Sacrifice: the story on HearLore

Sacrifice

The first evidence of ritual animal sacrifice dates back to the ancient Hebrews and Greeks, yet the practice likely predates written history by millennia. In the citadel of Knossos on Crete, archaeologists uncovered the butchered bones of children within the north house, suggesting that Pre-Hellenic Minoan cultures engaged in human sacrifice to accompany the dedication of new temples or to appease deities during times of natural disaster. These findings align with the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, where Athens was forced to send seven young men and seven young women to be devoured by the beast in the labyrinth, a story that mirrors the archaeological reality that most sacrifices were of young adults or children. The Phoenicians of Carthage were also reputed to practice child sacrifice, with Plutarch and other ancient authors describing children being roasted to death while still conscious on a heated bronze idol, though modern scholars debate whether the scale of these atrocities was exaggerated for political reasons. Evidence of ritual human sacrifice can also be found back to at least pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica, where the Aztec Empire estimated sacrificing between a couple of thousand and twenty thousand people per year to help the sun rise, bring rain, or dedicate the great Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlán. In Scandinavia, the old Scandinavian religion contained human sacrifice as both the Norse sagas and German historians relate, with the Temple at Uppsala serving as a central site for the Blót rituals. Human sacrifice is no longer officially condoned in any country, and any cases which may take place are regarded as murder, yet the historical footprint of these acts remains etched into the archaeological record.

The Gift of the Gods

E.B. Tylor suggested that sacrifice could be understood as a gift to the divine, either valued by the divinity on its own merits, valued as an act of homage, or valued based on the hardship of the sacrifice itself. William Robertson Smith in The Religion of the Semites argued that the sole function of sacrifice was for humans to achieve communion with the divine, basing his theory on the sacrificial system of the Hebrew Bible where the eating of burnt offerings by priests brought them closer to God. Émile Durkheim in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life argued that sacrifice served a dual function: social communion and divine communion, working from ethnographies of the Aboriginal Australians published by Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis James Gillen to argue that sacrifices took place during periods of social gathering to reinforce communal ties. Building from Durkheim's functionalist theories, his nephew and disciple Marcel Mauss collaborated with historian Henri Hubert to argue that sacrifice is a form of gift directed to the gods with the social expectation that the gods would offer a greater gift at a later date. Sigmund Freud, influenced by Robertson Smith's theories and Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, argued in Totem and Taboo that the sacrifice of a totem animal was a symbolic recapitulation of the murder and cannibalization of the primal father, viewing sacrifice as a neurotic ritual to displace guilt for inner-psychic tension produced by repressing the Oedipal Complex. René Girard argued that sacrifice functioned as a temporary catharsis for the mimetic desire individuals have to possess what others have, functioning as a form of displaced aggression on an innocent scapegoat. Girard rejected Freud's interpretation that the victim of the sacrifice was guilty, emphasizing that the victim is a surrogate target for, not a symbol of, collective violence. Nancy Jay argued that sacrifice creates and maintains patrilineal kinship structures, observing that sacrificial rituals were almost exclusively performed by men to ideologically justify the patrilineal inheritance of wealth and power by contrasting the shedding of pure blood in sacrifice by men with the shedding of impure blood in childbirth and menstruation by women. Georges Bataille in The Accursed Share argued that sacrifice in pre-modern societies was a deliberate form of conspicuous consumption of surplus value.

Common questions

When did the first evidence of ritual animal sacrifice appear in history?

The first evidence of ritual animal sacrifice dates back to the ancient Hebrews and Greeks, yet the practice likely predates written history by millennia. Archaeologists uncovered butchered bones of children within the north house of the citadel of Knossos on Crete, suggesting that Pre-Hellenic Minoan cultures engaged in human sacrifice to accompany the dedication of new temples or to appease deities during times of natural disaster.

How many people did the Aztec Empire sacrifice per year according to historical estimates?

Current estimates of Aztec sacrifice are between a couple of thousand and twenty thousand per year. These sacrifices were performed to help the sun rise, to help the rains come, and to dedicate the expansions of the great Templo Mayor located in the heart of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec Empire.

