Bible Studies: Essays on Phallic Worship and Other Curious Rites and Customs

SACRIFICES

 
No sacrifice to heaven, no help from heaven;
That runs through all the faiths of all the world.
 

—Tennyson—Harold.

The origin and meaning of sacrifices constitute a central problem of ancient religion. It links indeed the stronghold of orthodox Christianity—its doctrine of the Atonement—with the most barbarous customs of primitive savages. When we hear of the Lamb slain for sinners, the very phrase takes us back to the time when sins were formally placed upon the heads of unconscious animals that they might be held accursed instead of man; and to the yet older notion of human sacrifice as a most acceptable offering to the gods.

Sacrifices were primarily meals offered to the spirits of the dead. It is not hard to understand how they arose. The Hindoos who placed upon the grave of an English officer the brandy and cheroots which he loved in life in order to propitiate his spirit illustrated a prominent aspect. Just as men were appeased with gifts, usually of substances which minister to life, so were spirits supposed to be, and the general form which the offering took was something in the shape of what the Americans call a square meal. The Romans never sat down to eat without placing a portion aside for the Lares and Penates. Professor Smith, in his Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, gives abundant evidence that the early sacrifices of the Semitic people were animals offered at a meal partaken by the worshippers. The sacrifice, he holds, was originally a nourishing of the common life of the kindred and their god by a common meal. The primary communion with deity was communion of food. This may not be very poetical, but it is natural and true. Eating and drinking together were primarily signs of fraternity. Only to his own kin did early man own duty, and his god was always of his own kin. Jehovah was, as we are often told, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He was their father and their king. When Ruth said to Naomi, "Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God," the exclamation showed that taking up new kindred involved a change of worship. Professor Smith says: "It cannot be too strongly insisted on that the idea of kinship between gods and men was originally taken in a purely physical sense." The modern Christian's explanations of biblical anthropomorphisms may be dismissed as unfounded assumptions. The story in Genesis of the sons of God going with the daughters of men is one of the remnants of early myths unexplained by later editors.

The Bible God, as any careful reader will perceive, was very partial to roast meat. One of the earliest items recorded of him is that he had no respect for Cain and his offering of vegetables, while to Abel who brought him the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof, he had respect. He much prefered mutton to turnips. When Noah offered a sacrifice, we are told "He smelt a sweet savor" (Gen. vii. 21). But the Lord was by no means content with the smell. On his altars huge hecatombs of animals were continually being slaughtered, and the choicest portions set aside as the Lord's. The Lord God seems to have been extremely fond of fat, especially that about the rump. As the richest part of the animal, it was reserved with "the two kidneys and the fat that is upon them" especially for the Lord (Lev. iii. 9-11). Let it be noticed that the Lord God required no sacrifices except of eatable animals, oxen, rams, goats, lambs, and kids. Fishes he had no regard for, and of birds only turtle doves and pigeons were his favorite dishes. Wine and oil he took to wash them down, but never mentioned water. Like his ministers, he lived on the fat of the land,⁴⁴ claiming as his own the firstlings of the flock. From his claim to the first born, it appears that Jahveh was originally given to "long pig," but in the case of Abraham's son, he took a ram instead. He was, however, so partial to blood that he interdicted the sacred fluid to his worshippers, but demanded that it should be poured out upon his altar (Deut. xii.) Even the early Christians made it a fundamental rule of the Church that disciples should abstain from blood, and from things strangled (Acts xv. 20). The blood was supposed to be especially the Lord's.

Let not the serious reader suppose we are jesting. Hear what Prof. Robertson Smith says.

"All sacrifices laid upon the altar were taken by the ancients as being literally the food of the gods. The Homeric deities 'feast on hecatombs,' nay particular Greek gods have special epithets designating them as the goat-eater, the ram-eater, the bull-eater, even 'cannibal,' with allusion to human sacrifices. Among the Hebrews the conception that Jehovah eats the flesh of bulls and drinks the blood of goats, against which the author of Psalm 1. protests so strongly, was never eliminated from the ancient technical language of the priestly ritual, in which the sacrifices are called lechem Elohim, 'the food of the deity.'"⁴⁵

Our translators of the passages where this phrase occurs (Lev. xxi. 8, 17, 21, 22; Num. xxviii. 2) have done their best to conceal the meaning, but like the phrase "wine which cheereth God and man" (Judges ix. 13), it takes us back to the time when gods were supposed, like men, to eat, drink, and be refreshed.

