Anxiety and Guilt Over Spilled Blood

9000-year handprints.

Las Cuevas de las Manos on Rio Pinturas, in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. 

Alice C. Linsley

From the dawn of time humans recognized that life is in the blood. They saw offspring born of water and the blood. They knew that the loss of blood could bring death. Killing animals in the hunt meant life for the community. They sought ways to ensure that their dead entered life beyond the grave, especially their rulers who could intercede for them before the Deity. This explains the universal phenomena of burial of high-status individuals in red ocher powder, a symbolic blood covering, a practice that lasted for more than 100,000 years.

Anthropological and archaeological evidence indicates that early human populations experienced anxiety about bloodshed. They observed that blood loss from injuries could lead to death. Blood was visible when flowing from a wound or during childbirth, so blood was conceived as the substance of life. 

The shedding of blood appears to have been a moral issue of the first magnitude. Hunters and warriors were responsible for their acts of bloodshed. Blood appeared to animate and taking that vital power from another living creature could bring a curse upon those responsible for the shedding of blood. Doubtless, there was an element of anxiety about blood. Blood anxiety required the ministrations of priests and shamans. 

Blood anxiety: In every primitive society that has been studied by anthropologists there is a belief that there is power in blood and that this power is potentially dangerous. This anxiety about shed blood is widely diffused, evidence that it is very ancient. The need for relief of blood anxiety and blood guilt is one explanation for the development of the office of priest.

Among the early Hebrew bloodshed that resulted in death brough guilt to the killer. This is expressed in Genesis 4:10-11 where the Lord said to Cain, "What have you done? Listen; your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand."

Pontius Pilate, having been warned by his wife, attempted to relieve himself of blood guilt when he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves." (Matt. 27:24)

In response, the Jewish rabble-rousers who demanded Jesus' crucifixion declared, "His blood be on us and on our children!" They foolishly accepted guilt for Jesus' blood upon themselves and their children. This testifies to their seared consciences. They disdained their own tradition in which bloodguilt attaches for generations (II Kings 9:26) and can extend to the one's city (Jer. 26:5), nation (Deut. 21:8), and land (Deut. 24:4).

The biblical concept of bloodguilt derives from the belief that deeds generate consequences and that sin, in particular, is a danger to the sinner. The term for bearing bloodguilt damo bo, or damo bero'sho, meant "his blood in him/on his head" (Josh. 2:19; Ezek. 33:5), and in cases of legal execution the formula mot yumat damav bo (Lev. 20:9-16) means that the blood of the guilty remains on his own person and does not attach to his executioners.

Bloodshed: The first moral law

The Bible addresses the shedding of blood from beginning to end. In Genesis, God takes the life of animals to clothe the man and the woman in the hides. God becomes the first tahash (tanner).

Abel's blood cries to God from the ground with an implicit demand for justice.

Genesis 9:4-6 says, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in His image did God make man."

In the sacrificial system of the Israelites, atonement for sin requires blood sacrifice. This was the work of the sacrificing priests who themselves had to be purified by ritual washing before and after the sacrifices (Exodus 29).

Among ancient peoples, religious laws governed every aspect of the community’s life. The laws found in Leviticus and in the ancient Vedic Brahmanas are examples. Here we read instructions for how lepers are to be put outside the community and restored to the community after they are healed. Many of the laws govern family relations, forbidding incest and adultery. Others establish rules for the proper treatment of slaves, foreigners, widows, and orphans.

The code of Ur-Nammu from the reign of King Shulgi dates to 2095-2047 BC. It originally held 57 laws which covered family and inheritance law, rights of slaves and laborers, and agricultural and commercial tariffs. This code prescribes compensation for wrongs, as in this example: "If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out one-half a mina of silver." 

Many ancient laws concern purity. It is clear from biblical and extra-biblical texts that blood both pollutes and covers pollution. The largest question is how was this conceived by the early Hebrew ruler-priests? Non-Hebrew appeared to sacrifice animals to hungry gods. The Hebrew, on the other hand, did not believe that God is hungry. Consider Psalm 50. Here the LORD says, "I will accept no bull from your house, nor he-goat from your folds..." and "If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?" (vv. 9-13)

Among the early Hebrew (c. 5000-2000 BC) animal sacrifice was performed only in cases of extremely grave offenses. Cattle and sheep were their source of wealth, so they did not sacrifice them often.

