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Source: (consider it) Thread: Let's talk about blood
pimple

Ship's Irruption
# 10635

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There's so much of it in the bible that I think it should be in Keryg, but I don't want to stop anybody talking about Indian blood-brothers or the colour of gemstones.

I haven't I hope, got an agenda here. Except that I don't "do" blood very well, and I think I ought to look my phobias in the face.

Can we start with some of the early ideas of what blood was - what the ancients thought it was, what it was for, why, for instance, sacrificial animals had to be bled, and so on. What are the earliest reference to blood in art and folklore?

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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)

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Mamacita

Lakefront liberal
# 3659

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pimple, because you've indicated an interest in extending the topic into art, ancient cultures, and the like, not just "blood within the Bible," I think this might be better suited to Purgatory. I'll do a quick consult backstage. And yes, it's OK to talk about the Bible in Purgatory. [Biased]

Mamacita, Keryg Host

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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

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pimple

Ship's Irruption
# 10635

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OK thanks

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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)

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Mamacita

Lakefront liberal
# 3659

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The hostly consensus is that the thread is better suited to Purgatory. Everyone hold on to your colored ribbon markers.

Mamacita, Keryg Host

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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

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Net Spinster
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# 16058

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quote:
Originally posted by pimple:
There's so much of it in the bible that I think it should be in Keryg, but I don't want to stop anybody talking about Indian blood-brothers or the colour of gemstones.

I haven't I hope, got an agenda here. Except that I don't "do" blood very well, and I think I ought to look my phobias in the face.

Can we start with some of the early ideas of what blood was - what the ancients thought it was, what it was for, why, for instance, sacrificial animals had to be bled, and so on. What are the earliest reference to blood in art and folklore?

Well the earliest references are probably the paleolithic cave paintings such as the shaft of the dead man painting at Lascaux. Blood was apparently also use in making the paint of some cave paintings.

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spinner of webs

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
# 15560

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I suspect that most human hunter-gatherers had about the same strategy as most other predators: after the kill, eat the blood and some easy accessible organs first, and then do the heavier work of butchery. I think this sort of activity is the dominant heritage of people, then overlaid with what we acquired later as culture which allowed us to turn our predatory instincts toward each other. There are still people in the world who eat the hearts of those people they kill, acquiring, they think, the power of the enemy through such consumption. Violent and bloody are we, and when we fail to acknowledge this violent blood lust, and pretend that we are gentle, we fail to properly address and control it.

I have wondered about the symbolic blood consumption of Eucharist as accessing something from our ancient, collective unconscious predatory heritage. Our eating in communion is of a different prey item or a different enemy. Blood carries life in our mythologies.

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Brenda Clough
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# 18061

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And the persistent popularity of vampires. It is not only that they drink blood, there's a sexy quality to it.

Jane Yolen wrote a book, a fantasy novel, in which swords quenched in blood were deemed particularly powerful.

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Arethosemyfeet
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# 17047

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quote:

Jane Yolen wrote a book, a fantasy novel, in which swords quenched in blood were deemed particularly powerful.

Plenty of people have. George RR Martin uses the trope, and it comes from real-world legends.

[posts quenched in accurate UBB code are deemed particularly powerful]

[ 21. July 2015, 07:21: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

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LeRoc

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# 3216

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The KJV mentions 'blood' 392 times. It would be interesting to do an analysis of the different uses the word has there.

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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

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Moo

Ship's tough old bird
# 107

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Here is the KJV translation of Leviticus 17:11
quote:
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
Moo

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HCH
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# 14313

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I have sometimes observed that if one travels down the Red Sea, one reaches the horn of Africa, where one might encounter the Masai, who are reputed to be fierce warriors and to live on a diet of blood and milk. Perhaps the people of Israel had heard of the Masai and the prohibition on the eating of blood was a reaction against them.
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Pomona
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# 17175

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Because blood is liquid, it was often used as food for those without use of their teeth eg small children and old people, ie vulnerable people.

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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]

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Penny S
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# 14768

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I may have mentioned a colleague once, who worshipped, and ministered, in house type fellowship churches who had a most peculiar belief about blood. It wouldn't have appeared to peculiar to and Ancient Greek, maybe.