It was a fundamental rule of the Jewish faith that no one should appear before the Lord empty handed (Exodus xxiii. 15.) Not to take him an offering was as improper as in the East it still is to approach a chief or great man without some present. A sacrifice was as imperative as it now is to put something in the church plate. When God made a call on Abraham, with Eastern hospitality the patriarch procured water to wash his feet and killed a calf for the entertainment of his visitor. The Lord God was not a vegetarian but a stout kreophagist. In Numbers (xxix. 13) he orders as a sacrifice "of a sweet savor unto the Lord, thirteen young bullocks, two rams and fourteen lambs of the first year."

From the frequent mention of the "sweet savor," it seems likely that the original idea of the god partaking of the food, developed into that of his taking only the essence of the food. As God got less anthropomorphic he lost his teeth and had, poor spirit, to be content with the smell of the good things offered up to him. We gather from Lev. vii. 6 that the kidneys, fat and other delicacies really fell to the lot of the priests, and some people have found a sufficient reason for the sacrifices to God in the fact that the priests liked mutton.

In 1 Samuel ii. 13-16 we are told how it was the custom of the priests that when any man offered sacrifice, "the priest's servant came, while the flesh was in seething, with a fleshhook of three teeth in his hand. And he struck it into the pan or kettle, or caldron or pot; all that the fleshhook brought up the priest took for himself."

In the time of David the Lord had a table of shew-bread set before him—that is, a table spread with food in the temple, where he was supposed to come and take it when he desired, just as Africans place meal and liquor in their fetish houses. Such tables were set in the great temple of Bel at Babylon, and the story of Bel and the Dragon in the Apocrypha explains how the priests and their women and children came in by a secret door and ate up the things which were supposed to be consumed by the God.

While the Lord and the priests were certainly not vegetarians, neither did they insist on a vegetable diet for their people. The Lord's table of fare is set out in Leviticus xi., and a very curious menu it is. The hare is expressly excluded "because he cheweth the cud," although he does nothing of the kind; but "the locust after his kind, the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind," are freely permitted. Another divine regulation, and one which throws much light on the divine methods, is recorded in Deut. xvi. 21—"Thou shalt not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is within thy gates that he may eat it, or thou mayest sell it unto an alien." To this day the Jews are particular in observing this godly method of disposing of diseased meat.

To arrive at the truth in regard to the question whether human sacrifice was at one time a portion of the Jewish religion, or whether it was, as the orthodox generally assert, simply a corruption copied from the surrounding heathen nations, it is necessary to bear in mind that every portion of the Jewish law is of later date than the prophets. The book of the law was only found in the time of King Josiah, who opposed this very practice (2 Kings xxiii. 10), and there is no evidence of its existence before that date. There is reason to believe that the priestly code of Leviticus is later still, dating only from the time of Ezra. Instead of reflecting the ideas of the age of Moses, it reflects those of almost a thousand years later. It is therefore only in the historical books that we can expect to find traces of what the actual religion of Israel was. There is ample evidence that human sacrifice formed a conspicuous element. Ahaz, King of Judah, "burnt his children in the fire" (2 Chron. xxviii. 3); Mannasseh, King of Judah, was guilty of the same atrocity (2 Chron. xxxiii. 6); Jeremiah denounces the children of Judah for having "built the high place of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire" (vii. 31); Micah remonstrates against both animal and human sacrifice—"Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams; shall I give my first-born for my transgression; the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" (vi. 7). In the well-known story of Abraham and Isaac, as in the Greek story of Iphigenia, and the Roman one of Valeria Luperca, we have an account of the transition to a less barbarous stage in the substitution of animal for human sacrifice. It was natural that this legend should be ascribed to the time of the father of the faithful, but there is, as we have seen, abundant evidence of the practice existing long subsequent to the time of Abraham, who was by no means surprised at and in no way demurred to the divine command, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee unto the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of" (Genesis xxii. 2). Anyone who at the present day should exhibit a faith like unto that of the patriarchal saint would be in jeopardy of finding himself within the walls of a criminal lunatic asylum.