For the Hebrew ruler-priest caste animal sacrifice was an act of atonement; an extraordinary and unique perspective in the ancient world. The ruler-priest Job is said to have made atonement for the sins of his entire household daily. If this is true, Job, the Horite Hebrew, was a very rich man. It is safe to assume that the sacrifices were offered with prayer.

Of special interest is a Hittite ritual for purifying a house where a person has perjured himself, or has shed blood, or someone has made a threat or spoken a curse, or someone having shed blood or having committed perjury has entered, or someone has practiced sorcery, or bloodshed has occurred in the house.

The Hittites were related to the biblical Hebrew. These peoples share common ancestry. Heth was an ancestor of the Hittites (Gen. 10:15). He was one of Ham's grandsons, and the lines of Ham and Shem intermarried (endogamy). The Hittites of Canaan recognized Abraham the Hebrew as a high-ranking kinsman (Gen. 23:5).

 

Related reading: Blood, Animal Sacrifice, and the Hope of Immortality; The Oldest Known Religion; Blood Guilt and Christ's Priesthood; The History of Blood; Sun Symbolism and Blood Guilt; On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality

The Oldest Known Religion

 

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917)

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

British anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor proposed that religion evolved in stages from animism to polytheism to monotheism. He attempted to trace this evolution of religion to support his theory. The relationship between "primitive" societies, and "civilized" societies was a key theme in 19th century anthropological literature.

In his two-volume work Primitive Culture (1871) Tylor posed polytheism as an intermediate stage that coincided with the emergence of distinctions of rank: "As chiefs and kings are among men, so are the great gods among the lesser spirits. They differ from the souls and minor spiritual beings which we have as yet chiefly considered, but the difference is rather of rank than of nature" (vol. 2, p. 334).

Animism is the belief that significant animals, plants, rocks, streams and sacred places possess vitality/anima and participate in some way in spiritual experiences. Animistic communities recognize blood as the primary substance of life. Blood was symbolically represented by red ocher and red ocher burials were universal expressions of the hope for life after death.

Polytheistic religions recognize multiple deities, though often one is ranked higher than the others (henotheism). Polytheism describes late Egyptian religion which was highly syncretistic. However, elements of the earlier belief in God Father (Re) and God Son (Horus) remained in Egyptian religion.

Tylor and his contemporaries Herbert Spencer and James Frazer sought to align evolutionary theory with their perceptions of the development of religions. Their writings presented "primitive" populations as intellectually inferior with childish beliefs in magic, and incapable of monotheism. In fact, the data indicates that exactly the opposite is true: the more primitive the population's lifestyle and the more closely connected to the earth for survival, the more likely the population is to believe in a beneficent Creator God.

The dogmatism of early evolutionary anthropologists appears to have blinded them to the evidence that belief in a supreme High God predates polytheism. Long before the early kingdoms rose in the Ancient Near East, populations living in the Upper Nile Valley believed in God Father. 

Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

Against the evolutionary anthropologists stood Andrew Lang, a student of Tylor who contended that the historical evidence reveals that “primitive” peoples tended to monotheism or henotheism. Lang concluded in 1898 that the idea of the Supreme Being, the High God or "All Father" existed among many primitive tribes prior to Western contact. Comparative studies of creation stories confirm this. 

While studying tribal peoples in northern Nigeria, Dr. Charles Kraft asked a local chief, "What did your people believe about God before the missionaries came?" The old chief told this story:

"Once God and his son lived close to us. They walked, talked, ate, and slept among us. All was well then. There was no thievery or fighting or running off with another man's wife like there is now. But one day God's son ate in the home of a careless woman. She had not cleaned her dishes properly. God's son ate from a dirty dish, got sick, and died. This, of course, made God very angry. He left in a huff and hasn't been heard from since." (Charles Kraft, Christianity in Culture, Orbis Books, 1990, p. 153)

The German ethnologist Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954) coined the term "Urmonotheism" to speak of the primitive worship of a High God as opposed to a pantheon of gods. In his 12-volume Der Ursprung der Gottesidee (The Origin of the Idea of God), Schmidt argued that the earliest religions were monotheistic or henotheistic with a conception of the High God as dwelling above in the sky or heavens.