What is the meaning of the Latin word sacrificium and how does it relate to Christianity?

The Latin term sacrificium derived from Latin sacrificus, which combined the concepts sacra meaning sacred things and facere meaning to make or to do. This term came to apply to the Christian eucharist in particular, sometimes named a bloodless sacrifice to distinguish it from blood sacrifices.

Why did the Phoenicians of Carthage practice child sacrifice according to ancient authors?

Plutarch and other ancient authors described children being roasted to death while still conscious on a heated bronze idol as part of the practice of the Phoenicians of Carthage. Modern scholars debate whether the scale of these atrocities was exaggerated for political reasons, though archaeological evidence of large numbers of children's skeletons buried in association with sacrificial animals exists.

How does the Roman Catholic Church view the Eucharist in relation to the sacrifice of Christ?

Roman Catholic theology speaks of the Eucharist not being a separate or additional sacrifice to that of Christ on the cross, but rather exactly the same sacrifice which transcends time and space, renewed and made present. The sacrifice is made present without Christ dying or being crucified again, as it is a re-presentation of the once and for all sacrifice of Calvary by the now risen Christ.

What is the Islamic practice of Qurban and when is it performed?

Qurban is an Islamic prescription for the affluent to share their good fortune with the needy in the community, and on the occasion of Eid ul Adha, affluent Muslims all over the world perform the Sunnah of Prophet Ibrahim by sacrificing a cow or sheep. The meat is then divided into three equal parts, one part retained by the person who performs the sacrifice, the second given to his relatives, and the third part distributed to the poor.

