Why I am Such a Good Christian: Comments on Gil Anidjar, Blood: A Critique of Christianity

Abstract

Gil Anidjar begins his immensely ambitious bookBloodwith a strange statement/question “Why I am Such a Good Christian.” I begin by examining this question for its implications for cultural hybridity, for myself as well as for Anidjar, through the lens of Anidjar’s concluding discussion of Freud’sMoses and Monotheism. On the way I critically explore Anidjar’s insistence that blood is not a signifier of kinship or ancestry in the Hebrew Bible or in Judaism, and argue that both are in fact much more complex. I suggest also that Christianity has other elements than blood, such as the bread of the Eucharist, and that Anidjar devotes little attention to the differences between Protestant and Catholic Christianity. I conclude by reverting to Freud’s account of an experience of innocence inThe Interpretation of Dreams, as indicative of Freud’s ambivalent position between Judaism and Christianity.