I didn't pick her up on it, because there was something about her style as a Christian that made it something that would not be right. She was good.

She told me that a pastor had preached that it was necessary for Mary to have a virgin birth because the blood derives from the father, and it had to be god's blood which bought the atonement. Human blood would not do it.

There's a whole lot of rubbish beliefs about blood lines and inheritance in common parlance, and expressions such as blue blood which imply much more importance as a distinction between people than is really scientifically justifiable. Remember in Showboat, the white husband sucking a drop of his coloured wife's blood, so they could claim that he had black blood in him and that therefore they were not guilty of miscegenation.

[ 21. July 2015, 18:48: Message edited by: Penny S ]

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Martin60
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# 368

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HCH. No they hadn't. Penny S. God doesn't have blood. Except when He's HUMAN. And which genes in sperm are responsible for blood? Not that Jesus was conceived by a sperm. And the agent wasn't the Father's. Who isn't male anyway.

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Love wins

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Penny S
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# 14768

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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
HCH. No they hadn't. Penny S. God doesn't have blood. Except when He's HUMAN. And which genes in sperm are responsible for blood? Not that Jesus was conceived by a sperm. And the agent wasn't the Father's. Who isn't male anyway.

I know that. She didn't. Total bananas. But there are people I'm not going to attack about their bananas. I might have had a go if I'd met her pastor.
It's a reversal of Aristotle, anyway, where the life force of the sperm organises the blood contributed by the woman.

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Martin60
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Sorry, a bit literal minded me. Yeah, I only challenge negative stuff, although twaddle is negative, one just has to tolerate it or one would be challenging all day ...

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Love wins

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ArachnidinElmet
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# 17346

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quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:

Jane Yolen wrote a book, a fantasy novel, in which swords quenched in blood were deemed particularly powerful.

Plenty of people have. George RR Martin uses the trope, and it comes from real-world legends.

[posts quenched in accurate UBB code are deemed particularly powerful]

I remember during Archaeometallurgy lectures that Romans in the north of Britain were said to believe a sword quenched in the blood of a 'red-haired youth' would have a sharper edge. Presumably red-haired being short for marauding Pict.

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luvanddaisies

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# 5761

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Most of the blood references in the Bible tend to be concerned somewhere along the way with blood as a propitiatory thing - hence blood sacrifices in the Old Testament, and then blood of Christ in the New Testament, then continuing in the symbolism of the wine as blood in Communion wine.

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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." (Mark Twain)

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pimple

Ship's Irruption
# 10635

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quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
Here is the KJV translation of Leviticus 17:11
quote:
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
Moo
Yes, this is the quote that stands out when you go to a concordance for help. Can you explain how this ties in with the total prohibition on Jews to consume blood. Is it because God gives blood to them
exclusively for the purposes of sacrifice, and is therefore too holy for anything else? If so, how does such a belief arise?

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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)

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Moo

Ship's tough old bird
# 107

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quote:
Originally posted by pimple:
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
Here is the KJV translation of Leviticus 17:11
quote:
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
Moo
Yes, this is the quote that stands out when you go to a concordance for help. Can you explain how this ties in with the total prohibition on Jews to consume blood. Is it because God gives blood to them
exclusively for the purposes of sacrifice, and is therefore too holy for anything else? If so, how does such a belief arise?

AIUI the idea is that the life is in the blood, and life belongs solely to God.

Moo

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See you later, alligator.

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Mamacita

Lakefront liberal
# 3659

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That is also my understanding, and that the soul is incorporated into the life/blood as well.

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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

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Kaplan Corday
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# 16119

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Conservative evangelicals when I was young used to claim "You haven't preached the gospel if you haven't mentioned the blood", which meant that all the gospel sermons recorded in Acts were inadequate by their criterion.

Liberals on the other hand, used to whinge about "butcher shop religion", ignoring the obvious use of blood imagery in John, the epistles (especially Hebrews) and Revelation.

I have heard "There's power in the blood" sung recently, as incorporated into a contemporary praise and worship song, but "What can wash away my sin?/Nothing but the blood of Jesus" seems to have disappeared, and Cowper's "There is a fountain filled with blood/Drawn from Immanuel's veins/And sinners plunged beneath that flood/Lose all their guilty stains" was always fairly confrontational.

