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Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians

Online ISBN:
9780520934238
Print ISBN:
9780520253049
Publisher:
University of California Press
Book

Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians

Published online:
24 May 2012
Published in print:
23 October 2007
Online ISBN:
9780520934238
Print ISBN:
9780520253049
Publisher:
University of California Press

Abstract

Blood contains extraordinary symbolic power in both Judaism and Christianity — as the blood of sacrifice, of Jesus, of the Jewish martyrs, of menstruation, and more. Yet, though they share the same literary, cultural, and religious origins, on the question of blood the two religions have followed quite different trajectories. For instance, while Judaism rejects the eating or drinking of blood, Christianity mandates its symbolic consumption as a central sacrament. How did these two traditions, both originating in the Hebrew Bible's cult of blood sacrifices, veer off in such different directions? The book traces the continuing, changing, and often clashing roles of blood as both symbol and substance through the entire sweep of Jewish and Christian history from Biblical times to the present.

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