sacrifice

—sacrificeable, adj. —sacrificer, n.

/sak"reuh fuys'/, n., v., sacrificed, sacrificing.

n.

1. the offering of animal, plant, or human life or of some material possession to a deity, as in propitiation or homage.

2. the person, animal, or thing so offered.

3. the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.

4. the thing so surrendered or devoted.

5. a loss incurred in selling something below its value.

6. Also called sacrifice bunt, sacrifice hit. Baseball. a bunt made when there are fewer than two players out, not resulting in a double play, that advances the base runner nearest home without an error being committed if there is an attempt to put the runner out, and that results in either the batter's being put out at first base, reaching first on an error made in the attempt for the put-out, or being safe because of an attempt to put out another runner.

v.t.

7. to make a sacrifice or offering of.

8. to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else.

9. to dispose of (goods, property, etc.) regardless of profit.

10. Baseball. to cause the advance of (a base runner) by a sacrifice.

v.i.

11. Baseball. to make a sacrifice: He sacrificed with two on and none out.

12. to offer or make a sacrifice.

[1225-75; (n.) ME < OF < L sacrificium, equiv. to sacri- (comb. form of sacer holy) + -fic-, comb. form of facere to make, DO¹ + -ium -IUM; (v.) ME sacrifisen, deriv. of the n.]

Syn. 8. relinquish, forgo, renounce.

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Act of offering objects to a divinity, thereby making them holy.

The motivation for sacrifice is to perpetuate, intensify, or reestablish a connection between the human and the divine. It is often intended to gain the favour of the god or to placate divine wrath. The term has come to be applied specifically to blood sacrifice, which entails the death or destruction of the thing sacrificed (see human sacrifice). The sacrifice of fruits, flowers, or crops (bloodless sacrifice) is more often referred to as an offering.

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▪ religion

Introduction

 a religious rite in which an object is offered to a divinity in order to establish, maintain, or restore a right relationship of a human being to the sacred order. It is a complex phenomenon that has been found in the earliest known forms of worship and in all parts of the world. The present article treats the nature of sacrifice and surveys the theories about its origin. It then analyzes sacrifice in terms of its constituent elements, such as the material of the offering, the time and place of the sacrifice, and the motive or intention of the rite. Finally, it briefly considers sacrifice in the religions of the world.

Nature and origins

Nature of sacrifice

      The term sacrifice derives from the Latin sacrificium, which is a combination of the words sacer, meaning something set apart from the secular or profane for the use of supernatural powers, and facere, meaning “to make.” The term has acquired a popular and frequently secular use to describe some sort of renunciation or giving up of something valuable in order that something more valuable might be obtained; e.g., parents make sacrifices for their children, one sacrifices a limb for one's country. But the original use of the term was peculiarly religious, referring to a cultic act in which objects were set apart or consecrated and offered to a god or some other supernatural power; thus, sacrifice should be understood within a religious, cultic context.

      Religion is man's relation to that which he regards as sacred or holy. This relationship may be conceived in a variety of forms. Although moral conduct, right belief, and participation in religious institutions are commonly constituent elements of the religious life, cult or worship is generally accepted as the most basic and universal element. Worship is man's reaction to his experience of the sacred power; it is a response in action, a giving of self, especially by devotion and service, to the transcendent reality upon which man feels himself dependent. Sacrifice and prayer—man's personal attempt to communicate with the transcendent reality in word or in thought—are the fundamental acts of worship.

      In a sense, what is always offered in sacrifice is, in one form or another, life itself. Sacrifice is a celebration of life, a recognition of its divine and imperishable nature. In the sacrifice the consecrated life of an offering is liberated as a sacred potency that establishes a bond between the sacrificer and the sacred power. Through sacrifice, life is returned to its divine source, regenerating the power or life of that source; life is fed by life. Thus, the word of the Roman sacrificer to his god: “Be thou increased (macte) by this offering.” It is, however, an increase of sacred power that is ultimately beneficial to the sacrificer. In a sense, sacrifice is the impetus and guarantee of the reciprocal flow of the divine life-force between its source and its manifestations.

      Often the act of sacrifice involves the destruction of the offering, but this destruction—whether by burning, slaughter, or whatever means—is not in itself the sacrifice. The killing of an animal is the means by which its consecrated life is “liberated” and thus made available to the deity, and the destruction of a food offering in an altar's fire is the means by which the deity receives the offering. Sacrifice as such, however, is the total act of offering and not merely the method in which it is performed.

      Although the fundamental meaning of sacrificial rites is that of effecting a necessary and efficacious relationship with the sacred power and of establishing man and his world in the sacred order, the rites have assumed a multitude of forms and intentions. The basic forms of sacrifice, however, seem to be some type of either sacrificial gift or sacramental (sacrament) meal. Sacrifice as a gift may refer either to a gift that should be followed by a return gift (because of the intimate relationship that gift giving establishes) or to a gift that is offered in homage to a god without expectation of a return. Sacrifice as a sacramental communal meal may involve the idea of the god as a participant in the meal or as identical with the food consumed; it may also involve the idea of a ritual meal at which either some primordial event such as creation is repeated or the sanctification of the world is symbolically renewed.

Theories of the origin of sacrifice

      Since the rise of the comparative or historical study of religions in the latter part of the 19th century, attempts have been made to discover the origins of sacrifice. These attempts, though helpful for a greater understanding of sacrifice, have not been conclusive.

      In 1871 Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (Tylor, Sir Edward Burnett), a British anthropologist, proposed his theory that sacrifice was originally a gift to the gods to secure their favour or to minimize their hostility. In the course of time the primary motive for offering sacrificial gifts developed into homage, in which the sacrificer no longer expressed any hope for a return, and from homage into abnegation and renunciation, in which the sacrificer more fully offered himself. Even though Tylor's gift theory entered into later interpretations of sacrifice, it left unexplained such phenomena as sacrificial offerings wholly or partly eaten by worshippers.

