blood

• barbarous idea of penance by shedding b.

4:5.4The bar­barous idea of ap­peas­ing an an­gry God, of pro­pi­ti­at­ing an of­fended Lord, of win­ning the fa­vor of De­ity through sac­ri­fices and pen­ance and even by the shed­ding of blood, rep­re­sents a re­li­gion wholly puerile and prim­i­tive, a phi­los­o­phy un­wor­thy of an en­light­ened age of sci­ence and truth. Such be­liefs are ut­terly re­pul­sive to the ce­les­tial be­ings and the di­vine rulers who serve and reign in the uni­verses. It is an af­front to God to be­lieve, hold, or teach that in­no­cent blood must be shed in or­der to win his fa­vor or to di­vert the fic­ti­tious di­vine wrath.

• Hebrews believed no remission of sin without shedding

4:5.5The He­brews be­lieved that “with­out the shed­ding of blood there could be no re­mis­sion of sin.” They had not found de­liv­er­ance from the old and pa­gan idea that the Gods could not be ap­peased ex­cept by the sight of blood, though Moses did make a dis­tinct ad­vance when he for­bade hu­man sac­ri­fices and sub­sti­tuted there­for, in the prim­i­tive minds of his child­like Bed­ouin fol­low­ers, the cer­e­mo­nial sac­ri­fice of an­i­mals.

• scientific aspects of blood › retains salinity of ancestors’ ocean environment

58:1.3The Sa­ta­nia Life Car­ri­ers had pro­jected a sodium chlo­ride pat­tern of life; there­fore no steps could be taken to­ward plant­ing it un­til the ocean wa­ters had be­come suf­fi­ciently briny. The Uran­tia type of pro­to­plasm can func­tion only in a suit­able salt so­lu­tion. All an­ces­tral life—veg­etable and an­i­mal—evolved in a salt-so­lu­tion habi­tat. And even the more highly or­ga­nized land an­i­mals could not con­tinue to live did not this same es­sen­tial salt so­lu­tion cir­cu­late through­out their bod­ies in the blood stream which freely bathes, lit­er­ally sub­merses, ev­ery tiny liv­ing cell in this “briny deep.”

58:1.4Your prim­i­tive an­ces­tors freely cir­cu­lated about in the salty ocean; to­day, this same ocean­like salty so­lu­tion freely cir­cu­lates about in your bod­ies, bathing each in­di­vid­ual cell with a chem­i­cal liq­uid in all es­sen­tials com­pa­ra­ble to the salt wa­ter which stim­u­lated the first pro­to­plas­mic re­ac­tions of the first liv­ing cells to func­tion on the planet.

• scientific aspects of blood › cuttlefish oxygenate b. with copper
• scientific aspects of blood › role of iron in oxygenation

65:6.4One of the most ser­vice­able and com­plex episodes in the evo­lu­tion of the higher types of an­i­mals con­sisted in the de­vel­op­ment of the abil­ity of the iron in the cir­cu­lat­ing blood cells to per­form in the dou­ble role of oxy­gen car­rier and car­bon diox­ide re­mover. And this per­for­mance of the red blood cells il­lus­trates how evolv­ing or­gan­isms are able to adapt their func­tions to vary­ing or chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment. The higher an­i­mals, in­clud­ing man, oxy­genate their tis­sues by the ac­tion of the iron of the red blood cells, which car­ries oxy­gen to the liv­ing cells and just as ef­fi­ciently re­moves the car­bon diox­ide. But other met­als can be made to serve the same pur­pose. The cut­tle­fish em­ploys cop­per for this func­tion, and the sea squirt uti­lizes vana­dium.

• scientific aspects of blood › 15 million chemical reactions in

65:6.6But many seem­ingly mys­te­ri­ous ad­just­ments of liv­ing or­gan­isms are purely chem­i­cal, wholly phys­i­cal. At any mo­ment of time, in the blood stream of any hu­man be­ing there ex­ists the pos­si­bil­ity of up­ward of 15,000,000 chem­i­cal re­ac­tions be­tween the hor­mone out­put of a dozen duct­less glands.

• place b. shed became property of injured person

69:9.8At first, all prop­erty, in­clud­ing tools and weapons, was the com­mon pos­ses­sion of the tribe. Pri­vate prop­erty first con­sisted of all things per­son­ally touched. If a stranger drank from a cup, the cup was hence­forth his. Next, any place where blood was shed be­came the prop­erty of the in­jured per­son or group.

69:9.9Pri­vate prop­erty was thus orig­i­nally re­spected be­cause it was sup­posed to be charged with some part of the owner’s per­son­al­ity. Prop­erty hon­esty rested safely on this type of su­per­sti­tion; no po­lice were needed to guard per­sonal be­long­ings. There was no steal­ing within the group, though men did not hes­i­tate to ap­pro­pri­ate the goods of other tribes. Prop­erty re­la­tions did not end with death; early, per­sonal ef­fects were burned, then buried with the dead, and later, in­her­ited by the sur­viv­ing fam­ily or by the tribe.

• of kings believed divine

70:6.4The suc­ces­sion of kings was even­tu­ally re­garded as super­nat­u­ral, the royal blood be­ing thought to ex­tend back to the times of the ma­te­ri­al­ized staff of Prince Cali­gas­tia. Thus kings be­came fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties and were in­or­di­nately feared, a spe­cial form of speech be­ing adopted for court us­age. Even in re­cent times it was be­lieved that the touch of kings would cure dis­ease, and some Uran­tia peo­ples still re­gard their rulers as hav­ing had a di­vine ori­gin.

