For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life.
⛓ Read Leviticus 17 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion2
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
'The life of the flesh is in the blood... it is the blood that makes atonement' establishes the atoning, cleansing power of blood that 1 John applies to Jesus' blood. The sacrificial logic of cleansing-by-blood is foundational.
Medium confidenceThe blood among the witnesses evokes the Levitical principle that 'the life of the flesh is in the blood' and that blood makes atonement. John's 'water and blood' draws atoning significance from the sacrificial system where blood is the witnessing, life-bearing agent. The blood testifies because it is the locus of atoning life.
Medium confidenceEcho4
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
"It is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life" supplies the sacrificial logic behind calling Jesus the propitiation for sins. The atoning-blood theology of Leviticus underlies the claim that his death covers the guilt of the world.
Medium confidence‘Apart from shedding of blood there is no remission’ (v. 22) crystallizes the principle of Lev 17:11 — blood makes atonement because the life is in it. No verbatim quotation, but high thematic coherence: this is the axiom on which the whole sacrificial argument of vv. 11–22 rests.
Medium confidence"Justified by his blood" (5:9): "the life of the flesh is in the blood... it is the blood that makes atonement." Paul's atoning-blood language draws on the Levitical principle that blood effects expiation, already invoked at Romans 3:25 (hilasterion).
Medium confidence'The life is in the blood' — undergirds why water-turned-to-blood and 'blood as of a dead man' (16:3) signify death and defiled life-source; faint, conceptual.
Low confidence