Is Atonement Possible Without Blood? A Jewish-Christian Divide

Much of this chapter is a reworking of “Drink My Blood: Sacrifice and Atonement” from our The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2020), 219-253.

For surveys of the significance of blood in the Hebrew Bible, see B. Kedar-Kopfstein, “דָּם,” TDOT, 3:234–50; Christian Eberhart, “Blood: I. Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament,” EBR, 4:202–12.

The burnt offering (Hebrew ‘olah; Greek holokautoma, the origin of the term “holocaust”) is fully consumed by God (Lev 1). The well-being offering (shelamim, Lev 3) is shared between the offerer and God, with God receiving the choice parts, which indicates human-divine communion rather than forgiveness. The grain offering (Lev 2) obviously has no blood.

For a discussion of these offerings and their relationship to each other, see James Watts, “Leviticus’ Rhetorical Presentation of the Sin and Guilt Offerings,” TheTorah (2019).

The refrain appears in slightly shortened form in 4:20, 26, 31. The refrain for asham is similar:

^{ויקרא ה:כו} וְכִפֶּר עָלָיו הַכֹּהֵן לִפְנֵי יְהוָה וְנִסְלַח לוֹ עַל אַחַת מִכֹּל אֲשֶׁר יַעֲשֶׂה לְאַשְׁמָה בָהּ.

^{Lev 5:26 [=6:7]} The priest shall make expiation on his behalf before YHWH, and he shall be forgiven for whatever he may have done to draw blame thereby.

The refrain appears with slight variation in 5:13, 16, and 18.

See Yitzhaq Feder, “Expiating with Blood,” TheTorah (2015). For more on this offering, see, William K. Gilders, Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2004), 109–141.

Jacob Milgrom, “Israel’s Sanctuary: The Priestly ‘Picture of Dorian Gray,’” Revue Biblique 83 (1976): 390–399 [p. 398]. He explains that such attraction by the “Priestly notion of impurity as a dynamic force, magnetic and malefic to the sphere of the sacred, attacking it not just by direct contact but from a distance.” Milgrom, “Israel’s Sanctuary,” 394. Parts of this thesis appear in Milgrom’s earlier “Sin-Offering or Purification-Offering,” Vetus Testamentum 21 (1971): 237–239.

On some problems with Milgrom’s analysis, see Joseph Lam, “On the Etymology of Biblical Hebrew חטאת: A Contribution to the ‘Sin Offering’ vs. ‘Purification Offering’ Debate,” Journal of Semitic Studies 65 (2020), 325–346.

Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1079–84.

See, e.g., Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 239.

The Torah’s Holiness code uses this concept of blood atonement to explain why Israelites may not eat the blood of animals:

^{ויקרא יז:יא} ...וַאֲנִי נְתַתִּיו לָכֶם עַל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ לְכַפֵּר עַל נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם כִּי הַדָּם הוּא בַּנֶּפֶשׁ יְכַפֵּר. ^יז:יב עַל כֵּן אָמַרְתִּי לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל כָּל נֶפֶשׁ מִכֶּם לֹא תֹאכַל דָּם...

^{Lev 17:11} …and I have assigned it to you for making expiation for your lives upon the altar; it is the blood, as life, that effects expiation. ^17:12 Therefore I say to the Israelite people: No person among you shall partake of blood…

The claim that “the animal’s blood functions as a ransom or substitution for the life of the offerer” (Gilders, Blood Ritual, 178–179) is unique to this verse. The idea that the animal’s life is given as a ransom so that the human may live does not appear to hold for the numerous other descriptions of Israelite sacrifice. Gilders, Blood Ritual, 22, 169.

See also,

^{ויקרא טז:ל} כִּי־בַיּוֹם הַזֶּה יְכַפֵּר עֲלֵיכֶם לְטַהֵר אֶתְכֶם מִכֹּל חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם לִפְנֵי יְ־הוָה תִּטְהָרוּ.

^{Lev 16:30} For on this day atonement shall be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before YHWH.

^{ויקרא טז:לג} וְכִפֶּר אֶת־מִקְדַּשׁ הַקֹּדֶשׁ וְאֶת־אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד וְאֶת־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ יְכַפֵּר וְעַל הַכֹּהֲנִים וְעַל־כָּל־עַם הַקָּהָל יְכַפֵּר.

