Finkelstein said:
This is most likely why they thought blood in both humans and animals was sacred. This acknowledged sacredness of blood continued on right through up to the time of Jesus. Human ignorance is and was the cause of much inspired spiritual imagination.
Yes, but that only opens the can of worms of asking WHY humans were full of ignorance, when they supposedly had access to an omniscient source? WHY would God NOT know that the nephesh isn't associated with the blood, or that the heart is simply a pump (not the brain), or the kidneys are simply excretory organs that form urine (and not organs used for making decisions)?
All of these raise serious challenges to YHWH being the so-called "intelligent designer" of anything, much less homo sapiens. Especially when God is QUOTED in Genesis and Job referring to ancient physiological and anatomical misbeliefs of Egyptian and Babylonian origin that have long-since been corrected by scientific inquiry.
Why would God establish sacrificial rituals using kidneys for guilt offerings, when the actual organ at fault is the brain, not the kidneys (which WAS the thinking of ancient men)?
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Along with eating blood (which was prohibited also as a form of idolatry, since the practice was associated with pagan cultic worship), the other great sins of the land in the Torah were idolatry, murder, and having sex with a menstruating women! These were ALL considers the gravest of sins that tainted the land, and couldn't be atoned for with ritual cleansing, but required special methods cleanse the community. If they were allowed to go unpunished, the entire population risked being "vomited out of the land" for the sins of the few.
So why was sex with a menstruating women such a grave crime, so offensive to YHWH as to constitute the equivalent of a felony?
The thinking seems to have been that menstruation was a personal sacrifice that the woman makes to YHWH (the spilling of blood), as a ritual of her reproductive powers. They realized that menopause was associated with a loss of reproductive capability, and hence menstruation was a sign that God had continued to bless her husband with offspring. In fact, that may indicate why YHWH demanded that blood be spilled, in the first place: it was just following the model of menstruating women!
So the woman is ritually unclean during her period, and unable to enter the temple so as to avoid defiling it (and anything she touches is rendered unclean, requiring atonement with the sacrifice of doves, bathing, etc). In essence, her reproductive tract becomes her personal altar at that time, and hence her husband is not supposed to invade her temple by putting his wing-wang in there! That act renders both of them as unclean sinners.
(of course, this is where the "sex is for procreation, only" idea stems, as well as the prohibition of onanism)
HOWEVER, JWs have decided that this act that was so abhorrent to YHWH in ancient Israel, as to be tantamounted to murder and idolatry, is now a "conscience matter" (per the latest WT comments on the issue of sex during menstruation). Eating blood is verboten, but this one is a conscience matter.
Ala carte religion (where "your Mother" picks what you can eat): ain't it grand?
