building (protein) is destroyed and completely loses its identity as such.
In adults any proteins that manage to escape destruction are simply excreted. The only time intact proteins even cross the epithelial mucosa at all is in the first few months after birth. However in these are still broken down by the mucosal epithelial cells.
No blood components survive this process. Even the plasma proteins that JW?s allow as ?matters of conscience? (e.g. albumin, IgG Factors VIII & IX) are destroyed and broken down into their constituent amino acids.
If you want references I?ll be happy to provide them, but the website you provided is more than enough by itself:
?Simply put, the digestive system is a portal for nutrients from the environment to gain access to the circulatory system. Before such transfer can occur, foodstuffs first have to be reduced to very simple molecules by a combination of mechanical and enzymatic degradation. The resulting sugars, amino acids, fatty acids and the like are then transported across the epithelium lining the intestine into blood.? (Emphasis mine)
(From the introductory page)
So, if you eat blood it would go into your body and components of the blood would go into your own blood.
I?m sorry Delta. That is untrue. "Blood components" (Erythrocytes, Leucocytes Thrombocytes and whole plasma) do not enter the circulatory system via digestion. The only way this is even remotely possible is if someone had a peptic ulcer or some other open lesion of the G.I. tract. Go back to your friend the med student. Ask her point blank if the cellular components of blood enter the circulatory system via the G.I. tract.
But the same goes for bloodtransfusions, a bloodtransfusion will also put those components into your blood, so the effect is the same.
The effect is not the same. Blood consumed is broken down and destroyed by the digestive system. Blood transfused resumes its function in the body of the recipient.
Transfusion is a use of blood as blood, not a use of blood as food. The latter is an act of cannibalism while the former is simply a tissue transplant.
Now obviously bloodtransfusion looks different then eating although it has the same effect, but what is eating then? Can you only eat through your mouth? No, people who can't eat through their mouth can eat through a med. drip. I honestly think that you can call the "getting needed components into the blood" eating. So in this case, bloodtransfusion is equivalent to eating. Think about it, if God forbids to eat blood, does that mean you are allowed to use it through a drip? I don't think it does. Same goes for bloodtransfusion.
You are equivocating again. Blood is a complex living tissue in no way analogous to Dextran solution. A transfusion is a transplant of this living tissue, not intravenous feeding. A patient unable to eat cannot be kept alive by transfusion.
Of course this takes a believe, you have to believe that with eating God isn't only talking about the act that we call eating these days, but also implies that you are prohibited from taking in blood at all.
I agree. Preconceived notions do seem to be the primary ingredient here. Referring to two disparate acts in generic terms (?taking in?) does nothing to establish physical or moral equivalency. You are equivocating yet again. (How many times does this make?)
And because I cant think of any way, at the time these acts were written, of other ways that someone could take in blood besides the mouth,
How about ou lepsa haima
?it is very well possible that God means not to take any blood at all. And thats the point I have been trying to make all the time, in this sense, bloodtransfusion is identical to eating, and in this sense it is prohibited by the bible. So if you say that the JW dont have a rightful claim on this "doctrine" then you are simply wrong.
I understand this argument, but there are some fairly severe moral problems with it.
First, this argument is for all intents and purposes a claim to know the mind of God by claiming to have some esoteric knowledge of what He was consciously thinking at the time the Decree was written even though such information is nowhere to be found in the words He inspired to be written. You are free to surmise and speculate on such things, the same as all the rest of of us, but unless your are truly inspired, you do not know the mind of God in that sense.
This leads to the second problem. God has already told you in plain and simple, black and white, crystal clear and unambiguous terms that you are not to cause or be the cause of the loss of innocent human life.
Yet adherence to the transfusion medicine taboo can make you responsible for the loss of innocent human life. Maybe not at this point in your life, but the JW?s will demand that you adhere to this policy for any life ever entrusted to you in future. This would include minor children, aged parents, adults of diminished responsibility and anyone else for whom you eventually become responsible before God and the state. (I have seen this with my own eyes. Even if one of the parents is not a JW, I have seen how the JW's will come to the hospital and pressue the parent who is.)
It would be one thing if you were attempting to reconcile two equally clear commands God has given which have been brought into conflict by unique circumstances. But that?s not what you are doing. You are hypothesizing into existence a requirement contrary to one of God?s existing commands.
In this artificial dilemma, God?s requirement to preserve life is challenged not by another command God has given, but by your speculative hypothesis on nothing beyond its own merit alone. What is the moral justification for this? If you are a believer, it is not up to you to pick and choose which of God's commands you will follow. You can't say, "I know about command A, but I have surmised that command B might possibly mean something it doesn't actually say, and that's all I need to ignore command A in this situation."
I understand that the Catholic faith holds that the Pope has the authority to modify holy writ, but where and how was such ex cathedra authority conferred upon you? I'm not necessarily looking for a classical three point Aristotelian Syllogism here (Although if the JW's had a leg to stand on, that would not be difficult) but conjecture is hardly sufficient.
I really have no desire to put you on the spot if you have some emotional stake in this. I mean that in all sincerity.