As I was reading the book "Moral Transformation," I noticed that some
sins didn't have a specific way to make up for them, and instead, they
resulted in the death penalty. I mentioned this to the author, and he
wished he had included it in his book. He generously permitted me to
share chapter 12. The following enumerates the sins for which no
designated sacrifice existed.
Death Penalty Sins
- Murder - Gen. 9:6; Ex. 21:12-14,20,23; Lev. 24:17,21; Num. 35:16-34; Deut. 19.
- Smiting Parents- Ex. 21:15.
- Kidnapping - Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7.
- Cursing Parents - Ex. 21:17; Lev. 20:9.
- Negligence with animals that kill - Ex. 21:28-32.
- Witchcraft - Ex. 22:18.
- Bestiality –( sexual intercourse with an animal ) Ex. 22:19; Lev. 18:23-29; 20:15,16. Lev. 20:15,16
- Idolatry - Ex. 22:20; Deut. 17:2-7.
- Adultery (including sexual intercourse with father's wife, daughter-in-law, mother-in-law) Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22-30.
- Working on the Sabbath - Ex. 35:2.
- Incest - Lev. 18:6-29; 20:11-22.
- Consecration of children to idols - Lev. 20:1-5.
- Sodomy/Homosexuality - Lev. 20:13.
- Whoredom - Lev. 21:9; Deut. 22:21,22.
- Sorcery Lev. 20:27
- Blasphemy - Lev. 24:11-16.
- False prophecy - Deut. 13:1-18; 18:20.
- Leading men away from God - Deut. 13:6-18.
- Stubbornness, rebellious, glutton drunken sons - Deut. 21:18-23.
- False dreams and visions - Deut. 13:1-18.
- Rape Duet. 22:25
As the author has stated below,
"In Israel, sacrifices could not cleanse deliberate moral sins;
repentance and prayer provided the only solution. Israel had a strong
tradition of repentance, prayer and forgiveness."
Moral Transformation
By A.J. Wallace & R.D. Rusk
(Permission Granted by Author to Reproduce Chapter 12)
Chapter 12
Sacrifice
To understand how the New
Testament authors used sacrificial language to describe what Jesus had
accomplished, we must first find out the way in which their culture
understood sacrifices. Let us start with some background. Sacrificial
practices predated the formation of ancient Israel. Both biblical
narratives and studies of ancient cultures reveal that people made
sacrifices long before the Jews received the sacrificial laws of the
Torah. The covenant between God and Israel at Sinai did not introduce
sacrificial practices, but rather provided formal guidelines and strict
limits in order to control an already existing system. Generally, early
Christian writers believed that God had never approved of ritual
sacrifices and desired to phase them out. In their view, he regulated
their practice first at Sinai and then critiqued them over time through
the Prophets. Finally, he abolished them entirely following the life of
Jesus and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.[1]
As one scholar explains: “Early Christian writers collected
together the anti-sacrificial passages in the prophets in order to show
that God did not need or want the sacrifices of the Jews, but rather
demanded obedience, learning to do good, desisting from evil, seeking
justice, correcting oppression, and supporting the widow and
orphan.”[2]
In the last few centuries, many
Christians have believed that Jesus died a substitutionary death on
behalf of others to atone for their sin. This idea has become connected
with the New Testament sacrificial language used to speak of
Jesus’ death. Without understanding how ancient Israelite
sacrifices actually worked, Christians often assume they worked through
substitutionary atonement. One scholar explains it like this:
“ideas that form the basis for certain interpretations of
Jesus’ death are read back into the biblical texts regarding
sacrifice so as to argue that the same ideas are behind ancient Jewish
beliefs concerning sacrifice… it is argued that in ancient
Israel, sacrifices were understood as involving the death of an animal
as a substitute for the person who had sinned and thus deserved death:
sinners themselves were spared this penalty when the animal victim
endured it in their place.”[3] We
could imagine that people offered sacrifices because they felt guilty
of sin and worthy of death. The animals died in their place as
substitutes, and took the punishment they deserved. Such an account has
appeared widely in recent Christian literature, and it probably sounds
familiar to many Christians today.
