Shamans and Sacrifices to the Gods

Shamans and Sacrifices to the Gods

Joe Barnhart

= Un= iversity of North Texas

In The Daily Life of the Greek Gods, Guilia Sissa and Marcel <= span class=3DSpellE>Detienne write:

[T]he Greek gods are all strongly individualize= d, great actors set on stage by an ambitious mythology well served by its creators, the bards, singers, and poets, and [. . .] theologians, such as <= span class=3DSpellE>Hesiod of Ascra (late eig= hth century B.C.), who reflect upon the names, configurations, and stories of t= he gods, and upon a whole collection of questions that it is possible to formu= late through quarrels and developments between the various divine powers or the organization of the world from one generation of gods to the next. (155)

Today, we remain a little amazed that the bold, intelligent Greeks of the time of Sophocles and Socrates actually believed that their gods did and said what the Greeks cla= imed they did and said. To be sure, Plato felt that children should not be taught the stories of the gods because they did not serve as moral models. Socrates was accused of introducing, not atheism, however, but strange divinities. Today, most Christians, Jews, and Muslims experience little difficulty in believing that the numerous Greek gods do not and never have existed, altho= ugh some Christians still believe that those beings do exist, not as gods, but = as demons. In any case, most contemporary monotheists think the Greeks inve= nted the narratives about their gods. Hera never exi= sted as a sovereign power or as the spouse of Zeus.

The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, viewed h= er as a thinking goddess, a female of action, bossy, and manipulative. To make herself sexually provocative for Zeus, she sought the body of an elegant wo= man (33-5). Plato’s protest led him to postulate a different world, one of eternal forms that the gods could not override and with which shamans and priests could not negotiate. For Plato, the forms were changeless standards that stood in contrast to the whimsical and willful gods. In the Hebrew tradition, the emergence and development of the Torah served similarly to reduce divine arbitrariness and to curtail the role and influence of the shaman, who had served to bring fresh communications from God or the spirit= s. Though the Hebrew prophets might have reported God’s message, their r= ole of influencing Yahweh was severely reduced. Post-exilic priests could influ= ence Yahweh by means of sacrifices, but even those had to be presented in a stan= dard way presumably prescribed by Yahweh himself.

Before this process of standardization began, however, the offering of sacrifices presented the problem of determining what would count as an appropriate sacrifice. Working on the assumption that the information did not come by divine revelation, how did the “information” arrive? I will ret= urn to this question shortly.

In Dying for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Ir= on Age & Roman Europe, Miranda Aldhouse Green = goes into grisly detail to develop the theory that human beings could conceive of their gods as willing and at times eager to accept mutilated and/or slaught= ered human beings as fitting sacrifices (Chapter 4). She quotes Walter Burkert. “Sacrificial killing is the basic expe= rience of the ‘sacred’: homo religiousus acts and attains self-awareness as homo nacans [killer] (qtd. in Gr= een 37). So, how did our forebears gain the “information” that their gods desired slaughtered human beings as sacrifices? The Hebrew tradition eviden= tly wrestled with the question, as the Abraham-Isaac story indicates. The fact = that today many Jews, Christians, and Muslims still praise Abraham for his wi= llingness to sacrifice his son’s life upon God’s command indicates ju= st how deeply ingrained is the acceptance of blood sacrifice. Orthodox Christi= ans regard the execution of the innocent Jesus Christ as the human sacrifice th= at God not only accepted, but also required as the atonement without which redemption would remain impossible.

How did our species arrive at the belief that the gods desired or required sacrifices, especially of human beings? Drawing from Walter Burkett’s= Creation of the Sacred and M. A. Green’s Dying for the Gods, I offer the conjecture that shamans, priests, and others who presumed to negotiate = with gods and spirits borrowed from the experience of negotiating with neighbori= ng communities and with individuals. Once the shamans and the like beli= eved they received divine communiqués, the putative revelations developed their own momentum and semi-autonomy. Thus, theology evolved. Descriptions = of the nature or attributes of the gods and spirits developed considerably thr= ough determining what the gods and spirits favored or demanded as sacrifices.

Still, the following question remains to be ans= wered. Assuming the spirits and gods had no objective existence, where would the shamans and their heirs gain their “information” about what the gods and spirits favored or required as proper sacrifices?