• b. money substituted for vengeance; Moses abolished

70:10.12An­other ad­vance was the im­po­si­tion of fines for taboo vi­o­la­tions, the pro­vi­sion of penal­ties. These fines con­sti­tuted the first pub­lic rev­enue. The prac­tice of pay­ing “blood money” also came into vogue as a sub­sti­tute for blood vengeance. Such dam­ages were usu­ally paid in women or cat­tle; it was a long time be­fore ac­tual fines, mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion, were as­sessed as pun­ish­ment for crime. And since the idea of pun­ish­ment was es­sen­tially com­pen­sa­tion, ev­ery­thing, in­clud­ing hu­man life, even­tu­ally came to have a price which could be paid as dam­ages. The He­brews were the first to abol­ish the prac­tice of pay­ing blood money. Moses taught that they should “take no sat­is­fac­tion for the life of a mur­derer, who is guilty of death; he shall surely be put to death.”

• ancients believed b. created child

84:2.1The woman’s pe­ri­odic hem­or­rhage and her fur­ther loss of blood at child­birth early sug­gested blood as the cre­ator of the child (even as the seat of the soul) and gave ori­gin to the blood-bond con­cept of hu­man re­la­tion­ships. In early times all de­scent was reck­oned in the fe­male line, that be­ing the only part of in­her­i­tance which was at all cer­tain.

• some ancients believed soul resided in

86:5.15The soul was gen­er­ally thought of as be­ing iden­ti­fied with the breath, but it was also lo­cated by var­i­ous peo­ples in the head, hair, heart, liver, blood, and fat. The “cry­ing out of Abel’s blood from the ground” is ex­pres­sive of the one­time be­lief in the pres­ence of the ghost in the blood. The Semites taught that the soul resided in the bod­ily fat, and among many the eat­ing of an­i­mal fat was taboo. Head hunt­ing was a method of cap­tur­ing an en­emy’s soul, as was scalp­ing. In re­cent times the eyes have been re­garded as the win­dows of the soul.

• many still depend upon b. for salvation

89:9.4And so, af­ter long ages the cult of the sac­ri­fice has evolved into the cult of the sacra­ment. Thus are the sacra­ments of mod­ern re­li­gions the le­git­i­mate suc­ces­sors of those shock­ing early cer­e­monies of hu­man sac­ri­fice and the still ear­lier can­ni­bal­is­tic rit­u­als. Many still de­pend upon blood for sal­va­tion, but it has at least be­come fig­u­ra­tive, sym­bolic, and mys­tic.

• among earliest medicines

90:4.8Fast­ing, di­et­ing, and coun­terir­ri­tants were of­ten used as re­me­dial mea­sures. Hu­man se­cre­tions, be­ing def­i­nitely mag­i­cal, were highly re­garded; blood and urine were thus among the ear­li­est medicines and were soon aug­mented by roots and var­i­ous salts. The shamans be­lieved that dis­ease spir­its could be driven out of the body by foul-smelling and bad-tast­ing medicines. Purg­ing very early be­came a rou­tine treat­ment, and the val­ues of raw co­coa and qui­nine were among the ear­li­est phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­cov­er­ies.

• Phrygian mystery cult celebrated day of

97:4.4Amos pro­claimed Yah­weh the “God of all na­tions” and warned the Is­raelites that rit­ual must not take the place of righ­teous­ness. And be­fore this coura­geous teacher was stoned to death, he had spread enough leaven of truth to save the doc­trine of the su­preme Yah­weh; he had in­sured the fur­ther evo­lu­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek rev­e­la­tion.

• Philo taught forgiveness only through shedding

121:6.5Many, but not all, of Philo’s in­con­sis­ten­cies re­sult­ing from an ef­fort to com­bine Greek mys­ti­cal phi­los­o­phy and Ro­man Stoic doc­trines with the le­gal­is­tic the­ol­ogy of the He­brews, Paul rec­og­nized and wisely elim­i­nated from his pre-Chris­tian ba­sic the­ol­ogy. Philo led the way for Paul more fully to re­store the con­cept of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, which had long been dor­mant in Jew­ish the­ol­ogy. In only one mat­ter did Paul fail to keep pace with Philo or to tran­scend the teach­ings of this wealthy and ed­u­cated Jew of Alexan­dria, and that was the doc­trine of the atone­ment; Philo taught de­liv­er­ance from the doc­trine of for­give­ness only by the shed­ding of blood. He also pos­si­bly glimpsed the re­al­ity and pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers more clearly than did Paul. But Paul’s the­ory of orig­i­nal sin, the doc­trines of hered­i­tary guilt and in­nate evil and re­demp­tion there­from, was par­tially Mith­raic in ori­gin, hav­ing lit­tle in com­mon with He­brew the­ol­ogy, Philo’s phi­los­o­phy, or Je­sus’ teach­ings. Some phases of Paul’s teach­ings re­gard­ing orig­i­nal sin and the atone­ment were orig­i­nal with him­self.

• from sacrificial animals sickened Jesus

125:1.4They now passed down to the priests’ court be­neath the rock ledge in front of the tem­ple, where the al­tar stood, to ob­serve the killing of the droves of an­i­mals and the wash­ing away of the blood from the hands of the of­fi­ci­at­ing slaugh­ter priests at the bronze foun­tain. The blood­stained pave­ment, the gory hands of the priests, and the sounds of the dy­ing an­i­mals were more than this na­ture-lov­ing lad could stand. The ter­ri­ble sight sick­ened this boy of Naz­a­reth; he clutched his fa­ther’s arm and begged to be taken away. They walked back through the court of the gen­tiles, and even the coarse laugh­ter and pro­fane jest­ing which he there heard were a re­lief from the sights he had just be­held.