Sacrifice is an act or offering made to a deity. A sacrifice can serve as propitiation, or a sacrifice can be an offering of praise and thanksgiving.
Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly existed before that. Evidence of ritual human sacrifice can also be found back to at least pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica as well as in European civilizations. Varieties of ritual non-human sacrifices are practiced by numerous religions today.
Terminology
The Latin term sacrificium (a sacrifice) derived from Latin sacrificus (performing priestly functions or sacrifices), which combined the concepts sacra (sacred things) and facere (to make, to do). The Latin word sacrificium came to apply to the Christian eucharist in particular, sometimes named a "bloodless sacrifice" to distinguish it from blood sacrifices. In individual non-Christian ethnic religions, terms translated as "sacrifice" include the Indic yajna, the Greek thusia, the Germanic blōtan, the Semitic qorban/qurban, Slavic żertwa, etc.
The term usually implies "doing without something" or "giving something up" (see also self-sacrifice). But the word sacrifice also occurs in metaphorical use to describe doing good for others or taking a short-term loss in return for a greater power gain, such as in a game of chess.
Theories of sacrifice While no scholarly consensus on the origins and function of sacrifice exist, multiple scholars have developed theories on sacrifice.
E.B. Tylor suggested that sacrifice could be understood as a gift to the divine, either valued by the divinity on its own merits, valued as an act of homage, or valued based on the hardship of the sacrifice itself.
William Robertson Smith in The Religion of the Semites argued that the sole function of sacrifice was for humans to achieve communion with the divine. Robertson Smith based his theory on the sacrificial system of the Hebrew Bible, where the eating of burnt offerings by priests brought them closer to God. Robertson Smith linked Ancient Hebrew sacrifice to sacrifices of totem animals, a claim which was rejected by later anthropologists.
Influenced by Robertson Smith, Émile Durkheim in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life argued that sacrifice served a dual function: social communion and divine communion. Working from ethnographies of the Aboriginal Australians published by Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis James Gillen, Durkheim argued that the Aboriginal Australians sacrificed to reinforce communal ties, as sacrifices took place during periods of social gathering. Both the broader functionalist explanations of Durkheim and the accuracy of his ethnographic sources have been questioned by later scholars.
Building on Durkheim's functionalist theories of sacrifice, Durkheim's nephew and disciple Marcel Mauss collaborated with historian Henri Hubert to argue that sacrifice is a form of gift directed to the gods with the social expectation that the gods would offer a greater gift at a later date.
Sigmund Freud, influenced by Robertson Smith's theories of sacrifice and by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, argued in Totem and Taboo that the sacrifice of a totem animal is a symbolic recapitulation of the murder and cannibalization of the primal father. Sacrifice, Freud argued, is a neurotic ritual that amounts to a displaced expiation of a sense of guilt produced by repressing the Oedipus complex.
René Girard argued that sacrifice functioned as a temporary catharsis for the mimetic desire individuals have to possess what others have. Thus, sacrifice functions as a form of displaced aggression on an innocent scapegoat. Girard rejected Freud’s interpretation that the victim of the sacrifice was guilty, emphasizing that the victim is a surrogate target for, not a symbol of, collective violence.
Nancy Jay argued that sacrifice creates and maintains patrilineal kinship structures. Jay observed that sacrificial rituals were almost exclusively performed by men. Jay argued that the shedding of “pure” blood in sacrifice by men contrasted with the shedding of “impure” blood in childbirth and menstruation by women, allowing patriarchs to ideologically justify the patrilineal inheritance of wealth and power.
Georges Bataille in The Accursed Share argued that sacrifice in pre-modern societies was a deliberate form of conspicuous consumption of surplus value.
Animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practiced by adherents of many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature. It also served a social or economic function in those cultures where the edible portions of the animal were distributed among those attending the sacrifice for consumption. Animal sacrifice has turned up in almost all cultures, from the Hebrews to the Greeks and Romans (particularly the purifying ceremony Lustratio), Egyptians (for example in the cult of Apis) and from the Aztecs to the Yoruba. The religion of the ancient Egyptians forbade the sacrifice of animals other than sheep, bulls, calves, male calves and geese.
Animal sacrifice is still practiced today by Muslims as part of the annual Eid al-Adha celebrations. It is also practiced by followers of Santería and other derivatives of the Yoruba religion as a means of curing the sick and giving thanks to the Oriṣa (deities). However, in Santeria, such animal offerings constitute an extremely small portion of what are termed ebos—ritual activities that include offerings, prayer and deeds. Christians from some villages in Greece also sacrifice animals to Orthodox saints in a practice known as kourbánia. The practice, while publicly condemned, is often tolerated.
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice was practiced by many ancient cultures. People would be ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease a god or spirit.
