ratbastid

Acts 15:28-29
28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements:
29 You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.

Genesis 9:1-4
9:1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
2 And the fear of you and the terror of you shall be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given.
3 Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant.
4 Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

They both sound like dietary prohibitions to me. At least the message in the first one, "abstain from blood" seems clear enough. Not being raised in those beliefs, the interpretation of a prohibition against blood transfusion seems like a bit of a stretch, but I can at least see the thinking.

In the Genesis verses, I don't see how the word "eat" could be interpreted to mean "receive through a needle in your arm". This one strikes me as wholly dietary. Presumably that's where the kosher blood-draining practice comes from. Although there is a big "blood = life" right at the end of the verse there, and I suppose a theologian could turn that into a whole big rule-generating moral code.

I'm not trying to run down your beliefs here, randygurl, I'm really just trying to understand the thinking that would interpret those two scriptures to mean that the single highest offense you can commit is to receive a blood transfusion. I mean, given that blood isn't even mentioned in the Big Ten, it seems like God has at least those items as a higher priority. I know it's been a while, but can you give us a sense, at least, of what the JW reasoning on the matter is?