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The Rhetoric of Sacrifice Syracuse University SURFACE Religion College of Arts and Sciences 2011 The Rhetoric of Sacrifice James W. Watts Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/rel Part of the Biblical Studies Commons, Comparative Methodologies and Theories Commons, and the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation James W. Watts. "The Rhetoric of Sacrifice" Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice in the Bible. d.E Christian A. Eberhart. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. 3-16 This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religion by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RITUAL AND METAPHOR Jt8r Society of Biblical Literature SACRIFICE IN THE BIBLE ~ Resources for Biblical Study Tom Thatcher, New Testament Editor Edited by Christian A. Eberhart Number68 RITUAL AND METAPHOR Society of Biblical Literature SACRIFICE IN THE BIBLE Atlanta RITUAL AND METAPHOR CONTENTS SACRIFICE IN THE BIBLE List of Abbreviations .................................................. vii Preface ............................................................... xi Copyright © 2011 by the Society of Biblical Literature Introduction: Sacrifice in the Bible . xiii Christian A. Eberhart All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form PART 1: SACRIFICE IN THE HEBREW BIBLE/OLD TESTAMENT or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should 1. The Rhetoric of Sacrifice ........................................... 3 be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Office, Society of Biblical Literature, james W Watts 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30333-0399, USA. 2. Sacrifice? Holy Smokes! Reflections on Cult Terminology for Understanding Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible ...................... 17 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Christian A. Eberhart Ritual and metaphor: sacrifice in the Bible I [edited by] Christian A. Eberhart. 3. The Place of Human Sacrifice in the Israelite Cult ..................... 33 p. em. - (Society of Biblical Literature resources for biblical study; no. 68) jason Tatlock Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 978-1-58983-601-3 (paper binding: alk. paper) - ISBN 978-1-58983-602-0 4. The Role of Sacrificial Language in Prophetic Rhetoric ................. 49 (electronic format) Goran Eidevall l. Sacrifice in the Bible-Congresses. 2. Christian literature, Early-History and criti­ cism-Congresses. I. Eberhart, Christian. PART 2: SACRIFICE IN EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE BS1199.S2R58 2011 220.6'7-dc23 2011039047 5. Yom Kippuring Passover: Recombinant Sacrifice in Early Christianity .......................... 65 jeffrey S. Siker 6. Spiritualization of Sacrifice in Paul and Hebrews ...................... 83 Printed on acid-free, recycled paper Stephen Fin/an conforming to ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) and ISO 9706:1994 7. Who Is Sacrificing? Assessing the Early Christian Reticence standards for paper permanence. to Transfer the Idea of the Priesthood to the Community .............. 99 § Timothy Wardle 1 THE RHETORIC OF SACRIFICE fames W. Watts The language of sacrifice pervades our contemporary rhetoric of politics, religion, and popular culture. References to sacrifice and depictions of sacrifice can be found in music lyrics, movies, political speeches, and news stories about sports, economics, and biomedical research. It is, of course, ubiquitous in the rhetoric of war. Fascination with the idea of sacrifice is also reflected in the large number of academic theories about its nature and origins. For the past century and a half, scholars of religion, sociology, psychology, and anthropology have advanced theo­ ries to explain how sacrifice works religiously and why its practice and effects are so widespread. 1 Yet every attempt to describe and explain "sacrifice" always fails to encompass the whole range of ritual and nonritual behaviors called sacrifices. The entanglement of theory and ideology in discussions of sacrifice has led some to conclude that the word sacrifice describes nothing at all but is rather an evaluative term. The classicist Marcel Detienne argued: The notion of sacrifice is indeed a category of the thought of yesterday, conceived of as arbitrarily as totemism-decried earlier by Levi-Strauss-both because it gathers into one artificial type elements taken from here and there in the sym­ bolic fabric of societies and because it reveals the surprising power of annexation that Christianity still subtly exercises on the thought of these historians and soci­ ologists who were convinced they were inventing a new science. 