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treated as most holy and serves as holy food for the priests.
In view of all this, in the mind of P there could be no other answer to the question as to the etficacy of sacrifice, but simply this: God has connected the accomplishment of atonement with the obedient discharge of the sacrificial prescriptions ; whoever fulfils these and gets the priest to perform the atoning usages, is forgiven (Lv 4 °6 51-85 and oft.). The ritual, especially the prescribed presenting of the blood, is accordingly the indispensable con- dition of atonement, but is not yet exactly synony- mous with the latter. On the contrary, the for- giveness of sin flows from the grace of God exactly as in the Prophets, only that the latter regard the outward offering as a thing that may be dispensed with, provided the true penitent disposition is present, whereas, according to P, it is imperatively required that this disposition be accompanied by its outward manifestation in the shape of an offer- ing. Even from the point of view of linguistic usage, the difference between the prophetical and the priestly view of atonement is characteristic. According to the prophets (ef. above, p. 689*), God Himself covers the sin, 7.e. He declares it invisible, so that the sinner is safe from the wrath of God, whereas, according to P, the prvest covers the person of the sinner by means of presenting the blood [only in exceptional cases also through an unbloody offering, Ly 5"*-], so as to shield him from the destroying holiness of God.
The circumstance that the process of atonement is primarily connected with the presenting of the blood, explains itself naturally as a powerful after- influence of primitive sacrificial usages, in which the sprinkling of the blood had a different significa- tion. The latter is no longer in the mind of P ; for even the view is untenable, that the blood, being the seat of life, is regarded as the most precious gift which man can offer. At most, we might hold that P has still the idea of a symbolical (not real) satisfactio, or, in other words, the notion that, through the offering of the life of the animal, sym- bolical expression is given to the acknowledgment that, strictly speaking, the sinner’s own life is for- feit to God. But the main idea continues to be, as already noted, this: ‘thou shalt procure atone- ment in this and in no other way, because God has so commanded it.’
(8) The technical questions connected with the sacrifices may here be passed by. Their various degrees of value come out clearly in the order in which they have to be offered in all cases where a number of different kinds of sacrifice are combined. (i.) The first place is always held by the propitiatory offerings, which include two species: the sin-offering (nxvn) and the guilt- offering (o¥x). The difference between the two is not very easy to determine from the descriptions contained in Ly 4f. Both are presented even in the ease of unintentional and even unconscious offences ; but the guilt-offering (Lv 5%:) has very largely to do with occasions when one has uncon- sciously (vv.!:!7) or consciously (v.20f- [612-]) inter- fered with the property of another, whether God or one’s neighbour. The guilt-offering (in the shape of a ram without blemish) is always coupled with resti- tution of what has been NPoRELy taken, with an additional fifth of its value. Of sin-offerings the holiest and most important are naturally those presented on the Great Day of Atonement (Lv 16), when the blood of the victims is brought by the high priest into the Holy of Holies, and thus into the immediate presence of the Divine form of manifestation whose seat is the sacred Ark. It is quite a unique feature that in this instance P introduces, along with the customary atoning medium of sacrifice, another, perhaps very ancient,
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form of propitiation, namely, the loading of the ‘goat for ‘Azazel’ with the sins of the people by the high priest, and the sending of this goat away to ‘Azazel into the wilderness. The interpretation of the name ‘Azazel is disputed ; it may mean either ‘the apostate’ or ‘the one who takes away [sin].’ Only, there can be no doubt of this, that a personal being must be intended, for in v.5*: he is expressly opposed to Jahweh; and it is equally clear that he is thought of as an unclean demon dwelling in the desert (or as the prince of the demons that dwell there?), The sending away of the goat to him is simply an act symbolical of the cleansing of the sacred God-consecrated soil from sin and guilt (cf. the precisely similar example of a symbolical re- moval of uncleanness in Lv 14) ; sin and guilt are sent off into the unclean wilderness to the demon with whose character they correspond. It would be quite wrong to discover in P’s recognition of ‘Azazel any tendency to dualistic conceptions. Azazel is not a power hostile to Jahweh, a power to be in any way compared with Him, but simply a denon, standing outside the theocracy, but none the less on that account subject to Jahweh, the almighty Creator and Ruler of the world (see, further, art. AZAZEL in vol. i.).