The discourse of social anthropology and religions studies encourages us to view the sacrificial religion of Israelites and Christians as we would the practices of any other people. It enables us to appreciate that what is described in the Bible responds to the same motivations as the sacrificial religion of other societies (including our own), and produces and reproduces human identity in much the same way. It may not be typical exactly, but it is nevertheless ‘sacrificial religion’ as everywhere understood.
The biblical texts, however, introduce an additional dimension altogether absent from social anthropology. In the Bible, there is good and bad – proper and improper – religion. And to those whom the God chooses for his own, he reveals a proper form of sacrificial expenditure. In their case alone, the universal human propensity for human wealth and effort to lavish itself on some idol finds at last a proper outlet. That appropriate outlet is, of course, the only god these texts recognize – the one true god envisaged by the provisions of the cult. Such, then, was the form of sacrifice instituted at Sinai, revealed by God uniquely to His people as the answer to their religious needs. In its claim to divine authorship this form of sacrifice stands in marked contrast to the form that emerged out of Aaron’s own imagination and took root spontaneously during Moses’ absence on Mt Sinai.
The stark opposition in the biblical text of proper and improper sacrifice can hardly fail to raise a question in the enquirer’s mind – namely, what it is about one kind of sacrifice rather than the other that would make it the only good and proper kind. Obviously, a crucial difference lies in the identity of the god to whom the sacrifice is addressed. But that does not, for our purposes, constitute a fully adequate response. For a start, if the divine object is known to believers primarily as the addressee of their sacrificial practice, then what they know of that object – their representation of it – will have everything to do with the nature of their practice. It would make little sense, for example, to ask whether the golden calf of Exodus was, or was not, intended as a representation of the one true god. It is in its cultic provisions for the manner of its sacrifice that the Mosaic law determines how god will be known (e.g. as a god without image).
There is a second good reason not to content ourselves with an account of what counts as proper sacrifice based simply on how god is named – and it has to do with the kind of explanations we are seeking in this piece. Hitherto we have been looking for an account of the faith that isn’t ‘just theological’, but also relevant to the practical concerns of every day enquirers – an account, that is, that can make sense of our human experience. And I propose to continue with this ‘anthropological’ orientation in exploring what the Bible tells us about the proper and the improper sacrifice. We will therefore be interested to discover what it is about the good form of sacrifice that uniquely distinguishes it as a practice. What is so special about the sacrifice that God Himself ordains? Is it the mere fact of its being divinely ordained? Or are there any particular characteristics that explain why this, and no other, form would be acceptable?
The biblical material I shall be considering includes the tabernacle cult with its sacrifices, but also a couple of other sacrificial actions that precede its official inauguration. Of these, the second (the sacrifice of the Passover), though first celebrated before the departure from Egypt, subsequently has its place amongst the provisions of the tabernacle cult; the first (the sacrifice of Abraham) forms no part of the Mosaic religion, but was later seen as prefiguring its sacrifices, and providing them with a kind of theological warrant.
The sacrifice of Abraham
This episode has an obvious relevance to our concerns, since the question of the proper form of sacrifice appears to be precisely the question preoccupying the future patriarch now that he feels himself called to demonstrate his allegiance to the god who has called him out of polytheism. Despite its description as a ‘test’, the envisaged slaughter of his son Isaac is evidently an intended act of sacrifice to his god. Abraham apparently finds himself prompted by that god to offer up the very thing that he had been promised at the moment of his first calling: a numerous posterity through which all the nations of the world would be blessed.
To remind ourselves of our earlier definition – sacrifice is an expenditure (of resources or self) serving to bind the sacrificer to the source of his/her identity. Abraham’s action fits the definition; but the value of what he offers takes that idea to its limit. If Abraham doesn’t offer back life itself exactly, he offers up everything that has given his life meaning hitherto. If anything, he offers back more than life itself. It is as if he were attempting a sacrifice commensurate with what he owed its addressee. And as one eminent anthropologist has recently stated: ‘one cannot give back the gift of life itself’.[i]
Now if this is our model of proper sacrifice (i.e. sacrifice addressed to the one true god), then we might well be prompted to ask what it could possibly be about the form of sacrifice received at Sinai, and described by Exodus and Leviticus, that would make it uniquely appropriate to its expression. There seems a total incommensurability between the offering up of the son of the promise (Isaac), and the slaughtered livestock we read about in the early chapters of Leviticus …. Until, that is, we remember that the story of the sacrifice on Mt Moriah doesn’t end where we have just left it.
