sacrifice - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

8/13/2019 Sacrifice - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

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Sacrifice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaSacrificeFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.Sacrifice (is a Middle English verb meaning 'to make sacred', from Old French,from Latin sacrificium : sacer, sacred; sacred + facere, to make) is commonlyknown as the practice of offering food, or the lives of animals or people to thegods, as an act of propitiation or worship. The term is also used metaphoricallyto describe selfless good deeds for others.

Contents [showhide]1 Theologies of sacrifice

2 Sacrifice in Judaism

3 Animal sacrifice

4 Human sacrifice

5 Sacrifices in games

6 See also

7 Further Reading

8 External links

[edit]Theologies of sacrificeThe theology of sacrifice remains an issue, not only for religions that continueto practice rituals of sacrifice, but also for those religions that have animalsacrifice in their scriptures, traditions, or histories, even if sacrifice is nolonger made. Religions offer a number of reasons for why sacrifices are offered. Gods need sacrifice to sustain themselves and their power, without which theyare diminished.

Sacrificed goods are used to make a bargain with the god, who has promisedsome favour in return for the sacrifice.The lives or blood of sacrificial victims contains mana or some othersupernatural power whose offering pleases the god.The sacrificial victim is offered as a scapegoat, a target for the wrath of agod, which otherwise would be visited on the followers.Sacrifice deprives the followers of food and other useful commodities, and assuch constitutes an ascetic discipline.Sacrificed goods actually become part of a religious organisation's revenue;it is a part of the economic base of support that compensates priests andsupports temples.The sacrifice is actually a part of a festival and is ultimately consumed bythe followers themselves; often this includes an element of redistribution

where the poor get a larger share than they contributed.The sacrifice may be a sign of a covenant between a god and His people.

[edit]Sacrifice in Judaism See related article on Korban.In Judaism, a sacrifice is known as a Korban from the Hebrew root karov meaningto "[come] Close [to God]".Much of the Bible, particularly the opening chapters of the book Leviticus, ispreoccupied by sacrifices. But the prophets also warned the Israelites thatover-reliance on sacrificial ritual could lead to no good. Jeremiah used theexample of the worshippers of Molech who on occasion would sacrifice their own


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children to achieve military success or a good harvest. (Jer. 7:31). Instead offocussing on sacrifices the prophets tended to emphasise moral values: living agood life and devotion to God.After the destruction of the Second Temple, ritual sacrifice ceased withinJudaism. Medieval Jewish rationalists like Maimonides drew on the earlycritiques of the need for sacrifice, taking the view that God always heldsacrifice inferior to prayer and philosophical meditation. However, Godunderstood that the Israelites were used to the animal sacrifices that thesurrounding pagan tribes used as the primary way to commune with their gods. Assuch, in Maimonides' view, it was only natural that Israelites would believethat sacrifice were be a necessary part of the relationship between God and man.Maimonides concludes that God's decision to allow sacrifices was a concession tohuman psychological limitations. It would have been too much to have expectedthe Israelites to leap from pagan worship to prayer and meditation in one step.In the Guide to the Perplexed he writes: "But the custom which was in those days general among men, and the generalmode of worship in which the Israelites were brought up consisted insacrificing animals... It was in accordance with the wisdom and plan ofGod...that God did not command us to give up and to discontinue all thesemanners of service. For to obey such a commandment would have been contrary to

the nature of man, who generally cleaves to that to which he is used; it would

in those days have made the same impression as a prophet would make at present[the 12th Century ] if he called us to the service of God and told us in Hisname, that we should not pray to God nor fast, nor seek His help in time oftrouble; that we should serve Him in thought, and not by any action." (BookIII, Chapter 32. Translated by M. Friedlander, 1904, The Guide for thePerplexed, Dover Publications, 1956 edition.)

The teachings of the Torah and Tanakh reveal Judaism's abhorrence of humansacrifices.[edit]Animal sacrificeSacrificeIs the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is

practiced by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changingthe course of nature. Animal sacrifice has turned up in almost all cultures,from the Hebrews to the Greeks and Romans and from the Aztecs to the Yoruba.However, the practice was a taboo among the Ancient Egyptians, and they tendedto look down on cultures that practiced this custom. Animal sacrifice is stillpracticed today by the followers of Santera as a means of curing the sick andgiving thanks to the gods. It is appropriately termed animal offerings andaccount for extremely small portions of "ebbos", ritual activities that includeofferings, prayer and deeds, in Santeria. Some villages in Greece also sacrificeanimals to Orthodox saints in a practice know as kourbnia. This practice, whileofficially condemned, is tolerated for the benefits it provides to the churchand the sense of community it engenders.

[edit]Human sacrificeHuman sacrifice was practiced by many ancient cultures. People would be rituallykilled in a manner that was supposed to please or appease some god or spirit.While not widely known, human sacrifices for religious reasons still exist todayin a number of nations, including India.Some occasions for human sacrifice found in multiple cultures on multiplecontinents include: Human sacrifice to accompany the dedication of a new temple or bridge.