I suggest that the sacrifice of human beings to= the gods has its roots in war. We still speak of a soldier’s dying in bat= tle as “the supreme sacrifice.” Lincoln in his Gettysburg address mentioned “the cause for which t= hey [i.e., the dead soldiers] gave the last full measure of devotion.” In= her chapter titled, “The Ban as God’s Portion,” Susan Niditch writes:

The most chilling biblical war texts [of the He= brew Bible] refer to hērem, the ban, und= er which all human beings among the defeated are “devoted to destruction.” In one important passage, Num 21:2-3, Israelites vow th= eir enemies to God as a promise for his support of their successful military efforts. In the majority of texts in Deuteronomy and Joshua, it is assum= ed that God demands total destruction of the enemy. (28).

The ransom aspect of sacrifice has its roots in= war, too. When tribes or communities threatened war or sought ways to end the fighting, gifts of propitiation sometimes served to prevent or end the destruction. In some cases, the death of some community members became the substitution. In some respects, all sacrifices offered are substitutionary. The grim story of 2 Samuel 21 vividly illustrates this. According to the te= xt, the Gibeonites communicated to King David their demand for revenge for what King Saul had done to them. As Saul’s hei= r to the throne, David, true to his character of treachery and murder, made a de= al with the Gibeonites. He handed over to them sev= en of Saul’s “sons,” who were then brutally sacrificed to Yahwe= h as atonement for Saul’s crimes and as appeasement to the Gibeonites. This transaction served David’s self-interest, too, by wiping out all= of Saul’s “sons” who might have been legitimate heirs to the throne. According to J. Cheryl Exum, the execut= ions were likely ritual dismemberment with public exposure of the corpses (110-1= 1). The story of the contest between Moses and Pharaoh portrays Yahweh as making various threats to Pharaoh in the attempt to induce him to release the capt= ive Israelites. Eventually, Yahweh slaughters all the firstborn among the Egyptians. According to Yahweh, however, the greater purpose was that of demonstrating his power and making fools of the Egyptians (Exodus 10:1-2). = In effect, then, the slaughter of humans and animals served as a sacrifice to Yahweh’s reputation and glory. This story, I submit, provides a clue = to understanding human and animal sacrifices. Many kings, heroes, chieftains, = and rulers had reputations to make and maintain. They either craved worship and power or received them from those eager to bestow them. In her insightful b= ook David: Biblical Portraits of Power, Marti J. Steussy notes that the Hebrew word hištahweh is correctly translated “worship” if the object is God (e.g., 1 Sam 1:13) but is often mistranslated “bow down” if the object is a = king (e.g., 1 Sam 25:41) (20).

My point is that despots ha= ve long craved worship, gifts, homage, and sacrifices of a wide variety. Much = of the character of Yahweh is modeled after Middle East warriors and despots both before and after David’s rule. Niditch concludes, “[= T]he Greek and Hebrew tales imply world-views in which deities are pictured as appreciating human sacrifice” (34). This appreciation is found largely in connection with wars. We recall that Jephthah sacrificed his only child because of a sacri= fice he had promised to Yahweh in exchange for victory in battle with the Ammoni= tes (Judges 11:29-40). Though Jephthah had not anticipated that his daughter would become the burnt offering that he h= ad promised, he does not renege. Yahweh, who intervened on Isaac’s behal= f, does nothing to save her; and the narrator does not give her a name.

Whereas in Greek mythology the gods are autonom= ous and men do not call themselves sons of gods, the Egyptian Pharaoh was Horus on the throne. Roman Emperors were deified. In = one strain of the Hebrew religion, there were sons of God presumably in heaven (Gen. 6:2; Job 1:6). As late as the seventeenth century C.E., King James I = of England, who regarded himself as head of the Church of England, delivered a speech to Parliament to compare himself to a god. Much= of the character of Yahweh, I have argued, has flowed from the model of benevo= lent despots, but despots all the same. The following is an excerpt from King Ja= mes I’s speech.

The state of monarchy= is the supremest thing upon earth. For kings are n= ot only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, b= ut even by God himself they are called gods.... Kings are justly called gods f= or that they experience a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth. For if you will consider the attributes of God, you shall see= how they agree in the person of the king. God has power to create, or destroy, make, or unmake at his pleasure, to give life, or send death, to j= udge all, and to be judged nor accountable to none; to raise low things, and to = make high things low at his pleasure, and to God are both soul and body due. And= the like power have kings; they make and unmake their subjects; they have power= of raising and casting down, of life and death; judges ov= er all their subjects, and in all cases, and yet accountable to none but God only. They have power to exalt low things and abase things high, and make of their subjects like men at the chess: a pawn to take a bishop or a knight, and to= cry up or down any of their subjects, as they do their money. And to the king is due both the affection of the soul and the service of the body of his subje= cts. (Qtd. in Martinich = 46-7)

The Greek gods became players in their own soci= ety as well as in human society. When these extraordinary beings are perceived as possessing great powers to control various areas of the individual’s = and community’s survival and well being, the sacrifices offered them beco= me more important. Indeed, sacrifices may be perceived as a matter of life and death.

