First condemned in the Bible as evil after the flood of Genesis 6-8, eating blood is more than the first sin having to do with food to be specified in the text (9:4): it is the greatest sin having to do with food. It does not matter what creature the blood belongs or belonged to; because life has a great value as the category of Yahweh's greatest creation (yes, Yahweh is a mind with conscious life, so I mean life other than God's), even the life of non-human animals, the blood of biological creatures must never be eaten. Over and over is the reason provided: an animal's blood is directly tied to its life, so it follows that not eating blood is at least partially about respecting life. That certain animals may be eaten does not nullify this crucial obligation.
There are other verses after Genesis 9 which condemn this behavior, whatever the intention or circumstance. A handful will be displayed later in this post to highlight a very particular point. As an aside, a second reason is later given as for why it would be wicked to eat blood amidst animal sacrifices to Yahweh in Leviticus 17—since their blood is used to make atonement for human sins, to eat blood is to take what is owed to God. The lack of present animal sacrifices to Yahweh in the Levitical sense does not erase the first reason, which would require even in the absence of Genesis 9 addressing the act as sinful before the formation of Israel that all people, Jew or Gentile, male or female, should not eat blood. I will not focus on the numerous reasons why the moral relativism of Rabbinic Judaism concerning Jews and Gentiles is logically false no matter what and also contrary to Biblical philosophy itself, but even according to the contrived "seven laws of Noah", eating blood is a sin for everybody. After the first condemnation in Genesis 9, this prescription is repeated in places like Deuteronomy 15.
Genesis 9:4—"'But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.'"
Deuteronomy 15:23—"But you must not eat the blood; pour it out on the ground like water."
Despite the language of "eating" blood, any consumption of blood is sin. Whether someone literally eats meat with blood still in it, as the direct phrasing speaks of throughout the Old Testament, eats another sort of food mixed with blood, physically drinks it from a creature's body (living or dead), or drinks it from a vessel wholly apart from meat or the creature it came from, blood is being ingested. Clearly, because the Bible (Genesis 9, Leviticus 19, Deuteronomy 12, and more) either only says to not eat meat with blood or openly invites humans to eat meat, while prohibiting the consumption of blood, it logically follows that ingesting blood by drinking it or "eating" it by itself would have to be immoral as well. Ingesting blood is the sin.
Few people I have known might openly practice or discuss the consumption of blood, but for those who do not directly slaughter animals for the sake of their own food, blood must be avoided in food prepared by others. This is not necessarily as difficult as it might seem. For instance, the red liquid that comes out of some steaks or packaged meats is supposed to be a mixture of water and the protein myoglobin, not blood. But there are reported examples of people eating blood, even that of other humans, as with the cannibalistic murderer Marc Sappington, who claimed voices told him that he would die unless he ate flesh and blood ahead of his 2001 killings. He did allegedly engage in some form of cannibalism, and if he acted as these voices directed, he would have truly ingested blood, that of a human, no less. Sappington's deeds would somewhat parallel those of literal vampires in fiction.
Biblically, it would not matter in a moral sense if the voices he heard were schizophrenic constructs of his own mind (that is, the voices would still exist, but only as his own thoughts) or if they originated from genuine beings. Nor would it matter if the blood was from humans or another animal. The act of consuming blood, other than incidentally swallowing one's own blood from a oral wound or one by the mouth, is an intrinsic evil. Even an animal that is permitted as food should never have its blood eaten by people or, as would have to be the case, equivalent beings. At the very least, it is obvious that a vampire, was such a thing to exist, would in plenty of mainstream iterations have to practice something terribly depraved according to the Bible in order to feed in the manner it needs.
In fiction, such as in the show Supernatural and the Twilight films, some vampires refuse to consume human blood for moral reasons, but to survive, they still drink the blood of non-human animals, like cattle. In Supernatural, one of them insists to Sam that she and the other vampires sharing her commitment have a right to live just like humans do; in Twilight, the Cullen family has collectively determined to not only not drink human blood, but also to protect humans from vampires who would still prey on them. Some storytellers sidestep the worst of the moral dilemma inherent in the coexistence of humans and typical vampires on the Judeo-Christian worldview. Should they allow themselves to live or be allowed to by others? Should they engage in romantic relationships with humans? They need blood, and they might still sometimes crave human blood, but they are resolved to not consume blood from humans.
