Tattoos, blood, and dubious appeals to context.

A while ago I went on a short rant about how often I see an unsupported appeal to "context" to explain away all sorts of uncomfortable scriptures. While cataloguing my books, I ran across an example I'd like to share with you. The author is dealing w/ Lev. 19:28:

"If we study Leviticus in its context, we see that it isn't talking about tattoos in general, but tattoos that identify a person with a pagan deity or pagan practice. Two verses before, it forbids the eating of meat with blood in it. Does this mean you can't eat your steaks rare? Not at all. This is talking specifically about the meat that was offered as a sacrifice, not an evening out at Mortons..." (Kimmel, 'Grace Based Parenting', pp. 155,156)

Ok, so we have an appeal to context, and an absolute claim (unsupported in the book) that the prohibition unambiguously applies only to pagan tattoos. Then even more troubling, a similar unsupported appeal to context is used to say that the prohibition against eating blood applies only to sacrificial meats, which is a very, very dubious bit of exegesis! By the same token we could say vs. 29 means we can't sell our daughters into *pagan* prostitution, but regular prostitution is OK. Do a search for "eat, blood" on biblegateway and read how many vss. prohibit it strongly. Also, read Deut. 12:20-25 and ask yourself if that sounds like a general prohibition against eating blood or not. Read Lev. 17:14 and ask yourself if that seems like a rationale for the prohibition. And then look at Acts 15:20,29 and 21:25 and see that the prohibition carries into the NT, and if you feel inclined to say that there too it applies only to blood sacrificed to idols, then ask yourself why you don't say only the sexual immorality prohibited in the same verse only applies to that done in worship to idols.

All that so say, a well-supported understanding of the actual, demonstrated historical and textual context is very important to interpretation, but don't let writers sucker you with appeals to context that aren't carefully supported and especially when they ignore the whole testimony of Scripture.  I'm sure we've all imbibed bucketloads of asides like this on our course of reading books and listening to sermons, and probably repeated them too, not without effect. My advice would be when someone is telling you the bible doesn't mean what it seems to be saying, don't take their word for it, even if they say the magical word "context", until you've verified that it indeed IS the context and that it doesn't go against the rest of the witness of the Scriptures.