Practice Of Sacrifice Research Articles

NOAH'S YOUNGER BROTHER REVISITED: ANTI-NOACHIC POLEMICS AND THE DATE OF 2 (SLAVONIC) ENOCH

The paper investigates the anti-Noachic tendencies in 2 Enoch. The analysis shows that anti-Noachic polemics in 2 Enoch are based on the «original» Noachic materials which demonstrate close parallels with the fragments of the Book of Noah found in 1 Enoch, Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon. The anti-Noachic debates involve a substantial rewriting of the «original» Noachic motifs and themes. The research shows that 2 Enoch contains a systematic tendency to diminish or refocus the priestly significance of the Noachic tradition. These anti-Noachic revisions take place in the midst of the sectarian debates about the sacrificial practice and the priestly succession.

Du sanctuaire au macellum : sacrifices, commerce et consommation de la viande à Pompéi

Here and there we find passages in the Christian authors, which on the one hand throw light on the connections between animal sacrifice and meat consumption in Antiquity and, on the other, on the important function of the macellum in Roman towns. It was there, in the city’s public markets, where sacrificed meat was primarily distributed. It remains to define how the commerce of meat was organised, from the sacrifice of the animal to the final disposal of the meat. At Pompeii, the rich documentation and the excellent state of archaeological remains allow us to describe the entire chain of events of sacrificial practice and meat selling in detail. The aim of the present paper is, then, to follow the food chain in its urban context at Pompeii. We begin with the procession and the sacrifice of the animals in the sanctuary, pass on to the marketing of the meat in the macellum and end with the problem of final consumption: the serving of the carnes in the house triclinia.

Vom Opfer zur Auslösung. Analyse ausgewählter Texte zum Thema Erstgeburt im Alten Testament

AbstractIn the present study the relevant texts in the Hebrew Bible concerning sacrifice or redemption of the first born of humans and animals are considered in detail. The most important findings are the following: 1. An Israelite could understand the instructions in Ex. xxii 28f. to mean that he should sacrifice his first-born child to JHWH. 2. Ez. xx 25f. describes such first-born sacrifices for JHWH as practised. Therefore it cannot be ruled out that in early Israel at a particular time such a sacrificial practice could indeed have occurred. 3. In the laws of the first-born in the Book of Covenant, in the Dodecalogue and in the original layer of Num. xviii 15-18 (P) the corresponding terms bekôr and peter rekhem refer to the male and female first-born of human and animal. The regulation in Deut. xv, to consecrate only the male first-born clean animals to JHWH and to consume them in JHWH's presence during the Feast, is connected with a clearly farmer-friendly tendency of the deuteronomic law-maker. Apart from that a limitation to the male first-born prevails only in the later post-exilic period. According to the note in Num. xviii 16, the redemption of the human first-born applies only to male children; according to the law of the first-born in Exod. xiii only the male first-born of human and animal (of female Israelites and animals) are affected.

The Heir of Righteousness and the King of Righteousness: The Priestly Noachic Polemics in 2 Enoch and the Epistle to the Hebrews

It has previously been noted that 2 (Slavonic) Enoch, a Jewish pseudepigraphon written in the first century ce, contains traces of polemics against the priestly Noachic tradition. In the course of the polemics the role of Noah as the pioneer of animal sacrificial practice to whom God reveals the commandments about the blood becomes transferred to other characters of the story, including the miraculously born priest Melchizedek. In light of the polemics detected in 2 Enoch, it is possible that another work written at the same period of time, namely, the Epistle to the Hebrews—a text which like 2 Enoch deals with the issues of blood, animal sacrificial practice, and the figure of Melchizedek—might also contain implicit polemics against Noah and his role as the originator of such practice. It has been noted before that the author of Hebrews appears to be openly engaged in polemics with the cultic prescriptions (δικαιματα λατρeας) found in the law of Moses and perpetuated by the descendants of Levi. Yet the origin of animal sacrificial practice and the expiatory understanding of blood can be traced to the figure of Noah, who first performed animal sacrifices on the altar after his disembarkation and who received from God the commandment about the blood. By renouncing the practice of animal sacrifices and invalidating the expiatory significance of the animal blood through the sacrifice of Jesus, who in the Epistle to the Hebrews is associated with the figure of Melchizedek, the authors of the Epistle to the Hebrews appear to be standing in opposition not only to Moses and Levi, but also to Noah. Here again, as in 2 Enoch, the image of Melchizedek serves as a polemical counterpart to Noah and the priestly Noachic tradition, which the hero of the Flood faithfully represented.

