Watchtower on Taking In Meat

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1961 is the year Watchtower began imposing its blood transfusion ban onto Jehovah’s Witnesses under pain of its organized communal shunning policy, otherwise known as a member being disfellowshipped or disassociated.[1-2]

The Watchtower organization attempts to leverage text of the Noachian Decree (Gen. 9:1-17, esp. vs. 3-4) in support of its doctrinal prohibition of blood transfusion among Jehovah’s Witnesses. In part Watchtower depends on this text representing permission to eat meat that was not eaten by pre-flood biblical characters such as Abel, Enoch and Noah.[3]

This idea of pre-flood worshippers of God not eating meat is expressed by Watchtower in the same year of 1961. Watchtower wrote[4]:

Then Comes 1980

In 1980 the Watchtower organization changed its doctrinal position against human organ transplantation. Prior to 1980 Jehovah’s Witnesses had been taught human organ transplantation was cannibalism, a grave sin against God.[5] It was decided this needed to change, but Watchtower had the problem of previously teaching human organ transplantation was cannibalism. So what to do?

Watchtower got rid of its doctrinal cannibalism problem by writing the following[6]:

This 1980 teaching undermines Watchtower’s anti-blood transfusion teaching because it means Watchtower can no longer leverage the Noachian Decree as though prior to it godly humans were not already eating meat. As Watchtower says, there was no biblical command forbiddeing the taking in of [meat], and this includes the pre-flood era.

Of God the Watchtower organization’s New World Translation has this to say of pre-flood use of meat[7]:

This biblical text of Genesis 3:21 is an express depiction of God teaching humans to take animal meat onto their bodies.

As Watchtower admitted in 1980, at the time of Genesis 3:21 there was no then existing biblical text forbidding the taking in of meat.

So we have this:

◄  Putting animal meat onto your flesh is okay with God.

◄  Eating animal meat is a form of literally putting meat onto your flesh.

◄  Eating animal meat is okay with God.

Because animal meat is a food, we also have this:

◄  Putting food onto your flesh is okay with God.

◄  Eating food is a form of literally putting meat onto your flesh.

◄  Eating food is okay with God.

The idea of applying a food item onto our body as clothing shouldn’t strike anyone as odd. According to the biblical account Adam and Eve made clothing for themselves of a food item. Genesis 3:7 says they used fig leaves as clothing.

Apparently God thought they needed a more robust food item as clothing so he taught them to use meat instead of vegetation.

So What’s the Beef?

A person amongst Jehovah’s Witnesses might object to this as dicto simpliciter.

To these I ask: From a moral perspective what’s the difference between 1) putting food into your body as personal sustenance and 2) putting food onto your body as personal clothing? And, if there is some relevant moral disinction, what is it specifically and can you prove any moral disparity is real?

Apparently Adam and Eve had no problem placing food both onto and into their bodies, and neither did God.[8] So why should anyone else?

As it turns out, none other than God himself taught humans to butcher animals and put that food onto their bodies for practical personal use, and from a biblical perspective there was no prohibition against eating animal meat as food prior to the flood.[9-10]

Prior to the flood God was not having humans treat blood as some kind of sacred substance. Antediluvians eating meat were also eating blood. The Noachian Decree is no basis whatsoever to support Watchtower’s doctrinal position against blood transfusion.

Blood addressed under the Noachian Decree was of slaughter, and of that blood Noah was to abstain from eating it. Blood used for medical transfusion is not of slaughter, and transfusion is not eating.

Aside from eating blood of slaughter, the ancient biblical Noah was free to do with blood whatever he wanted, including eating the blood of animals found dead of natural cause whose flesh was edible. This food item has been a staple in human diet from antiquity. And why not?

After all, the Watchtower organization teaches that prior to the flood there was absolutely no stipulation that taking in meat was anyways wrong.

Any questions?

Marvin Shilmer

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References:

1. Watchtower’s Gunpoint

2. Coercion to Refuse Blood

3. If meat was not eaten prior to the flood then blood was not eaten prior to the flood. As Watchtower publish in 1973 (Awake, published by Watchtower, May 8, 1973, p. 28):

4. The Watchtower, December 15, 1961, p. 766.

5. Watchtower — fixing blame? see ftn 2.

6. The Watchtower, March 15, 1980, p. 31.

7. Genesis 3:21, NWT, published by Watchtower, Revised 1984 edition.

8. Pre-flood Food

9. Various Bible commentators conclude Genesis contains no prohibition against antediluvians eating meat and some assert the biblical text of Genesis 1:28 granting man dominion over animals made it lawful for humans to use animals for carriage and slaughtering them for clothing and food.—(Old Testament Commentary, Ellicott, 1882, p. 18; Genesis and its Authorship, Quarry, 1866, p. 82. See also In Primum Mosis librum, qui Genesis vulgo dicitur, Commentarius, John Calvin, 1554, pp. 69-70, and Hierozoicon, Bochart, 1692, col. 11.1.43.)

10. For more biblical commentaries addressing this issue see the article Genesis and meat eating? 

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