Some occasions for human sacrifice found in multiple cultures on multiple continents include: Human sacrifice to accompany the dedication of a new temple or bridge. Sacrifice of people upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader; the sacrificed were supposed to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next life. Human sacrifice in times of natural disaster. Droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure by deities, and sacrifices were supposed to lessen the divine ire.
There is evidence to suggest Pre-Hellenic Minoan cultures practiced human sacrifice. Corpses were found at a number of sites in the citadel of Knossos in Crete. The north house at Knossos contained the bones of children who appeared to have been butchered. The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur (set in the labyrinth at Knossos) suggests human sacrifice. In the myth, Athens sent seven young men and seven young women to Crete as human sacrifices to the Minotaur. This ties up with the archaeological evidence that most sacrifices were of young adults or children.
The Phoenicians of Carthage were reputed to practise child sacrifice, and though the scale of sacrifices may have been exaggerated by ancient authors for political or religious reasons, there is archaeological evidence of large numbers of children's skeletons buried in association with sacrificial animals. Plutarch (ca. 46–120 AD) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo. They describe children being roasted to death while still conscious on a heated bronze idol.
Human sacrifice was practiced by various Pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica. The Aztec in particular are known for the practice of human sacrifice. Current estimates of Aztec sacrifice are between a couple of thousand and twenty thousand per year. Some of these sacrifices were to help the sun rise, some to help the rains come, and some to dedicate the expansions of the great Templo Mayor, located in the heart of Tenochtitlán (the capital of the Aztec Empire). There are also accounts of captured conquistadores being sacrificed during the wars of the Spanish invasion of Mexico.
In Scandinavia, the old Scandinavian religion contained human sacrifice, as both the Norse sagas and German historians relate. See, e.g. Temple at Uppsala and Blót.
In the Aeneid by Virgil, the character Sinon claims (falsely) that he was going to be a human sacrifice to Poseidon to calm the seas.
Human sacrifice is no longer officially condoned in any country, and any cases which may take place are regarded as murder.
By religion Ancient China and Confucianism
During the Shang and Zhou dynasty, the ruling class had a complicated and hierarchical sacrificial system. Sacrificing to ancestors was an important duty of nobles, and an emperor could hold hunts, start wars, and convene royal family members in order to get the resources to hold sacrifices, serving to unify states in a common goal and demonstrate the strength of the emperor's rule. Archaeologist Kwang-chih Chang states in his book Art, Myth and Ritual: the Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (1983) that the sacrificial system strengthened the authority of ancient China's ruling class and promoted production, e.g. through casting ritual bronzes.
Confucius supported the restoration of the Zhou sacrificial system, which excluded human sacrifice, with the goal of maintaining social order and enlightening people. Mohism considered any kind of sacrifice to be too extravagant for society.
Chinese folk religion
Members of Chinese folk religions often use pork, chicken, duck, fish, squid, or shrimp in sacrificial offerings. For those who believe the high deities to be vegetarian, some altars are two-tiered: The high one offers vegetarian food, and the low one holds animal sacrifices for the high deities' soldiers. Some ceremonies of supernatural spirits and ghosts, like the Ghost Festival, use whole goats or pigs. There are competitions of raising the heaviest pigs for sacrifice, known as Shen Zhu, in Taiwan and Chaozhou.
Christianity
In Nicene Christianity, God became incarnate as Jesus, sacrificing his son to accomplish the reconciliation of God and humanity, which had separated itself from God through sin (see the concept of original sin). According to a view that has featured prominently in Western theology since early in the 2nd millennium, God's justice required an atonement for sin from humanity if human beings were to be restored to their place in creation and saved from damnation. However, God knew limited human beings could not make sufficient atonement, for humanity's offense to God was infinite, so God created a covenant with Abraham, which he fulfilled when he sent his only Son to become the sacrifice for the broken covenant. According to this theology, Christ's sacrifice replaced the insufficient animal sacrifice of the Old Covenant; Christ the "Lamb of God" replaced the lambs' sacrifice of the ancient Korban Todah (the Rite of Thanksgiving), chief of which is the Passover in the Mosaic law.
In the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Lutheran Churches, the Methodist Churches, and the Irvingian Churches, the Eucharist or Mass, as well as the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Catholic Churches and Eastern Orthodox Church, is seen as a sacrifice. Both Lutheran and Orthodox Christians teach: "that the Eucharist is a sacrifice in the sense that 1) it is Christ, not the celebrant priest, who offers and is offered as the sacrifice, 2) Christ’s sacrifice of atonement is made once and for all with respect to God, and 3) it is sacramentally enacted so that its benefits are distributed to the believers each and every time the Eucharist is celebrated. Both Orthodox and Lutherans also regard the Eucharist as a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise (Heb. 13,15)."