Animal sacrifices in the ancient world

Parasha for March 28, 2020

Va-Yikra (Leviticus Chapters 1-5)

By Irv Jacobs, M.D.

Irv Jacobs

SAN DIEGO — This parasha deals in tedious detail with the various conditions for sacrifices: I have chosen three topics from the text and looked for equivalents practiced by ancient pagan nations.

I. Did pagans also practice grisly animal sacrifice? Yes, it was common throughout Europe and the Ancient Near East, and in fact continues in some cultures/religions today.

This parasha is a jumble of sacrificial details, which I have tried to organize.  It includes: a variety of justifications for sacrifice (voluntary, meal sharing, well-being, guilt, community error, chieftain guilt, sin, uncleanliness, utterance of a bad oath, a trespass, belated recognition of a guilt, or deceit); a list of sacrificial sources, including cattle, bulls, sheep, goats, birds, meals of grain-flour-with-oil, and first fruits; prescribes that all animals are to be unblemished; details of sacrificial presentation–without leaven, salted and seasoned with frankincense, sprinkled blood placed on the horns of the altar and the remaining blood poured onto the base of the altar; mandate to separate out and burn collections of fat–the suet covering the entrails, liver, and kidneys “(to) turn it into smoke on the altar, for a pleasing odor to the Lord;” and afterward, to share the meal with priests and the contingent families.

In the Neolithic Revolution, humans moved from hunter-gatherer cultures toward agriculture and animal domestication. It is believed that ritual sacrifice evolved as a continuation of ancient hunting rituals.

Some of the earliest animal sacrifice was in Egypt, 4400 BCE. Sheep and goat remains were found buried in their own graves at one site, while at another gazelle remains were found at the feet of human burials. At one cemetery dated 3000 BCE, remains were found of non-domestic species such as baboons and hippopotami. According to Herodotus, later Egyptian animal sacrifice became restricted to livestock, with rituals and rules to describe each type of sacrifice.

Archaeological data indicate that Canaanites imported sacrificial sheep and goats from Egypt rather than selecting from their own herds.
Sacrifice was practiced in Sardinia. From 3000 BCE, It may have been common on the Italian peninsula. In ancient Crete, excavations revealed basins for animal sacrifice dated from 2000 BCE.

Similar findings come from Ancient Mesopotamia and Persia. Unlike the later Greeks, who rationalized to keep the best parts for humans, in these cultures the whole animal was placed in the fire on the altar and burned.

The Greeks had elaborate rituals, some rather colorful, following which they burned the inedible parts for the deity’s portion. The participants, led by the community leaders, ate the meat. The skin was sold to tanners. That the humans got more from the sacrifice than the deity did not escape public attention. The topic is often the subject of humor in Greek comedy.

The Greeks liked to believe that the animal was glad to be sacrificed. They added divination, by inspection of the liver, as part of the cult of Apollo. They threw a grain of incense on the sacred fire. Also, farmers could make sacrificial gifts of produce. Ultimately, some ceremonies involved large numbers of animals, e.g. up to several hundred bulls, with the number of feasting public well into the thousands.

Here are selected variations in sacrifice procedures by other cultures:

The Scythians strangled the animal, a horse not a pig, (not unlike a Mafia technique in “The Godfather”)

Romans garlanded a sacrificial animal (cattle, sheep, pigs), and clad it in dressy regalia, so the victim would seem willing to offer its life. Romans also liked to match an infertile animal and its sex to the ‘prestige’ of a deity of the ‘Upper Heaven.’ For Juno, it was a white heifer. For Jupiter, it was a white castrated ox. Underworld goddesses of fruitfulness were offered pregnant female animals. These sacrifices were burnt, and there was no shared banquet.

Extraordinary circumstances called for extraordinary sacrifice. In a crisis during the Second Punic War, Jupiter was offered every animal born that spring (in an extant detailed contract).

A word about Christianity: Christ’s crucifixion is considered to be a substitution punishment for all humanities’ sins. Incidentally the word Easter was taken in the 8th century CE from an Anglo-Saxon mother goddess of the spring, called ‘Easter.’ [1]

For Muslims: Those on a Hajj to Mecca sacrifice a lamb or goat or cow. Those not on a Hajj, on the 10th day of the 12th Islamic lunar month, re-enact Abraham’s sacrifice of a ram in place of his son (sheep, goat, cow, or camel). Meat is divided into three parts: one to the sacrificing family, a second to friends and family, and the third to poor Muslims.

Indonesian Muslims, on the festival coincident with a Hajj, allegedly sacrificed 800,000 animals in 2014. Also In Pakistan, nearly 10,000,000 animals are sacrificed annually on this festival! [2]

II.Leviticus 3:9-11,16 (paraphrased) “He (the priest) shall…present…to the Lord, the fat from the sacrifice…the whole broad tail…the fat that covers the entails and..the two kidneys and the fat that is on them…at the loins… The Priest shall turn these into smoke on the altar as food…to the Lord..of pleasing odor. All fat is the Lord’s.”

Did pagans also value the kidney and its enveloping fat in sacrifice?

The Greeks held religious significance to the kidney.Their medicinal use was dictated by its abundance of surrounding adipose tissue, which was an ideal warming and binding substance.

Even before, ancient Egyptians, in a belief that gods examined the kidneys and the heart, removed the kidneys of corpses before mummification–these to be readily accessible to the judging god. To such ancients, the kidneys and its peri-renal fat possessed an important role in pagan, and subsequent Jewish religion.

It was further believed that the locus of thoughts and desires lay in the kidneys. In the Iliad, Homer (8th Century BCE) describes the loss of manly power from Trojan leaders, when fish of the Scamandros River devoured their perirenal fat. [3]

III.Leviticus 2:11-12 (paraphrased) “…for no…honey may be turned into smoke as an offering by fire to the Lord. You may bring them to the Lord as an offering of choice products: but they shall not be offered up on the altar for a pleasing odor.”

Some scholars believe that the prohibition at the altar against honey (both from bees or fruit nectars) represents the Hebrews distancing themselves from the widespread use of honey in pagan cults. Honey was frequently offered to pagan gods in the ancient Near East. In the Ugaritic epic of Keret, ‘honey from a honeycomb’ was offered to the Syro-Canaanite god El. Cuneiform records from Mesopotamia and ancient Syria list ‘honey-nectar’ as an offering.

By prohibiting honey on the altar, Leviticus law could have intended elimination of a pagan practice. However a passage in Judges 9: 8-13, in speaking of the virtues of various trees and vines, mentions the fig tree for “…my sweetness, my delicious fruit” but does not allude to its utilization as offerings to (pagan) deities!

Per this inconsistency, it must be assumed that we do not clearly understand what is behind this prohibition. [4] [5]

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[1] https://www.wierdworm.com/5-weird-ancient-pagan-rituals/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Animal_sacrifice
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0085253815508508
[4] Baruch A. Levine, Leviticus (The JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989, p. 12
[5] https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/39168/honey-offerings-accepted-but-not-for-burning-leviticus-211

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Irv Jacobs is a retired medical doctor who enjoys writing about a variety of interests, including both religion and science.  To access more of his articles, please click on his byline at the top of this page.  He may be contacted via irv.jacobs@sdjewishworld.com