No sacrifice to heaven, no help from heaven;
That runs through all the faiths of all the world.
--Tennyson--Harold.
The origin and meaning of sacrifices constitute a central problem
of ancient religion. It links indeed the stronghold of orthodox
Christianity--its doctrine of the Atonement--with the most barbarous
customs of primitive savages. When we hear of the Lamb slain for
sinners, the very phrase takes us back to the time when sins were
formally placed upon the heads of unconscious animals that they might
be held accursed instead of man; and to the yet older notion of human
sacrifice as a most acceptable offering to the gods.
Sacrifices were primarily meals offered to the spirits of the dead. It
is not hard to understand how they arose. The Hindoos who placed upon
the grave of an English officer the brandy and cheroots which he loved
in life in order to propitiate his spirit illustrated a prominent
aspect. Just as men were appeased with gifts, usually of substances
which minister to life, so were spirits supposed to be, and the general
form which the offering took was something in the shape of what the
Americans call a square meal. The Romans never sat down to eat without
placing a portion aside for the Lares and Penates. Professor Smith, in
his _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_, gives abundant evidence
that the early sacrifices of the Semitic people were animals offered
at a meal partaken by the worshippers. The sacrifice, he holds, was
originally a nourishing of the common life of the kindred and their
god by a common meal. The primary communion with deity was communion of
food. This may not be very poetical, but it is natural and true. Eating
and drinking together were primarily signs of fraternity. Only to his
own kin did early man own duty, and his god was always of his own kin.
Jehovah was, as we are often told, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
He was their father and their king. When Ruth said to Naomi, "Thy people
shall be my people, and thy God my God," the exclamation showed that
taking up new kindred involved a change of worship. Professor Smith
says: "It cannot be too strongly insisted on that the idea of kinship
between gods and men was originally taken in a purely physical sense."
The modern Christian's explanations of biblical anthropomorphisms may be
dismissed as unfounded assumptions. The story in Genesis of the sons
of God going with the daughters of men is one of the remnants of early
myths unexplained by later editors.
The Bible God, as any careful reader will perceive, was very partial to
roast meat. One of the earliest items recorded of him is that he had
no respect for Cain and his offering of vegetables, while to Abel who
brought him the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof, he
had respect. He much prefered mutton to turnips. When Noah offered a
sacrifice, we are told "He smelt a sweet savor" (Gen. vii. 21). But
the Lord was by no means content with the smell. On his altars huge
hecatombs of animals were continually being slaughtered, and the
choicest portions set aside as the Lord's. The Lord God seems to have
been extremely fond of fat, especially that about the rump. As the
richest part of the animal, it was reserved with "the two kidneys and
the fat that is upon them" especially for the Lord (Lev. iii. 9-11). Let
it be noticed that the Lord God required no sacrifices except of eatable
animals, oxen, rams, goats, lambs, and kids. Fishes he had no regard
for, and of birds only turtle doves and pigeons were his favorite
dishes. Wine and oil he took to wash them down, but never mentioned
water. Like his ministers, he lived on the fat of the land,* claiming as
his own the firstlings of the flock. From his claim to the first born,
it appears that Jahveh was originally given to "long pig," but in
the case of Abraham's son, he took a ram instead. He was, however,
so partial to blood that he interdicted the sacred fluid to his
worshippers, but demanded that it should be poured out upon his altar
(Deut. xii.) Even the early Christians made it a fundamental rule of
the Church that disciples should abstain from blood, and from things
strangled (Acts xv. 20). The blood was supposed to be especially the
Lord's.
* To "eat the fat" seems, as in Neh. viii. 10, to have been
a biblical expression for good living.
Let not the serious reader suppose we are jesting. Hear what Prof.
Robertson Smith says.
"All sacrifices laid upon the altar were taken by the ancients as
being literally the food of the gods. The Homeric deities 'feast on
hecatombs,' nay particular Greek gods have special epithets designating
them as the goat-eater, the ram-eater, the bull-eater, even 'cannibal,'
with allusion to human sacrifices. Among the Hebrews the conception that
Jehovah eats the flesh of bulls and drinks the blood of goats, against
which the author of Psalm 1. protests so strongly, was never eliminated
from the ancient technical language of the priestly ritual, in which the
sacrifices are called _lechem Elohim_, 'the food of the deity.'"*
* Religion of the Semites, p. 207.
Our translators of the passages where this phrase occurs (Lev. xxi. 8,
17, 21, 22; Num. xxviii. 2) have done their best to conceal the meaning,
but like the phrase "wine which cheereth God and man" (Judges ix. 13),
it takes us back to the time when gods were supposed, like men, to eat,
drink, and be refreshed.
It was a fundamental rule of the Jewish faith that no one should appear
before the Lord empty handed (Exodus xxiii. 15.) Not to take him an
offering was as improper as in the East it still is to approach a chief
or great man without some present. A sacrifice was as imperative as it
now is to put something in the church plate. When God made a call on
Abraham, with Eastern hospitality the patriarch procured water to wash
his feet and killed a calf for the entertainment of his visitor. The
Lord God was not a vegetarian but a stout kreophagist. In Numbers (xxix.
13) he orders as a sacrifice "of a sweet savor unto the Lord, thirteen
young bullocks, two rams and fourteen lambs of the first year."
