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half3clipse t1_jcyont7 wrote

Reply to comment by Probably_Not_Evil in Saudi Arabia stone ruins were pilgrimage sites, where an ancient cult gathered to sacrifice animals about 7,000 years ago by marketrent

in a lot of places they were kinda. in many ancient religions the gods were viewed as powerful members of the community. You throw a party, you make sure they're included.

More deliberate and specific rituals also happened of course but if you were slaughtering a goat for food and are going to celebrate something? Might as well make a sacrifice to whoever the relevant deity was at the same time. If they like it, you might get a bit of divine favor, and you sure wouldn't want them to feel like they were snubbed.

Its not a coincidence that when animal offerings were burnt or etc, they were often parts we couldn't eat, or only a small part of the animals. Rituals where the whole animal was given up were less common and often reserved for really important things.

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xiaorobear t1_jcyzasr wrote

> Its not a coincidence that when animal offerings were burnt or etc, they were often parts we couldn't eat, or only a small part of the animals.

Of course it's not a coincidence, you can't take credit away from Prometheus tricking Zeus into choosing the inedible parts! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trick_at_Mecone

(ie a fun explanation for why, as you said, the humans get the best bits)

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SwadianZunist t1_jd0w8up wrote

Why don’t people ever talk about this context when they talk about Prometheus? It seems vital.

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OtisTetraxReigns t1_jd1xt4k wrote

Most people only know about the black goo. And Guy Pierce’s bad old-man makeup.

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cosmotosed t1_jd0i6hh wrote

Clearly Zeus was from Nobility if he couldn’t discern the difference between a pile of bones and a pile of meat with a cow stomach on top ;)

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XAos13 t1_jcz79rx wrote

>slaughtering a goat for food

Also the priest makes sure the knife is as clean as possible. The blood drains completely etc. Anything else would be an insult to God. Who might retaliate with a plague.

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StekenDeluxe t1_jcz7qhj wrote

> Also the priest makes sure the knife is as clean as possible. The blood drains completely etc. Anything else would be an insult to God.

Sorry in which religion is this the case?

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XAos13 t1_jcz87is wrote

In the 1st century BC, almost all of them in the middle east. Today, we leave it to butchers.

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StekenDeluxe t1_jcza377 wrote

Sorry, which specific religions are you talking about?

FWIW, it may be worth noting that you can find plenty of sacrificial traditions wherein the blood is commonly included as part of the offering. The Hittites used to pour blood into sacrificial pits. At least in the Luwian-Hurrian sacrificial tradition as attested from Kizzuwatna, the blood of the sacrificial animals was specifically given to the gods to drink. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is similarly said to pour the blood of a ram and a ewe into a pit in the ground, presumably as offerings to chthonic deities, in order to consult the dead. And so on and so forth.

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XAos13 t1_jcze64w wrote

>blood ... given to the gods to drink. pour the blood of a ram ... into a pit

Requires the blood to be drained. You just cited two examples of what I meant. The parts reserved for the gods are the parts humans don't eat.

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StekenDeluxe t1_jczfoeo wrote

I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Earlier, you wrote the following:

> the priest makes sure the knife is as clean as possible. The blood drains completely etc. Anything else would be an insult to God.

Are you saying that the insult would be to include any of the sacrificial animal's blood as part of the offering? Or that the insult would be to include only a part but not all of the sacrificial animal's blood?

Also, you mentioned an "insult to God," but you still haven't specified which "God" this would be. It's all terribly unclear.

> The parts reserved for the gods are the parts humans don't eat.

Which parts are you talking about? The blood? If so, that makes no sense at all. Gods and men alike could consume blood - it was considered perfectly fine food. Blood was famously a main ingredient in the "black soup" of the Spartans. Surely they weren't alone in this. Folks back then could ill afford to discard any part of a slaughtered animal.

EDIT: I don't mind the downvotes, at all, but would much prefer counter-arguments of some kind. Anyone?

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IFailedTuringTestAMA t1_jd089p9 wrote

I think he’s just pointing out how the traditions are rooted in logic for the time. Some were to prevent the spread of disease and others are explanations for why the gods got the bits we don’t want. And I’m pretty sure most cultures didn’t consider blood a food or something to be eaten. I wouldn’t mind seeing your source on the Gods enjoying it, though.

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StekenDeluxe t1_jd0dx9m wrote

> And I’m pretty sure most cultures didn’t consider blood a food or something to be eaten.