But the Torah does not restrict the sin of eating blood to only human blood (nor, as will be focused on shortly, would a human-like but non-human being be exempt from moral requirements). Moreover, it does fasten a penalty to this act, a strict one that is fairly easy to overlook even for a rationalistic reader of the Bible because of the alternate wording for the punishment that only receives mention in Leviticus:
Leviticus 7:26-27—"'"And wherever you live, you must not eat the blood of any bird or animal. Anyone who eats blood must be cut off from their people."'"
Leviticus 17:10-14—"'"I will set my face against any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood, and I will cut them off from the people. For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life. Therefore I say to the Israelites, 'None of you may eat blood, nor may any foreigner residing among you eat blood.' Any Israelite or any foreigner residing among you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with earth, because the life of every creature is its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, 'You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.'"'"
The very ongoing earthly existence of a true vampire as presented in many fictional portrayals requires that it would repeatedly violate this obligation, one that Leviticus 7 and 17 say deserves being cut off. While I will discuss more thoroughly in a separate post why being "cut off" in this manner is a reference to prescribed capital punishment, Exodus 31:14 says that whoever desecrates the Sabbath through illicit work must be cut off from their people. The following verse says whoever does such a thing must be put to death, a reference to capital punishment carried out by fellow people. Before the book of Leviticus, the Bible has confirmed that at least in some cases, being cut off as mentioned in Yahweh's laws equates to being executed for specific sins. As for other parts of Leviticus?
Leviticus 18 condemns a number of miscellaneous sins that it says make the evildoer deserve to be cut off, with Leviticus 20 addressing some of the very same sins in a way that starkly demands the death penalty. For example, sacrificing one's child to Molech is brought up in Leviticus 18:21. In Leviticus 20:1-5, it is affirmed that, as with all other human sacrifice or broader murder, the person who does this must be executed. God himself also says he will cut off those who seek mediums and spiritists in Leviticus 20:6 before he calls for the human-conducted execution of any man or woman who practices mediumship or spiritism in verse 27. Being cut off in the context of Yahweh's laws clearly entails being put to death for particularly egregious sins (as obscure and secondary as some of the passages relevant to this topic are, this is still a very important truth).
But would it make a moral difference that vampires are not human? They are still human-like in form and mind and capable of doing the same righteous actions and abstaining from the same sins as people. The usual vampire is human-like, that is, though it is logically possible for a vampire to be some other creature independent of examples. Even so, the video game House of Ashes shoes features non-human vampires. A vampire with a consciousness equivalent to a human's would be bound to the same obligations and, except wherever it would infringe on human rights or those of other animals, the same rights. And what if they had to murder a person in order for the blood to nourish or sustain them? Then, it would clearly be evil for them to do what it necessary for survival one way or another since murder is always evil and always a capital sin at that (Genesis 9:6, Exodus 20:13, 21:12-14, 20-21, etc.). The same is the case with the intentional consumption of blood.
No one can permissibly murder, kidnap (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7), and so on just because their survival depends on it, unless someone is forcing them to do it by the likes of physical violence or hypothetical mind control, in which case the latter is the one logically and Biblically guilty of the evil (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). With a vampire who needs to intake some sort of literal blood to survive, there is no external being forcing them to consume blood, whatever the source and regardless of whether the creature whose blood is consumed is kidnapped or murdered in the process. They would at best simply have to continue eating/drinking some kind of blood from a living creature to remain alive, which is still a universal sin that merits being cut off from the living.
Thankfully, it would appear that vampires only exist in fictional stories, yet the nature of the standard vampire is very relevant to a key Judeo-Christian obligation overlooked by the masses in spite of its emphatic, relatively frequent repetition in the Torah and elsewhere. That eating blood would be sinful even for human-like vampires, such as those who were formerly human, exemplifies the rigidness of Biblical ethics. Indeed, if there is morality at all, its requirements would not in almost any instance change with a situation for practicality or convenience, not even for survival. Something mandatory or wicked would remain so by nature as circumstances shift. Utilitarianism is not only unbiblical, as necessitated by the outright inflexiblity of many individual moral instructions, but it is logically false.
Other than lesser animals that are not morally responsible in the same way humans are, all beings would be obligated to not eat blood as Genesis, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy prescribe. Wicked without exception and deserving of banishment from conscious existence, consuming blood is the ultimate Biblical sin pertaining to food, for the type of animal the blood is from is irrelevant, and no other food-related sin is revealed to deserve such a penalty. A conventional vampire that must consume blood to live does not sin only by engaging in other wrongs like the abduction and murder of people to achieve this goal of survival. In fact, it would sin by ingesting any blood at all.
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