Actually, Abraham’s sacrifice concludes, not with the slaughter of a human being, but with the offering of a ram. The intention of Abraham is certainly to offer back to God everything God has given him. Yet, the practical realization of that intention, paradoxically, requires only the expenditure of a beast of the flock – and, in fact, not even that, since the animal (unlike the son) had never belonged to Abraham, but is miraculously provided at the critical moment by what is (in every sense) an act of grace on God’s part. As things turn out, Abraham gives proof of his readiness to do what he is not finally called on to do – what he is even forbidden from doing. And both parties have a demonstration of uncompromising allegiance without the necessity of infanticide.
And what makes such an outcome possible? Apparently, the authority of the one true god to ordain, in the face of an intention known only to Himself, ‘let this thing (a ram) stand for that (a child of the promise)’.
Maybe all religious symbolism does this. But, in Abraham’s case, we are struck: on the one hand, by the enormity of the intended expenditure (which cannot be realized without the kind of action (i.e. human sacrifice) which the Bible elsewhere formally condemns); on the other, by the entirely providential manner in which a substitute presents itself. The very name attributed to the site of sacrifice (Jireh) means ‘God will provide’, and no doubt portends the ram that miraculously appears out of a thicket. So, maybe one CAN ‘give back the gift of life itself.’ Certainly, Abraham comes pretty close. Only, the completion of the action requires an absolute separation between sacrificial intention and sacrificial outcome. God Himself must break into Abraham’s action and impose His own form upon it – by pure act of grace.
There is clearly a relationship here between the possibility of this separation of intention and outcome and the power of God to shape the sacrifice. Without God’s authority to ordain, ‘Let this be for that’, no such separation would be possible. The action would end in Isaac’s death, or else just couldn’t be undertaken. Yet, given that authority, it becomes possible to envisage a kind of sacrifice which really does give, not just a part, but the whole of what one owes. And such, it would seem, is the kind of sacrifice that the model of Abraham would enjoin upon us.[ii]
How does any of this apply to the sacrifice of the tabernacle cult? The main similarity lies in the divine imposition of the form of its ritual expression. As we made clear in the last chapter, every last detail of tabernacle cult – furnishings and rituals – are minutely specified. It is evident that the outward form of the cult owes no more to the imagination of the sacrificer than the animal sacrifice on Mt Moriah owed to Abraham’s. As if to drive the point home, the content of the lengthy passage detailing the provisions for the construction of the tabernacle gets repeated practically verbatim in the subsequent account of the implementation of those provisions. The case of Abraham, however, indicates how a divinely authorized symbolism (‘Let this be for that) might allow a form of sacrifice that offers more than its offeror can afford.
Thus far, then, the answer to our question – what it is about biblical sacrifice that makes it so special – would seem to lie largely in its being divinely ordained. However, the case of Abraham also points to the possibility that this characteristic might relate to the aspiration (and requirement), in the case of the one true god, that our sacrifice offer back the whole of what we have been given and what we are – not just an agreed share. We are reminded of the great commandment: to love the Lord thy God ‘with all thy heart and all thy soul, with all thy mind and all thy strength’. This is not a demand that will allow of any competing religious commitment. Hence the first commandment: ‘Thou shalt have no other god before me’. And such a religious aspiration/requirement we can acknowledge but not fulfil without supernatural recourse. As we see with Abraham, God – not the human imagination – must prescribe the manner of the offering. Hence the second commandment: ‘Thou shalt not make for thyself an image …’ There is a logic underlying the divine ordinance.
All this we are already able to say.
However, the book of Exodus prescribes another sacrificial action that makes the particular quality of divine symbolism even more specific.
The sacrifice of Passover and the tabernacle cult
You may recall the story of the Hebrews’ eventual flight out of Egypt. How, on the night of the final, and most devastating plague upon their Egyptian masters, the taking of the first-born, the Hebrews are instructed, as a means of avoiding the loss of their own first-born, to slaughter a lamb, daub its blood on the doorpost, and eat the meat in a prescribed manner.
