The primary religious rituals of Israelite religion involved sacrifices and offerings. The ritual system within the Israelite cult evolved around gifts and offerings that were presented before Yahweh. In examining the book of Leviticus, the sacrificial system of the Israelites can be identified. It is this sacrificial system that was handed down by God through Moses that allowed the people of Israel to cross over the gap between their own weaknesses and corruption to the expectations presented by God. Sacrifices symbolized an acknowledgement of guilt and a need for divine grace and forgiveness. Understanding the Israelite Cult The Israelite cult is set apart from other cults in that the people were bound together to worship one God. “The distinctiveness of the Israelite cult is nothing other than the limitation of cultic activity to one particular patron deity” (Anderson, 1987;3). The cult’s foundation of worship centered on those sacrificial gifts and offerings that were given to Yahweh. In addition, the Israelite cults were village centered. In the beginning of the 12th century BC, settlements on the hill country of Judea and Ephraim began to increase in number and density. The farming that took place on these hills allowed Israelites to gain an independent economy from surrounding cult economies (Anderson, 1987;23). Sacrifice within the social context can be transgressed into two aspects, one relating to the offender, and the other being the offended one, God. “If individuals entered a state incongruent with good relations with God, they had to undergo rites to restore them to a normative status” (Davies, 1985;155). Thus the sacrifice encompassed this social dimension. The part played by God in the social ... ... middle of paper ... ... Bibliography: Anderson, G. 1996. “Sacrifices and Offerings in Ancient Israel” in Community, Identity, and Ideology: Social Science approach to the Hebrew Bible., ed. Charles E. Carter. Davies, D. 1985. “An Interpretation of Sacrifice in Leviticus” in Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament. Ed., Bernhard Lane. Gerstenberger, Erhard S. 1996. Leviticus. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Leach, Edmund 1985. “The Logic of Sacrifice” in Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament. Ed., Bernhard Lane. Nelson, Richard 1993. Raising Up a Faithful Pries: community and Pristhood in Biblical Theology. Louisville: Westminster/John Know Press. Smith, William Robertson 1996. “Sacrifice: Preliminary Survey” in Community, Identity, and Ideology: Social Science approach to the Hebrew Bible., ed. Charles E. Carter.
The Bible: The Old Testament. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Sarah Lawall et al. Vol 1. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 1999. 47-97.
Judaism is one of the oldest religious practices all over the world. It literally gave a start to two the most popular religions nowadays: Islam and Christianity. It seems that everybody must be familiar with the basics of this religion, though it is not true. The majority of people know only a few attributes or ceremonies that Judaism is using until modern times, such as Menorah (the candelabrum with seven branches), Star of David (traditionally known as the symbol of Judaism) and, let’s say, the Bar Mitzvah ceremony. What people are missing (apart from the associations) is how truly symbolic all of them are in the practice of Judaism. Bar or Bat Mitzvah, for example, present practically the basis of Jewish culture and religion. The idea of how and why it became so important is what we will try to look through.
Berlin, Adele, Marc Zvi. Brettler, and Michael A. Fishbane. "Job." The Jewish Study Bible. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 1501-1505. Print.
New International Version. [Colorado Springs]: Biblica, 2011. BibleGateway.com. Web. 3 Mar 2011. Accessed 22 April 2014.
In the early text of the Hindu tradition, the Veda, everything evolved around sacrifice. As a means of acquiring something, the elite class would make sacrifices to their gods in order to obtain the things they so desperately needed. An example of this would be the slaughtering of an animal to the gods in exchange for a sufficient rainy season during harvest time. The essence of what it is to be a human being in the Hindu tradition comes from a later text known as the Upanishads. This text did not focus on sacrifice rituals, but instead focused on the quest for knowledge.
Harris, R. L., Harris, R. L., Archer, G. L., & Waltke, B. K. (1999). Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed.) (566). Chicago: Moody Press.
The finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Qumran Documents is the single most important religious find of the twentieth century. These manuscripts have revolutionized the entire field of biblical study and have the ability to destabilize the mass of western religious thought as we know it today. For the information contained in these scrolls, include books of the Hebrew Bible that predate the next earlier example by one thousand years. The data found in these scrolls enable us to form a historically accurate reconstruction of the time period formative of Rabbinic Judaism and of Christianity. By studying the customs and the religious practices of the Essene people we can put together a snapshot of the religious and political times that were in place at the start of Christianity.
Robinson, B. A. (2008, March 30). Books of the Hebrew Scripture . Retrieved May 7, 2011, from Religious Tolerance: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_otb3.htm
Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament, An Introduction. 2nd. Edited by Richard Clifford and Daniel Harrington. New York/Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2012.
There are many themes running through the Old Testament myth of Exodus – slavery, rescue and redemption, guidance, commandments on how to live, the creation of a nation, and God’s power over other gods. In this paper I will explore what appears to be the chief reasoning behind the creation of the Exodus myth – the explanation of the creation of a monotheistic religion and the similarities of the Exodus myth to the ancient myths, as well as how one should approach the reading of the myth.
LaSor, W., Hubbard, D., Bush, F., & Allen, L. (1996). Old Testament survey: The message, form, and background of the Old Testament (2nd ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans
Rogerson, J. W., & Carroll, R. M. D. (2004). Theory and practice in Old Testament ethics.
Not all Jewish communities continued on their faith with YHWH. Before the exile, many communities began to scatter all over the Middle East, Egypt and Babylon; however, the exile...
Kohn, Risa Levitt, and Rebecca Moore. A Portable God: The Origin of Judaism and Christianity. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Print.
Wole Soyinka, like other Nigerian writers, characterizes the conflict of cultural and religious choices in his country and emphasizes the distinct customs of society (Tucker 9). Born into the Yoruba tribe and culture, Soyinka’s writings are clearly influenced by Yoruba culture and practices. Communities and societies in Africa today religiously partake in ancient rituals that some may consider extreme, such as cannibalism and self-mutilation. In the village in The Strong Breed, the extent to which individuals will go in order to rid a community of its sins and faults is tested by the sadistic annual sacrificial killing of an innocent individual for communal benefit. Wole Soyinka introduces ritualistic human societies that expose the ferocity of human beings and emphasize the cruel nature of their members. The moral disgust that permeates the community prior and subsequent to the ritual, the uncommon traits seen in characters triggered by a ritualistic society, and dialogue that highlights increasing ferocity of human beings, brings into question the validity of whether or not ritualistic sacrifice is ultimately beneficial to a community.