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Sacrifice of people upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader; thesacrificed were supposed to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next

life.Human sacrifice in times of natural disaster. Droughts, earthquakes, volcaniceruptions etc were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure by deities, andsacrifices were supposed to lessen the divine ire.

Some of the best known ancient human sacrifice was that practiced by variousPre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica. The Aztec were particularly notedfor practicing this on an unusually large scale; a human sacrifice would be madeevery day to aid the Sun in rising, the dedication of the great temple atTenochtitln was reportedly marked with the sacrificing of thousands, and thereare multiple accounts of captured Conquistadores being sacrificed during thewars of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico.In Scandinavia, the old Scandinavian religion contained human sacrifice and boththe Norse sagas and German historians relate of this, see e.g. Temple at Uppsalaand Blt.There is evidence to suggest Pre-Hellenic Minoan cultures practised humansacrifice. Sacrificed corpses were found at a number of sites in the citadel ofKnossos in Crete. One such find at the North house in Knossos numbered 337 bones

of children who appear to have been butchered. It is possible they may have beenfor human consumption as was the tradition with sacrificial offerings made inPre-Hellenic Civilization.The evidence that this practice was widespreadthroughout Minoan culture is not strong. It is also possible that the humansacrifices at Crete were one-off occurrences as Knossos did befall an epictectonic natural disaster around the time at which these sites would have beenpreserved. Hence these human sacrifices could be explained in terms of theMinoans desperation in the situation and being far from routine procedures. Thetemple of Anemospilia at Knossos exemplifies this view. Here they found thesacrifice of a teenager which was interrupted by the temple collapsing on theparticipants due to the tectonic activity at the time. The myth of Theseus and

the Minotaur (set in the labyrinth at Knossos) provides evidence that Humansacrifice was commonplace. In the myth we are told that Athens sent seven youngmen and seven young women to Crete as human sacrifices to the Minotaur. Thisties up well with the archaeological evidence that most sacrifices were of youngadults or children. This view contrasts with the Utopian view of the Minoanspropagated by the archaeologist Arthur Evans.Human sacrifice still happens today as an underground practice in sometraditional religions, for example in muti killings. Human sacrifice is nolonger officially condoned in any country, and these cases are regarded asmurder.Many people in India are adherents of a religion called Tantrism; a smallpercent of unscrupulous Tantric practitioners engage in human sacrifice, often

with the promise of inducing childbirth in a sterile couple (see FurtherReading).In the Aeneid by Virgil the character Sinon claims that he was going to be ahuman sacrifice to Poseidon to calm the seas (of course Sinon was lying).Human sacrifice is a common theme in the religions and mythology of manycultures.Christians believe that the death of Jesus was a self-sacrifice for mankind'ssins.[edit]Sacrifices in gamesSacrifice is also used metaphorically to describe a number of plays in games.


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Sacrifices, in this sense, are plays that deliberately lose pieces oropportunities in order to obtain some other advantage.In chess, a number of plays are described as sacrifices: these typically involvelosing a piece or a pawn to disrupt the opponent's formation and open up anattack. Chess openings that involve sacrifices are usually called gambits bychess players; in these gambits, usually a pawn is deliberately lost; gambitsthat lose a piece are rare and risky. In baseball, a sacrifice fly is a play inwhich a batter deliberately allows himself to be called out so as to enableanother player on base to score. Likewise, a sacrifice bunt in baseball is onein which a batter allows himself to be put out while advancing a team mate,usually to second, but sometimes to third base, from where he has a greaterchance to score. Players who commit either a sacrifice fly or bunt are notcharged with a "time at bat," thus the out that they sacrificed is not chargedagainst their batting average. Many Magic: The Gathering style trading cardgames have cards that allow an effect if a card in play is sacrificed and sentto the 'graveyard'.Sacrifice is also the name of a computer game released by Shiny entertainment inthe year of 2000. For more information about the computer game, see Sacrifice(PC game).[edit]See also Human sacrifice, Child sacrifice, Ritual murder, SatiPropitiation

MartyrdomScapegoatImmolationCelts and human sacrificeAshvamedhaQuetzalcoatlJephthahGreek mythology, Lycaeus, IphigeniaNordic religion (Norse mythology)Behanzin

[edit]Further Reading Human Sacrifice: In History and Today Nigel Davies; Dorset Press, 1981 ISBN0-88029-211-3

In India, case links mysticism, murder John Lancaster, Washington Post,11/29/2003[edit]External links BBC news story about muti killings (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1899609.stm)

Indian human sacrifice bid in Kamakhya temple foiled(http://news.indiainfo.com/2003/06/14/14sacrifice.html)Police have arrested a village priest in the central Indian state of MadhyaPradesh for allegedly carrying out a human sacrifice(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2892333.stm)Hindu monks in India pledge to fight human sacrifice(http://in.news.yahoo.com/030624/43/25eil.html)

Killing for 'Mother' Kali: A spate of ritual killings in India shows thathuman sacrifice lives on - TIME Asia magazine(http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501020729-322673,00.ht

ml)

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