      William Robertson Smith (Smith, William Robertson), a Scottish Semitic scholar and encyclopaedist, marked a new departure with his theory that the original motive of sacrifice was an effort toward communion among the members of a group, on the one hand, and between them and their god, on the other. Communion was brought about through a sacrificial meal. Smith began with totemism, according to which an animal or plant is intimately associated in a “blood relationship” with a social group or clan as its sacred ally. In general, the totem animal is taboo for the members of its clan, but on certain sacred occasions the animal is eaten in a sacramental meal that ensures the unity of the clan and totem and thus the well-being of the clan. For Smith an animal sacrifice was essentially a communion through the flesh and blood of the sacred animal, which he called the “theanthropic animal”—an intermediary in which the sacred and the profane realms were joined. The later forms of sacrifice retained some sacramental character: people commune with the god through sacrifice, and this communion occurs because the people share food and drink in which the god is immanent. From the communion sacrifice Smith derived the expiatory or propitiatory forms of sacrifice, which he termed piaculum, and the gift sacrifice. There were great difficulties with this theory: it made the totem a sacrificial victim rather than a supernatural ally; it postulated the universality of totemism; and, further, it did not adequately account for holocaust sacrifices in which the offering is consumed by fire and there is no communal eating. Nevertheless, many of Smith's ideas concerning sacrifice as sacramental communion have exerted tremendous influence.

      Sir James George Frazer (Frazer, Sir James George), a British anthropologist and folklorist, author of The Golden Bough, saw sacrifice as originating from magical (magic) practices in which the ritual slaying of a god was performed as a means of rejuvenating the god. The king or chief of a tribe was held to be sacred (sacred kingship) because he possessed mana, or sacred power, which assured the tribe's well-being. When he became old and weak, his mana weakened, and the tribe was in danger of decline. The king was thus slain and replaced with a vigorous successor. In this way the god was slain to save him from decay and to facilitate his rejuvenation. The old god appeared to carry away with him various weaknesses and fulfilled the role of an expiatory victim and scapegoat.

      Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss (Mauss, Marcel), French sociologists, concentrated their investigations on Hindu (Hinduism) and Hebrew sacrifice, arriving at the conclusion that “sacrifice is a religious act which, through the consecration of a victim, modifies the condition of the moral person who accomplishes it or that of certain objects with which he is concerned.” Like Smith, they believed that a sacrifice establishes a relationship between the realms of the sacred and the profane. This occurs through the mediation of the ritually slain victim, which acts as a buffer between the two realms, and through participation in a sacred meal. The rituals chosen by Hubert and Mauss for analysis, however, are not those of preliterate societies.

      Another study by Mauss helped to broaden the notion of sacrifice as gift. It was an old idea that man makes a gift to the god but expects a gift in return. The Latin formula do ut des (“I give that you may give”) was formulated in classical times. In the Vedic religion, the oldest stratum of religion known to have existed in India, one of the Brāhmaṇas (commentaries on the Vedas, or sacred hymns, that were used in ritual sacrifices) expressed the same principle: “Here is the butter; where are your gifts?” But, according to Mauss, in giving it is not merely an object that is passed on but a part of the giver, so that a firm bond is forged. The owner's mana is conveyed to the object, and, when the object is given away, the new owner shares in this mana and is in the power of the giver. The gift thus creates a bond. Even more, however, it makes power flow both ways to connect the giver and the receiver; it invites a gift in return.

      Gerardus van der Leeuw (Leeuw, Gerardus van der), a Dutch historian of religion, developed this notion of gift in the context of sacrifice. In sacrifice a gift is given to the god, and thus man releases a flow between himself and the god. For him sacrifice as gift is “no longer a mere matter of bartering with gods corresponding to that carried on with men, and no longer homage to the god such as is offered to princes: it is an opening of a blessed source of gifts.” His interpretation thus melded the gift and communion theories, but it also involved a magical flavour, for he asserted that the central power of the sacrificial act is neither god nor giver but is always the gift itself.

      German anthropologists have emphasized the idea of culture history, in which the entire history of mankind is seen as a system of coherent and articulated phases and strata, with certain cultural phenomena appearing at specific levels of culture. Leo Frobenius (Frobenius, Leo), the originator of the theory that later became known as the Kulturkreislehre (Kulturkreis), distinguished the creative or expressive phase of a culture, in which a new insight assumes its specific form, and the phase of application, in which the original significance of the new insight degenerates. Working within this context, Adolf E. Jensen attempted to explain why men have resorted to the incomprehensible act of killing other men or animals and eating them for the glorification of a god or many gods. Blood sacrifice is linked not with the cultures of the hunter–gatherers but with those of the cultivators; its origin is in the ritual killing of the archaic cultivator cultures, which, in turn, is grounded in myth. For Jensen the early cultivators all knew the idea of a mythic primal past in which not men but Dema lived on the Earth and prominent among them were the Dema-deities (dema deity). The central element of the myth is the slaying of a Dema-deity, an event that inaugurated human history and gave shape to the human lot. The Dema became men, subject to birth and death, whose self-preservation depends upon the destruction of life. The deity became in some way associated with the realm of the dead; and, from the body of the slain deity, crop plants originated, so that the eating of the plants is an eating of the deity. Ritual killing, whether of animals or men, is a cultic re-enactment of the mythological event. Strictly speaking, the action is not a sacrifice because there is no offering to a god; rather, it is a way to keep alive the memory of primeval events. Blood sacrifice as found in the later higher cultures is a persistence of the ritual killing in a degenerated form. Because the victim is identified with the deity, later expiatory sacrifices also become intelligible: sin is an offense against the moral order established at the beginning of human history; the killing of the victim is an intensified act restoring that order.

      Another interpretation of some historical interest is that of Sigmund Freud (Freud, Sigmund) in his work Totem und Tabu (1913; Eng. trans., Totem and Taboo, 1918). Freud's theory was based on the assumption that the Oedipus complex is innate and universal. It is normal for a child to wish to have a sexual relationship with its mother and to will the death of its father; this is often achieved symbolically. In the primal horde, although the sons did slay their father, they never consummated a sexual union with their mother; in fact, they set up specific taboos against such sexual relations. According to Freud, the ritual slaughter of an animal was instituted to re-enact the primeval act of parricide. The rite, however, reflected an ambivalent attitude. After the primal father had been slain, the sons felt some remorse for their act, and, thus, the sacrificial ritual expressed the desire not only for the death of the father but also for reconciliation and communion with him through the substitute victim. Freud claimed that his reconstruction of the rise of sacrifice was historical, but this hardly seems probable.

