The Encyclopedia of World Religions

sacrifice S 401

terms of what is sacrificed, who performs the sac rifice, who or what allegedly receives it, who ben efits from it, what occasions it, where and when it is performed, and how it is supposed to work. Examples can only begin to hint at this variety. In ancient Greece festivals to the Olympian gods were something like barbecues to which both gods and mortals were invited ( see G REEK RELIGION ). The community led the victims in procession to an elevated open-air ALTAR . The gods descended from the sky. The sacrificers slaughtered, butchered, and cooked the animals. Only the gods received some portions. Mortals received the rest. Sacrifices known as “hecatombs” were the largest feasts. At them the Greeks killed and cooked a hundred (or more) oxen. The priests of ancient India known as BRAHMINS developed an elaborate complex of sacrifices. They sacrificed animals, dairy products, and an intoxi cating liquid called soma. Wealthy patrons spon sored major sacrifices and received their benefits. In time brahmins gathered the chants, rules, and explanations for the sacrifices into sacred books known as the V EDA . They suggested that the sac rifice worked because of connections between ele ments of the rituals and elements of the universe. Peoples who lived in urban Mesoamerica before the arrival of Columbus also had well developed sacrificial systems. The sacrifices of the Aztecs are notorious ( see A ZTEC RELIGION ). People often offered their own blood to the gods. At times—it is very difficult to say just how often—they offered entire human beings. They either cut off their heads, cut out their hearts, or drowned them. (Ancient Greeks and Indians occasionally sacrificed human beings, too.) Some religions and religious movements have rejected sacrifice. The Aztecs looked back to a mythological Toltec leader, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, who eliminated many sacrifices, including human sacrifice. In India during the sixth century B . C . E . B UDDHISM and J AINISM rejected sacrifice entirely. Some Hindus, too, came to deemphasize sacri fices in favor of ascetic exercises. The Persian prophet Z ARATHUSTRA eliminated animal sacrifice; he retained only the sacrifice of the sacred liquid

validity of sacraments as conveying God’s GRACE , quite apart from the qualities of the person per forming them. Lutherans say that sacraments con vey God’s grace when they are received in FAITH ( see L UTHERANISM ). Calvinists say sacraments are signs of God’s grace, but they do not convey it ( see P RESBYTERIAN AND R EFORMED CHURCHES ). Some writers use the term “sacrament” for important rituals in other religions, but the word has too many Christian connotations. Applying it to non-Christian rituals almost always results in misunderstanding. sacrifice One of the most important religious RITUALS . Sacrifice is the giving up of objects or the killing of animals or persons for religious pur poses. The most common form of sacrifice is the reli gious killing of animals. Indeed, animal sacrifice is in some sense the ruler by which scholars measure all other sacrifices. If a ritual act resembles animal sacrifice, it is a sacrifice. In the course of history human beings have made sacrifices of virtually anything and everything at their disposal: plants; smoke; dairy products; material products such as cloth, paper, statues, money, alcohol, drugs, and cooked food; rocks and minerals; speech; human blood and body parts; even entire human beings. THE PRACTICE OF SACRIFICE No one knows exactly when the practice of sacri fice began. Most animal sacrifices involve domes ticated animals. Therefore, some scholars have suggested that sacrifice began when people first domesticated animals. In this view, sacrifice was the proper way to kill such animals for meat. Evi dence for this view is scanty. It requires several controversial assumptions: that human culture went through a single series of developmental stages; that the culture of, say, prehistoric hunters closely resembled that of hunters today; and that rituals of the Paleolithic period cannot properly be called sacrifices. There is no such thing as a typical sacrifice. Sacrifices vary in a number of ways. They vary in