The Actuality Of Sacrifice

Sacrifice is a well known form of ritual in many world religions. Although the actual practice of animal sacrifice was largely abolished in the later history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it is still recalled through biblical stories, the ritual calendar and community events. The essays in this volume discuss the various positions regarding the value of sacrifice in a wide variety of disciplines such as history, archaeology, literature, philosophy, art and gender and post-colonial studies. In this context they examine a wide array of questions pertaining to the 'actuality of sacrifice' in various social, historical and intellectual contexts ranging from the pre-historical to the post-Holocaust, and present new understandings of some of the most sensitive topics of our time.

Argues that the modern Western world's reductive understanding of sacrifice simplifies an enormously broad and dynamic cluster of religious activities, drawing on a comparative study of Vedic and Jewish sacrificial practices to demonstrate not only that sacrifice has no single, essential, identifying characteristic, but also that the elements most frequently attributed to such acts--death and violence--are not universal.

The sacrificial instructions and purity laws in Leviticus have often been seen as later or secondary additions to an originally sparse Priestly narrative. In this volume, Liane M. Feldman argues that the ritual and narrative elements of the Pentateuchal Priestly source are mutually dependent, and that the internal logic and structure of the Priestly narrative makes sense only when they are read together. Bringing together insights from the fields of ritual theory and narratology, the author argues that the ritual materials in Leviticus should be understood and analyzed as literature. At the core of her study is the assertion that these sacrificial instructions and purity laws form the backbone of the Priestly story world, and that when these materials are read within their broader narrative context, the Priestly narrative is first and foremost a story about the origins and purpose of sacrifice.

Do you know the destiny for your life? Have you always wondered what life is all about and what part you play in it? Do you want to know more about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? The Human Sacrifice will open your eyes to the reality of what life is really about. Whether you are a non-believer, a new believer, or one who is established in the Word of God, The Human Sacrifice will scintillate your taste for living a satisfying life. As you understand the absolute principles of God's Word of Integrity, Life in the Blood, the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit and other truths it will cause you to be confident in whom you are. As you are established in the foundational attributes of Anointing, Holiness, Dominion, Loyalty, Justice, Hope, Prayfulness, and other basic character traits, you will meet your destiny in life!

When Daniel prophesied about the Daily Sacrifice, he was referring to the one thing we have all overlooked. Once you read this book, you will see there is only one thing the Daily Sacrifice can be.

Numerous ancient texts describe human sacrifices and other forms of ritual killing: in 480 BC Themistocles sacrifices three Persian captives to Dionysus; human scapegoats called pharmakoi are expelled yearly from Greek cities, and according to some authors they are killed; Locrin girls are hunted down and slain by the Trojans; on Mt Lykaion children are sacrificed and consumed by the worshippers; and many other texts report human sacrifices performed regularly in the cult of the gods or during emergencies such as war and plague. Archaeologists have frequently proposed human sacrifice as an explanation for their discoveries: from Minoan Crete children's bones with knife-cut marks, the skeleton of a youth lying on a platform with a bronze blade resting on his chest, skeletons, sometimes bound, in the dromoi of Mycenaean and Cypriot chamber tombs; and dual man-woman burials, where it is suggested that the woman was slain or took her own life at the man's funeral. If the archaeologists' interpretations and the claims in the ancient sources are accepted, they present a bloody and violent picture of the religious life of the ancient Greeks, from the Bronze Age well into historical times. But the author expresses caution. In many cases alternative, if less sensational, explanations of the archaeological are possible; and it can often be shown that human sacrifices in the literary texts are mythical or that late authors confused mythical details with actual practices.Whether the evidence is accepted or not, this study offers a fascinating glimpse into the religious thought of the ancient Greeks and into changing modern conceptions of their religious behaviour.