      In 1963 Raymond Firth (Firth, Sir Raymond), a New Zealand-born anthropologist, addressed himself to the question of the influence that a people's ideas about the control of their economic resources have on their ideology of sacrifice. He noted that the time and frequency of sacrifice and the type and quality of victim are affected by economic considerations; that the procedure of collective sacrifice involves not only the symbol of group unity but also a lightening of the economic burden or any one participant; that the use of surrogate victims and the reservation of the sacrificial food for consumption are possibly ways of meeting the problem of resources. Firth concluded that sacrifice is ultimately a personal act in which the self is symbolically given, but it is an act that is often conditioned by economic rationality and prudent calculation.

      Most social anthropologists and historians of religion in the mid-20th century, however, concentrated less on worldwide typologies or evolutionary sequences and more on investigations of specific historically related societies. Consequently, since World War II there have been few formulations of general theories about the origin of sacrifice, but there have been important studies of sacrifice within particular cultures. For example, E.E. Evans-Pritchard (Evans-Pritchard, Sir Edward), a social anthropologist at Oxford University, concluded after his study of the religion of the Nuer, a people in the southern Sudan, that for them sacrifice is a gift intended “to get rid of some danger of misfortune, usually sickness.” They establish communication with the god not to create a fellowship with him but only to keep him away. Evans-Pritchard acknowledged, however, that the Nuer have many kinds of sacrifice and that no single formula adequately explains all types. Furthermore, he did not maintain that his interpretations of his materials were of universal applicability. Many scholars would agree that, though it is easy to make a long list of many kinds of sacrifice, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find a satisfactory system in which all forms of sacrifice may be assigned a suitable place.

Analysis of the rite of sacrifice

 It is possible to analyze the rite of sacrifice in terms of six different elements: the sacrificer, the material of the offering, the time and place of the rite, the method of sacrificing, the recipient of the sacrifice, and the motive or intention of the rite. These categories are not of equal importance and often overlap.

Sacrificer

      In general, it may be said that the one who makes sacrifices is man, either an individual or a collective group—a family, a clan, a tribe, a nation, a secret society. Frequently, special acts must be performed by the sacrificer before and sometimes also after the sacrifice. In the Vedic cult, the sacrificer and his wife were required to undergo an initiation (dīkṣā) involving ritual bathing, seclusion, fasting, and prayer, the purpose of which was to remove them from the profane world and to purify them for contact with the sacred world. At the termination of the sacrifice came a rite of “desacralization” (avabhṛta) in which they bathed in order to remove any sacred potencies that might have attached themselves during the sacrifice.

      There are sacrifices in which there are no participants other than the individual or collective sacrificer. Usually, however, one does not venture to approach sacred things directly and alone; they are too lofty and serious a matter. An intermediary—certain persons or groups who fulfill particular requirements or qualifications—is necessary. In many cases, sacrificing by unauthorized persons is expressly forbidden and may be severely punished; e.g., in the book of Leviticus (Judaism), Korah and his followers, who revolted against Moses and his brother Aaron and arrogated the priestly office of offering incense, were consumed by fire. The qualified person—whether the head of a household, the old man of a tribe, the king, or the priest—acts as the appointed representative on behalf of a community.

      The head of the household as sacrificer is a familiar figure in the Old Testament, particularly in the stories of the patriarchs; e.g., Abraham and Jacob. Generally, in cattle-keeping tribes with patriarchal organization (patriarchy), the paterfamilias long remained the person who carried out sacrifices, and it was only at a late date that a separate caste of priests developed among these peoples. In ancient China, too, sacrifices were not presided over by a professional priesthood but by the head of the family or, in the case of state sacrifices, by the ruler.

      The old man or the elders of the tribe are in charge of sacrifices among several African peoples. Among the Ila, a people of Zambia, for instance, when hunters have no success, the oldest member of the band leads the others in praying for the god's aid; when the hunters are successful in killing, the old man leads them in offering portions of the meat to the god. Similarly, among peoples in Australia the leading role in all sacrificial acts is filled by the old men as bearers of tradition and authority. In cases in which there is a matriarchal organization, as in some parts of West Africa, the oldest woman of the family acts as priestess.

      The king has played an important role as the person active in sacrificing, particularly in those cultures in which he not only has temporal authority but also fulfills a religious function. The fact that the king is the primary sacrificer may stem from two roots. It may be that the most important gods of the state were originally family gods of the rulers, and, thus, the king is simply continuing the task of paterfamilias, only now on behalf of the whole community. The second root lies in the notion of sacred kingship, according to which the royal office is sacred and the king set apart from ordinary people is the intercessor with the supernatural world. These two concepts often go together. Thus, in ancient Egypt (Egyptian religion) the pharaoh was divine because he descended from the sun god Re. The pharaoh stood for Horus, the son of Re. The concepts of the god as family ancestor and of sacred kingship were combined. Although worship in ancient Egypt was controlled by a powerful priesthood, officially all sacrifices were regarded as made by the pharaoh.

      Most frequently, the intermediary between the community and the god, between the profane and the sacred realms, is the priest (priesthood). As a rule, not everyone can become a priest; there are requirements of different kinds to be satisfied. Usually, the priest must follow some training, which may be long and severe, There is always some form of consecration he has to undergo. For communities in which a priest functions, he is the obvious person to make sacrifices.

      The sacrificer is not always man, however; at times gods also make sacrifices. Examples of this are found chiefly in India and are set down particularly in the Brāhmaṇa texts; e.g., it is said in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa: “By sacrifice the gods obtained heaven.” The idea of gods making sacrifice, however, is found in the older Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā, a collection of sacred Vedic hymns: “With offerings the gods offered up sacrifice.” In this conception man makes sacrifices in imitation of a divine model inaugurated by the gods themselves. Another instance is the Iranian primordial god Zurvān (Time), who offered sacrifice for 1,000 years in order to obtain a son to create the world.

