7, 8. How did it become plain that God’s law on blood applies to Christians?

⁷ History shows us what happened later when a council of the Christian governing body decided whether Christians had to keep all of Israel’s laws. Under divine guidance, they said that Christians are not obliged to keep the Mosaic code but that it is “necessary” to “keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled [unbled meat] and from fornication.” (Acts 15:22-29) They thus made it clear that avoiding blood is as morally important as avoiding idolatry and gross immorality.a

⁸ The early Christians upheld that divine prohibition. Commenting thereon, British scholar Joseph Benson said: “This prohibition of eating blood, given to Noah and all his posterity, and repeated to the Israelites . . . has never been revoked, but, on the contrary, has been confirmed under the New Testament, Acts xv.; and thereby made of perpetual obligation.” Yet, would what the Bible says about blood rule out modern medical uses, such as transfusions, which clearly were not used in Noah’s day or in the apostles’ time?