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? With his characteristic wit and erudition, David Biale 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.
Table of Content
Preface
Introduction: Writing with Blood
1. Pollution and Power: Blood in the Hebrew Bible
2. Blood and the Covenant: The Jewish and Christian Careers of a Biblical Verse
3. God’s Blood: Medieval Jews and Christians Debate the Body
4. Power in the Blood: The Medieval and the Modern in Nazi Anti-Semitism
5. From Blood Libel to Blood Community: Self-Defense and Self-Assertion in Modern Jewish Culture
Epilogue: Blood and Belief
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the author
David Biale is Emanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis and author of Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (UC Press). He edited Cultures of the Jews: A New History, and Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism (UC Press) with Susannah Heschel and Michael Galchinsky.
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