As plausible as such a view
might sound, recent scholarship shows that the Israelites understood
their sacrifices very differently. “A deepening scholarly
appreciation of ancient animal sacrifice has revealed that later
Christian conceptions of sacrificial atoning death have been
systematically projected back onto Judaism.”[4]
We know this because scholars have studied the ancient texts carefully.
They have examined how the people practising those sacrifices described
what they did and why they did it. Largely, these scholars have reached
agreement. Even anthropologists who study modern cultures that perform
sacrifices report the same findings. It does not seem to matter what
culture we study – Israelite or Greek, Indian or Hawaiian,
ancient or modern – the same basic sacrificial principles and
motivations appear around the world and throughout history. Modern
scholars have studied ancient Jewish texts carefully (including the
scriptures and other texts). They have found that the principles and
motivations held by the Israelites have striking parallels in many
other cultures – yet modern Westerners would find their ideas
completely foreign!
One scholar investigated the way
in which the early Christians understood sacrifices as part of her
doctoral research. She has also published several books on early
Christianity. She noted this problem of misunderstanding the meaning of
sacrifice, and explained it in this way:
[Christians today] live in a culture in
which the practice of sacrifice is totally foreign – no doubt
largely because of the influence of Christianity down the centuries.
But the result is that we no longer seem to be in a position to know
instinctively what the sacrifice language of our traditions really
means. In fact, we get certain preconceptions about the meaning of
sacrifice and so misinterpret the real point of the language we are
using. Many books on the subject expound theories of sacrifice which
are in fact modern reconstructions with little evidential basis in the
ancient texts. The most common misconception when sacrificial language
is applied to the death of Christ runs something like this: ‘God
was angry with sinners. The Jews had tried to placate his anger by
symbolically offering the lives of animals to him in place of their
guilty selves. But this was inadequate and so Jesus offered a perfect
sacrifice. He died as our substitute to appease God’s
anger.’ With certain degrees of sophistication, this is the
general picture one gets from listening to sermons or reading the
majority of easily available books. Yet it is far from doing justice to
the real religious outlook of the Jews, or the early Christians who
used sacrificial terminology to sense the depth of meaning in the death
of Christ. Clearly, if we are going to be able to appreciate the
language of the liturgy and the New Testament, of our hymns and
prayers, we need to go back and try to understand what sacrifice meant
in the ancient world and what the new use of sacrifice language in
Christianity meant to the worshippers of that time.”[5]
We will present here the
conclusion of numerous scholars after their extensive research into the
ancient Israelites’ sacrificial system. Remember, the Israelites
did not hold a 21st-century
Western view of life. They held a world view totally different from our
modern one, which has been strongly shaped by science. We cannot
understand their ideas about sacrifices through the filter of our
modern world view. Their sacrificial ideas corresponded with the way in
which they understood the world, so we can only understand their sacrifices properly within their cultural context.
Israel’s sacrifices
Cultures that sacrifice tend to
perform a number of different rituals at different times for different
purposes. Israel’s sacrificial system fitted this general rule.
It used three major concepts that many other cultures also used: gifts, meals, and purification.[6]
Gifts
People in the ancient world often sacrificed to give “gifts to the gods,” as one ancient Greek writer noted.[7]
We noted earlier that ancient cultures valued the giving and receiving
of gifts highly. People could have many different motivations for
giving gifts: to gain a person’s favour; to appease an angry
person; to thank someone; or to repay a debt. It was believed widely
that the gods abided by the normal rules of social interactions, and so
people thought it appropriate to give them gifts for any of these
reasons. The notion that gods accepted sacrifices as gifts thus had
tremendous flexibility, and seems to have appeared in all sacrificial
cultures.[8]
Israelites gave the ‘first
fruits’ offering to the priests of God as thanks for the harvest.
