So I was discussing Good Friday and Easter with a Chinese friend at work. I mentioned how Jesus was the “Lamb of God” and that ancient religions would sacrifice sheep.
I got to thinking: why? How is sacrificing a sheep or anything else supposed to appease God? If I had already killed a man in, say, self defense, how would killing an animal clear that sin and make God happy with me again? It seems like a particularly violent way to say “Sorry for being so violent.”
I’m not looking for a debate here. I’m looking for factual answers, if there are any, about the intent of sacrifice and how it is supposed to appease God.
I also have some questions about Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice, but it might be treading on GD territory, so I’ll see where this thread goes before I ask those questions.
FTR, I was raised as a Methodist, but now I loosely classify myself as a dietist.
Sacrifices, like other forms or worship, are examples of obedience to God. God told Abraham to kill his son in sacrifice, Abraham showed himself willing to do it. He showed himself to be a servant of God.
God tells us to slaughter animals a certain way. We do it that way just because God told us to.
We pray not (usually) to ask for anything, but to simply do what God told us to do.
Actually the idea is that you do without something in order to turn it over to God. The sheep that you sacrifice should be your own, therefore. You can’t just off some random sheep and say “There ya go, God.” It’s the fact that you are losing something of value.
A few points, based on the Hebrew system (I can’t speak for sacrifice in the pagan world):
There were lots of sacrifices for lots of reasons, not just atonement. Thanksgiving was primary: for a good harvest, for a holiday, etc. The bottom line would be something like, “The Creator has caused these animals/plants to live and grow for your use, so in acknowledgement, you give some back to the Creator, that you don’t use.”
The sacrifice was usually eaten by the priests (and sometimes the celebrants); pretty much only the uneatable parts were burnt up. The priests didn’t produce goods that could be bartered for food, so the sacrifice system served as way for society to maintain the priests. We do the same today, only we use money (as “contributions” or “dues” or whatever) to pay for religious leaders to earn a living. Same principle as ancient sacrifice, but a different economic basis.
The sacrifice for atonement was not a random “act of violence.” It was highly ritualized, and infused with symbolic significance. You couldn’t just grab a sheep and slit its throad and salve a guilty conscience. The ritual was all part of that atonement process. Did it make God forgive you? Neither I nor anyone else knows the answer to that, but it certainly helped the individual come to grips (psychologically) with whatever misdeeds had been committed.
Note that, in ancient Hebrew society, sacrifice could NOT atone for a crime committed against another person. You had to at least make good whatever economic loss you had caused that person. Sacrifice – payment to the priests – was sometimes used if there was no other person who suffered loss.
Adam and his descendents were told to sacrifice the first born of their flocks as a reminder that God would sacrifice his first born Son as to atone for the sins of man.
This was brought home even more vividly to Abraham when he was commanded to sacrifice his son as a trial of his faith and obedience, but in his case the angel intervened after he passed the test.
You need to back it off a bit and think in terms of the origins of religion itself. Some think that gods started with a belief in the afterlife of the recently deceased. In particular, the tribal chief might “communicate” with his tribe after his death. Since people need food, offerings of food (and other nice stuff) would be offered to the dead. Possibly this was purely intended as nutrition in the beginning, but might evolve into outright offerings later.
In particular, up until relatively recent times, every event of note was thought to be controlled by supernatural forces. (And there is still a lot of holdover of this.) If something bad happened, it was because one of the dead was unhappy and you made them happy ASAP or more frogs would rain down.
Over time, certain deceased persons are considered gods, the offerings become sacrifices, etc. E.g., there have been a lot of people over the centuries that insisted that Woden/Odin was originally a king. Similar claims have been made about a lot of other “pagan” gods.
Just look at ancient Egypt, the deification of Pharoahs and the goodies stored in the tombs as an “in between” example.
In the cultures in which animal sacrifice arose, livestock were one of the primary manifestations of wealth. You wanna know how rich somebody is? You count how many sheep he has. So if you’re going to give up something of value, to pay some penalty or make some offering, sacrificing something like a sheep makes sense.
In Jewish theology, the sacrificial animal is a proxy for the offerer him or her self. That’s why the most preferable thing to offer is a mammal, next level of preference is a bird, lowest level allowable is flour and oil - that which bears most resemblance to a human being (while still being a Kosher animal) is that which the offerer of the sacrifice sees as being in place of himself to the greatest degree.
Sorry to post and run yesterday, but they actually expect me to do stuff to get paid. Hmpf… people…
Sorry about that. I’m the deist. My wife is the dietist.
Back on topic:
So it seems to be that a sacrifice back then is what we would call a sacrifice now, that is giving something of value up in order to make someone/something else happy.
So here is where I tread the Great Debate line. What part of Jesus’ crucifixion made it a sacrifice? I guess the arguement could be made that Jesus gave up his life, so that all humanity is happy. But is it really a sacrifice if you know that you will get something better out of the deal? Say I give up everything I own knowing for a fact that in three days I’ll get 500 million dollars. Am I really sacrificing anything even though for three days I am stuck in abject poverty?
Or is that an incorrect analogy? Am I getting it all wrong?
I’ve also heard that God gave his only son to die for our sins. But God didn’t lose anything. Jesus came back to him.
Hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it? According to the Gospels, it appears that Jesus was not cognizant of what his fate would be beyond an agonizing death. He looked at it only with dread. Mark 26:
As he died on the cross, he feared he had been abandoned. Matthew 27:
If he knew that he would be resurrected on the third day, he showed no sign of it.
(Disclaimer: My posting links to these threads does not constitute an endorsement of their contents. I haven’t read them recently or thoroughly enough to be able to say how helpful they are.)
Potlach. A tradition to gain prestige by showing how wealthy you are by 1) inviting everyone for a party and giving away huge amounts of stuff; 2) publically destroying wealth just to show you don’t need it, that’s how rich you are.
I think you mean a deist.