On two occasions, the biblical texts juxtapose the provisions for this and all future Passovers, with instruction for giving of ‘first-fruit’ sacrifices, according to which the first of every harvest, and the first-born of every womb, should be offered to God.[iii] Some scholars have found in this insistent juxtaposition a rationale for the Passover offering. I happen to believe these scholars to be right – and had myself reached the same conclusion prior to reading their work. These scholars argue that the taking of the Egyptian first-born could properly be seen as God’s due – the ‘first-fruits’ of the human, as of the animal, womb.[iv] (In fact, the Egyptian first-born taken at Passover include livestock as well as humans). To this exaction the Hebrews are apparently also subject; only, a special grace-given dispensation (which turns out to mark the final and most divisive stage in the process of their differentiation from the Egyptians as God’s people) allows the Hebrews alone to offer a lamb as a substitute.
The parallels with Abraham should be apparent. In both cases, we have a seemingly extreme religious demand reflecting what we owe to the one source of our being: the offering of the first-born. Then, in both cases, we have a symbolic resolution of the problem this poses for the survival of family and race – at least where God’s people is concerned. Their religion – and theirs alone – allows them to fulfil their obligation to the one and only god by replacing a child of the promise with a grace-given substitute. With the God’s people, as with Abraham, it is as though they had offered up their posterity, though without actually having to do so.
In fact, this same system of sacrificial symbolism is exhibited in the dedication of the entire Levitical priesthood. This we discover from the book of Numbers. The latter makes abundantly clear that the exclusion of the tribe of Levi from any share in the land of the promise and their dedication as a priestly class is in substitution for the Israelite first-born who would have died but for their redemption by the Passover lambs. How? Well, the number of those of serving age among the tribe of Levi are meticulously reckoned up, as are the total of all Hebrew male first-borns known to have been redeemed at the first Passover. The two numbers turn out to be approximately equal – no doubt, ideally, they would have been perfectly so. But in testimony to the symbolic importance of this equivalence, the difference between the two figures is made up through a money offering, reckoned according to the money-equivalent stipulated by the Law for the life of an adult male. Thus, the biblical text could hardly be more explicit that the Levites collectively constitute a substitute for the first born, and, as such, the Lord’s share. They stand, as it were, in the same synecdochic (=part for the whole) relation to Israel as a whole, as Israel, the ‘first-born’, stands to the human race. We see, at both levels the operation of the same divinely-sanctioned system of symbolic equivalence (‘Let this be for that’) that enables humanity’s ultimate aspiration/obligation to be recognized through a divinely-sanctioned equivalent of the sacrifice of the first-born.
As if in testimony to this underlying principle of sacrificial substitution, later Jewish tradition saw the institution of Mosaic cult as prefigured in Abraham’s sacrifice. The Jerusalem temple itself was popularly believed to be located on Mt Moriah. Later traditions also held the efficacy of its cult to have been underwritten by the sacrificial piety of Abraham – and of his son, Isaac, who purportedly consented to his own sacrifice.[v]
In sum, the religion of the Mosaic cult is already, pre-eminently, a religion of grace. It is a religion which doesn’t rein in human aspiration by scaling down god; but accepts that the forms in which such aspiration finds expression, must, if they are to remain true to the aspiration, owe everything to a supernatural grace allowing one thing to substitute for another: in short, a system of symbolic equivalences that is divinely sanctioned. In this way, Israel can continue to offer up what otherwise she would be unable to offer up without ceasing to exist: her only son.
Between blueprint and realization
So much then for the blueprint. Where historically did it lead, this proper religion?
The blueprint may have rested on acts of grace; yet, for all this initial divine warrant, the blueprint was to remain largely that – a blueprint. This becomes apparent from the narratives and prophecies that constitute much of the rest of the Old Testament.
There was indeed a temple built in Jerusalem where the ritual practices went on.
Yet, fundamental as such practices were, the religion specified by the blueprint required more than the exact performance of a set of ritual acts – just as Abraham’s sacrifice on Mt Moriah was more than the mere slaughter of a ram. Its requirements were supposed to express an appropriate sacrificial response to the one true god. They extended the demand for personal and collective purity into every area of social behaviour. Their realization also required a measure of political and politico-religious autonomy. Hence the terms of the covenant assured the people, on God’s side, that He would drive out the nations of Canaan, and protect them from their enemies.