In presenting this offering at the Temple, the offerer thanked God
publicly for bringing his ancestors to the fertile land of Israel.[9]
In a ‘burnt offering’ sacrifice, a whole animal would be
burned as a gift to God. People would sometimes sacrifice a burnt
offering in the hope that God would respond favourably to their
prayers. We might call it ‘bribery’, but many ancient
societies used this standard practice on a daily basis. They also gave
gifts as a common customary way in which to appease those they had
offended. So, if people believed they had angered God for some reason,
they often attempted to appease him by giving him a gift.
Initially, ancient Israel had no
prisons. No crimes resulted in imprisonment and punishments took
instead the form of either death or a fine. The ancient Israelites had
very little coinage – since the wealth of their agricultural
society consisted in livestock and grain – and therefore had to
pay fines in food products. In some cases, the monetary value of the
sacrifice was downgraded for poorer people according to what they could
afford – birds instead of livestock, or just flour.[10]
They paid these fines to God, and burned the offerings whole as
compulsory ‘gifts.’ Hence, the Israelite ’burnt
offering’ served several purposes: the motivation varied, but in
all cases the giver sacrificed an animal or grain to God as a gift.
Meals
Meat was far rarer and more
expensive in ancient societies than it is in modern times. The ancient
world had no refrigeration and very poor quality salt, so they also
needed to eat killed animals quickly. Naturally, many people were
required in order to consume an entire animal in a short time, and the
killing of an animal for meat was generally reserved for special
celebrations involving many people. The group dynamics at such meals
mattered greatly. Who sat where, who got which cuts of the meat, and
even the preparation of the meal itself had great significance.[11] Many cultures gave a portion of the meal to the gods, who they believed shared the meal in fellowship with the community.
Israel called such group
banquets ’well-being’, ‘thanksgiving’, and
‘free-will’ offerings. They performed sacrifices of this
type most commonly. A modern reader may feel that these do not truly
count as ‘sacrifices’ at all, but, as in many ancient
cultures, the Hebrew word for ‘sacrifice’ also meant
‘slaughter.’[12] They
considered life sacred, and taking the life of an animal, even for
eating, required an appropriate ritual. The Israelites held these
community meal sacrifices in the presence of God and followed the
relevant customs carefully.
Purification
Many pre-scientific cultures
believed in the existence of magical forces of purity and impurity. As
a useful analogy for these ideas, imagine this impurity as invisible
dirt or bacteria. If people did not take care to keep things clean,
they could become contaminated. If things became too dirty, and stayed
dirty for a long time, then disease and suffering could result. People
believed that demons thrived in an impure environment. An impure person
or house could therefore become inhabited by demonic forces and powers.
Purity had special importance around temples, in order to keep demons
out of the homes of the gods. Hence, people performed rituals carefully
in order to clean up any impurity quickly and keep things clean. Today,
if parents saw that their children had failed to take off muddy shoes
and trekked mud through the house, they would probably use some
cleaning product to remove the dirt. In the same way, cultures that
believed in magical purity and impurity used cleansing agents to remove
impurity. Such cultures had various sets of cleansing agents, rituals,
and incantations that they used to purify people or places, and used
various substances and rituals to purify items magically.
The Israelites used purification
agents that included blood, ashes, coals, oil, water, cedarwood (a
strongly scented red wood), red cows, red wool,[13]
and hyssop (an aromatic herb). They believed that these substances
acted in the way detergents do today. The detergent analogy even
appears in the Bible.[14] As an example, one Israelite purification ritual after contact with dead bodies involved the following:
Take some ashes of the burnt purification
offering, and running water shall be added in a vessel; a clean person
shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, on
all the furnishings, on the persons who were there, and on whoever
touched the bone, the slain, the corpse, or the grave.[15]
Obviously, cultures like that of
the West would not perform such a ritual, as typically people do not
believe in this kind of magical impurity today. The Israelites,
however, believed that such rituals removed the magical contamination
that resulted from contact with the dead. The Israelites believed that
these magical impurities came from several sources, including corpses,
some skin diseases, genital discharges, and moral wrongs.[16] Impurity could also arise if people made mistakes in rituals and did not follow proper procedure.