The Bloodless Offering

The Latin term sacrificium derived from Latin sacrificus, which combined the concepts sacra meaning sacred things and facere meaning to make or to do, and came to apply to the Christian eucharist in particular, sometimes named a bloodless sacrifice to distinguish it from blood sacrifices. In Nicene Christianity, God became incarnate as Jesus, sacrificing his son to accomplish the reconciliation of God and humanity, which had separated itself from God through sin. According to a view that has featured prominently in Western theology since early in the 2nd millennium, God's justice required an atonement for sin from humanity if human beings were to be restored to their place in creation and saved from damnation. However, God knew limited human beings could not make sufficient atonement, for humanity's offense to God was infinite, so God created a covenant with Abraham, which he fulfilled when he sent his only Son to become the sacrifice for the broken covenant. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Lutheran Churches, the Methodist Churches, and the Irvingian Churches, the Eucharist or Mass, as well as the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Catholic Churches and Eastern Orthodox Church, is seen as a sacrifice. Both Lutheran and Orthodox Christians teach that the Eucharist is a sacrifice in the sense that it is Christ, not the celebrant priest, who offers and is offered as the sacrifice, and that Christ's sacrifice of atonement is made once and for all with respect to God. Roman Catholic theology speaks of the Eucharist not being a separate or additional sacrifice to that of Christ on the cross; it is rather exactly the same sacrifice, which transcends time and space, renewed and made present, the only distinction being that it is offered in an unbloody manner. The sacrifice is made present without Christ dying or being crucified again; it is a re-presentation of the once and for all sacrifice of Calvary by the now risen Christ, who continues to offer himself and what he has done on the cross as an oblation to the Father. The complete identification of the Mass with the sacrifice of the cross is found in Christ's words at the last supper over the bread and wine: This is my body, which is given up for you, and This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed unto the forgiveness of sins. The bread and wine, offered by Melchizedek in sacrifice in the old covenant, are transformed through the Mass into the body and blood of Christ, and the offering becomes one with that of Christ on the cross. In the Mass as on the cross, Christ is both priest and victim, though in the Mass in the former capacity he works through a solely human priest who is joined to him through the sacrament of Holy Orders and thus shares in Christ's priesthood as do all who are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Through the Mass, the effects of the one sacrifice of the cross can be understood as working toward the redemption of those present, for their specific intentions and prayers, and to assisting the souls in purgatory. For Catholics, the theology of sacrifice has seen considerable change as the result of historical and scriptural studies. For Lutherans, the Eucharist is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise in that by giving thanks a person acknowledges that he or she is in need of the gift and that his or her situation will change only by receiving the gift. The concept of self-sacrifice and martyrs are central to Christianity, often found in Roman Catholicism as the idea of joining one's own life and sufferings to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, allowing one to offer up involuntary suffering, such as illness, or purposefully embrace suffering in acts of penance. Pope John Paul II explained in his Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris on the 11th of February 1984 that in the Cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed, and that every man has his own share in the Redemption, called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished. Some Christians reject the idea of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, inclining to see it as merely a holy meal, while the more recent the origin of a particular tradition, the less emphasis is placed on the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist. The Roman Catholic response is that the sacrifice of the Mass in the New Covenant is that one sacrifice for sins on the cross which transcends time offered in an unbloody manner, as discussed above, and that Christ is the real priest at every Mass working through mere human beings to whom he has granted the grace of a share in his priesthood. As priest carries connotations of one who offers sacrifice, some Protestants, with the exception of Lutherans and Anglicans, usually do not use it for their clergy. Evangelical Protestantism emphasizes the importance of a decision to accept Christ's sacrifice on the Cross consciously and personally as atonement for one's individual sins if one is to be saved, this is known as accepting Christ as one's personal Lord and Savior. In the past this issue was much more contentious because private masses were big business, and in more modern times the RCC will even say that the Eucharist offers the forgiveness of venial sins but back in the 16th and 17th centuries the common view was more of a meritorious work that you can participate in and take credit for towards your justification, indeed the council of Trent takes a low view of the sin forgiving ability of Eucharist. The Eastern Orthodox Churches see the celebration of the Eucharist as a continuation, rather than a reenactment, of the Last Supper, as Fr. John Matusiak of the OCA says that the Liturgy is not so much a reenactment of the Mystical Supper or these events as it is a continuation of these events, which are beyond time and space. The Orthodox also see the Eucharistic Liturgy as a bloodless sacrifice, during which the bread and wine we offer to God become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ through the descent and operation of the Holy Spirit, Who effects the change, this view is witnessed to by the prayers of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, when the priest says: Accept, O God, our supplications, make us to be worthy to offer unto thee supplications and prayers and bloodless sacrifices for all thy people, and Remembering this saving commandment and all those things which came to pass for us: the cross, the grave, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the sitting down at the right hand, the second and glorious coming again, Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee on behalf of all and for all, and Thou didst become man and didst take the name of our High Priest, and deliver unto us the priestly rite of this liturgical and bloodless sacrifice.