Material of the oblation

      Any form under which life manifests itself in the world or in which life can be symbolized may be a sacrificial oblation. In fact, there are few things that have not, at some time or in some place, served as an offering. Any attempt to categorize the material of sacrifice will group together heterogeneous phenomena; thus, the category human sacrifice includes several fundamentally different sacrificial rites. Nevertheless, for convenience sake, the variety of sacrificial offerings will be treated as (1) blood offerings ( animal and human), (2) bloodless offerings (libations and vegetation), and (3) a special category, divine offerings.

Blood offerings

      Basic to both animal and human sacrifice is the recognition of blood as the sacred life-force in man and beast. Through the sacrifice—through the return of the sacred life revealed in the victim—the god lives, and, therefore, man and nature live. The great potency of blood has been utilized through sacrifice for a number of purposes; e.g., earth fertility, purification, and expiation. The letting of blood, however, was neither the only end nor the only mode of human and animal sacrifice.

      A wide variety of animals have served as sacrificial offerings. In ancient Greece and India, for example, oblations included a number of important domestic animals, such as the goat, ram, bull, ox, and horse. Moreover, in Greek religion all edible birds, wild animals of the hunt, and fish were used. In ancient Judaism the kind and number of animals for the various sacrifices was carefully stipulated so that the offering might be acceptable and thus fully effective. This sort of regulation is generally found in sacrificial cults; the offering must be appropriate either to the deity to whom or to the intention for which it is to be presented. Very often the sacrificial species (animal or vegetable) was closely associated with the deity to whom it was offered as the deity's symbolic representation or even its incarnation. Thus, in the Vedic ritual the goddesses of night and morning received the milk of a black cow (cattle) having a white calf; the “bull of heaven,” Indra, was offered a bull, and Sūrya, the sun god, a white, male goat. Similarly, the ancient Greeks sacrificed black animals to the deities of the dark underworld; swift horses to the sun god Helios; pregnant sows to the earth mother Demeter; and the dog, guardian of the dead, to Hecate, goddess of darkness. The Syrians sacrificed fish, regarded as the lord of the sea and guardian of the realm of the dead, to the goddess Atargatis and ate the consecrated offering in a communion meal with the deity, sharing in the divine power. An especially prominent sacrificial animal was the bull (or its counterparts, the boar and the ram), which, as the representation and embodiment of the cosmic powers of fertility, was sacrificed to numerous fertility gods (e.g., the Norse god Freyr; the Greek “bull of the Earth,” Zeus Chthonios; and the Indian “bull of heaven,” Indra).

      The occurrence of human sacrifice appears to have been widespread and its intentions various, ranging from communion with a god and participation in his divine life to expiation and the promotion of the earth's fertility. It seems to have been adopted by agricultural rather than by hunting or pastoral peoples. Of all the worldly manifestations of the life-force, the human undoubtedly impressed men as the most valuable and thus the most potent and efficacious as an oblation. Thus, in Mexico the belief that the sun needed human nourishment led to sacrifices in which as many as 20,000 victims perished annually in the Aztec and Nahua calendrical maize ritual in the 14th century AD. Bloodless human sacrifices also developed and assumed greatly different forms: e.g., a Celtic ritual involved the sacrifice of a woman by immersion, and among the Maya in Mexico young maidens were drowned in sacred wells; in Peru women were strangled; in ancient China the king's retinue was commonly buried with him, and such internments continued intermittently until the 17th century.

      In many societies human victims gave place to animal substitutes or to effigies made of dough, wood, or other materials. Thus, in India, with the advent of British rule, human sacrifices to the Dravidian village goddesses (grāma-devīs) were replaced by animal sacrifices. In Tibet, under the influence of Buddhism, which prohibits all blood sacrifice, human sacrifice to the pre-Buddhist Bon deities was replaced by the offering of dough images or reduced to pantomime. Moreover, in some cults both human and animal oblations could be “ransomed”—i.e., replaced by offerings or money or other inanimate valuables.

Bloodless offerings

      Among the many life-giving substances that have been used as libations are milk, honey, vegetable and animal oils, beer, wine, and water. Of these, the last two have been especially prominent. Wine is the “blood of the grape” and thus the “blood of the earth,” a spiritual beverage that invigorates gods and men. water is always the sacred “water of life,” the primordial source of existence and the bearer of the life of plants, animals, human beings, and even the gods. Because of its great potency, water, like blood, has been widely used in purificatory and expiatory rites to wash away defilements and restore spiritual life. It has also, along with wine, been an important offering to the dead as a revivifying force.

      Vegetable offerings have included not only the edible herbaceous plants (plant) but also grains, fruits, and flowers. In both Hinduism and Jainism, flowers, fruits, and grains (cooked and uncooked) are included in the daily temple offerings. In some agricultural (agriculture, origins of) societies (e.g., those of West Africa) yams and other tuber plants have been important in planting and harvest sacrifices and in other rites concerned with the fertility and fecundity of the soil. These plants have been regarded as especially embodying the life-force of the deified earth and are frequently buried or plowed into the soil to replenish and reactivate its energies.

Divine offerings

      One further conception must be briefly mentioned: a god himself may be sacrificed. This notion was elaborated in many mythologies; it is fundamental in some sacrificial rituals. In early sacrifice the victim has something of the god in itself, but in the sacrifice of a god the victim is identified with the god. At the festival of the ancient Mexican sun god Huitzilopochtli, the statue of the god, which was made from beetroot paste and kneaded in human blood and which was identified with the god, was divided into pieces, shared out among the devotees, and eaten. In the Hindu soma ritual (related to the haoma ritual of ancient Persia), the soma plant, which is identified with the god Soma, is pressed for its intoxicating juice, which is then ritually consumed. The Eucharist, as understood in many of the Christian (Christianity) churches, contains similar elements. In short, Jesus is really present in the bread and wine that are ritually offered and then consumed. According to the traditional eucharistic doctrine of Roman Catholicism, the elements of bread and wine are “transubstantiated (transubstantiation)” into the body and blood of Christ: i.e., their whole substance is converted into the whole substance of the body and blood, although the outward appearances of the elements, their “accidents,” remain.