That human sacrifices lasted long after the time of Abraham we have an instance in the case of Jephthah, who vowed that if Jahveh would deliver the children of Ammon into his hand, he would offer up for a burnt offering whosoever came forth from his house to meet him upon his return from his expedition (Judges xi. 30, 31). In order to tone this down the Authorised Version reads "whatsoever" instead of "whosoever," which is supplied in the margin of the Revised Version. Despite the emphatic statement that Jephthah did with her according to his vow, it has been alleged that because his daughter petitioned to be allowed to bewail her virginity for two months, she was only condemned to a life of celibacy. This is preposterous. Jahveh, unlike Jesus, had no partiality for the unmarried state. He liked a real sacrifice of blood. To lament childlessness was a common ancient custom, and even the Greek and Latin poets have represented their heroines who were similarly doomed to an early death, such as Antigone, Polyxena, and Iphigenia, as actually lamenting in a very similar manner their virginity or unmarried condition. There is no single instance in the Old Testament of a woman being set apart as a virgin, though, as we have seen, there are numerous indications of human sacrifices.

Even in the Levitical law sanction is given to human sacrifice. "None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be ransomed; he shall surely be put to death" (Lev. xxvii. 29). Jahveh insisted on the sacrifice being completed. David sent seven sons of Saul to be hung before the Lord to stay a famine.

That a party remained in Israel who considered human sacrifice a part of their religion is evident also from Jeremiah, who says: "They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind" (xix. 5). These strong asseverations were evidently called forth by assertions made by persons addicted to such practices, and those persons had the support of Ezekiel, who, in contradiction to the statements of Jeremiah, contended that Jahveh gave them up to pollution, even as he hardened the heart of Pharaoh that they might know that he was the Lord (Ezek. xx. 25-26).

THE PASSOVER

"Christ our passover is sacrificed for us."

—Paul (1 Cor. v. 7.)

The Passover is the most important and impressive festival of the Jews, instituted, it is said, by God himself, and a type of the sacrifice of his only son. Its observance was most rigorously enjoined under penalty of death, and although the circumstances of the Jews have prevented their carrying out the sacrificial details, they still, in the custom of each head of the family assuming pro tem, the rôle of high priest, preserve the most primitive type of priesthood known.

The Bible account of the institution of the Passover is utterly incredible. After afflicting the Egyptians with nine plagues, God still hardens Pharaoh's heart (Exodus x. 27), and tells Moses that "about midnight" he will go into the midst of Egypt and slay all the firstborn. But in order that he shall make no mistake in carrying out his atrocious design, he orders that each family of the children of Israel shall take a lamb and kill it in the evening, and smear the doorposts of the house with blood, "and when I see the blood I will pass over you." The omniscient needed this sign, that he might not make a mistake and slay the very people he meant to deliver. One cannot help wondering what would have been the result if some Egyptian, like Morgiana in "The Forty Thieves," had wiped off the blood from the Israelite doorposts and sprinkled the doorposts of the Egyptians. Moses received this command on the very day at the close of which the paschal lambs were to be killed. This was very short notice for communicating with the head of each family about to start on a hurried flight. As the people were two million in number and the lambs had to be all males, without blemish, of one year old, this supposes, on the most moderate computation, a flock of sheep as numerous as the people. Who can credit this monstrous libel on the character of God and on the intelligence of those to whom such a story is proffered?

What, then, is the correct version of the origin of the Passover? Dr. Hardwicke, in his Popular Faith Unveiled, following Sir Wm. Drummond and Godfrey Higgins, says it meant "nothing more or less than the pass-over of the sun across the equator, into the constellation Aries, when the astronomical lamb was consequently obliterated or sacrificed by the superior effulgence of the sun." It is noticeable that the principal festivals of the Jews, as of other nations, were in spring and autumn, at the time of lambing and sowing and when the harvest ripened. But while allowing that this may have determined the time of the festival, I cannot think it covers the ground of its significance. The story relates that when Moses first asked Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, it was that they might celebrate a feast in the wilderness which was accompanied by a sacrifice (see Exodus v. i. and iii. 19). This may be taken as indicating that there was known to be a festival at this season prior to the days of Pharaoh. And at the festival of the spring increase of flocks the god must of course have his share.

Epiphanius declares that the Egyptians marked their sheep with red, because of the general conflagration which once raged at the time when the sun passed over into the sign of Aries, thereby to symbolise the fiery death of those animals who were not actually offered up. Von Bohlen says the ancient Peruvians marked with blood the doors of the temples, royal residences, and private dwellings, to symbolise the triumph of the sun over the winter.