Perhaps Muddy could tell us whether Salvos still sing them.

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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081

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quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I have heard "There's power in the blood" sung recently, as incorporated into a contemporary praise and worship song

As I said recently, I don't over-emphasise the gore of the crucifixion, but it is there. Especially in Hebrews.

The orignal version of "there's power in the blood", arranged more like this (from the film Apostle) is a real hit when we sing it (in French) in chapel in my prison.

Why should the devil have all the good music?

[ 25. July 2015, 06:49: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Curiosity killed ...

Ship's Mug
# 11770

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Most of the early food prohibitions in the Bible make sense as ways to stay healthy.

Drinking blood isn't that good for you: too high in iron, which we are not good at digesting or excreting if we eat too much. Vampire bats have additional digestive systems to handle the haemoglobin. Raw blood is likely to carry blood borne diseases, it's the reason we, usually, avoid eating raw meat.

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hatless

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I can't find it on Google, but I've heard about a case of a domestic horse mare mated with a zebra that in a subsequent mating with a domestic horse gave birth to a goal with some stripes. Apparently it's not uncommon for domestic horses to show stripes, or for foals to have markings they later lose.

But Darwin discussed this case, and the theory was that some 'principle' from the zebra remained in the mare's blood and was partially expressed in the later conception.

My point is that blood seems to have been thought to do the job we now ascribe to DNA and the cell nucleus. Blood is life, not only in the sense of supplying oxygen and nutrients, but also that likeness which gives an animal its identity.

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Schroedinger's cat

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# 64

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I suppose the origins of the understanding of blood comes from what happened when you stabbed something (or someone). In prehistoric times, what they would have seen was that this liquid flowed out of them, and that they then died.

So it is natural to say that "the life is in the blood". As society developed, something of this primal understanding was retained, which we see in the OT writings.

It serves symbolically to represent the life of the owner. This is the core understanding, and still valid - the blood references are about the life, and an appreciation of the sanctity of of this life.

And so shedding blood is about giving of life - which is what Jesus did for us. The quantity of blood is irrelevant, it is a symbol of life. That is probably why for some people it is so disturbing to see it. This link is deep and basic.

I suppose the association of women, blood and childbirth highlights our association with "bloodlines". It isn't blood, but genes, but there is something we recognise in this.

Does that help?

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Ariel
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# 58

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quote:
Originally posted by pimple:
Can we start with some of the early ideas of what blood was - what the ancients thought it was, what it was for, why, for instance, sacrificial animals had to be bled, and so on. What are the earliest reference to blood in art and folklore?

It's life. The ancients noticed that if something loses blood, it usually starts to lose life.

For that reason some ancient burial customs came to involve the corpse being buried in a coating of red ochre - the "blood of the earth", which was giving back a kind of life to the deceased who presumably went into the afterlife with extra protection, or was returned to the earth mother in her blood, as they had been born in human blood.

Blood is the life-force. As such it came to have special significance: it makes a person what s/he is. You could get power over someone by obtaining some of their blood and performing various rites. The blood of a witch could be immensely powerful. You could kill an animal with a spear and it would be dead, but not properly dead until its lifeforce was spilt. All of those are ideas prevalent in many early cultures.

And menstrual blood in particular had power, the power to wither and curse. Periods became the subject of many taboos and superstitions: nobody knew what was happening, or why it was linked to a roughly lunar cycle of 23-28 days, but so it seemed, and so women became associated with that side of things: the moon and night and witchcraft and fertility.

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pimple

Ship's Irruption
# 10635

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If an animal is not properly dead until it is bled, why were human corpses not bled? Oh, I think I get it - the life-blood in a human being also belongs to God so only God can take it away.

But there's an interesting link to resurrection here, isn't there? Where there's blood there's hope - that God will not take away or dry up the blood of a person, but return him/her to normal life.

I'm a bit concerned about the way women's blood is regarded as unclean or tainted with unholy power of some sort. Didn't they "get it" - that since all women menstruate, God must not only approve but be the cause of it?