Time and place of sacrifice

      In many cults, sacrifices are distinguished by frequency of performance into two types, regular and special. Regular sacrifices may be daily, weekly, monthly, or seasonal (as at planting, harvest, and New Year). Also often included are sacrifices made at specific times in each man's life—birth, puberty, marriage, and death. Offerings made on special occasions and for special intentions have included, for example, sacrifices in times of danger, sickness, or crop failure and those performed at the construction of a building, for success in battle, or in thanksgiving for a divine favour.

      In the Vedic cult the regular sacrifices were daily, monthly, and seasonal. The daily rites included fire offerings to the gods and libations and food offerings to the ancestors and the earth divinities and spirits. The monthly sacrifices, conducted at the time of New and Full Moons, were of cakes or cooked oblations to sundry deities, especially the storm god Indra. Some daily and monthly sacrifices could be celebrated in the home by a householder, but only the official priesthood could perform the complex seasonal sacrifices, offered three times a year—at the beginning of spring, of the rainy season, and of the cool weather—for the purpose of expiation and of abundance. Of the occasional sacrifices, which could be celebrated at any time, especially important were those associated with kingship (sacred kingship), such as the royal consecration and the great “horse sacrifice” performed for the increase of the king's power and domain.

      In ancient Judaism the regular or periodic sacrifices included the twice daily burnt offerings, the weekly sabbath sacrifices, the monthly offering at the New Moon, and annual celebrations such as Pesaḥ (Passover), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles). Special sacrifices were usually of a personal nature, such as thank and votive offerings and “guilt offerings.”

      The common place of sacrifice in most cults is an altar. The table type of altar is uncommon; more often it is only a pillar, a mound of earth, a stone, or a pile of stones. Among the Hebrews in early times and other Semitic peoples the altar of the god was frequently an upright stone (matztzeva) established at a place in which the deity had manifested itself. It was bet el, the “house of God.”

      Frequently, the altar is regarded as the centre or the image of the universe. For the ancient Greeks the grave marker (a mound of earth or a stone) was the earth altar upon which sacrifices to the dead were made and, like other earth altars, it was called the omphalos, “the navel” of the Earth—i.e., the central point from which terrestrial life originated. In Vedic India the altar was regarded as a microcosm, its parts representing the various parts of the universe and its construction being interpreted as a repetition of the creation of the cosmos.

Method of sacrifice

      Along with libation and the sacrificial effusion of blood, one of the commonest means of making an oblation available to sacred beings is to burn it. In both ancient Judaism and Greek religion the major offering was the burnt or fire offering. Through the medium of the fire, the oblation was conveyed to the divine recipient. In ancient Greece the generic term for sacrifice (thysia) was derived from a root meaning to burn or to smoke. In Judaism the important sacrifices (ʿola and zevaḥ) involved the ritual burning, either entirely or in part, of the oblation, be it animal or vegetation. For the Babylonians, also, fire was essential to sacrifice, and all oblations were conveyed to the gods by the fire god Girru-Nusku, whose presence as intermediary between the gods and men was indispensable. In the Vedic cult the god of fire, Agni, received the offerings of men and brought them into the presence of the gods.

      As burning is often the appropriate mode for sacrifice to celestial deities, so burial is often the appropriate mode for sacrifice of earth deities. In Greece, for example, sacrifices to the chthonic or underworld powers were frequently buried rather than burned or, if burned, burned near the ground or even in a trench. In Vedic India the blood and entrails of animals sacrificed on the fire altar to the sky gods were put upon the ground for the earth deities, including the ghosts and malevolent spirits. In West Africa yams and fowls sacrificed to promote the fertility of the earth are planted in the soil.

      In sacrifice by burning and by burial, as also in the effusion of blood, the prior death of the human or animal victim, even if ritually performed, is in a sense incidental to the sacrificial action. There are, however, sacrifices (including live burial and burning) in which the ritual killing is itself the means by which the offering is effected. Illustrative of this method was the practice in ancient Greek and Indian cults of making sacrifices to water gods by drowning the oblations in sacred lakes or rivers. Similarly, the Norse cast human and animal victims over cliffs and into wells and waterfalls as offerings to the divinities dwelling therein. In the Aztec sacrifice of human beings to the creator god Xipe Totec, the victim was lashed to a scaffold and shot to death with bow and arrow.

      There are also sacrifices that do not involve the death or destruction of the oblation. Such were the sacrifices in ancient Greece of fruits and vegetables at the “pure” (katharos) altar of Apollo at Delos, at the shrine of Athena at Lindus, and at the altar of Zeus in Athens. These “fireless oblations” (apura hiera) were especially appropriate for the deities of vegetation and fertility; e.g., Demeter and Dionysus. In Egypt bloodless offerings of food and drink were simply laid before the god on mats or a table in a daily ceremony called “performing the presentation of the divine oblations.” In both Greek and Egyptian cults such offerings were never to be eaten by the worshippers, but they were probably surreptitiously consumed by the priests or temple attendants. In ancient Israel, on the other hand, the food offerings of the “table of the shewbread” (the “bread of the presence” of God) were regarded as available to the priests and could be given by them to the laity. In Hinduism the daily offering of cooked rice and vegetable, after its consecration, is distributed by the priests to the worshippers as the deity's “grace” (prasāda). In some cases the sacrificial gifts are put out to be eaten by an animal representative of the deity. In Dahomey wandering dogs consume, on behalf of the trickster deity Eshu (Elegba), the consecrated food oblations presented to the god each morning at his shrines.

Recipient of the sacrifice

      Sacrifices may be offered to beings who can be the object of religious veneration or worship. They will not be made to human beings unless they have first been deified in some way. In some cases sacrifice is made only to the god or gods; in others it is made to the deity, the spirits, and the departed; in others it is made only to the spirits and the departed, who are considered intermediaries between the deity and men. The Nkole people of Uganda, for example, are said to make no sacrifices to God, thinking he does not expect any. But, on the third day following the New Moon, they make offerings to the guardian spirits (emandwa), and they also make offerings at the shrines of ancestors (emizimu) of up to three generations back. Worship of spirits and of ancestors, often including the offering of sacrifices, occurs in widely distributed cultures; in fact, according to some scholars, probably the major recipients of sacrifice in non-Western traditions are the ancestors.