The Israelites cared especially
about maintaining the purity of the Temple, God’s dwelling. They
believed that impurities elsewhere in Israel could spread into the
Temple and contaminate it. The more impurity in Israel, the farther
into the Temple the impurity would reach. They feared that God would
abandon both the Temple and Israel if impurities contaminated the Holy
of Holies.[17] Hence, they purified the
Temple regularly. For serious contamination, they purified the inner
sanctums of the Temple. Israel’s neighbours had similar practices
to keep their temples ritually pure because they thought that purity
warded off demons. They maintained the purity of their temples to
prevent demons from entering, for if they did the gods would leave.[18]
As we have already noted, one of
the substances used in these purification rituals was blood. People
thought that blood contained the life-force of the animal, and that
they could use this pure life-force to wash away impurity. Israelites
used blood regularly to purify the contaminated parts of their Temple,
pouring or sprinkling the blood of animals on the outer altars to
purify them. Once a year, on Yom Kippur (the Day of
Purgation), the High Priest would use blood to purify the Holy of
Holies. Consider this typical passage about a purification ritual being
performed in God’s dwelling:
The anointed priest shall take
some of the blood of the bull and bring it into the tent of meeting.
The priest shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle some of the
blood seven times before the Lord in front of the curtain of the
sanctuary. The priest shall put some of the blood on the horns of the
altar of fragrant incense that is in the tent of meeting before the
Lord; and the rest of the blood of the bull he shall pour out at the
base of the altar of burnt offering, which is at the entrance of the
tent of meeting.[19]
All the important parts of the
altar and Temple needed ritual purification using blood to prevent
magical impurities from accumulating within the Temple.[20]
Blood served as a magical detergent, not as a means of personal
forgiveness. Personal forgiveness in Judaism came through repentance
(as we saw in an earlier chapter). One scholar explains the function of
blood in this way:
Failure to keep the temple pure meant to
risk God’s anger and the loss of his presence. …the blood
of the animal was the purging agent that was applied to various parts
of the temple and removed the consequences of sins and
impurities (that is, the pollution of the temple). The person did not
receive forgiveness for a sinful act itself but dealt only with the
consequences of such acts on the temple.[21]
Another scholar has reached the same conclusion:
Who or what is being purified?
Surprisingly, it is not the person with the moral or physical impurity.
According to Leviticus, if his or her impurity is physical, only
bathing is required to purify the body; if the impurity is moral (the
unintended breach of a prohibition), a remorseful conscience clears the
impurity. In neither case does the offering purify the person bringing
the offering. … Blood is the ritual cleanser that purges the
altar of the impurities inflicted on it by the offender.[22]
A third scholar agrees that the
Israelites viewed the animal’s blood “as a kind of
spiritual disinfectant purifying the sanctuary of the pollution
associated with sin and uncleanness.”[23]
Traditionally, translators have called the rituals to purify the Temple
with blood ‘sin‑offerings’, but these rituals are
translated more accurately as ‘purification offerings.’[24]
The Israelite Passover also functioned as a purification ritual.[25]
In the original Passover, the Israelites had dabbed two purification
agents (hyssop and blood) on their doors. The instructions were to
“take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the
basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood in the
basin.”[26] Other references to the
Passover in the Bible confirm that the Israelites considered it a time
of ritual purity in which they performed a purification ritual on their
doors. The ancient Babylonians performed a similar practice. Their
ritual involved “smearing a door with a mixture including
bats’ blood and crushed spider.”[27]
The Babylonians did this to create a barrier of purity around the door
to protect against evil spirits. People in the ancient Near East
performed similar rituals, daubing vulnerable parts of structures with
blood to purify them and thereby ward off demonic forces.[28] In the original Passover, the Israelites purified the doorways of their dwellings to ward off the Angel of Death.