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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
# 15560

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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
HCH. No they hadn't. Penny S. God doesn't have blood. Except when He's HUMAN. And which genes in sperm are responsible for blood? Not that Jesus was conceived by a sperm. And the agent wasn't the Father's. Who isn't male anyway.

This reads well as a stream of consciousness poem.

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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/

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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

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quote:
Originally posted by pimple:
If an animal is not properly dead until it is bled, why were human corpses not bled? Oh, I think I get it - the life-blood in a human being also belongs to God so only God can take it away.

I suspect that if you were planning to eat the human body, you would need to bleed it as well. [Two face]

quote:
Originally posted by pimple:


I'm a bit concerned about the way women's blood is regarded as unclean or tainted with unholy power of some sort. Didn't they "get it" - that since all women menstruate, God must not only approve but be the cause of it?

It's not necessarily that simple, or that negative, either. Blood is regarded as powerful in most cultures--not negative, not positive, just powerful, period. [dang those double entendres]

As a result, any shedding of blood needs to be handled properly. There are rules for what you do after you hunt or butcher an animal, and you ignore them at your peril. There are also rules for what you do regarding menstruation and childbirth.

Together these are the two most common cases where people encounter blood and its power. That's why you're going to find clear-cut customs and rules that you might not find (for example) about how to handle war wounds or nosebleeds. The fact that rules exist does not mean that the blood itself is "bad," any more than rules about dynamite safety mean the dynamite is bad. It simply means that it is powerful.

That said, there are certainly cultures and individuals who treat menstruation as "bad." I'm inclined to think this is a result of men not menstruating themselves and therefore (many of them) being scared and a bit mystified at a process women take in their stride. It's the grown-up version of the little boy "Ewwwww, it's creepy, what's happening!????" To which women roll their eyes and get on with life.

[ 25. July 2015, 22:40: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

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Part two (shameless double post): On the Bible's regulations for dealing with menstrual bleeding and childbirth.

From a human standpoint, you can take the stuff in my post above as read. The Israelite culture was a human culture and shared in the characteristics of lots of them.

From a divine standpoint, it's important to realize that the Hebrew term "unclean" has a double-edged meaning, which is not strictly bad. English-speakers think unclean = bad, negative, to be avoided. But in Hebrew, the same concept can refer to books of the Bible (e.g. there was an argument about whether reading certain Old Testament books "made the hands unclean," which AFAIR is basically an argument about the holiness, the canonicity of those books and how they are to be used. The point of "unclean" is that you will have to undergo a special procedure to re-enter the ordinary, humdrum, day-to-day world. You will have to do this if you get involved in something nasty (e.g. a horrible disease) but you will ALSO have to do it if you get involved in something remarkably holy and powerful (e.g. Aaron's priestly ordination). In neither case may you simply dust off your hands and stroll down to the marketplace. There are things you have to do first.

You also want to take into account the fact that most women would have had very few menstrual periods, given the age of marriage and the absence of birth control. And the fact that people tended to live in extended families, which meant that menstruation (and post-childbirth bleeding) provided women with a chance to rest and leave the chores to others--by accident (or more likely, God's kind design), their "uncleanness" meant that they would not be allowed to cook or to handle items other family members would be using. There's a lot to say for a divine excuse to get out of doing the laundry once in a while!

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Ariel
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# 58

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quote:
Originally posted by pimple:
I'm a bit concerned about the way women's blood is regarded as unclean or tainted with unholy power of some sort. Didn't they "get it" - that since all women menstruate, God must not only approve but be the cause of it?

You're assuming they were Christian, or monotheistic, I think.

Also, I don't want to go into details but it isn't always like the kind of blood you get if you cut yourself, and it's understandable why it can be seen as "unclean".

As for most women not having many periods, that would only apply to the sexually active who were particularly fertile. (I'm still surprised nature hasn't found a better way of dealing with this in humans.) As for the absence of birth control, while it wasn't widespread, it wasn't completely unknown in some cultures, who had invented pessaries and developed contraceptive herbal extracts. (There were also some condoms, which must have been ghastly - sheepskin, etc.) Some of these were more effective than others, though I'm guessing that many of the recipes will have been oral tradition handed down privately from woman to woman to stop a cycle of perpetual pregnancy, so we're never going to have the statistics or all the recipes. Anyhow, that's tangential.