Intentions

 Sacrifices have been offered for a multiplicity of intentions, and it is possible to list only some of the most prominent. In any one sacrificial rite a number of intentions may be expressed, and the ultimate goal of all sacrifice is to establish a beneficial relationship with the sacred order, to make the sacred power present and efficacious.

Propitiation and expiation

      Serious illness, drought, pestilence, epidemic, famine, and other misfortune and calamity have universally been regarded as the workings of supernatural forces. Often they have been understood as the effects of offenses against the sacred order committed by individuals or communities, deliberately or unintentionally. Such offenses break the relationship with the sacred order or impede the flow of divine life. Thus, it has been considered necessary in times of crisis, individual or communal, to offer sacrifices to propitiate sacred powers and to wipe out offenses (atonement) (or at least neutralize their effects) and restore the relationship.

      Among the Yoruba of West Africa, blood sacrifice must be made to the gods, especially the earth deities, who, as elsewhere in Africa, are regarded as the divine punishers of sin. For the individual the oblation may be a fowl or a goat; for an entire community it may be hundreds of animals (in former days, the principal oblation was human). Once consecrated and ritually slain, the oblations are buried, burnt, or left exposed but never shared by the sacrificer.

      In ancient Judaism the ḥaṭṭaʾt, or “sin offering,” was an important ritual for the expiation of certain, especially unwittingly committed, defilements. The guilty laid their hands upon the head of the sacrificial animal (an unblemished bullock or goat), thereby identifying themselves with the victim, making it their representative (scapegoat) (but not their substitute, for their sins were not transferred to the victim). After the priest killed the beast, blood was sprinkled upon the altar and elsewhere in the sacred precincts. The point of the ritual was to purify the guilty and to re-establish the holy bond with God through the blood of the consecrated victim. It was as such an expiatory sacrifice that early Christianity regarded the life and death of Christ (Jesus Christ). By the shedding of his blood, the sin of mankind was wiped out and a new relationship of life—eternal life—was effected between God and man. Like the innocent and “spotless” victim of the ḥaṭṭaʾt, Christ died for men—i.e., on behalf of but not in place of them. Also, like the ḥaṭṭaʾt, the point of his death was not the appeasement of divine wrath but the shedding of his blood for the wiping out of sin. The major differences between the sacrifice of Christ and that of the ḥaṭṭaʾt animal are that (1) Christ's was regarded as a voluntary and effective sacrifice for all men and (2) his was considered the perfect sacrifice, made once in time and space but perpetuated in eternity by the risen Lord.

      There are sacrifices, however, in which the victim does serve as a substitute for the guilty. In some West African cults a person believed to be under death penalty by the gods offers an animal substitute to which he transfers his sins. The animal, which is then ritually killed, is buried with complete funeral rites as though it were the human person. Thus the guilty person is dead, and it is an innocent man who is free to begin a new life.

      Finally, some propitiatory sacrifices are clearly prophylactic, intended to avert possible misfortune and calamity, and as such they are really bribes offered to the gods. Thus, in Dahomey libations and animal and food offerings are frequently made to a variety of Earth spirits to ensure their good favour in preventing any adversity from befalling the one making the offering.

Gift sacrifices

      Although all sacrifice involves the giving of something, there are some sacrificial rites in which the oblation is regarded as a gift made to a deity either in expectation of a return gift or as the result of a promise upon the fulfillment of a requested divine favour. Gift sacrifices have been treated above. Here, it can be briefly noted that numerous instances of the votive offering are recorded. In ancient Greece sacrifices were vowed to Athena, Zeus, Artemis, and other gods in return for victory in battle. The solemnity and irrevocability of the votive offering is seen in the Old Testament account of the judge Jephthah's sacrifice of his only child in fulfillment of a vow to Yahweh.

Thank offerings

      One form of thank offering is the offering of the first fruits in agricultural societies. Until the first fruits of the harvest have been presented with homage and thanks (and often with animal sacrifices) to the deity of the harvest (sometimes regarded as embodied in the crop), the whole crop is considered sacred and thus taboo and may not be used as food. The first-fruits sacrifice has the effect of “desacralizing” the crops and making them available for profane consumption. It is a recognition of the divine source and ownership of the harvest and the means by which man is reconciled with the vegetational, chthonic powers from whom he takes it.

Fertility

      Another distinctive feature of the first-fruits offering is that it serves to replenish the sacred potencies of the earth depleted by the harvest and to ensure thereby the continued regeneration of the crop. Thus, it is one of many sacrificial rites that have as their intention the seasonal renewal and reactivation of the fertility of the earth. Fertility rites usually involve some form of blood sacrifice—in former days especially human sacrifice. In some human sacrifices the victim represented a deity who “in the beginning” allowed himself to be killed so that from his body edible vegetation might grow. The ritual slaying of the human victim amounted to a repetition of the primordial act of creation and thus a renewal of vegetational life. In other human sacrifices the victim was regarded as representing a vegetation spirit that annually died at harvest time so that it might be reborn in a new crop. In still other sacrifices at planting time or in time of famine, the blood of the victim—animal or human—was let upon the ground and its flesh buried in the soil to fertilize the earth and recharge its potencies.

Building sacrifices

      Numerous instances are known of animal and human sacrifices made in the course of the construction of houses, shrines, and other buildings, and in the laying out of villages and towns. Their purpose has been to consecrate the ground by establishing the beneficent presence of the sacred order and by repelling or rendering harmless the demonical powers of the place. In some West African cults, for example, before the central pole of a shrine or a house is installed, an animal is ritually slain, its blood being poured around the foundations and its body being put into the posthole. On the one hand, this sacrifice is made to the earth deities and the supernatural powers of the place—the real owners—so that the human owner may take possession and be ensured against malevolent interferences with the construction of the building and its later occupation and use. On the other hand, the sacrifice is offered to the cult deity to establish its benevolent presence in the building.