If you could list a few examples from the ancient world of cultures where cooking with blood was considered wrong or taboo, I'd love to see them.

> I wouldn’t mind seeing your source on the Gods enjoying it, though.

Sure thing!

In Billie Jean Collins' Pigs at the Gate: Hittite Pig Sacrifice in Its Eastern Mediterranean Context, she describes how in a rite from Kizzuwatna,

> "the petitioner digs a hole in the ground and kills a piglet […] so that its blood flows into the pit. Various offerings of grains and breads are placed into the pit and the primordial deities are invited to eat the food and drink the blood of the piglet."

Furthermore, in Gary Beckman's Blood in Hittite Ritual, he explains how

> "… The syntagm aulin karp- must indicate the positioning of the victim’s throat to receive the fatal slashing. After the blow had been struck, the officiant could control the direction taken by the resultant eruption of blood, sending it upward or downward. It is this distinction that is expressed by the pair of technical terms ‘slaughter up’ versus ‘slaughter down’…"

And he continues:

> "In this regard the Hittites seem to have observed a practice similar to that of the ancient Greeks by which animals offered to celestial and earthly gods were generally killed with their throats upward, while those intended for chthonic deities met their end with throats turned earthward."

Apparently none of these gods had a problem with being sprinkled with blood - quite the opposite!

As mentioned, Odysseus' sacrifice of the ram and the ewe is described in the Odyssey - the relevant passages are 10.504-540 and 11.13-50.

Oh and another example from the Greek world - in Pindar's Olympian 1, the deified Pelops is explicitly said to receive "blood-sacrifices" at his "much-frequented tomb."

Likewise, Menander Rhetor describes a happy birth thusly - "every relative and friend was full of hope; they sacrificed to the gods of birth, altars ran with blood, the whole household held holiday."

There are many, many more examples of altars being smeared with blood. Picking a few examples at random, you've got the Hyndluljóð, where the young king smears the sacrificial hǫrgr with ox blood - as does a princess in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, and an injured hero in Kormáks saga.

I mean I could go on and on, but yeah - there are plenty of examples.

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IFailedTuringTestAMA t1_jd1dk2a wrote

Gods don’t actually exist which is what I was getting at due your phrasing… It’s interesting that now you went out on your own and found all the sources that the person you were originally, pedantically arguing with would’ve found useful to prove you wrong about the blood offerings haha

Also, those are all blood offerings to gods, not those same cultures eating blood… I feel like this is an information dump of irrelevant info

It’s sort of the original commenters point - they offer blood to gods claiming it’s sustenance but those same cultures aren’t necessarily eating that blood. They’re taking the good meat

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Ok-disaster2022 t1_jczqccu wrote

So it doesn't take much practice or experience to find leaving blood in the body, especially when cooked is pretty unpleasant. Draining the blood is common pretty much world wide for meat, as is letting it rest to have the rigor mortis dissipate.

Ironically though, depending on society, butchers may be considered a profession for the lowest levels in society. I believe in Japan's social stru ture for example the butchers and leatherworkers were lowest level.

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Mayor__Defacto t1_jczyssy wrote

Sure, because they deal with things that are considered taboo/unfit for human consumption (like blood)

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StekenDeluxe t1_jd02or5 wrote

> things that are considered taboo/unfit for human consumption (like blood)

To be clear, that is not a universal taboo.

As mentioned, the Spartans (as an example) used pig's blood for their famous "black soup" - surely they weren't alone in thinking of blood as potential food.

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DaddyCatALSO t1_jd1gsu8 wrote

Using the drinaed blood as an *ingredient* was not at all rare.

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StekenDeluxe t1_jczs0j5 wrote

Right, sure, I'm not denying any of that.

The other gentleman, however, didn't make the claim that the blood of the sacrificial animal was drained because it makes the meat more pleasant to consume for humans, but because not doing so "would be an insult to God" - a very different explanation.

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Xtorting t1_jd0q0so wrote

For Judaism, any new Temple that is raised must have all the tools and instruments cleaned with the blood of a red heifer (cow). This was specifically laid out in the law of Moses. Once the 3rd Temple is raised there will be animal sacrifices again. However, it is important to note that Judaism have not had a new Temple to make any animal sacrifices in over 2000 years.

