Analysis of a Scapegoat Sacrifice at the Ancient Greek Thargelia Festival (original) (raw)
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Ethics in Progress, 2022
Humanity has practised animal sacrifice for the greater part of its history, from the time of the Neolithic Revolution. The ritual forms have varied, depending on the culture. They have also been subject to change, in connection with the development of human understanding and knowledge of animals, which is reflected in the ontological, cultural and moral status assigned to animals in the human world. Sacrificing animals involved not only killing them in a particular way – their treatment was sometimes sophisticated or ‘ritualistic’; often it was simply cruel. Human attitudes towards non-human living beings have also evolved in the context of animal killing and sacrifice. The treatment of animals reveals a great deal about human beings – in terms of their culture, beliefs, and morals. The article outlines this issue in a historical manner, referring to the practices adopted in selected cultural circles (in the Mediterranean Basin): ancient Mesopotamia and Greece, as well as in Judaism and Islam. The key findings of researchers are presented, along with the evaluations of philosophers, ethicists and anthropologists.
History of religions, 2019
Gunnel Ekroth, in “Why Does Zeus Care about Burnt Thighbones from sheep? Defining the Divine and Structuring the World Through Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greece,” sets the plate for this volume by reassessing the historical backdrop against which nascent Christian traditions related to animal sacrifice emerge. Animal sacrifice was the central ritual action of ancient Greek religion, as well as in most religions of the eastern Mediterranean in antiquity. Although modern scholars have studied this religious practice for more than 100 years, animal sacrifice has always posed something of a problem, as it is so fundamentally alien to western European Christian culture. In order to understand animal sacrifice in the ancient world, one needs to encounter it in its own historical setting. This means not only exploring its role in what moderns more narrowly construe as the religious sphere, but also in social and political orderings as well. Of central importance, to archaeologists of sacrifice like Ekroth, is the practical execution of the rituals. Ekroth introduces readers to a relatively new wealth of material evidence about animal sacrifice in the pre-Christian, Greek world. Ekroth’s critical contribution is to assess the results of recent research on the archaeology of sacrifice. Her main concern is with historical animal sacrifice as it was actually performed, primarily, in the thysia ritual, which occurred across ancient Greek sanctuaries between the 8th and 1st centuries BCE. At these events, mainly domesticated animals along with the fruit of agricultural labor and libations, after being dedicated to a deity, were sacrificed and shared – with butchered portions ostensibly going to gods like Zeus who preferred thighbones, while the rest of the animal, in particular the meat, was given to the human participants. Ekroth encounters in the material handling, treatment, and distribution of meat derived from ritualized animal sacrifice an ancient structuring of the world. Analysis of these sacrificial rituals provides us with windows to the cosmologies, hierarchies of social power, and group identities associated with those who participated.
"Gods and Daimons in the Platonic Economy of Sacrifice," 32nd SAGP/SSIPS Conference, New York City
“Let us sacrifice, therefore, but let us sacrifice, as is appropriate, offering different sacrifices to different powers,” (De abstinentia 2, §34). Drawing upon Porphyry’s De abstinentia as well as Iamblichus’ De mysteriis and other relevant texts, this paper looks at the systematic and phenomenological dimensions of Platonic philosophers’ accounts of different sacrificial practices, centered on the distinction between animal and vegetarian sacrifices. To what experience of the divine are different sacrificial practices correlated? How do these manifest the ontological differences between theophanies on different planes of being? In particular, how is it that the same deity may be worshiped by animal as well as vegetarian sacrifices? How do the social dimensions of the sacrificial economy relate to the divine providence at work in the world? What are its implications for questions of social justice? What is the significance for the worshiper in a given time and place of the historical accounts writers offer of the institution of diverse sacrificial practices, in accord with Porphyry’s notion that “It remains for those who come later to heal by purifications the faults concerned with food of those who came before,” (2, §31)?
Philosophy and the End of Sacrifice Disengaging Ritual in Ancient India, Greece and Beyond Edited by
Beyond righteousness and transgression: Reading the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Judas from an acosmic perspective, 2016
In this paper, a new perspective on Gnostic myth is argued for. Traditionally, a negative view on cosmos, expressed in so-called anti-cosmic myths were supposed to lead to world rejection and often a rebellious subversive attitude and conduct. A pro-cosmic myth, on the other hand, would lead to engagement in society and ethical reflection and conduct. As Michael A. Williams argued in Rethinking Gnosticism, there is very little evidence for an anti-cosmic attitude on the part of the Gnostics. But the question remains: what function would an anti-cosmic myth have? In this paper Jörgen Magnusson presents a new reading of the Gospel of truth and the Gospel of Judas, based on a so-called acosmic perspective, not to be confused with anti-cosmic perspective. This perspective explains how the Gnostic might use myths in ethical and theological discourses, with a much more multivalent position than hitherto has been recognized.
Traditionally used to designate bloody rituals practiced in primitive societies, the notion of sacrifice is commonly understood as a strategic investment in which the renunciation to something valuable is compensated by a more advantageous return. Sharing such a functionalist perspective, social theorists describe sacrifice as a means to renewing social and/or religious bonds through the transgression of social and/or religious boundaries. However, social theorists do not explain why men need to renew such bonds – i.e. what lies behind the human desire to unite with the divine and why violence exists in the first place – and ultimately leave unresolved the question of sacrifice’s deep origins. This article examines how two French theorists, namely Georges Bataille and René Girard, manage to overcome the theoretical constraints faced by their predecessors and offer an innovative answer to the question of sacrifice’s deep origins, providing Western functionalist sacrifice theories with an unprecedented depth.