{"id":497,"date":"2005-08-26T01:10:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-26T01:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=497"},"modified":"2005-08-26T01:10:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-26T01:10:00","slug":"497","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=497","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The logistics of sacrifice (2)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part 1<\/a><\/p>\n

Bard College is known for its Classics program. Somewhere on the Web there is a video clip transferred from film of 1930s students in ancient Greek costumes having an Olympic-style competition on the fieldhouse.<\/p>\n

This graphic series from Bard attempts to show the stages of a typical Greek sacrifice of a sheep<\/a>, but it suffers from a degree of prettiness. For instance:<\/p>\n

Scene 14: the improbable fire. No ash buildup, and no one gets smoke in their eyes later<\/p>\n

Scene 16: Half-raw, half-charred sheep heart. . . yum!<\/p>\n

Scene 17: Where did the fire go? Who stripped the bones, and how long did that take? There is archaeological evidence for the burning of bones<\/a>. Does everyone else stand around getting hungry? One source I read suggested that the meat was often boiled (plain or with onions?); another says that priests (or their agents) could sell their portion of the meat in the marketplace.<\/p>\n

Scene 19: That must be wine with a very high alcoholic content!<\/p>\n

Still the basics are there. By comparison, Muslims seem not necessarily to bother with altars<\/a> for their animal sacrifices.<\/p>\n

Christianity, too, grew up in a culture, temple Judaism, that practiced sacrifice, as did surrounding cultures. The idea of Jesus-as-sacrifice must have carried a lot of emotional impact then based on what people had seen for themselves, as opposed to being just a dead metaphor as it is now.<\/p>\n

It’s like “flip side” from phonograph albums<\/a> or all the steam-power metaphors still in our language: “get fired up,” “build up a head of steam.” When did you last fire a steam boiler?<\/p>\n

When I was a child, I was just grossed out by phrases like “washed in the blood of the Lamb.” All bloody–yuck! At least if I had seen blood-splashed altars, it would have meant something to me.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the only way to learn is to do it. An essay in The Pagan Book of Living and Dying<\/em><\/a> describes the outdoor cremation of a corpse on a Texas ranch. The deceased friends’ had the land, the firewood (old corral rails), and the inclination, and it was what he had wanted. So they build a pyre around the corpse and lit it . . . and then had to wait, because a body in a wood fire does not burn instantly. What to do? They had food, drink, and time–so they played games: volleyball or whatever, just like at a picnic. Of course! You always read about “the funeral games” at the burial of some ancient hero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The logistics of sacrifice (2) Part 1 Bard College is known for its Classics program. Somewhere on the Web there is a video clip transferred from film of 1930s students in ancient Greek costumes having an Olympic-style competition on the fieldhouse. This graphic series from Bard attempts to show the stages of a typical Greek […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-497","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":830,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=830","url_meta":{"origin":497,"position":0},"title":"Sacrificing sheep in Jerusalem","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Cambridge University classics professor Mary Beard recently suggested that today's Hellenic Pagans were inauthentic because they did not sacrifice animals.Set aside the Pagans for a moment. What about Jews?A small but controversial movement in Israel wants to revive Temple-based religion, including sacrifice.The present-day Sanhedrin Court decided Tuesday to purchase a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Islam\"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=islam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":494,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=494","url_meta":{"origin":497,"position":1},"title":"The logistics of sacrifice (1)Looking\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The logistics of sacrifice (1)Looking at an artist's rendition of the Roman temple of Minerva Sulis at Bath, UK, you will see a thin plume of smoke arising from the altar outside the temple. There appears to be no fuel, just smoke.I got to thinking about animal sacrifice, not the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10248,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10248","url_meta":{"origin":497,"position":2},"title":"Siberian Shamans Hold Camel Sacrifice \u2014\u00a0It’s Traditional, They Say","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 22, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Watch this powerful video, which is also embedded in this article in the Moscow Times online: \"Siberian Shamans Revive Ancient Camel-Burning Rite \u2018to Help Russia.\u2019\"\u00a0 The location is given merely as \"the Irkutsk region\" but elsewhere there are references to Tuva, a Central Asian republic that is part of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animals\"","block_context":{"text":"animals","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5677,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5677","url_meta":{"origin":497,"position":3},"title":"When Gods Sacrifice to Themselves","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Almost all traditional Pagan cultures have one religious practice in common that contemporary Pagans for the most part avoid: Sacrifice, which means literally \"to make sacred.\" Earlier this month, in fact, at a Pagan camp-out one of the elders was discoursing on the uselessness of sacrifice. If g\/God were a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/9\/91\/Omphalos_pushkin.jpg\/337px-Omphalos_pushkin.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1883,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1883","url_meta":{"origin":497,"position":4},"title":"Giving Animal Sacrifice a Bad Name","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"You know that I am all for polytheism, and I say \"All honor to Durga,\" but isn't this a bit much? The Los Angeles Times reports that more than 40,000 people, many of whom were inebriated, took their sacrificial goats to the Tildiha village temple in Bihar state to pray\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Hinduism\"","block_context":{"text":"Hinduism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=hinduism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13830,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13830","url_meta":{"origin":497,"position":5},"title":"Animal Sacrifice: Are They Doing It Wrong?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 17, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"A possible animal sacrifice location in the Howard Beach area. J.C. Rice (New York Post) The New York Post had two articles recently on apparent animal sacrifice in the Jamaica Bay area of Long Island (politically in both Brooklyn and Queens). \"Animal Sacrifices on the Rise in Queens with Chickens,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"African religion\"","block_context":{"text":"African religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=african-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}