[ 26. July 2015, 06:16: Message edited by: Ariel ]

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Penny S
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Difficult if all the adult women are in synchronisation and they all have to take time off at the same time. Granny gets to do the cooking, I suppose.
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Ariel
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They won't be. I know this is supposed to be something that happens and you might theoretically expect it in an all-female environment/one where people work long hours together, but personally I've never known this happen.
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Lamb Chopped
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... and you'd expect at least one person in that household to be either pregnant or menopausal--or prepubescent!--and therefore capable of holding down the fort. Not to mention that men ARE capable of feeding themselves in dire straits, even in ancient Israel...

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Penny S
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quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
They won't be. I know this is supposed to be something that happens and you might theoretically expect it in an all-female environment/one where people work long hours together, but personally I've never known this happen.

I looked on Wikipedia and liked this sentence..."After the initial studies reporting menstrual synchrony began to appear in the scientific literature, other researchers began reporting the failure to find menstrual synchrony in women." In who else?

Obvious conclusions in the article. But there would be times when they were all together!

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pimple

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quote:
You shall take the other ram; and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the ram, 20 and you shall slaughter the ram, and take some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron's right ear and on the lobes of the right ears of his sons, and on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet, and dash the rest of the blood against all sides of the altar. 21 Then you shall take some of the blood that is on the altar, and some of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it on Aaron and his vestments and on his sons and his sons' vestments with him; then he and his vestments will be holy, as well as his sons and his sons vestments.
[Exodus 29.19-21]
So don't get the idea that Aaron and his sons are involved in some sort of pagan debauchery. Later on these archetypal fat-cats get to eat some of the ram - including the fat (the tasty bits, in other words) and nobody else gets a look in - because roast leg of lamb is holy (I'll go along with that). So all the left-overs get burnt so that God gets a whiff of it (and so, presumably) do the hungry onlookers...

What's all this right thumb, right ear malarkey? Is anybody going to notice if some of it gets on their elbows or dribbles down their chin?

And this is the word of the Lord. Too true it is!
Tells us a lot about how to exercise control, keep the gang together, sanction conspicuous consumption, let hoi polloi (or whatever the Hebrew equivalent is) know their place.

You can see, can you not, why the Nazarene was a danger? He never mentioned stuff like this, as far as I recall, but he was a threat to it. I don't know about fulfilling the scriptures - maybe some of the early Christian leaders had their eyes on the tasty bits of meat - no need to throw the baby out with the gravy!

And you know, all this pious stuff about the blood of the lamb keeps the old myths going. Should we really see Jesus as a perfect sacrifice - the only thing good enough for the priests and the prelates to gorge on?

But didn't he himself say "this is my blood..."
Yes, but in remembrance - using the out-dated metaphors for pagan butchery because that was the only language they understood?

Oh, dear me! Ingo would tear this to bits - if he thought the trouble worthwhile!

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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)

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Lamb Chopped
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[Edges nervously onto the thread]

Pimple dear--this is the ordination ram, not every sacrifice that was ever made. Of course they're supposed to eat it! It's their own ordination!

And it's five guys over several meals (I believe), so it's not like this is going to be a huge gorge-fest.

For normal sacrifices, the bulk of the meat would go home with the worshipper.

[sidles quickly away]

[ 04. August 2015, 23:01: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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W Hyatt
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quote:
Originally posted by pimple:
What's all this right thumb, right ear malarkey? Is anybody going to notice if some of it gets on their elbows or dribbles down their chin?

And this is the word of the Lord. Too true it is!

Yes, it almost sounds as if it's based on some sort of arcane symbolism, doesn't it?

(Of course, I would see it that way because that's pretty much the foundation for Swedenborgian theology. [Cool] )

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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.

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George Spigot

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Now Rachel had taken the household gods and put them inside her camel's saddle and was sitting on them. Laban searched through everything in the tent but found nothing....

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C.S. Lewis's Head is just a tool for the Devil. (And you can quote me on that.) ~
Philip Purser Hallard
http://www.thoughtplay.com/infinitarian/gbsfatb.html

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