When I taught World Religions the required text taught that the oldest known religion is Hinduism. However, the evidence of ancient texts, anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics does not support that assertion. The rudimentary Messianic Faith is expressed in the religion of the Horite and Sethite Hebrew and can be studied in such ancient documents as the Coffin Texts, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the Pyramid Texts. Many of the Pyramid Texts predate the oldest Hindu texts by at least 1200 years.

Contrary to another popular opinion, monotheism was not invented by Pharaoh Akhenaton and transmitted to the Jews through Moses. Moses, the Horite Hebrew, was the recipient of a much earlier tradition that should be identified as "Messianic" since it held that God Father had a divine son. 

Winfried Corduan's book In the Beginning: A Fresh Look at the Case for Original Monotheism argues that the evolutionary paradigm held by early secularist anthropologists such as Tylor is spectacularly wrong, and informed anthropologists know it. 

Why is the erroneous theory perpetuated? Probably because the dominance of evolutionary paradigms has not yet passed, and only a few are willing to acknowledge that belief in God Father and God Son is the oldest known religion.

Related reading: Competition Between the Horites and the Sethites; On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality; Dr. Winfried Corduan on the case for original monotheism (podcast); The Case for Ancient Monotheism (video); The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Andrew Lang Reflects on his Mentor E.B. Tylor 

Promoting YEC by Undermining the Truth

 

Alice C. Linsley

I am writing as a pioneer in the emerging science of Biblical Anthropology, an empirical approach to the canonical Scriptures that avoids denominational interpretations. A biblical anthropologist studies the Scriptures to identify anthropologically significant data that clarifies the cultural contexts of ancient biblical populations, and especially the social structure of the biblical Hebrew. This interdisciplinary approach considers kinship patterns, morphological study of human fossils, DNA studies, data about the migration of ancient populations, burial practices, and sacred symbols.

Biblical Anthropology is rigorous in that no assertion can be made without data and no assumption can stand untested. Anthropological data in the Scriptures can lead to a better understanding of the origin of the Messianic Faith among Abraham’s ancestors, shine light on contextual incongruities, and uncover antecedents of beliefs and practices. Where did the idea originate that humans were created from the soil? What is the origin of Messianic expectation? Where is the oldest known site of Hebrew worship? What is the significance of the ubiquitous solar symbolism among biblical populations?

Biblical Archaeology and Biblical Anthropology are complementary disciplines. The archaeologist digs artifacts to gain a better understanding of the material culture of populations associated with the Holy Land. The Biblical Anthropologist digs data out of the Bible to better understand the cultures and social patterns of biblical populations from Africa to Europe. The skill sets of the two disciplines are different, but they share a common objective to gain greater clarity.

I see a great deal of pseudo-science and half-truths among anthropologists who disdain religion in general and Christianity in particular. Their scholarship is like a map out of which numerous holes have been cut. Is it any wonder that so few anthropologists are people of faith? In the universities they are never shown the whole map. They miss the paths that lead to verification of the core Christian beliefs and the veracity of Scripture.

Yet anthropology has much to offer to the Church and to those to read the Bible. A principle in anthropological investigation states that the older culture traits, symbols, and beliefs are those found most widely dispersed globally. Expectation of a righteous ruler who would die and rise from the grave and lead his people to immortality was held by the Hebrew (Akkadian: Abrutu) ruler-priests 6000 years ago. They spread this belief wherever they dispersed in the service of kingdom builders like Nimrod. This means that their belief in bodily resurrection is central to the oldest known religion.

Young Earth Creationists consistently ignore anthropological data because it shows that humans have been around for millions of years. By insisting that the Earth is only 6000-8000 years, Young Earth Creationists deny the weighty evidence that God was laying the ground among archaic human populations for the Messianic Faith that would eventually be fulfilled in Jesus.