Ancient Israelites, like people
of many other ancient cultures, also believed in the power of curses
– magical forces invoked by rituals to bring harm. Curses
differed from impurity in that people could not simply wash them away.
Instead, people could transfer them ritually. The ancient Greeks
performed a ceremony in which they transferred the curses from a city
to a slave. They then drove that person out of the city to bear away
the curses. The Israelites had a similar annual ritual in which the
High Priest placed two hands on a goat and prayed over it all the
curses, sins and wrongs of the nation. They then drove that animal off
into the wilderness to carry the curses away.[29]
Note that they saw the goat simply as a means of transport, and that it
did not die as an offering or a sacrifice. It did not die nor suffer on
behalf of others but simply carried the curses away, out into the
wilderness.[30]
These purification rituals were
not, strictly speaking, sacrifices to God. In rituals involving blood,
the actual death of the animal had no relevance. In many purification
rituals they did not use blood at all and instead used other substances
as purification agents. These rituals may strike us as magical,
ritualistic and primitive, yet the ancient Israelites took them very
seriously. Professionals performed them in a formal and public setting,
and people believed these rituals had great power.
Clarifying modern misunderstandings
The three concepts of gift, meal, and purification
correspond to ancient Israel’s three types of sacrifice –
the three reasons they killed animals. In Israel’s sacrificial
system, as in most other cultures, the actual death of the animal
itself had no relevance. As one scholar notes: “In ancient Jewish
and ancient Mediterranean animal sacrifices and in the rites of
numerous other cultures the death of the animal was an incidental
prelude to the ritual. Strange as it may seem to people steeped in the
legacy of Christianity; these sacrificing cultures attach no special
significance to the death of the animal itself.”[31]
Rather, they attached importance to what they did with the
animal’s blood and flesh, which they would eat, burn, or use in
rituals. Israel’s sacrificial texts discuss these aspects at
length, and hardly discuss the death of the animal itself at all. They
mention the actual death of the animals only briefly, often to outline
simply the most humane way in which to kill the animals.
In Israel, sacrifices could not cleanse deliberate moral sins; repentance and prayer provided the only solution.[32] Israel had a strong tradition of repentance, prayer and forgiveness.[33]
In their view, a burnt offering gift might appease God and encourage
him to accept a person’s repentance and prayers for forgiveness.
Their standing before God, though, depended on his kindness and their
own prayer and repentance, not on any sacrifices they might perform.
If a transgression deserved the
death penalty, no sacrifice could be given. Israel’s legal code
either fined people in the form of compulsory burnt offerings or
applied the death penalty (or in some cases, exile). People could offer
sacrificial fines if, and only if, their transgressions did not
deserve the death penalty. Hence, if we remain consistent with the way
their law worked, we see that the animal never died as a substitution
for the offerer. This concept would have been totally foreign to the
Ancient Israelites.
Many different cultures followed
the custom that the person bringing the sacrifice identified the animal
publicly as theirs by placing a hand on it.[34]
Some Christians have thought mistakenly that the Israelites did this to
transfer the sins of the sinner to the animal. Many scholars,
therefore, take pains to reject this view explicitly and note that the
evidence contradicts it.[35] The Israelites followed the hand-laying practice for all their sacrifices – gifts, meals, and purification rituals.[36]
In all three of these types of sacrifice, transferring sin to the
animal would not have made sense. It would have polluted the gift that
the worshipper gave to God, contaminated the meat they ate, or spoiled
the blood that they used to purify the Temple. For meal sacrifices, the
holy offerer did not even have any sin to transfer. The Israelite
practice of hand-laying more closely parallels the customs we see in
other cultures, in which it publicly identified the person bringing the
sacrifice. It had little to do with atonement. The only time in the
Israelite rituals where such a transfer of sin took place was on Yom Kippur. On that day, the high priest laid both
hands on the goat, rather than only one. After praying over it the
curses and sins of the nation he did not sacrifice it, but instead sent
it away into the wilderness.
