Offering, Sacrifice and Gift

Abstract

In this paper 1) I call an offering any act of presenting something to a supernatural being, a sacrifice an offering accompanied by the ritual killing of the object of the offering. This definition does not permit the use of the term sacrifice for killing rituals (a term introduced by Jensen, 1951) that are neither preceded nor followed by the presentation of the object of the rite to a supernatural being. Among the distinctive features of offering and sacrifice I do not include their sacred nature, considered to be their most essential characteristic by Hubert and Mauss, the authors of the Essai sur la Nature et la Fonction sociale du Sacrifice (1899). Founding their argument on data derived from Hebrew and Vedic sources, they concluded that the confrontation with the sacred is the awe-inspiring heart and core of the sacrificial act. However, the authors of these sources were native theologians, representing the views held by a priestly elite caste in a fairly highly developed society. Modern ethnographic research in simpler societies gives evidence that here the victims of a sacrifice are relatively rarely held to be sacred. Under certain circumstances they may, indeed, be tabooed but the rule is that these victims are primarily appreciated as meat. Even the parts more specifically dedicated to the gods are so little sacred that sometimes the children are condoned to snatch up the (mostly small) portions set aside for divine use. The sacred nature of the victim is too accidental a feature to be used as the foundation for the construction of a theory on the origin and development of sacrifice. To that end we have to turn to that general characteristic that sacrifice and offering have in common, that of being gifts. It is all the more desirable to concentrate on this common feature