To take up the cause of proper religion in an impious world was never going to be an easy call. Unsurprisingly, Israel did not live up to that vocation – or only very inconsistently. Her prophets warn her religion could not be emptied of devotion, nor her ritual divorced from holiness, without losing its essential meaning. Indeed, if the prophetic texts are to be taken at face value, even formally correct ritual performance seems to have been undermined by the tendency of the people’s rulers to adopt the sacrificial practices of their neighbours. Simultaneously, politico-religious autonomy was threated. As it turned out, Israel only slowly achieved the goal of driving out the nations. As soon as she came anywhere close, she was crowded out by rising Middle Eastern empires such as Assyria and Egypt.
The prophets are at pains to represent such political failures as the consequence of failures of religion rather than the other way round. Yet, it is not hard to imagine how the idolatry and political weakness would have been intimately linked. The Bible records the example of one king of Israel, King Ahaz, who decided to canvass the support of the king of Assyria in his struggle against the local power of Aram. How does he do so? He builds an altar after the model he has seen on his trip to the Assyrian king in Damascus.[vi]
At all events, from the Book of Judges onwards, there recurs, with growing insistence, the theme of God intervening to put things right through calling a leader. And, with the cycle of divine intervention & swift relapse hardening into a pattern, this need for a divinely-ordained saviour becomes an increasingly future hope of a yet more decisive intervention on the part of an ever more messianic leader (if not God Himself), involving radical change affecting the hearts of the people as much as their political fortunes (‘a new heart’, or ‘a new spirit’). This process finally culminates in notions of messiahship which, if not themselves necessarily eschatological (= to do with the end times), certainly clothe themselves in eschatological language and imagery.
And here, with the notion of an eschatological Messiah, we come at last to Jesus.
Summary (2)
From a biblical perspective, there is form of expenditure and a form of identity that takes precedence over all the rest. This is the sacrifice to the one true god. Where other forms usurp that precedence, they are described by the Bible as idolatries. The proper form of sacrifice is also distinguished as entailing an offering of the whole of our being – not just an agreed part. As we learn from the stories of Abraham and the Passover offering, this absolute sacrifice is only realizable through symbolic means – that is, through the authority of the one true god to ordain that, in a certain case, this thing shall stand for that. The sacrifice is important for what it signifies inwardly about the sacrificer’s intention; but its outward form will owe everything to divine imposition, and nothing to the human imagination.
The biblical narrative makes plain that the inauguration of this proper religion was God’s response to human depravity brought about through the fall. On the basis of what we have said, it would seem that sacrifice is at some level a human necessity – if for no other reason because humans cannot live without purpose and community of some kind. On the other hand, fallen humanity, prior to this intervention, would appear to have lost the knowledge of the true source of its being, and, along with that knowledge, the wherewithal to offer its sacrifice worthily. At any rate, the diverse objects of human sacrifice, and the broken and divisive forms of community instituted by mis-directed religion, litter the course of history.
It is also apparent that the vocation of Israel to be the sole representative of proper religion in a world of idolatry was hardly going to be an easy call. As subsequent events were to prove, it was a call that, in the present conditions of humanity, exceeded the capacities of any other than God himself, become human and acting on our behalf.
[i] Knut Rio, ‘Denying the Gift’ in Anthropological Theory 7.4 (December 2007), p.457
[ii] The theologian, John Milbank characterizes the distinctiveness of proper (i.e. biblical) religious practice in terms of its opposition to a pagan sacrifice of ‘pars pro toto’ (i.e. an agreed part for the whole). See, for example, ‘Stories of Sacrifice’, Modern Theology, 12.1, 1996, pp.27-56, p. 52
[iii] Exodus 13.1-6; Numbers 28. 16-31
[iv] For this interpretation of the Passover sacrifice, see: Joh D. Levenson, ‘The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son’, in ed. Jeffrey Carter, Understanding Religious Sacrifice, Continuum, 1993, pp.423-448; John Dunnill, Sacrifice and the Body, Ashgate, 2013
[v] Geza Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism, E.J.Brill, 1973; Bruce Chilton, Abraham’s Curse, Doubleday, 2008, p.166
[vi] 2 Kings 16.10ff.