The Sin of the Gentiles: The Prohibition of Eating Blood in the Book of Jubilees

Jubilees exhorts Israelites to separate from Gentiles in every way. Jubilees does not simply repeat familiar arguments that Gentiles will lead Israelites to sin if they adopt their ways. Rather, Jubilees argues that merely being in the presence of Gentiles is dangerous because they are liable to a violent death at any moment for their abhorrent daily practices. At the same time, Jubilees maintains a strict standard for God’s justice such that sinners must be warned of the crime and its punishment in advance. Jubilees maintains that the ancestors of all nations willingly entered into a covenant which demands eradication of entire nations for the sin of eating blood. In order to make this point Jubilees interprets Genesis 9 and other sources to indicate that all nations are bound to a covenant which demands eradication for the crime of eating meat that was not processed according to Levitical procedure.