Mortuary sacrifice

      Throughout the history of man's religions, the dead (death rite) have been the recipients of offerings from the living. In ancient Greece an entire group of offerings (enagismata) was consecrated to the dead; these were libations of milk, honey, water, wine, and oil poured onto the grave. In India water and balls of cooked rice were sacrificed to the spirits of the departed. In West Africa, offerings of cooked grain, yams, and animals are made to the ancestors residing in the Earth. The point of such offerings is not that the dead get hungry and thirsty, nor are they merely propitiatory offerings. Their fundamental intention seems to be that of increasing the power of life of the departed. The dead partake of the life of the gods (usually the chthonic deities), and sacrifices to the dead are in effect sacrifices to the gods who bestow never-ending life. In Hittite funeral rites, for example, sacrifices were made to the sun god and other celestial deities—transcendent sources of life—as well as to the divinities of Earth.

Communion sacrifices

      Communion in the sense of a bond between the worshipper and the sacred power is fundamental to all sacrifice. Certain sacrifices, however, promote this communion by means of a sacramental meal. The meal may be one in which the sacrificial oblation is simply shared by the deity and the worshippers. Of this sort were the Greek thysia and the Jewish zevaḥ sacrifices in which one portion of the oblation was burned upon the altar and the remainder eaten by the worshippers. Among the African Yoruba special meals are offered to the deity; if the deity accepts the oblation (as divination will disclose), a portion of the food is placed before his shrine while the remainder is joyfully eaten as a sacred communion by the worshippers. The communion sacrifice may be one in which the deity somehow indwells the oblation so that the worshippers actually consume the divine; e.g., the Hindu soma ritual. The Aztecs twice yearly made dough images of the sun god Huitzilopochtli that were consecrated to the god and thereby transubstantiated into his flesh to be eaten with fear and reverence by the worshippers.

Sacrifice in the religions of the world

 The constituent elements of sacrifice have been incorporated into the particular religions and cultures of the world in various and often complex ways. A few brief observations that may illustrate this variety and complexity are given here.

Religions of India

      Speculations regarding sacrifice and prescribed rituals seem to have been worked out more fully in the Vedic (Vedic religion) and later Hindu (Hinduism) religion in India than anywhere else. These rites, laid down in a complicated system known mainly from the Brāhmaṇa texts, included obligatory sacrifices following the course of the year or the important moments in the life of an individual and optional sacrifices occasioned by the special wishes of a sacrificer. Yet cultic sacrifice has not developed in Buddhism, another religion that arose in India. Ritual sacrifice was judged to be ineffective and in some of its forms to involve cruelty and to run counter to the law of ahiṃsā, or non-injury. There are, however, in the Jātaka stories of the Buddha's previous births accounts of his self-sacrifices. Furthermore, Buddhism emphasizes the notion of ethical sacrifices, acts of self-discipline; and there are instances of devotional offerings, such as burnt incense, to the Buddha.

Religions of China

      In China sacrifice, like other aspects of religion, has existed at a number of different levels. The essential feature of Imperial worship in ancient China was the elaborate sacrifices offered by the emperor himself to Heaven and Earth. There are also records of sacrifice, including human sacrifice, associated with the death of a ruler because it was thought proper for him to be accompanied in death with those who served him during life. But, because the common people were excluded from participation in Imperial sacrifices, they had lesser gods—some universal, some local—to whom sacrifices were made. Furthermore, ancestor worship has been the most universal form of religion throughout China's long history; it was the responsibility of the head of a household to see to it that sacrificial offerings to the dead were renewed constantly. The blending of these elements with such established religions as Buddhism and Taoism influenced the great diversification of sacrificial rites in China.

Religions of Japan

      In ancient Japan offering occupied a particularly important place in religion because the relationship of the people to their gods seems frequently to have had the character of a bargain rather than of adoration. It is probable that the offerings were originally individual, but they gradually became collective, especially as all powers, including religious, were concentrated in the hands of the emperor, who officiated in the name of all his people. Human sacrifice to natural deities and at burials was once common but seems generally to have been abandoned in the early Middle Ages. Besides human sacrifices and their more modern substitutes, the Japanese offered to the gods all the things that man regards as necessary (e.g., food, clothing, shelter) or merely useful and pleasing (e.g., means of transportation, tools, weapons, objects of entertainment) for life. These practices, which were found in the traditional religion known as Shintō, were modified when Confucianism and Buddhism were introduced into Japan during the 5th and 6th centuries AD.

Ancient Greece (Greek religion)

      The Homeric poems contain the most complete descriptions of sacrificial rites in ancient Greece. These rites, which were maintained almost without change for more than 10 centuries, were of two types: rites (thysia) addressed to the Olympian deities, which included burning part of a victim and then participating in a joyful meal offered to the gods during the daytime primarily to serve and establish communion with the gods; and rites ( sphagia) addressed to the infernal or chthonic deities, which involved the total burning or burying of a victim in a sombre nocturnal ceremony to placate or avert the malevolent chthonic powers. Besides the official or quasi-official rites, the popular religion, already in Homer, comprised sacrifices of all kinds of animals and of vegetables, fruits, cheese, and honey offered as expiation, supplication, or thanksgiving by worshippers belonging to all classes of society. Furthermore, the secret worship of what are known as the mysteries—cults normally promising immortality or some form of personal relationship with a god—became widespread. This practice became especially prominent during the Hellenistic period.

Judaism

      The destruction of the Second Temple (Jerusalem, Temple of) in AD 70 marked a profound change in the worship of the Jewish people. Before that event, sacrifice was the central act of Israelite worship; and there were many categories of sacrificial rites that had evolved through the history of the Jews into a minutely detailed system found in that part of the Torah (Law; the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) that is ascribed by biblical scholars to the Priestly code, which became established following the Babylonian Exile (586–538 BC). The sacrificial system ceased, however, with the destruction of the Temple, and prayer took the place of sacrifices. In modern Judaism the Orthodox prayer books still contain prayers for the reinstitution of the sacrificial cult in the rebuilt Temple. Reform Judaism, however, has abolished or modified these prayers in keeping with the conception of sacrifice as a once adequate but now outmoded form of worship, and some Conservative congregations have also rephrased references to sacrifices so that they indicate solely past events without implying any hope for the future restoration of the rite.