The Meat of the Matter

Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion, practiced by adherents of many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature. It also served a social or economic function in those cultures where the edible portions of the animal were distributed among those attending the sacrifice for consumption. Animal sacrifice has turned up in almost all cultures, from the Hebrews to the Greeks and Romans, particularly the purifying ceremony Lustratio, Egyptians for example in the cult of Apis, and from the Aztecs to the Yoruba. The religion of the ancient Egyptians forbade the sacrifice of animals other than sheep, bulls, calves, male calves and geese. Animal sacrifice is still practiced today by the followers of Santería and other lineages of Orisa as a means of curing the sick and giving thanks to the Orisa, though in Santeria, such animal offerings constitute an extremely small portion of what are termed ebos, ritual activities that include offerings, prayer and deeds. Christians from some villages in Greece also sacrifice animals to Orthodox saints in a practice known as kourbánia, the practice, while publicly condemned, is often tolerated. In the Islamic context, an animal sacrifice referred to as dhabiha meaning sacrifice as a ritual is offered only in Eid ul Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice. The sacrificial animal may be a sheep, a goat, a camel, or a cow, and the animal must be healthy and conscious. Qurban is an Islamic prescription for the affluent to share their good fortune with the needy in the community, and on the occasion of Eid ul Adha, affluent Muslims all over the world perform the Sunnah of Prophet Ibrahim by sacrificing a cow or sheep. The meat is then divided into three equal parts, one part retained by the person who performs the sacrifice, the second given to his relatives, and the third part distributed to the poor. The Quran states that the sacrifice has nothing to do with the blood and gore, It is not their meat nor their blood that reaches God, It is your piety that reaches Him, rather it is done to help the poor and in remembrance of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismael at God's command. The Urdu and Persian word Qurbani comes from the Arabic word Qurban, suggesting that the associate act performed to hunt distance to Almighty God and to hunt His sensible pleasure. Originally, the word Qurban enclosed all acts of charity as a result of the aim of charity is nothing however to hunt Allah's pleasure, but in precise non-secular nomenclature, the word was later confined to the sacrifice of associate animal slaughtered for the sake of Allah. A similar symbology, which is a reflection of Abraham and Ismael's dilemma, is the stoning of the Jamaraat which takes place during the pilgrimage. Ritual sacrifice was practiced in Ancient Israel, with the opening chapters of the book Leviticus detailing parts of an overview referring to the exact methods of bringing sacrifices. Although sacrifices could include bloodless offerings like grain and wine, the most important were animal sacrifices. Blood sacrifices were divided into burnt offerings in which the whole unmaimed animal was burnt, guilt offerings in which part was burnt and part left for the priest, and peace offerings in which similarly only part of the undamaged animal was burnt and the rest eaten in ritually pure conditions. After the destruction of the Second Temple, ritual sacrifice ceased except among the Samaritans. Maimonides, a medieval Jewish rationalist, argued that God always held sacrifice inferior to prayer and philosophical meditation, but God understood that the Israelites were used to the animal sacrifices that the surrounding pagan tribes used as the primary way to commune with their gods. As such, in Maimonides' view, it was only natural that Israelites would believe that sacrifice was a necessary part of the relationship between God and man. Maimonides concludes that God's decision to allow sacrifices was a concession to human psychological limitations, it would have been too much to have expected the Israelites to leap from pagan worship to prayer and meditation in one step. In contrast, many others such as Nachmanides in his Torah commentary on Leviticus 1:9 disagreed, contending that sacrifices are an ideal in Judaism, completely central. The teachings of the Torah and Tanakh reveal the Israelites's familiarity with human sacrifices, as exemplified by the near-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham and some believe, the actual sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, while many believe that Jephthah's daughter was committed for life in service equivalent to a nunnery of the day, as indicated by her lament over her weep for my virginity and never having known a man. The king of Moab gives his firstborn son and heir as a whole burnt offering, albeit to the pagan god Chemosh. In the book of Micah, one asks, Shall I give my firstborn for my sin, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul, and receives a response, It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what the LORD doth require of thee: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. Abhorrence of the practice of child sacrifice is emphasized by Jeremiah. In Chinese folk religion, members often use pork, chicken, duck, fish, squid, or shrimp in sacrificial offerings. For those who believe the high deities to be vegetarian, some altars are two-tiered: The high one offers vegetarian food, and the low one holds animal sacrifices for the high deities' soldiers. Some ceremonies of supernatural spirits and ghosts, like the Ghost Festival, use whole goats or pigs. There are competitions of raising the heaviest pig for sacrifice in Taiwan and Teochew. The modern practice of Hindu animal sacrifice is mostly associated with Shaktism, and in currents of folk Hinduism strongly rooted in local popular or tribal traditions. Animal sacrifices were part of the ancient Vedic religion in India, and are mentioned in scriptures such as the Yajurveda. For instance, these scriptures mention the use of mantras for goat sacrifices as a means of abolishing human sacrifice and replacing it with animal sacrifice. Even if animal sacrifice was common historically in Hinduism, contemporary Hindus believe that both animals and humans have souls and may not be offered as sacrifices. This concept is called ahimsa, the Hindu law of non-injury and no harm. Some Puranas forbid animal sacrifice.

