Human Sacrifice In Jewish And Christian Tradition

The present volume asks to which extent ancient practices and traditions of human sacrifice are reflected in medieval and modern Judeo-Christian times and also includes contributions concerned with the Ancient Near East and Ancient Greece.

Common features of sacrifice -- Theories of sacrifice -- Sacrifice in Jewish tradition -- Sacrifice in Christian tradition -- Sacrifice in Islamic tradition

Among the many religious acts condemned in the Hebrew Bible, child sacrifice stands out as particularly horrifying. The idea that any group of people would willingly sacrifice their own children to their god(s) is so contrary to modern moral sensibilities that it is difficult to imagine that such a practice could have ever existed. Nonetheless, the existence of biblical condemnation of these rites attests to the fact that some ancient Israelites in fact did sacrifice their children. Indeed, a close reading of the evidence—biblical, archaeological, epigraphic, etc.—indicates that there are at least three different types of Israelite child sacrifice, each with its own history, purpose, and function. In addition to examining the historical reality of Israelite child sacrifice, Dewrell’s study also explores the biblical rhetoric condemning the practice. While nearly every tradition preserved in the Hebrew Bible rejects child sacrifice as abominable to Yahweh, the rhetorical strategies employed by the biblical writers vary to a surprising degree. Thus, even in arguing against the practice of child sacrifice, the biblical writers themselves often disagreed concerning why Yahweh condemned the rites and why they came to exist in the first place.

Glory and Agony is the first history of the shifting attitudes toward national sacrifice in Hebrew culture over the last century. Its point of departure is Zionism's obsessive preoccupation with its haunting "primal scene" of sacrifice, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, as evidenced in wide-ranging sources from the domains of literature, art, psychology, philosophy, and politics. By placing these sources in conversation with twentieth-century thinking on human sacrifice, violence, and martyrdom, this study draws a complex picture that provides multiple, sometimes contradictory insights into the genesis and gender of national sacrifice. Extending back over two millennia, this study unearths retellings of biblical and classical narratives of sacrifice, both enacted and aborted, voluntary and violent, male and female—Isaac, Ishmael, Jephthah's daughter, Iphigenia, Jesus. Glory and Agony traces the birth of national sacrifice out of the ruins of religious martyrdom, exposing the sacred underside of Western secularism in Israel as elsewhere.

"The near sacrifice and miraculous restoration of a beloved son is a central but largely overlooked theme in both Judaism and Christianity. This book explores how this notion of child sacrifice constitutes an overlooked bond between the two religions."--

Sacrifice is a well known form of ritual in many world religions. Although the actual practice of animal sacrifice was largely abolished in the later history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it is still recalled through biblical stories, the ritual calendar and community events. The essays in this volume discuss the various positions regarding the value of sacrifice in a wide variety of disciplines such as history, archaeology, literature, philosophy, art and gender and post-colonial studies. In this context they examine a wide array of questions pertaining to the 'actuality of sacrifice' in various social, historical and intellectual contexts ranging from the pre-historical to the post-Holocaust, and present new understandings of some of the most sensitive topics of our time.