Development of sacrificial ideas
Studies have found that it is
common for the sacrificial ideas within different cultures to change
over time, moving typically toward moral ideas and away from ritual and
magical ones.[37] One scholar has
observed: “In cultures from Asia to Europe to Africa there is a
progressive and observable development away from violent sacrificial
practices toward a concentration on ethics.”[38]
Sacrificial systems tend to focus initially only on ritual and magic.
People see morality as unrelated and irrelevant. Yet, over time,
morality becomes as important as ritual. Eventually, people reject
ritual and magic and stop making sacrifices. They then start to use
sacrificial language metaphorically to talk about morality. A similar
progression of ideas occurred among the Israelites and early Christians.
The writings of the Psalms and
Prophets in the Old Testament seem to have moved the Israelites some
distance toward emphasising morality at the expense of ritual. Some of
their comments include:
I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or
of lambs, or of goats… cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek
justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.[39]
Even though you offer me your burnt
offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the
offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look
upon…But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness
like an ever-flowing stream.[40]
They also used the word
‘sacrifice’ metaphorically to refer to morality rather than
to an animal on an altar. One Psalm reads, “The sacrifice
acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite
heart.”[41]
The New Testament authors rejected sacrifices and replaced them completely with morality.[42] Within the Gospels we see some clear statements about the importance of morality compared to that of sacrifices:
Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”[43]
“To love [God] with all the heart,
and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,” and
“to love one's neighbor as oneself,” – this is much
more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.[44]
Paul and Peter wrote of ‘spiritual’ sacrifices, which consisted of moral living:
Present your bodies as a living sacrifice,
holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship…
[Act in a way that] is good and acceptable and perfect.[45]
Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice,
and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander… be a
holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God[46]
Hebrews says that Jesus
abolished the old sacrificial system in order to establish in its place
obedience to God’s will:
“You [God] have neither desired nor
taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and
purification offerings” (these are offered according to Torah),
then he [Jesus] added, “See, I have come to do your will.”
He abolishes the first in order to establish the second.[47]
Hebrews also uses sacrificial
language as a metaphor for doing good. It teaches: “Do not
neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are
pleasing to God.”[48] This passage
uses the term ‘sacrifices’ non-literally to talk about
doing good, rather than the slaughter of animals.[49] We can see from the above passages that terms from the old sacrificial system became metaphors for moral ideas.
The concept of
‘purification’ also moved away from the original idea of
applying purifying substances to cleanse an object magically. The New
Testament authors used it to refer solely to moral transformation.
Peter wrote, “You have purified your souls by your obedience to
the truth so that you have genuine mutual love.”[50]
John wrote that followers of Jesus “purify themselves, just as he
is pure.” He explained that this means they do what is right
rather than what is wrong, and are “righteous, just as he is
righteous.”[51] According to Titus, Jesus came to “purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.”[52] Hebrews explains that Jesus can “purify our ethics from dead works to worship the living God!”[53]
James too referred to correct conduct when he instructed:
“Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you
double-minded.”[54] The
significance of the term ‘sanctification’ changed in a
similar way. The term sanctification had its roots in ritual purity,
and yet most Christians know it relates to morality in the New
Testament.[55] Likewise, originally yeast
had implications of ritual impurity (which is why people made
unleavened bread without it), but it became another moral metaphor for
the early Christians. They used it as a metaphor for “malice and
evil,”[56] and for the wrong teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees.[57]
As sacrifice and purity became
associated more with morality and less with the old rituals, the places
where sacrifices took place also changed. Priests had performed literal
sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem, yet followers of Jesus could
perform moral sacrifices in their own bodies. Hence, they located their
‘temple’ not physically in Jerusalem, but metaphorically
within them. Paul saw Christians as ‘God’s temple’,[58] and Peter saw them as the new ‘priesthood’ who performed these new kinds of ‘spiritual sacrifices’.[59]
In this way, the early
Christians moved radically away from ideas of literal sacrifice,
spiritualising and moralising the notion instead. They began to use
sacrificial language to refer to correct conduct, rather than using
literal animal slaughters. Christians became their own temple and their
own priests, and gave God acceptable ‘sacrifices’ and
‘offerings’ by living morally ‘pure’ lives in
obedience to his will. They rejected the value of performing the cultic
and ritual laws, and emphasised the value of good works and
faithfulness to the will of God. The cultic goal of purity thus was
achieved through morality, and a moral life in obedience to God
replaced the old sacrificial system. The New Testament authors used the
sacrificial ideas familiar to their first-century readers as metaphors
to describe this new state of affairs.
