on an appeal to bans on the consumption of blood in both the
Old and New Testaments (e.g. Deuteronomy12.23–5;Leviticus
7.26–7; Acts 15.20). But they have also appealed to early
Christianity as part of their effort to show that this biblical rejec-
tion of consuming blood has been obeyed also throughout history
by ‘true Christians’ (Jehovah’s Witnesses 1990/2000). Among
the evidence they cite for this view is the account in Eusebius
of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History(see pp. 35–40) of the perse-
cution of Christians that broke out in 177, during the reign of
the emperor Marcus Aurelius, at Lyons and Vienne in southern
Gaul. Among the Christian martyrs was a woman named Biblis,
who rejected the notorious pagan accusation that the Christians
ate children with the retort: ‘How could children be eaten by
people who are not even allowed to eat the blood of brute beasts?’
(Ecclesiastical History5.1.26). Similarly, they cite the third-
century north African author Tertullian who, in his Apology, a
work of Christian self-defence against various pagan accusations,
remarked that Christians on trial were offered blood sausages by
pagan prosecutors who knew that such food was anathema to them
(Apology9.14). By invoking such early Christian evidence, the
Jehovah’s Witnesses contend that their prohibition on blood
transfusions means that they too are ‘true Christians’, keeping
alive biblical teachings on the matter. Yet their interpretation of
these texts is not uncontroversial. It might be objected that the
injunctions mentioned in Scripture or in Eusebius and Tertullian
(and other early Christian authors: cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius
30) are culturally specific, reflecting assumptions peculiar to the
historical contexts in which they were made. It seems that in
the early Christian period, for example, such objections might
have been raised because of the origin of the blood and meat: it
came from animals sacrificed to the pagan gods and was tainted
for this very reason. Indeed, the consumption of sacrificial meat
and blood was one of the demands made in some trials of the
early Christians (Lane Fox 1986: 455).
If for some modern Christians the study of early Christianity
provides justification for their current practices, for others theWHAT IS EARLY CHRISTIANITY?
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