Any one also of the people of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among them, who takes in hunting any beast or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth. For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood. Whoever eats it shall be cut off.
Leviticus 17:13-14
Let me preface this by saying that I am engaging in speculative theology here. I am certainly liable to be, and perhaps am, wrong. Nevertheless, I do think the ideas here are probably worth thinking through.
Throughout scripture, blood is immensely important; but even that is an understatement. “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.” But even in pagan thought, blood had tremendous significance. Many pagan religions believed that living bodies were a kind of storehouse of energy and that drinking the blood of something (or someone) that has just been killed would give the recipient some of the victim’s energy and power. The healthier, younger, purer or stronger the animal, the more of this energy could be gained for the blood drinker. In more familiar terms, these religions held to a form of spiritual vampirism: draining the life out of one person or animal for the benefit of another person. In fact, I don’t think its a stretch to think that the modern concepts of vampirism arose from these pagan practices.
You are the sons of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves or make any baldness on your foreheads for the dead
Deuteronomy 14:1
While the original context of the Torah’s prohibition of cutting oneself was probably specifically addressing necromancy, it was not limited to it but addressing the whole of the pagan sacrificial system. In the account of Elijah at Mount Carmel, we catch a glimpse at a corollary of this pagan blood theology at work. Since Baal was heedless of the prophets’ bloodless calls in the morning, they begin to cut themselves. In spilling their own blood, they were offering their power to Baal. 1 Kings 18:28 says that this “was their custom,” suggesting that such bloodletting rites were often a part of the summoning of demonic powers. They spent the entire morning working themselves into a frenzy, maximizing the energy in their blood, and now pouring it out to a Baal who doesn’t pay attention. Later, this bloodletting ritual resurfaces in Mark 5 with the Gerasene demoniac. Where the “raving” of the prophets in 1 Kings 18 had not called the fire of Baal to consume the sacrifice, the demoniac’s possession did consume him and, whether by his own volition or not, he continually offered up his life to them.
1 Corinthians 10:14-22 expands upon this concept, drawing the antithesis between the cup of demons and the cup of the Lord. In the Lord’s supper, the wine is a real covenantal “participation in the blood of Christ.” The bread is a real covenantal “participation” in the flesh of Christ and, unless we partake of Him, we remain dead. A believer cannot participate in the blood offered up to demons; the source of our “power” in the blood of Christ is irreconcilable with the counterfeit of demons. Partaking of the demonic cup is exactly the same as Lot’s wife longing for Sodom or the worker who sets his hand to the plow and turns back. It is impossible to restore such men to repentance (Hebrews 6:4-6). As Paul is pointing out, it is not that “food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything,” but rather the covenantal nature of sacrifices. Eating those sacrifices as sacrifices is forbidden. This is part of the idea behind the apostolic prohibition against blood and things strangled. (Acts 15:20)
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”
John 6:53-55)
Satan’s method is rarely to invent some new falsehood but to twist something true. The existence of the counterfeit presupposes the existence of the genuine. The life is indeed in the blood. There is one sacrifice, one loaf, one cup. We, as sons of God, must not cut ourselves because the Son of God was cut for us. We cannot mark ourselves up for the dead because Christ rose from the dead. And we are filled with the power of the Son, even to life everlasting, by drinking His blood and eating His flesh.