section_path: Culture and religion/Christianity
section_name: Christianity
paragraph_text: Christianity
  
  In Genesis 9:4, God prohibited Noah and his sons from eating blood (see Noahide Law). This command continued to be observed by the Eastern Orthodox Church.
  
  It is also found in the Bible that when the Angel of Death came around to the Hebrew house that the first-born child would not die if the angel saw lamb's blood wiped across the doorway.
  
  At the Council of Jerusalem, the apostles prohibited certain Christians from consuming blood – this is documented in Acts 15:20 and 29. This chapter specifies a reason (especially in verses 19–21): It was to avoid offending Jews who had become Christians, because the Mosaic Law Code prohibited the practice.
  
  Christ's blood is the means for the atonement of sins. Also, "... the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." (1 John 1:7), "... Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood." (Revelation 1:5), and "And they overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony..." (Revelation 12:11).
  
  Some Christian churches, including Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Assyrian Church of the East teach that, when consecrated, the Eucharistic wine actually becomes the blood of Jesus for worshippers to drink. Thus in the consecrated wine, Jesus becomes spiritually and physically present. This teaching is rooted in the Last Supper, as written in the four gospels of the Bible, in which Jesus stated to his disciples that the bread that they ate was his body, and the wine was his blood. "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you." (Luke 22: 20).
  
  Most forms of Protestantism, especially those of a Methodist or Presbyterian lineage, teach that the wine is no more than a symbol of the blood of Christ, who is spiritually but not physically present. Lutheran theology teaches that the body and blood is present together "in, with, and under" the bread and wine of the Eucharistic feast.