sacrifice

sacrifice The Greek myth of the origin of sacrifice links it with the aftermath of Prometheus' attempt to trick Zeus by dividing the meat of an ox into two packages and trying to persuade Zeus to pick the one that had the tempting exterior, but that contained only the bones of the beast. In animal sacrifice, it was to be these bones which were burned on the altar as the divine share: the human sacrificers and onlookers then divided out the meat according to their degree of participation in the ritual. In the classical world, animal sacrifice was a daily necessity, reminding people of a lost past in which they had once shared food with the gods, but simultaneously acting to keep up communication between the human and the divine worlds. The Christian innovation of the ‘one, true, pure, immortal sacrifice’ of the son of God thus built on classical notions of the necessity of sacrifice, but also completely overthrew them by its insistence that no further animal sacrifices were necessary.

Not all sacrifice takes the form of animal sacrifice. Bloodless offerings of cakes, fruit, and bread were also common in antiquity. In all sacrifices fire was used to consume the parts which were being dedicated to the gods; a holocaust is a sacrifice in which the chosen offering is entirely consumed by the flames.

In the late nineteenth century, scholars of religion and sociologists tried to find a general theory of sacrifice. In his Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1894), W. Robertson Smith proposed that totemism was the basic form of sacrifice, in which the clan shed the blood of its totem animal, then consumed it in a communal meal. The great French sociologist Émile Durkheim went further, arguing that sacrifice not only bonded the members of a social group, but acted to make the group aware of its common identity and thus, in a sense, to create the group. The anthropologist René Girard saw sacrificial violence as the basis of human culture; the classical scholar Walter Burkert links it to man the hunter who, by hedging around the slaughter of animals with the observation of strict ritual practices, attempted to allay his unease about whether the animal kingdom permitted him to take the lives of its members.

The problem with all such ‘grand theories’ of sacrifice is that they cannot always take account of individual societies' different myths and practices. However, a comparative approach can be illuminating; for example, the Greek myth of the Bouphonia (Ox-slaying) suggests that the beast to be sacrificed must agree to its role, and the story of the sacrifice of Christ also makes much of the need for the sacrificial victim to be aware of his role and willing to take it on. In classical Greek sacrificial ritual, the ox was even supposed to nod its head in consent, although this was often achieved by sprinkling water on its head to make it shiver.

Human sacrifice, like cannibalism, tends to be an accusation levelled by a society against its most feared enemies, or a marginal group within it. The Romans accused the Carthaginians of sacrificing children; Christian communities from the Roman Empire onwards have accused Jewish communities of it, while Roman pagans accused the Christians of exactly the same offence. But, as the ultimate victims, human beings make perfect sense in extremis. In the biblical story, when God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his only son Isaac, the command did not seem unreasonable, and the last-minute substitution of a ram became evidence that ‘The Lord will provide’. In myth and drama, the Greek leader Agamemnon thought his daughter Iphigenia was an appropriate sacrifice to ensure a good wind for the fleet sailing to Troy; in many versions of the myth, the goddess Artemis substituted an animal for Iphigenia. In ancient Rome, the burial alive of two Gauls and two Greeks was performed when the city was believed to be in serious danger.

Helen King