From the frequent mention of the "sweet savor," it seems likely that the
original idea of the god partaking of the food, developed into that of
his taking only the essence of the food. As God got less anthropomorphic
he lost his teeth and had, poor spirit, to be content with the smell of
the good things offered up to him. We gather from Lev. vii. 6 that the
kidneys, fat and other delicacies really fell to the lot of the priests,
and some people have found a sufficient reason for the sacrifices to God
in the fact that the priests liked mutton.
In 1 Samuel ii. 13-16 we are told how it was the custom of the priests
that when any man offered sacrifice, "the priest's servant came, while
the flesh was in seething, with a fleshhook of three teeth in his hand.
And he struck it into the pan or kettle, or caldron or pot; all that the
fleshhook brought up the priest took for himself."
In the time of David the Lord had a table of shew-bread set before
him--that is, a table spread with food in the temple, where he was
supposed to come and take it when he desired, just as Africans place
meal and liquor in their fetish houses. Such tables were set in the
great temple of Bel at Babylon, and the story of Bel and the Dragon in
the Apocrypha explains how the priests and their women and children
came in by a secret door and ate up the things which were supposed to be
consumed by the God.
While the Lord and the priests were certainly not vegetarians, neither
did they insist on a vegetable diet for their people. The Lord's table
of fare is set out in Leviticus xi., and a very curious _menu_ it is.
The hare is expressly excluded "because he cheweth the cud," although
he does nothing of the kind; but "the locust after his kind, the
bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the
grasshopper after his kind," are freely permitted. Another divine
regulation, and one which throws much light on the divine methods, is
recorded in Deut. xvi. 21--"Thou shalt not eat of anything that dieth
of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is within thy gates
that he may eat it, or thou mayest sell it unto an alien." To this day
the Jews are particular in observing this godly method of disposing of
diseased meat.
To arrive at the truth in regard to the question whether human sacrifice
was at one time a portion of the Jewish religion, or whether it was,
as the orthodox generally assert, simply a corruption copied from the
surrounding heathen nations, it is necessary to bear in mind that every
portion of the Jewish law is of later date than the prophets. The book
of the law was only found in the time of King Josiah, who opposed this
very practice (2 Kings xxiii. 10), and there is no evidence of its
existence before that date. There is reason to believe that the priestly
code of Leviticus is later still, dating only from the time of Ezra.
Instead of reflecting the ideas of the age of Moses, it reflects those
of almost a thousand years later. It is therefore only in the historical
books that we can expect to find traces of what the actual religion
of Israel was. There is ample evidence that human sacrifice formed a
conspicuous element. Ahaz, King of Judah, "burnt his children in the
fire" (2 Chron. xxviii. 3); Mannasseh, King of Judah, was guilty of the
same atrocity (2 Chron. xxxiii. 6); Jeremiah denounces the children of
Judah for having "built the high place of Tophet, which is in the valley
of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the
fire" (vii. 31); Micah remonstrates against both animal and human
sacrifice--"Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams; shall I
give my first-born for my transgression; the fruit of my body for the
sin of my soul?" (vi. 7). In the well-known story of Abraham and
Isaac, as in the Greek story of Iphigenia, and the Roman one of Valeria
Luperca, we have an account of the transition to a less barbarous stage
in the substitution of animal for human sacrifice. It was natural
that this legend should be ascribed to the time of the father of the
faithful, but there is, as we have seen, abundant evidence of the
practice existing long subsequent to the time of Abraham, who was by no
means surprised at and in no way demurred to the divine command, "Take
now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee unto
the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of
the mountains which I will tell thee of" (Genesis xxii. 2). Anyone
who at the present day should exhibit a faith like unto that of the
patriarchal saint would be in jeopardy of finding himself within the
walls of a criminal lunatic asylum.
That human sacrifices lasted long after the time of Abraham we have an
instance in the case of Jephthah, who vowed that if Jahveh would deliver
the children of Ammon into his hand, he would offer up for a burnt
offering whosoever came forth from his house to meet him upon his return
from his expedition (Judges xi. 30, 31). In order to tone this down the
Authorised Version reads "whatsoever" instead of "whosoever," which
is supplied in the margin of the Revised Version. Despite the emphatic
statement that Jephthah did with her according to his vow, it has been
alleged that because his daughter petitioned to be allowed to bewail her
virginity for two months, she was only condemned to a life of celibacy.
This is preposterous. Jahveh, unlike Jesus, had no partiality for
the unmarried state. He liked a real sacrifice of blood. To lament
childlessness was a common ancient custom, and even the Greek and Latin
poets have represented their heroines who were similarly doomed to an
early death, such as Antigone, Polyxena, and Iphigenia, as actually
lamenting in a very similar manner their virginity or unmarried
condition. There is no single instance in the Old Testament of a woman
being set apart as a virgin, though, as we have seen, there are numerous
indications of human sacrifices.
Even in the Levitical law sanction is given to human sacrifice. "None
devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be ransomed; he shall
surely be put to death" (Lev. xxvii. 29). Jahveh insisted on the
sacrifice being completed. David sent seven sons of Saul to be hung
before the Lord to stay a famine.
That a party remained in Israel who considered human sacrifice a part of
their religion is evident also from Jeremiah, who says: "They have built
also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt
offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came
it into my mind" (xix. 5). These strong asseverations were evidently
called forth by assertions made by persons addicted to such practices,
and those persons had the support of Ezekiel, who, in contradiction
to the statements of Jeremiah, contended that Jahveh gave them up to
pollution, even as he hardened the heart of Pharaoh that they might know
that he was the Lord (Ezek. xx. 25-26).