The hope for immortal life is evident in the widespread, archaic practice of burial in red ocher, a symbolic blood covering. 

Red ocher was used 300,000 years ago at site GnJh-03 in the Kapthurin Formation of East Africa, and at Twin Rivers in Zambia. 

Red ocher burials dating to 100,000 year ago have been found at the Qafzeh Cave in Lower Galilee.

A man buried at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France was buried in red ocher 45,000 years ago.

A man was buried in red ocher in Paviland Cave, Wales 35,000 years ago.

Four bodies were buried in red ocher at Sungir in Russia 32,000 years ago.

A man was buried in red ocher in Goat's Hole Cave in Wales 27,000 years ago.

The "Fox Lady" of Doini Vestonice, Czechoslovakia, was buried in red ocher 26,000-23,000 years ago. Around the same time, Lake Mungo Woman (LM1) was cremated and her remains were sprinkled with red ocher in Australia.

A woman buried in Santa Maria di Agnano cave in Italy was buried 24,000 years ago with hundreds perforated shells and her head was covered with red ocher paste.

A man buried in Bavaria was buried with mammoth tusks and submerged in red ocher 20,000 years ago. Around the same time, a lady was buried in Paviland, Wales in red ocher. 

A woman was buried in red ocher in El Mirón Cave in Northern Spain 19,000 years ago.

A young child was buried in red ocher 11,000 years ago in Alaska.

The global nature of the practice of red ocher burial tells us that it is extremely old. It suggests that God has been pointing humanity to the Christ event for many thousands of years.

The Bible asserts that life is in the blood. That is true in terms of human biology and it is true in a metaphysical sense. The Blood covering that brings immortality has been revealed. Christians are to make this evident to the world. We cannot do that if we deny the facts or obfuscate the truth.

Related reading: Artifacts of Great Antiquity; On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality, The Age of the Earth and the Evidence of Human Occupation; Genesis and Inerrancy; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; Oldowan Culture of Archaic Humans 2.6 Million Years Ago

The Eternal Son Comes Down From Heaven

When Jesus instituted Holy Communion in the Upper Room was He drawing on received tradition or inventing something new?  Is the Passover the only pattern whereby we understand Jesus' self-sacrifice or are there other threads in Scripture which shed light on the sacrament?

In John 6:51, we read these words concerning Jesus:  "I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world."

Note that the bread comes down from heaven. Such was the case with the manna in the wilderness and probably John 6 refers to to the wilderness experience. However, Holy Communion involves flesh and blood so we do well to look for other antecedents that involve being fed with both elements. We find one antecedent in the book of Job, one of the oldest books of the Bible. Here the mother vulture nourishes her young with flesh and blood. Consider Job 39:27-30:


Does the vulture (nesher) mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? She dwells and abides on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place.
From there she seeks the prey, and her eyes behold afar off.
Her young ones also suck-up blood: and where the slain are, there is she.


This is an image of a mother nourishing her young with bloody bits of flesh from the carcasses of the fallen. In Exodus19:4, we read: Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and, how I bare you on vulture's (nesherim) wings, and brought you unto myself.

The Hebrews living in Egypt would have understood the force of this metaphor since the Vulture was one of the emblems of Egyptian power. Images of the vulture mother of Nekhbet of Elkab are shown with outspread wings on the grand monuments and temples of ancient Egypt. Its counterpart is the mother scorpion of Hierakonpolis.The scorpion, like the vulture, represented Hat-hor's devoted care of Horus, who was called the son of God. He is the pattern by which some of Abraham's Jewish descendants recognized Jesus as the promised Son. Only the Son of God can nourish us with his own eternal Person. Only His eternal Person can bring us eternal life.

C.S. Lewis, who knew languages and mythologies, saw that even the pagans of Europe had dreams of the god who dies and rises again as this idea appears in their literature. In Mere Christianity, Lewis writes that God "sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean ... about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men." It is the life that comes from receiving into ourselves the body and blood of the Eternal Son.

Related reading: "The Ostrich in Biblical Symbolism"