Christianity

      The notion of sacrifice emerged in the early Christian communities in several different contexts. The death of Christ (Jesus Christ) upon the cross preceded by the Last Supper was narrated in the Gospels in sacrificial terms; the life of Christ, culminating in his Passion and death, was seen as the perfect sacrifice, and his Resurrection and glorification were seen as God the Father's seal of approval on that life. The notion that members of the church are vitally linked to Christ and that their lives must be sacrificial was also elaborated, especially in the letters of St. Paul. Moreover, from the first decades of the church's existence, the celebration of the eucharistic meal was connected with the sacrifice of Jesus; it was a “memorial” (anamnēsis)—a term denoting some sort of identity between the thing so described and that to which it referred—of that sacrifice.

      The interpretation of sacrifice and particularly of the Eucharist as sacrifice has varied greatly within the different Christian traditions, partly because the sacrificial terminology in which the Eucharist was originally described became foreign to Christian thinkers. In short, during the Middle Ages, the Eastern Church (Eastern Orthodoxy) viewed the Eucharist principally as a life-giving encounter with Christ the Resurrected; the Roman Church, however, saw it primarily as a bloodless repetition (mass) of the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the cross. For the Protestant Reformers in the 16th century, the sacrifice of Christ was unique and all sufficing, so that the idea of repeating it in cult became unnecessary. Sacrifice was separated from liturgy and was associated, especially in Calvinist Protestantism, with the personal ethical acts that should be made by a Christian believer. The ecumenical movement (ecumenism) of the 20th century, bolstered by modern biblical scholarship, has led some of the Christian churches—e.g., the Roman Catholic and Lutheran (Lutheranism) churches—to realize that they are not so far apart in their understanding of the Eucharist as sacrifice as was formerly thought and that they hold many elements of belief in common.

Islām

      Sacrifice has little place in orthodox Islām. Faint shadows of sacrifice as it was practiced by the pre-Islāmic Arabs have influenced Muslims, so that they consider every slaughter of an animal an act of religion. They also celebrate feasts in fulfillment of a vow or in thanksgiving for good fortune, but there is no sacrificial ritual connected with these festive meals. On the last day of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, animals are sacrificed; nevertheless, it is not the sacrificial rite that is important to the Muslims, but rather their visit to the sacred city.

Conclusion

      The organization of sacrificial rites in the different cultures and religions has undoubtedly been influenced by a number of factors. Economic considerations, for example, certainly have had some impact upon primitive peoples in the selection of the victim and the time of sacrifice and in the determination of whether the victim is consumed or totally destroyed and whether the sacrificer is an individual or a collective group. The importance of such factors is an aspect of sacrifice that deserves increased investigation. Nevertheless, sacrifice is not a phenomenon that can be reduced to rational terms; it is fundamentally a religious act that has been of profound significance to individuals and social groups throughout history, a symbolic act that establishes a relationship between man and the sacred order. For many peoples of the world, throughout time, sacrifice has been the very heart of their religious life.

Robert L. Faherty

Additional Reading

Classic theories of the origin and nature of sacrifice are found in the following: Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, 2 vol. (1871, reprinted 1958), a presentation of the gift theory of sacrifice; W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, 3rd ed. (1927), the clearest formulation of the author's theory of communion through a sacrificial meal; James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., 12 vol. (1907–15; abridged ed., The New Golden Bough, 1964), a famous and influential treatise on ancient religion that presents sacrifice as a means for rejuvenating a god; and Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, “Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice,” L'Année sociologique (1899; Eng. trans., Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, 1964), a sociological explanation of the sacrificial victim as a buffer between man and the god. More recent formulations include Gerardus van der Leeuw, Phänomenologie der Religion (1933; Eng. trans., Religion in Essence and Manifestation, 1963), an expansion of the notion of the sacrificial gift by a phenomenologist of religion; Adolf E. Jensen, Mythos und Kult bei Naturvölkern, rev. ed. (1960; Eng. trans., Myth and Cult Among Primitive Peoples, 1963), which correlates types of cultures and their sacrifice; Raymond Firth, “Offering and Sacrifice: Problems of Organization,” in W.A. Lessa and E.Z. Vogt (eds.), Reader in Comparative Religion, 3rd ed., pp. 185–194 (1971), an economic interpretation of sacrifice; and E.O. James, Sacrifice and Sacrament (1962), a good survey. Frances M. Young, Sacrifice and the Death of Christ (1978), is an overview of the theology of sacrifice in the early Christian church.Brief articles on several religions are found in “Sacrifice,” Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 11:1–39 (1928, reprinted 1955). On Vedic religion, A.B. Keith, The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads, 2 vol. (1925), is still a standard work; and Louis Renou, Religions of Ancient India (1953), offers a brief survey. On Chinese sacrificial rites, see C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society (1961); on ancient Egypt, J.H. Breasted, The Elder Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (1912); and on ancient Greek and Roman religions, R.K. Yerkes, Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and Early Judaism (1952), a clearly written, well-documented work; and M.P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 2 vol. (1941–50; Eng. trans., A History of Greek Religion, 2nd ed., 1963), a good handbook on Greek religion. On sacrificial rites in Judaism there is extensive literature, including “Sacrifice,” Encyclopedia Judaica, 14:599–615 (1971), a good survey with a bibliography; Roland de Vaux, Les Sacrifices de l'Ancien Testament (1964; Eng. trans., Studies in Old Testament Sacrifice, 1964); and Yerkes (above). On ancient Scandinavian rites, see E.O.G. Turville-Petrie, Myth and Religion of the North (1964). Walter Krickeberg et al., Die Religionen des Alten Amerika (1961; Eng. trans., Pre-Columbian American Religions, 1968), discusses the rites of the ancient civilizations of the American continents. On the religions of the peoples of Africa, John S. Mbiti, Concepts of God in Africa (1970), is an introduction with extensive bibliography. Important specific studies include Melville Herskovits, Dahomey, 2 vol. (1938); E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion (1956); E.B. Idowu, Olódùmarè: God in Yoruba Belief (1962); and Geoffrey Parrinder, West African Religion, 2nd ed. rev. (1961).

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