A kind of formula of proportionality emerges. G= reat favors require great sacrifices. Problems develop among shamans and their h= eirs when sharp disagreement surfaces regarding what the gods and spirits will accept and what they will take as an offense.

When sacrifices are believed to involve conside= rable power in negotiating with the gods and spirits, the role of the negotiating, mediating agent becomes powerful. This creates the propensity to generate shaman rivalry, envy, treachery, and other syndromes found in ordinary rivalries.

Much of religious history and theology, beginni= ng with the shamans, may be viewed as human attempts to discern what will sati= sfy the gods/spirits. Substitutionary sacrifices are prevalent because that is a part of the negotiating process, which, of cour= se, can be observed taking place among human beings. The earthly process became= the initial model for shamans to use in negotiating with the gods. What human beings prize most will be highly prized by the gods. This, or course, modif= ied over the centuries because human beings have differed among themselves as to what is prized most. Indeed, putative mediating agents have challenged eith= er the whole system of sacrifices to gods/spirits or aspects of it. A major sh= ift took place in Judaism after the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. Some strains of Christianity eliminated all a= nimal sacrifice and took the death of Christ to be in effect the end of blood sacrifice, leading Paul the Apostle to write to the Romans, “[P]resent your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which= is your spiritual [or reasonable] worship” (Romans 12:1, Italics added).=

René Girard has gone so far as to advanc= e the thesis that by viewing it from the victim’s point of view, many early Christians developed a new way of understanding blood sacrifice. “[T]= he passion narratives of the gospels not only describe accurately a scapegoat event, but also disclose […] the mechanism for what it really is—arbitrary, unanimous, unconscious persecution of an innocent victim” (qtd. in Mack 143). The impact of Girard’s interpretation leads to the conclusion that the whole system= of the deity’s demanding blood sacrifice was from first to last a human projection. Some of the Hebrew prophets, seeing injustice in their own soci= ety, saw through the sacrificial scheme. “Not only does Amos criticize the actual sacrificial cult, but he even expresses the idea that the people onc= e lived justly in the presence of Yahweh, without sacrificing” (Schwager 83).

In The Savage in Judaism, however, Howard Eilberg<= /span>–Schwartz argues that the very prophets who criticized the institution of sacrifice a= lso prophesied devastation for Israel and frequently portrayed Yahweh either as= a lion preying on the prey Israel or as a warrior descending to make war agai= nst Zion (Isa. 1:11; 31:4; Jer= . 6:20; 7:21; 14:11). In short, = Israel will become the sacrifice to Yahwe= h (Hos. 5:14; 13:7–8). The premise behind= this seems to be that when Israel’s sins exceed certain limits= , then no substitution will satisfy Yahweh (136–137). Other papers and books have explored ways in which this premise has so entered the Christian tradi= tion that Israel’s so–called “sin of rejecting Christ” h= as been used to punish (i.e., persecute) Jews. We recall that a few among the Christian clergy have interpreted the Holocaust as a sacrifice somehow connected with the reputed Jewish “unbelief.”=

Works Cited

Exum, J. Cheryl. Tragedy and Bi= blical Narrative: Arrows of the Almighty. New York<= /st1:State>: = Cambridge= UP, 1996.
Green, Miranda Aldhou= se. Dying = for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Iron Age & Roman = Europe= . Charleston= , SC: Tempus Publishing, 2002.

Mack, Burton L. “The Innocent Transgressor: Jesus in Early Christian Myth and History.” Semeia 33: René Girard and Biblical Studies. Ed. A.J. McKenna. Decatur, GA: Scholars Press, 1985.

Martinich, A.P. The Two Gods of L= eviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics. New York<= /st1:State>: = Cambridge= UP, 1992.
Niditch, Susan. War in the Hebrew = Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence. New York<= /st1:State>: = Oxford UP, 1993.
Schwager, Raymund= . Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in= the Bible. Trans. Maria L. Assad and Robert J. Daly. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978.=

Sissa, Guilia, and Marcel Detienne. The Da= ily Life of the Greek Gods. Trans. Janet Lloyd. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000.

Steussy, Marti J. David: Bi= blical Portraits of Power. Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 1999.

Eilberg–Sch= wartz. The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Juda= ism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1990.