^{Lev 16:33} He shall make atonement for [better: purge] the sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly.

It is unclear, who (or what) is kipper-ed—the people (v. 30) or the sanctuary (v. 33a).

Unusually, in part of this ritual, the sins of the people are expiated by a “bloodless” sacrifice, when the chatat of the people is sent out into the wilderness to Azazel. For a discussion of this ritual, see Noga Ayali-Darshan, “The Scapegoat Ritual and Its Ancient Near Eastern Parallels,” TheTorah (2020). In the rabbinic interpretation of this ritual, the scapegoat is thrown from a cliff (m. Yoma 6:6), and thus would indeed bleed.

Luke 22:20 rephrases: “And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’”

For the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus’s Last Supper is a Passover meal. In John’s Gospel, Jesus is crucified the day before, when the priests slaughter the Passover lambs.

For more on John the Baptist, see Tamás Visi, “John the Baptist – A Jewish Preacher Recast as the Herald of Jesus,” TheTorah (2020).

Greek: hilasterion; literally, “propriation,” “conciliation,” or “place of forgiveness.” The Greek term is, in the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew kaporet, the ark’s cover.

Hebrews 12:24 also evokes the blood of Abel that cries out from the ground (Gen 4:10) in comparison to Jesus, “the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

Some New Testament texts also suggest that Jesus’s death functioned as a ransom for humanity (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45; 1 Timothy 2:6; 1 Peter 1:18; Revelation 5:9). However, nothing in the Christian development of the concern for blood speaks about washing away ritual impurity, in contrast to Milgrom’s understanding of the role of blood in purgation. The focus of the purification is the individual believer who is “washed in the blood of the lamb.” The phrase, based in Revelation 7:14, is from an 1878 hymn by Presbyterian minister Elisha Hoffman; it was later popularized by the Salvation Army.

Feder, Blood Expiation, 167 [n. 4].

It is unclear if it is an asham or a chatat, since Leviticus 5:1–13 uses both terms.

For the conceptual move from the biblical turning to God to the rabbinic re-turning to God, see David A. Lambert, “Teshuva and "Returning to the LORD" - Are They One and the Same?” TheTorah (2016); idem, How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2016).

See Marc Zvi Brettler, “Interpretation and Prayer: Notes on the Composition of 1 Kings 8.15–53,” in Minhah le-Nahum: Biblical and Other Studies Presented to Nahum M. Sarna in Honour of his 70th Birthday, ed. Marc Zvi Brettler and Michael Fishbane, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 154 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 17–35.

See e.g. Jeremiah 4:11; Hosea 14:2-3 [Eng. 14:1-2].

Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. I. Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), 1:462–71. The rabbis may not have coined the term teshuva; it appears in the Cairo Genizah copy of the Damascus Document (CD) 19:16.

Guy Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations in Late Antiquity (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2009), 64–65. This idea may have precedents at Qumran.

See Jeff Hoffman, “A Linguistic Analysis of the Phrase Ma’avirin et Ro’a HaGezeirah,” TheTorah (2014).

David Biale, Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2007), 65; Stroumsa, End of Sacrifice, 68.

E.g., Moed Katan 28a; Midrash Tanchuma (Buber), Achrei Mot 7:1; 10:1. The rabbis backdate this idea to ancient Israel (Lev Rab, Acharei Mot 20:12):

שכשם שיום הכפורים מכפר כך מיתתן של צדיקים מכפרת... ומנין שמיתתן של צדיקים מכפרת דכתיב (שמואל ב כא) ויקברו את עצמות שאול וכתיב ויעתר אלהים לארץ אחרי כן.

“Just as the Day of Atonement atones, so does the death of the righteous atone. And where is it shown that . . . the death of the righteous atones? Where it is stated, ‘And they buried the bones of Saul.’ . . . And God responded to the plea of the land thereafter.” (2 Sam 21:14)

In some rabbinic texts, it is the blood of circumcision that atones, showing the continuing power of blood, albeit not in the context of sacrifice. Here we may see a response to Christian proclamation that the blood of Jesus creates the forgiveness of sins. See The Bible With and Without Jesus, 248-251.