Jesus and purification
We have seen above that the New
Testament authors used the common sacrificial ideas of their day often
to explain ideas. Paul described his own suffering and impending death
in sacrificial terms, for example.[60]
The New Testament authors also used sacrificial language to explain
what Jesus did. Out of the three types of sacrifices (gift, meal, and
purification), they seldom wrote of him as a gift sacrifice.[61]
They wrote of him as a meal sacrifice only occasionally in the context
of the Eucharist. The vast majority of sacrificial references to Jesus
relate to purification.
So in what way did the New
Testament writers think Jesus brought purification? We saw in an
earlier chapter that they spoke in many ways of the moral
transformation brought by Jesus. They drew on ideas from many spheres
of life to express vividly how Jesus had changed their lives. As we
have just seen, they also referred to moral issues using sacrificial
language – especially the idea of purification. We would
therefore expect them to have used the language of the ancient
sacrificial system to speak of the moral changes Jesus brought. We find
exactly this in their writings. They used the ideas of purification
sacrifices to speak about the moral changes in their lives, and also
about Jesus himself, since obvious parallels existed. The ancient
purification rituals took away the ritual impurity from people or
places and brought ritual purity. Jesus, on the other hand, brought a
way of life that took away immorality and replaced it with right
living. Both cases have the concept of purification in common (either
ritual or ethical). The two processes worked differently, but had
similar effects. The Israelites had believed their rituals worked by
magical principles, whereas the Christians believed that by following
Jesus’ teachings their lives could be transformed. They did not
believe this transformation worked by the same magical principles of
sacrifice rituals. Nobody among them thought that Jesus’ blood
literally dripped down onto people from the cross and cleansed magical
impurities from them. Rather, the teachings and movement for which
Jesus died brought moral transformation to the lives of Christians.
The writer of Hebrews regularly wrote of Jesus as both performing and embodying a purification sacrifice.[62]
He used sacrificial language about Jesus consistently to discuss
morality rather than ritual purity. This language referred to a
transformed lifestyle and mindset, not a change in ritual state from
impure to pure. Hebrews depicts Jesus abolishing the traditional
concept of sacrifices. Instead of literal sacrifices, Jesus brought a
kind of sacrifice that involved living in accordance with God’s
will.[63] The author argued that old
purification sacrifices never cleansed sinfulness properly. In
contrast, the actions of Jesus led to real changes in peoples’
lives, which purified them from sinfulness.[64]
The writer believed that Jesus’ blood brought “a better
message than the blood of Abel,” and warned that if we ignore
this message we will not escape judgment.[65]
Note the concept that his blood had a message. It emphasises the
message Jesus taught and died for, rather than the magical power of
blood to purify what it touches.
John used the idea of Jesus as a
purification sacrifice as a metaphor for moral purity in a similar way.
He wrote that “the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin”
only if we “walk in the light.”[66]
As we saw in the previous chapter, John used the idea of ‘walking
in the light’ to refer to correct conduct. John taught that, in
order to receive the purification Jesus offered, we must live according
to his example and teachings.
