RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Oomparative Religion
supernatural interferes to secure justice and right, always powerful in the primitive realm, still works in civilized society, as may be seen in the oath and the otherwise meanmgless ceremony of kissing the Bible in court, which is the last vestige of the primitive, ancient, and medieval ordeal. The influence of the transmigration upon ethics may be seen in the written records of religious peoples, and heard in the naive explanations of tribes yet without writing, as they tell why this one became a snake and that one a noble animal. Distinctions between modes of existence are made by savages and attributed to ethical or non-ethical behavior in this Hfe. To this contributed belief in the return of the dead. A crude heaven and hell is found among savages as a cardinal doctrine of belief, in which existence hereafter is conditioned by conduct in this life; reward and retribution are the salient ideas.
d. Primitive Beligrion in the Sphere of Cult:
The most characteristic and illuminative facts in this region are connected with sacrifice (Lat. sacrificium, Gk. hierourgia, " action within the sphere of things sacred ")• In modern usage the word implies painful or costly self-denial. In this it follows the later developments of the institution, in the earlier phases such a sense was entirely lacking. The motive of sacrifice is to initiate or maintain friendly relationship with the supernatural, or to recover it if lost, the end being the blessing of mankind. That it had its origin as far back as the animistic stage is clear both from the forms and the conceptions attached to the rite and from the anthropopathic views of the supernatural powers with which sacrificial communion was had. Sacrifice as seen in history may be treated as communal, honorific, and piacular.
A full definition of communal sacrifice embraces the following. It is in its primitive form a festal meal, with the god and his worshipers as participants, a meal equally necessary to both parties to it, the essential part of which was a slain victim;
the title to participation was vested I. Commu- in kinship as then conceived; the meal nal Sacri- was both a pledge of the tie of kinship fice. and a means of its continuance; the
celebration was a community affair, and the entire consimiption of the victim was a necessity. The unfolding of the definition requires the remark that sacrifice antedated the idea of property (cf. Jevons, pp. 385, 390, and the authorities cited there). The leading idea was not a gift to the god, but a meal in which god and worshipers partook in common of a victim (Smith, Rel. of Sem., p. 226). The notion of the kinship of gods and men is an old one of which the " Our Father " of the Lord's Prayer and the line of Aratus quoted by Paul (Acts xvii. 28) are late expressions. It is animistic in origin, arising in the conceived parity of all existence. The god was of the same stock as his worshipers, and commensality impHed all that these mutual relations involved. The meal was festal. Observers have often remarked that the earUer stages of reUgion seem less afHicted with awe than the later. Instances as wide apart as the Vedic religion compared with the Brahmanic,
and the celebrations of the period of the Judges and the Priestly sacrifice of the Hebrews confirm this. The normal spirit was that of music, dancing, and mirth. Of this meal the god was a partaker', not the only recipient. That the deity should eat was a notion not at all abnormal, and is illustrated by the fact that the dead were supposed to need nourishment and were supphed, often by channels opening into the grave. Advancing culture modified this idea, and to gods was given the blood or the fat or both, and later the food was suited to the spiritual nature of deity, being etherealized by fire. But for long the gods were supposed to require nourishment. In Egypt records exist of the threat that were not the gods complacent the magic word of power would be uttered which would blot out the worlds and starve the gods out of existence. Anthropopathism was carried to its logical limits (cf. Judges ix. 13). Inasmuch as kinship was a matter of blood, as a part of the feast a slain victim was required; without blood there was no sacrifice (Smith, Rel. of Sem., pp. 280, 376). The mystic sacrifice of totemism and the camel sacrifice cited from Nilus when a camel was torn in pieces alive and eaten on the spot (cf. G. Allen, Idea of God, pp. 323-324, London, 1897; J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 482, ib. 1903; J. M. Robinson, Pagan Christs, pp. 110 sqq., ib. 1903; J. G. Frazer, Golden Bough, iii. 134 sqq., ib. 1900; Reville, " Hibbert Lectures," pp. 89 sqq., ib. 1884) may as a survival point to the time when the victim was eaten raw and in the blood. The totem as a mystic sacrifice appears as the only case in which the animal was eaten by its human kin, except in case of dire necessity. The explanation of this mystic rite is that it was an actual eating of the god to renew the kinship and to obtain some share of his qualities, as a savage devours the heart of his slain enemy that he may absorb the courage and skill of that enemy. The explanation of the law of consuming the entire animal is not easy. It may have been that nothing might be left to cause a breach of taboo, or it might have been a desire to obtain as much of the feast as possible. The Jewish Passover is but one case out of many that may be adduced for the custom.
The origin of honorific sacrifice was likewise anthropopathic. Man's conception of deity led him to attribute to the gods the same 2. Honor- pleasure in gifts as he himself felt, so ific Sacri- that honorific sacrifice in perhaps flee. three varieties developed out of varying experience, viz.: emergential, implying special comnmnion when a favor was desired; periodical (a form which the communal came to take), having the idea of tribute; and piacular, which became the general type when the idea of sin (by no means a primitive idea) came into experience. Honorific sacrifice was the effect of transferring to deity the position, attributes, and qualities of a ruler. As the chief was pleased with gifts and kindly disposed to those who made them, and in emergencies would grant his favor to a donor, and as he demanded them as tribute, deity was regarded as governed by the same motives. Out of this grew the gifts and libations at
Comparative Relig-ion