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Bible Dictionaries
Strangled
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Acts 15:20; Acts 15:29; Acts 21:25)
The interpretation of this word has been a difficulty almost from the beginning. Western texts substitute for it: ‘not to do unto others what you would not they should do unto you.’ They thereby turn all the prohibitions into moral ones. ‘Blood’ means murder, ‘fornication’ adultery, and for ‘things strangled’ is substituted harmfulness. This of course misses the whole point of the Council, which had to decide not on moral (except indirectly) but on ceremonial distinctions. The Council wishes Gentile Christians of Syria and Cilicia to keep from heathendom, i.e. idolatry and its accompaniment, fornication; blood; things strangled. Now blood-offerings and strangled offerings are mentioned in the OT as found among idolatrous Jews (Ezekiel 33:25, Isaiah 65:4; Isaiah 66:3; Isaiah 66:17). St. James fears these offerings among idolatrous Christians. To eat blood in any form is contrary to the teaching of the OT. But strangled things are specially mentioned because they have a peculiar efficacy in heathen eyes. They do not shed the blood, and it does not therefore call for vengeance from the ground. Thus they have a magical influence, and have been so used in N. America and Japan and are still used in India. The word may therefore stand here as a well-known allusion to magical rites in Syria, and the prohibition may become equivalent to ‘Keep yourselves from magic.’
Literature.-F. J. A. Hort, Judaistic Christianity, 1894, p. 73; W. R. Religion of the Semites (W. Robertson Smith) 2, 1894, pp. 343, 417; J. G. Frazer, Golden Bough2, 1900, ii. 319, 416; J. B. Lightfoot, Colossians and Philemon, new ed., 1879, pp. 88-90. For another view, W. J. Conybeare and J. S. Howson, The Life and Epistles of St. Paul, new ed., 1889, p. 172.
Sherwin Smith.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Strangled'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/s/strangled.html. 1906-1918.