The suggestion that owing to peculiarities of diet or of constitution some pestilence afflicted the Egyptians which passed over and spared the Jews, is a very plausible one, and deserves more attention than it has yet received, since it would account for many features in the institution. But there remains another signification, which seems indicated in the thirteenth chapter of Exodus in connection with the institution of the Passover. There we read the order, "Thou shalt set apart [the margin more properly reads "cause to pass over"] unto the Lord, all that openeth the matrix" (verse 12). "And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou will not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem."⁴⁶ Professor Huxley asks upon this passage: "Is it possible to avoid the conclusion that immolation of their firstborn sons would have been incumbent on the worshippers of Jahveh, had they not been thus specially excused?"⁴⁷ In one of the oldest portions of the Pentateuch (Exodus xxii. 29) the command stands simply, "the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me." In Exodus xii. 27, xxiii. 18, xxxiv. 25; and Numbers ix. 13, the Passover is spoken of as particularly the Lord's own sacrifice.

The law proceeds to enjoin that the father shall tell his son as the reason for the festival, how the Lord "slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beasts: therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the matrix being males; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem." Evidently here is the notion of a substitutionary offering, although the reason given is not the true reason. In Exodus xxxiv. 18-20, the festival is brought into the same connection with immediate reference to the redemption of the firstborn. In the story of Abraham and Isaac we have the same idea. God commands the patriarch to offer up his only son as a burnt sacrifice (Gen. xxii. 2), an order which he receives without astonishment, and proceeds to execute as if it were the most ordinary business imaginable, without the slightest sign of reluctance. A messenger from Jahveh, however, intervenes and a ram is substituted.⁴⁸ I do not doubt that this story, like similar ones found in Hindu and Greek mythology, indicates an era when animal sacrifices were substituted for human ones.⁴⁹

The legend is of course far older than the record of it which reaches us. In a notable passage in Ezekiel xx. 25, 26, the Lord declares that he had given his people "statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live." And he continues, "I polluted them in their own gifts in that they cause to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord." The fact that the very same words are used in Ezekiel which are found in Exodus xiii. 12, at once suggests that originally the passover was a human sacrifice, and that of the most abominable kind—the offering of the firstborn—and that the story of the Lord slaying the firstborn of Egypt was an invention to account for the relics of the custom. We know that such sacrifices did remain as part of the Jewish religion. Ezekiel himself says that when they had slain their children to their idols, they came the same day in the sanctuary to profane it (xxiii. 39). Micah argues against the barbarous practice: "Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" (vi. 6). Two kings of Judah, Ahaz and Manasseh, are recorded to have offered up their children as burnt offerings (2 Chron. xxviii. 3, xxxiii. 6), as upon one occasion did the king of Moab (2 Kings iii. 27). 2 Chron. xxx., in relating how Hezekiah commanded all Israel to keep the Passover, says that "they had not done it of a long time in such sort as it was written," and relates how the Levites were ashamed and many yet did eat the Passover otherwise than it was written. And in the account of how Josiah broke down the altars which had been set up by Ahaz and Manasseh one reads "surely there was not held such a Passover from the days of the judges." In other words, it had never been kept in the same fashion within human memory. The keeping of the Passover had been different before this reformation, just as until the age of Hezekiah the Jews worshipped a brazen serpent, which they afterwards accounted for by ascribing it to Moses, the law-giver who had prohibited all idolatry. On the eve of the Passover, to the present day, the firstborn son among the Jews, who is of full age—i.e., thirteen—fasts. This we take to be a rudimentary survival.

If then we interpret the offering of the paschal lamb as being substituted for a human sacrifice, we shall understand how it is at once a thank-offering and yet eaten with "the bread of affliction," the motzahs, or unleavened cakes, and bitter herbs, which are the remaining features of the festival, and this may help to explain the accusation which in all ages has been brought against the Jews, viz., that once in seven years at least they required their Passover to be celebrated with human blood. It is true the accusation has been often brought without evidence, but the Jews themselves profess astonishment at the unanimity with which their opponents have fixed upon this charge. Further, we shall see that in adopting the paschal lamb as the type of Christ, the substitutionary sacrifice for our sins, the Christians were simply reverting to the early savage notion that deities are only to be appeased with blood, and to this degraded belief they have added the absurdity that Christ himself was God, thus making God sacrifice himself in order to appease himself!