Diversity Of Sacrifice

The term "sacrifice" belies what is a complex and varied transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon. Bringing together scholars from such diverse fields as anthropology, archaeology, epigraphy, literature, and theology, Diversity of Sacrifice explores sacrificial practices across a range of contexts from prehistory to the present. Incorporating theory, material culture, and textual evidence, the volume seeks to consider new and divergent data related to contexts of sacrifice that can help broaden our field of vision while raising new questions. The essays contributed here move beyond reductive and simple explanations to explore complex areas of social interaction. Sacrifice plays a key role in the overlapping sacred and secular spheres for a number of societies in the past and present. How religious beliefs and practices can be integral parts of life on individual and community levels is of fundamental importance to understanding the past and present. In addition to aiding scholarly research, Diversity of Sacrifice enables students to explore this rich theme across Europe and the Mediterranean with clear discussions of theory and data.

The present volume was made possible by the Norwegian Research Council’s generous funding of the Human Sacrifice and Value project (FRIPROHUMSAM 275947). It explores concepts of human sacrifice. This volume explores concepts of human sacrifice, focusing on its value – or multiplicity of values – in relative cultural and temporal terms, whether sacrifice is expressed in actual killings, in ideas revolving around ritualized, sanctioned or sanctified violence or loss, or in transformed and (often sublimated) undertakings. Bridging a wide variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, it analyses a spectrum of sacrificial logics and actions, daring us to rethink the scholarship of sacrifice by considering the oft hidden, subliminal and even paradoxical values and motivations that underlie sacrificial acts. The chapters give needed attention to pivotal questions in studies of sacrifice and ritualized violence – such as how we might employ new approaches to the existing evidence or revise long-debated theories about what exactly ‘human sacrifice’ is or might be, or why human sacrifice seems to emerge so often and so easily in human social experience across time and in vastly different cultures and historical contexts. Thus, the volume will strike a chord with scholars of sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, religious studies, political science and economics –wherever interest is focused on critically rethinking questions of sacred and sanctified human violence, and the values that make it what it is.

Examining the theme of child sacrifice as a psychological challenge, this book applies a unique approach to religious ideas by looking at beliefs and practices that are considered deviant, but also make up part of mainstream religious discourse in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Ancient religious mythology, which survives through living traditions and transmitted narratives, rituals, and writings, is filled with violent stories, often involving the targeting of children as ritual victims. Christianity offers Abraham's sacrifice and assures us that the “only begotten son” has died, and then been resurrected. This version of the sacrifice myth has dominated the West. It is celebrated in an act of fantasy cannibalism, in which the believers share the divine son's flesh and blood. This book makes the connection between Satanism stories in the 1980s, the Blood Libel in Europe, The Eucharist, and Eastern Mediterranean narratives of child sacrifice.

This book presents revised papers delivered at the 1998 and 1999 Taubes Minerva Center for Religious Anthropology conferences. The papers from the 1998 conference discuss the role of sacrifice in religious experience from a comparative perspective. Those from the second conference examine alternatives to sacrifice. The first theme has been much elaborated in recent scholarship, and the essays here participate in that on-going inquiry. The second theme has been less explored, and the goal of this volume is to stimulate examination of the topic by offering a set of test cases. In both sections of the volume a wide variety of religious traditions are considered. The essays show that in spite of the inclination we may sometimes have to consider sacrifice part of the idolatrous past, long overcome, it remains a persistent and meaningful part of religious experience.

This book examines Maya sacrifice and related posthumous body manipulation. The editors bring together an international group of contributors from the area studied: archaeologists as well as anthropologists, forensic anthropologists, art historians and bioarchaeologists. This interdisciplinary approach provides a comprehensive perspective on these sites as well as the material culture and biological evidence found there

This volume provides a thorough introduction to the major classic and modern writings dealing with religious sacrifice. Collected here are twenty five influential selections, each with a brief introduction addressing the overall framework and assumptions of its author. As they present different theories and examples of sacrifice, these selections also discuss important concepts in religious studies such as the origin of religion, totemism, magic, symbolism, violence, structuralism and ritual performance. Students of comparative religion, ritual studies, the history of religions, the anthropology of religion and theories of religion will particularly value the historical organization and thematic analyses presented in this collection.

Illustrated with scores of drawings and halftone photos, this guidebook to the mythology of Mexico and Central America focuses mainly on Mexican Highland and Maya areas, due to their importance in Mesoamerican history.