Blood libel

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Blood libels are unfounded allegations that a particular group eats people as a form of human sacrifice, often accompanied by the claim of using the blood of their victims in various rituals. The alleged victims are often children.

Jews are the most common target of blood libels, but many other groups have been accused, including Christians, Cathars, Carthaginians, Knights Templar, Witches, Christian heretics, Roma, Wiccans, Druids, neopagans, Satanists, evangelical Protestant missionaries, and recently, the Chinese.[citation needed]

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[edit] Blood libel against followers of Ancient Greek religion

When the Christianization of Greece occurred, there was an attempt to portray all sacrifices as blood sacrifices, but contrary to popular Christian myth sacrifices to the Greek gods were typically in the forms of wealth. Human blood sacrifices were in Greek cities illegal. Early Christians spread myths about the children of Christians being abducted and having their throats slit in various temples. Such myths are similar to the blood libel accusations against Jews. Virtuvian blood sacrifices were seen by the Greek people as barbaric and laws against them were believed to be part of what separated the Greeks from those they considered barbarians, even after Romanization occurred.

[edit] Blood libel against Jews

Main article: Blood libel against Jews

Blood libels against the Jews were a common form of anti-Semitism during the Middle Ages. There is no ritual involving human blood in Jewish law or custom. The first recorded instance of a blood libel against Jews was in the writings of Apion, who claimed that the Jews sacrificed Greek victims in the Temple. After this there are no existent records of the blood libel against the Jews until the 12th century legend surrounding William of Norwich, first recorded in the Peterborough Chronicle. The libel afterward became an increasingly common accusation. In many subsequent cases, anti-Semitic blood libels served as the basis for a blood libel cult, in which the alleged victim of human sacrifice was venerated as a Christian martyr. Many Jews were killed as a result of false blood libels, which continued into the 20th century, with the Beilis Trial in Russia and the Kielce pogrom in Poland. Blood libel stories persist in the Arab world.

[edit] Blood libel against Christians

During the first and second centuries, some Roman commentators had various interpretations of the ritual of the Eucharist and related teachings. While celebrating the Eucharist, Christians drink red wine in response to the words "This is the blood of Christ". Propaganda arguing that the Christians literally drank blood based on their belief in transubstantiation was written and used to persecute Christians. Romans were highly suspicious of Christian adoptions of abandoned Roman babies and this was suggested as a possible source of the blood.

In the Mandaean scripture, the Ginza Rba, a purportedly Christian group called the "Minunei" are accused of it against the Jews: "They kill a Jewish child, they take his blood, they cook it in bread and they proffer it to them as food." (Ginza Rba 9.1).

[edit] Contemporary blood libel myths in the West

Accusations of ritual murder are being advanced by different groups to this day.

One claim stated that physicians in the People's Republic of China who perform abortions consider the fetus a delicacy and eat it. The story, reported from Hong Kong by Bruce Gilley, was investigated by Senator Jesse Helms, and gruesome artwork reminiscent of traditional depictions of blood libel was featured in several anti-abortion campaigns.[1] The only use for "human fetal tissue" is in the medical research field, particularly stem cell research.[2][3]

Another contemporary blood libel in the United States alleges, falsely, that both neopagans and Satanists use human blood, sexual abuse, or ritual murder, especially of children, in their rituals. Often Satanism, all of the diverse neopagan religions, the role playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and sometimes Roman Catholicism and liberal or non-fundamentalist Christian denominations, are portrayed as expressions of one monolithic and ancient global conspiracy of Satan-worshippers. Mike Warnke (The Satan Seller), Bill Schnoebelen (Wicca: Satan's Little White Lie), Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith (Michelle Remembers), Jon Watkins[4], Bill Pricer, and Ken Wooden (Child Lures) are some of the voices of these libels.

Dave Brown claims that his editorial cartoon (right) is based on Francisco de Goya's painting, Saturn Devouring his Son (left).
Dave Brown claims that his editorial cartoon (right) is based on Francisco de Goya's painting, Saturn Devouring his Son (left).

Many Jewish groups were shocked by the publication in 2003 by the British newspaper The Independent of a cartoon depicting Ariel Sharon eating a baby.[5] The Israeli government complained to the Press Complaints Commission that the cartoon alluded to the blood libel of Jews eating the children of Christians; Dave Brown, the author, responded that the cartoon was in fact inspired by Francisco de Goya's painting Saturn Devouring his Son[6] and was not anti-Semitic in intent. The PCC accepted Brown's argument, stating "There is nothing inherently anti-semitic about the Goya image or about the myth of Saturn devouring his children, which has been used previously to satirise other politicians accused of sacrificing their own 'children' for political purposes".[7] The cartoon ultimately earned Brown the British Political Cartoon Society's Political Cartoon of the Year award.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in his failed bid for re-election in March 2006, said communists have a history of boiling babies. "I have been accused many times of saying communists eat babies," said Berlusconi at a rally of his Forza Italia party. "Go and read the black book on communism and you'll find that under Mao's China they didn't eat babies but they boiled them to fertilise the fields." Despite Berlusconi's 2006 denial that he has ever said that 'communists eat babies,' in the 2001 campaign, Berlusconi said "I can organise a conference in which I will prove communists have really eaten babies and done even worse things. "[8]

[edit] The decline of belief in ritual murder

Belief in ritual murder has gradually disappeared from mainstream Christianity, and child-martyrs have been purged from the official Catholic calendar of saints. Nevertheless, similar accusations are still being made by some Muslim groups against the Jews, and the same accusations were defended by Nazism and related movements in the twentieth century.

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

    [edit] External links

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