Resenlund og Brøndumgård bronzedepoter – Kult og samfund i yngre bronzealder

Resenlund og Brøndumgård bronzedepoter – Kult og samfund i yngre bronzealder

Fruitful Death: Mircea Eliade and Ernst Jünger on Human Sacrifice, 1937–1945

AbstractMircea Eliade, the writer and historian of religions, and Ernst Jünger, the hero of the Great War, novelist, and essayist, met in the 1950s and co-edited twelve issues of the periodical Antaios. Before they met and cooperated, however, and while the German writer knew about Eliade from their common friend, Carl Schmitt, they both dealt with the subject of human sacrifice. Eliade began to do so in the thirties, and his interest in that theme was at least in part an aspect of his political activism on behalf of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, or the Iron Guard, the nationalistic and anti-Semitic movement lead by Corneliu Codreanu. Sacrificial ideology was a central aspect of the Legion's political theories, as well as of the practice of its members. After the Iron Guard was outlawed by its allies, and many of its members had been killed, and while the Romanian regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu was still fighting alongside the National Socialist regime in the Second World War, Eliade turned to other aspects of sacrificial ideology. In 1939 he wrote the play Iphigenia, celebrating Agamemnon's daughter as a willing victim whose death made the Greek conquest of Troy possible; and as a member of the regime's diplomatic service in Lisbon he published a book in Portuguese on Romanian virtues (1943), in which he presented what he called Two Myths of Romanian Spirituality, extolling his nation's readiness to die through the description of the sacrificial traditions of Master Manole and of the Ewe Lamb (Mioritza). Jünger's attitude to sacrifice ran along lines that were less traditional: possibly already while serving as a Wehrmacht officer, in his pamphlet Der Friede, the German writer attributed sacrificial status to all the victims of the Second World War, soldiers, workmen, and unknowing innocents, and saw their death as the ransom of a peace "without victory or defeat." In this article, the sacrificial ideologies of the two intellectuals are compared in order to reflect upon the complex interplay between traditional religious themes, more or less freely re-interpreted and transformed, political power, and violent conflict, in an age of warfare marked by fascisms and by the terrible massacre some refer to by the name of an ancient Greek sacrificial practice.

Debating the Spirit in Early ChinaTo Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China. Michael J. Puett

MichaelJ. Puett's To Become a God is an important contribution to study of early Chinese religions, and it offers dense, ambitious, radically novel, and utterly fascinating reinterpretations of major religious and philosophical works of early China. Puett can be counted among a number of scholars of early China who, over past decade or so, have come to take pride in their efforts, convincing or not, to dismantle several of most seemingly foundational pillars for study of early Chinese thought, including textual classification (Confucian, Daoist, Legalist, etc.), geographic and cultural difference, and role of myth and shamanism. Puett pursues these trends to an extreme degree in attempting to overturn many of even more basic assumptions held by modern scholars in regard to early China. He argues that worldview of early China is best characterized not by an essential harmony between humans and nature, but by a theistic and agonistic dualism producing a similar tension with world that, in West, gave rise to ethical rationalization. To Become a God is Puett's attempt to demonstrate that this worldview reveals a fundamental tension between humans, on one side, and spirits and deities, on other, in which humans strove to separate their spirits from their bodies to become gods controlling all other spirits and natural phenomena. Puett claims that it is only by recognizing this tension that we can come to understand central motivation underlying thought of early China: I will attempt to provide a full historical study of relations of humans, spirits, and cosmos from Bronze Age to early Han. ... Once we move away from a commitment to seeing a lack of tension between humans and divinities as a guiding theme in early China, we may discover a rich, and perhaps more troubled, world of debate concerning humans, divinities and sacrificial practice than previous analyses have accustomed us to expect from Chinese texts (pp. 24-25). Puett quickly adds rejoinder that the recurrent references in secondary literature to 'schools of thought' in early China-such as Con-

Sacrifices of Raw, Cooked and Burnt Humans

Sacrifice is a ritual practice including funerals. Rituals teach people to believe in cultural principles by creating experiences in which they can be apprehended, and therefore rituals produce social order by producing conceptual order. The supreme metaphoric symbol is the human victim. Beyond human sacrifice remains only the sacrificer's own death. The dead humans can be seen as gifts to the gods. There are at least three modes of preparation of the corpse for the gods: it can be sacrificed raw, cooked or burnt. Cremation as a heat-mediated transformation renders possible at least two ways of preparing the corpse. The cremated ones may either be cooked or burnt. The deceased are prepared in various ways to become edible meals for the deities. The humans are as a banqueting sacrifice returned to their land of origin. Social control is defined by hierarchically ordered powers determining who can be sacrificed and in what manner the sacrifice can be made. In this sacrificial practice the whole cosmological world is incorporated in the resurrection of the society, legitimated by the gods through their consumption of a holy meal.

Ethnobiological Studies from’Manusntruti’ V. The Concept of ‘Somarasa’ and Dictum Against ‘Suraa’

Drinking of ‘Somarasa’ (Juice of plant ‘Soma’) was an uncommon sacrificial practice or ancient people. While consumption of ‘Suraa’ (spirituous liquor) was a sinful deed of lower social status, as evident form ‘Manusmruti’.

Confessing Dying Within

Draws on the speculations of Freud and Jung to address the topics of confession, sin, narcissism, and shame, particularly as they relate to certain theological themes. Concludes from both theoretical data and personal experience that the spiritual practice of sacrifice remains an antidote to guilt, an idiom of self-reliance counteracting shame.

Initiations grecques et idéologie indo-européenne

Étudiant en 1964 diverses survivances de la tripartition fonctionnelle indœuropéenne en Grèce, A. Yoshida avait remarqué que les trois cadeaux que, selon Strabon suivant ici Ephore, la coutume Cretoise prescrit à l'amant d'offrir au jeune homme qu'il a enlevé — bœuf, tenue de guerre, coupe — représentaient une série trifonctionnelle. Dans les trois pages qu'il consacrait à cette question, le savant japonais ne s'est pas interrogé sur la raison d'un tel usage. Or c'est un point qui, selon nous, mérite d'être approfondi : il n'est assurément pas indifférent que dans une pratique dont H. Jeanmaire a remarquablement montré l'importance qu'elle avait dans le système d'initiation crétois, le jeune éromène, désormais agrégé à la société des kleinoi, se trouve en possession de trois objets ordonnés fonctionnellement. Nous connaissons un individu à qui, très normalement, dans le contexte indo-européen, sont attribués de tels objets, dans la légende ou dans le rite : c'est le roi. Assurément le jeune Crétois n'est-il pas un roi, même en puissance.