Flesh, Bone, Blood

Gil Anidjar (Blood: A Critique of Christianity) makes the surprising claim that while “there may be a deep link between sacrifice and kinship, indeed, between blood and covenant, it is simply a fact that for the Old Testament, flesh and bone – never flesh and blood – signify the basis of elementary communal identity (45). He cites Adam’s first words to Eve (Genesis 2:24), Laban’s appeal to Jacob (Genesis 29:14), Joseph’s brothers (Genesis 37:27), and the men of Israel to David (2 Samuel 5:1).

He’s right: The phrase “flesh and blood” is not used for kinship. And the alternative phrase, flesh and bone, suggests to Anidjar a different basis and structure of kinship: “‘flesh and bone’ mark contemporaneity rather than form the substance of a link between and across generations” (45). Flesh and bone signify “horizontal contiguity” and militate against “hierarchical distinctions” (46).

Far from signalling continuity, he argues, blood is a sign of disruption, “invoking images of violence, death, and contamination.” Blood is not, as many translations of Leviticus 17 have it, life, but “ultimately closer to death” and like death a “great equalizer.” It purifies not because it marks continuity but because it “follows the logic of interruption” (47). 

In the Hebrew imagination, blood is blood is blood: “there is no difference between bloods. Blood is blood and is thus affected by its place and usage. But all creatures, insofar as they are created, ‘have’ blood. Blood is not property and only doubtfully substance. Like death, it is a great leveler” (49).

Anidjar goes on to blame the positive valuation of “pure blood” on Christianity. But I think he misses the important continuity between Old and New. Though “natural” blood is not a sign of generational continuity or status privilege in the Hebrew Bible, covenant blood functions as a mark of community. “Flesh and bone” is the marker of natural brotherhood; but Israelites are all brothers because they are together sprinkled with the “blood of the covenant.” Just as in the New Testament, the blood the binds is not natural blood but the blood of a sacrificial victim.