The reason Christians stopped blood sacrifices was due to Jesus shedding his blood as a sacrifice for us. Some sections of Christian faiths believe Christ will bring back blood sacrifices when he returns. Technically, there is a symbolic blood sacrifice for Christians during the sacrament every Sunday. Wine or water symbolizing the blood of Christ.

Muslims have continued the tradition of annual animal sacrifices to this day commemorating Abraham (Ibrahim) sacrificing his son.

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nrin005 t1_jd00xso wrote

To be fair to the person you are responding to, your examples are centuries earlier than the 1st century BCE they referred to

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StekenDeluxe t1_jd0287e wrote

That is true.

I still wonder which specific 1st century BCE religions the person had in mind, though - would have loved to learn more!

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Ok-disaster2022 t1_jczpv1s wrote

Also the priests often got to eat the sacrifices if there was edible elements.

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half3clipse t1_jd06jna wrote

Sacrifices specifically performed by priests were not really the norm. They happened, they existed, but often those were for really big really important rituals where you need someone to ensure it's performed correctly. But even then the role of the priest was not much what the modern conception looks like. Ancient polytheistic religions weren't just "Christianity but with more sky daddies'. The priests role was to ensure orthopraxy, not orthodoxy.

The impetus for a sacrifice was far from always some rarefied churchy thing. If someone in your family was making a journey you might invoke some god to look on favor of whatever their goal was and see to their safe return, and propose to the god that if they do so you'd celebrate their return and success, and the god role in it by making a sacrifice to that god. And you might involve a priest in determining if the god agreed to those terms (determine portents was very much seen as a skill and if you ask the god for help and the portents say '"Don't do this" you'd want to put those plans off). But on their safe return you wouldn't just hand the animal off to a priest and wash your hands of the whole thing. The sacrifice would be part of your families celebration of their success and return. It's not the priests eating the food, it's you.

Even if you're not trying to ask for some specific thing, your local gods would be powerful members of your community. So as mentioned if you were celebrating something (Slaughtering an animal and the food that came from it would be cause enough to celebrate) you'd make sure any god who was relevant was included just on general principle. The animal grew well and strong, did not die to illness or wild animals, and now you and your household have a bounty of food. Clearly the gods looked in favor on that, and they'd deserve to be included in that celebration as much or more than any of the members of the household. Unless there was some specific agreement with the god to make a sacrifice, the sacrifice wouldn't be made out of obligation, but because not doing so would just be plain rude.

A lot of sacrifices wouldn't have been "Well we need to waste this animal as a sacrifice to keep a god happy, but a least the priests can eat it", but "We're slaughtering this animal for food to eat ourselves. So we're going to offer some relevant god an appropriate portion of that bounty as thanks." In a modern context, a community BBQ would be a wholly appropriate event to make some offerings, because it would not do to snub some of the most powerful and important figures of that community.

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DaddyCatALSO t1_jd1gzne wrote

That's why paul goes on so much about "meat sacrificed to idols" it was really the only red meat msot peoplke got

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akodo1 t1_jd09pke wrote

If you don't give something up, it's not a sacrifice. Pouring whiskey on the grave of a deceased friend is a kind of sacrifice. Taking a drink in his honor is not.

If it was a sacrifice then no, it or at least parts of it were not eaten. If all the normal bits were eaten then it would be a feast in honor of x not a sacrifice to x. Note it's likely that a few high value but also symbolic parts were wasted rather than eaten. Lots of sacrifice is of the heart which is burnt (otherwise it's good vitamin rich food) or blood which soaks into the ground (rather than caught in bowls and made into foods like blood pudding)

But humans like to play games, lots of sacrifices were of bits like bones or hooves that had very little use. Or people would sacrifice a proxy, maybe make a little clay cow, and throw that in the fire

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StekenDeluxe t1_jd0fli7 wrote

I mean even the term "sacrifice" has been problematised for some of these reasons. As several people have pointed out, a lot of this stuff could probably better be described as large-scale feasts, to which entire communities were invited - including the gods, who were seen as potential allies, to be swayed with food and drink.

If I host a BBQ in my backyard, I might pay for the meat to be grilled, and in that sense I am in a sense "sacrificing" something - in that I am thereby giving up something of value - but calling the entire BBQ a "sacrifice" would nevertheless be quite wrong.

Scholars who study the idea of "sacrifice" are, these days, very aware of all of this and therefore tend to be quite careful indeed about how the term is used.

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