The Cost of Power

During the Shang and Zhou dynasty, the ruling class had a complicated and hierarchical sacrificial system. Sacrificing to ancestors was an important duty of nobles, and an emperor could hold hunts, start wars, and convene royal family members in order to get the resources to hold sacrifices, serving to unify states in a common goal and demonstrate the strength of the emperor's rule. Archaeologist Kwang-chih Chang states in his book Art, Myth and Ritual: the Path to Political Authority in Ancient China that the sacrificial system strengthened the authority of ancient China's ruling class and promoted production, for example through casting ritual bronzes. Confucius supported the restoration of the Zhou sacrificial system, which excluded human sacrifice, with the goal of maintaining social order and enlightening people. Mohism considered any kind of sacrifice to be too extravagant for society. The Latin word sacrificium came to apply to the Christian eucharist in particular, sometimes named a bloodless sacrifice to distinguish it from blood sacrifices. In individual non-Christian ethnic religions, terms translated as sacrifice include the Indic yajna, the Greek thusia, the Germanic blōtan, the Semitic qorban/qurban, Slavic żertwa, etc. The term usually implies doing without something or giving something up, but the word sacrifice also occurs in metaphorical use to describe doing good for others or taking a short-term loss in return for a greater power gain, such as in a game of chess. The sacrifice of a totem animal was a symbolic recapitulation of the murder and cannibalization of the primal father, according to Sigmund Freud, viewing sacrifice as a neurotic ritual to displace guilt for inner-psychic tension produced by repressing the Oedipal Complex. René Girard argued that sacrifice functioned as a temporary catharsis for the mimetic desire individuals have to possess what others have, thus, sacrifice functions as a form of displaced aggression on an innocent scapegoat. Girard rejected Freud's interpretation that the victim of the sacrifice was guilty, emphasizing that the victim is a surrogate target for, not a symbol of, collective violence. Nancy Jay argued that sacrifice creates and maintains patrilineal kinship structures, observing that sacrificial rituals were almost exclusively performed by men to ideologically justify the patrilineal inheritance of wealth and power by contrasting the shedding of pure blood in sacrifice by men with the shedding of impure blood in childbirth and menstruation by women. Georges Bataille in The Accursed Share argued that sacrifice in pre-modern societies was a deliberate form of conspicuous consumption of surplus value. The sacrifice of people upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader was supposed to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next life. Human sacrifice in times of natural disaster, such as droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc., were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure by deities, and sacrifices were supposed to lessen the divine ire. The Phoenicians of Carthage were reputed to practise child sacrifice, and though the scale of sacrifices may have been exaggerated by ancient authors for political or religious reasons, there is archaeological evidence of large numbers of children's skeletons buried in association with sacrificial animals. Plutarch, who lived from 46 to 120 AD, mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo, describing children being roasted to death while still conscious on a heated bronze idol. Current estimates of Aztec sacrifice are between a couple of thousand and twenty thousand per year, some of these sacrifices were to help the sun rise, some to help the rains come, and some to dedicate the expansions of the great Templo Mayor, located in the heart of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec Empire. There are also accounts of captured conquistadores being sacrificed during the wars of the Spanish invasion of Mexico. In the Aeneid by Virgil, the character Sinon claims falsely that he was going to be a human sacrifice to Poseidon to calm the seas. Human sacrifice is no longer officially condoned in any country, and any cases which may take place are regarded as murder. The term sacrificium derived from Latin sacrificus, which combined the concepts sacra meaning sacred things and facere meaning to make or to do, and came to apply to the Christian eucharist in particular, sometimes named a bloodless sacrifice to distinguish it from blood sacrifices. In individual non-Christian ethnic religions, terms translated as sacrifice include the Indic yajna, the Greek thusia, the Germanic blōtan, the Semitic qorban/qurban, Slavic żertwa, etc. The term usually implies doing without something or giving something up, but the word sacrifice also occurs in metaphorical use to describe doing good for others or taking a short-term loss in return for a greater power gain, such as in a game of chess.