2 Wilfred Lambert, in describing the religions of ancient Mesopotamia, also avoided the term sacrifice because it "is so loaded and ambiguous a term that it is © James W. Watts, 2007; revised and reprinted with the permission of Cambridge Univer­ sity Press from James W. Watts, Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus: From Sacrifice to Scripture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 173-92. 1. Anthologized by Jeffrey Carter, ed., Understanding Religious Sacrifice: A Reader (Lon­ don: Continuum, 2003). 2. Marcel Detienne, "Culinary Practices and the Spirit of Sacrifice;' in The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks (ed. M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant; trans. P. Wissig; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 1-20 [20]. 1 4 RITUAL AND METAPHOR WATTS: THE RHETORIC OF SACRIFICE 5 best not to use it. In modern usage sacrifice is too dependent on biblical institu­ THEORIES OF SACRIFICE tions and concepts to be a suitable vehicle to express ancient Mesopotamian prac­ tices:'3 A survey of theoretical discussions of sacrifice led Ivan Strenski to conclude Modern theories of sacrifice fall rather obviously into two groups based on whether that "sacrifice is what might be better called a syndrome, rather than an objective their explanations emphasize human or animal sacrifices. Of course, most theo­ 'thing' with its name written on it:'4 Such skepticism has found a foothold in bib­ rists discuss both, but they inevitably explain one in terms of the other, which is lical scholarship as well: in his commentary on Leviticus, Erhard Gerstenberger more fundamental for their theories. concluded, "Our attempts to delineate the three notions of offering, community, Theories based principally on animal offerings have been espoused throughout and atonement as the comprehensive motives represent merely modern rational­ the last century and a half. W. Robertson Smith, for example, traced the origins izations, and function only in a limited fashion as aids to understanding that can­ of sacrifice to a community's consumption of the totem animal in a festival meal. not completely illuminate the mystery of sacrifice:'s He considered other kinds of sacrifice, including human sacrifice, to be corrupted These negative judgments can be generalized to say that sacrifice is an evalua­ forms of this original communion meal. So for him eating animals lay behind all tive term rather than a descriptive one.6 It expresses value judgments about behav­ traditions of sacrifice whether they involve animals or not,7 Many other theorists iors rather than describing a distinct form of behavior. An unusual feature of the have also emphasized the primacy of animal offerings, though in very different term sacrifice, however, is that it conveys not just one but rather several contra­ ways from Smith and each other. Thus Edward Tylor's gift theory of sacrifice de­ dictory evaluations of actions. The following survey will show that evaluations of fined the offering of humans as a version of cannibalism, that is, as an alternative particular ritual and nonritual acts as "sacrifices" depend on analogies with stories food offering to animal meat.8 Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss based their socio­ of sacrifice. Such narrative analogies ground the idea of sacrifice, which is mean­ logical theory on the most complete descriptions of sacrificial rituals available to ingless without them, and they account for the opposite valuations that it can con­ them, the animal offerings of the Vedic (Indian) and biblical (Jewish) traditions. vey. Comparative analyses of sacrificial rituals have confused the narrative analogy Human offerings, even "the sacrifice of the god;' derive from older animal rites.9 ("sacrifice") with the rituals to which it is applied. Walter Burkert traced sacrifice back to the hunting of animals, Jonathan Z. Smith I will defend these claims by categorizing the major theories about sacrifice in to the domestication of animals, and Marcel Detienne to the cooking of animals. 10 modern scholarship on the basis of their use of rituals and narratives. This catego­ And Nancy Jay, though focusing on sacrifice as a patriarchal rite bent on expel­ rization shows that the ritual/narrative distinction lies at the heart of the theoreti­ ling symbols of "femaleness;' followed Hubert and Mauss in seeing animals as the cal confusion over sacrifice. I will then turn to the problem of ritual interpretation principal vehicles for such expiation. 11 as it impinges on the debates over sacrifice before concluding with a brief analysis Over the same time period, other theorists have focused first on human sacri­ of
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