Jehovah's Witnesses and Blood Transfusions

Factual Questions
1

#include standard_no_debate_disclaimer.h

Acording to a show on the Discovery Health Channel last night, and an episode of The Practice last season, devout Jehovah’s Witnesses are forbidden to recieve blood transfusions.

  1. Assuming this is true, what part of the bible or other teaching do they rely upon for this prohibition?

  2. How do Orthodox Jews (if it is also in Jewish bible/torah) and/or fundamentalist/biblical-literlist Christian sects interpret this passage?

  3. Hi, Opal!

  4. Do any other religious groups have similar prohibitions on medical procedures. (Excepting abortion)

2

  1. There seem to be four passages: in the Old Testament, Genesis 9:4 and Leviticus 17:12-14 both prohibit the consumption of blood; in the New Testament, Acts 15:29 states that “You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality…” and Acts 21:25 repeats these prohibitions, explicitly applying them to Gentile believers. Although these passages probably originally referred to eating blood, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe they apply to transfusions as well.

  2. Well, obviously Orthodox Jews don’t care what it says in Acts. They do abstain from eating blood, based on Leviticus; for meat to be kosher, it must be drained of blood. I don’t know if any Orthodox Jews have interpreted this to mean that they can’t have blood transfusions as well, but from what our Jewish posters on this message board have said, in Orthodox thought most of the laws may be set aside (except for a handful like murder or idolatry) in order to preserve human life, which would obviously apply to blood transfusions, so I suspect not. Other Biblically inerrantist Christians would probably tend to reject the two O.T. passages as applying to them on the grounds that they’re part of the Old Law which was (in Christian belief) fulfilled in Christ and was explicitly superseded by Acts 10:9-16. I dunno what most Christians make of the two anti-blood passages in Acts. They may be contradicted/superseded by other New Testament verses–I don’t recall off the top of my head.

  3. Indeed.

  4. Most famous would be the Christian Scientists, who tend to reject all of modern medicine in favor of faith healing; at least some other groups of faith-healing Christians would have similar tendencies.

3

As a former Jehovah’s Witness, I can second MEBuckner’s information.

4

I know MEBuckner said “tend to reject,” but since the question posed talked of “prohibitions,” I’d like to offer a clarification.

Christian Science tenets do not prohibit medical procedures. People who study their teachings and decide to follow them will not want medical procedures performed on them. If, for whatever reason, a Christian Scientist decides to obtain medical help, there is no retribution from the church.

(No debate intended.)