The theories above mentioned assume that sacrifice was directly called into e.xisteuce by the religious idea. Another possibihty is that the slaughler'ng ot animals or men came to awaken awe and misgivings in the breast ot the savage, and that he sought to reassure himself bv a procedure which in vested such acts with a religious character and sanction.
Amid this mass of speculation the mo.st certaii; conclu.sion seems to he lliat -sacrilit'e ()ii;.'iiiated in childlil<e ideiis of God, ami that the fundamental motive was to gratify Him hy giving or sharing with Him a meal.
iii. Semitic Sacrifice in the phe - Mosaic I'EumD.— For the period between the dim region of origins and the consolidation of Israel as a nation a certain amount of material is jirofessedly contributed in the i)atriarchal narratives of ,\. The representation driven is that sacrifice origin- ated in the first family when the bloody oflcnng of Abel was accepted "((-n 4'') ; that Noah oflored burnt -offerings after his deliverance (S'-") ; and that by Abraliam and his line it was practised under a variety of forms and with some diversity of ritual. The chief occasions were times of meet- ing with God, and other solemn moments of life : the kind.s of olleriiig in vogue were tlie I'eace- otl'ering (Gn SI"), the Burnt-oliering (22"), the Covenant Sacrifice (15"-), and the Libation (28'") ; the sacrificial material consisted of clean beasts and fowls (8-'"), especially cattle, goats, sheep, and pigeons (15"). Human .sacrifice, it ii- made known to Abraham, is not required by God ('ii'"'). It is also recognized that sacrifice is practised outside the pale of the chosen line (Ex 18", cf. Nu 23"'').
That the kinds of .'^acrilice thus distinguished, the material of sacrifice, and otiier features, corre- spond to the us.age of an early period in the history of Israel is quite certain ; but the references do not carry us back to the earliest phases in the evolution of Semitic sacrifice, lietween the primi- tive form of sacrifice ami the coiiipiirativcly com- |)lex and elevated cultus niirrorcit in these nar- ratives there lies a course of development on which attention has been recently focussed owing to the researches of Wellhausen (Reste arabUchen Hei(lcyitkum.i) and of W. R. Smith (RS). For the rediscovery of the stages and factors of this de-
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SACRIFICE
velopment, reliance is placed on the survivals from heathen Arabia, on the vestiges of Phcenician and other Semitic cults, and especially on the gift of divination which wrests from the phenomena of the matured institution a confession as to tlie course of its earlier life-histoi*y. The special features of Smith's treatment are his insistence on the con- nexion of primitive sacrifice with totemism, and his scheme sliowing the derivation of the varieties of sacrihce from the alleged primitive form, while he also supplements WclUuiusen's elucidation of the growth of sacrificial ritual and the progressive modilication of sacrificial ideas. This reconstructed chapter of history may be outlined as follows : —
(a) Evolution of the varieties of Seinitic Sacrifice. — The orig-inal point of departure, as we have already aeen, is, according to Smith, the sacramental meal, at which an animal wa3 devoured which was akin both to the god and hie wor- shippers, and which in virtue of its sacred properties served as a cement to bind together in closer unioo the I)ivine and the human sharers of the repast {RS^ 313). On this followed a process of differentiation, giviog rise on the one hand to the Sacrificial Feast, on the other to the holocaust. The distinctions between the original sacramental meal and the Sacrificial Feast are two ; the former occurs at rare intervals and the tlcsh is deemed most holy, the latter occurs frequently and the flesh is in use as an ordinary article of diet. The transition is explained on the one hand by the cessation of the belief in the atiinity of animals to man, on the other by times of scarcity and a grow- ing- taste for animal food. Less obvious is it why the primitive sacrifice, which was essentially a joint -meal, should have developed along a second line into a holocaust. The nexus is supplied by the following train of speculation. So long as the victim was a sacred animal there was but one type of sacrifice — the sacramental meal. When totemistic modes of thought disappeared, and domestic animals supplied the sacrificial material, the victim, since it was no longer deemed to be kin, no longer fulfilled the condition necessary to unite the god and his worshippers. The only victim that fulfilled the condition of being akin to worshippers and worshipped was a human victim, and soon solenm occasions recourse was had to human sacrifices. The eating of human tlesh was, however, re- pugnant to natural feeling, and the human victim was therefore offered as a holocaust. And, naturally enough, when an animal came to be substituted for a human victim the holocaust per- sisted as the ap|>ropriate form (Lect. x.). By this account the evolution is carried for^vard to the point represented in the beginnings of Hebrew history — where the Sacrificial Feast and the Burni-offering exist side by side.
(6) Develitpment of Sacrijicial Kitxial. — The oldest Semitic form of ritual, it is supposed, is preserved in a description by Nilus of a Saracen sacrifice. 'The camel chosen as the victim is bound upon a rude altar of stones piled together, and the leader of the band, after inflicting the first wound, in all haste drinks of the blood that gushes forth. Forthwith the whole company fall on the victim with their swords, hacking off pieces of the quivering flesh and devouring them raw, with such wild haste that in a short interval the entire camel, body and bones, skin, blood, and entrails, is wholly devoured' (/i6'2 p. 338). In this savage rite we see the first stage of usages which were to undergo numy niodificatioiis before reachmg familiar shape. — (1) The manipulation of the blood, so im- portant in sacrificial ritual, here begins in the form that the worshippers lap it as it flows, ami tlie god s portion runs out upon the stones. Later the repulsive draught is eschewed, and they are content to be smeared with it — a portion being sprinkled for the god upon the altar or running into a gutter, while some is sprinkled upon the worshippers. This double sprinkling survived to hist^jric times in the Covenant-sacrifice, Ordinarily, however, the whole of the blood was treated as the god's portion, and was conveyed to him on the altar in peace- offerings and burnt-offerings, and also in the later piacular sacrifices. — (2) Conveyance of other portiotis to the god. Assum- ing that the above-mentioned rite IS primitive, the god origin- ally received nothing save a share of the effueetl blood. Gradually, however, other portions, as fat and entrails, were assigned to him, and the question emergt-d as to how they were to be conveyed to him. In the case of libations of blood or wine, they could be supposed to rea*;h him by absorption in the ground, while fat was seen to melt, but the solid in- gredients presented a ditficulty. An earl.v idea was to expose them, and allow them to reach their destination through being devoured by wild beasts. Next, the use of fire came in— originally, as Smith thinks, simply to get rid of the remanent portionsi but afterwards as the means of canying into the sphere of the gods the sublimated essence or the sweet savour of the meal. The usage in which, while the blood is poured out on the altar, the essence of the offering ascends in fire from the altar, is that which has been firmly established at the dawn of Hebrew history- (Wellhausen, op. eit. 110 ff., 'Opfer u. Gaben ' ; liS^, Lect. ix.X— (3) Modificationi of the hwnan m^al. Like the drinking of the warm blood, the eating of the raw flesh had to yield in the course of time to more refined methods. With the appearance of the Burnt-offering it went partially out of use, while in the Sacrificial Feast it appears to nave been at first boiled, at a later period roasted.— <4) Growth