Peter also saw Jesus as a
purification sacrifice in moral terms. In the middle of a discourse on
moral transformation he wrote:
Do not be conformed to the desires you
formerly had in ignorance. Instead… be holy yourselves in all
your conduct… You know that you were ransomed from the futile
ways inherited from your ancestors… with the precious blood of
Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish... Now that you
have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you
have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.[67]
Here, the concept of ritual
purification refers to morality. The passage concerns the
‘purification’ of people’s souls through obedience to
Jesus’ message, linking that moral purification with Jesus’
blood – a reminder of his martyrdom. His blood rescued people
metaphorically from ‘futile ways’ of living and taught them
to live with genuine love. Paul, too, referred to Jesus as a
purification sacrifice in moral terms. He explained that the Torah
could not free us from sinfulness,[68] yet God freed us though sending Jesus and transforming our lives so that we might fulfil his moral requirements.[69] In the middle of this discussion he called Jesus a ’purification sacrifice’.[70]
The idea of Jesus cleansing people from moral impurity can also explain
a much debated Pauline passage that may refer to Jesus as a
purification sacrifice.[71] In that passage, Paul taught that Jesus acted for our sake so that we could gain godly righteousness.
According to Revelation,
Jesus “freed us from our sinfulness by his blood, and made us to
be… priests serving his God and Father.”[72] Here,
Revelation likens Jesus’ martyrdom to a purification sacrifice,
which purifies us of our sinfulness. It uses cultic language
metaphorically not only of Jesus, but also of Jesus’ followers,
calling them ‘priests of God’. In a similar passage,
Revelation speaks later of people who have “washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb [Jesus].”[73] Literally
speaking, no one uses blood as a detergent to wash his or her clothes.
In the metaphorical language of Revelation, white robes represent good
works.[74] Thus,
the metaphor of washing them in Jesus’ blood to whiten them
suggests that these good works came through the purifying effect that
Jesus had on his followers’ lives.
As we saw earlier, the Passover
involved a purification ritual. Paul used this metaphor to write about
Jesus, once again in the context of our moral transformation:
“For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore,
let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of
malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and
truth.”[75] Here, Paul used an
analogy between the Passover lamb that brought ritual purification and
Christ’s sacrifice that brought moral change away from sinfulness
(represented by the yeast). Paul again moved the concept of
Christ’s sacrifice from the realm of ritual purity to the area of
moral transformation.
We must read all these
references to Jesus and his purifying blood in the spirit in which the
New Testament writers intended them. Magical purification through the
smearing of blood interested them no longer; instead, they concerned
themselves with spiritual sacrifices rather than literal ones, and
moral purity rather than ritual purity. People once thought
purification sacrifices performed by smearing blood on the altar
brought magical purity. Now, however, Christians believed that Jesus
could bring moral purity through his martyr’s death and the
subsequent spread of his teachings through the church.
People sometimes misinterpret
the New Testament sacrificial language in reference to Yom Kippur. On
that day, as we have already seen, the High Priest performed a
purification ritual in the Holy of Holies to purify it, and then
transferred the curses and sins of the nation to a goat which he sent
into the wilderness. The New Testament likens Jesus to the High Priest
on Yom Kippur who performed the purification ritual. Yet, contrary to
what some Christians today believe, it never likens Jesus to the goat
that carried the curses and sins into the wilderness. It seems the New
Testament writers preferred to use the metaphor of a purification
offering rather than concepts like the scapegoat.
Jesus and covenant sacrifice
The New Testament writers also
explained what Jesus achieved using another idea. This idea related to
sacrificial rituals, but focussed on covenants (agreements or
contracts). The Jews divided their history into a series of separate
covenants between God and their nation. Jesus aimed to bring the
Kingdom of God, a radical social renewal. This heralded a new age,
which would require a new covenant. The prophet Jeremiah had promised
that a new covenant would supersede the Torah, bringing morality and
forgiveness of sins.[76] Jesus introduced
this covenant among his followers. At the Last Supper, he made clear to
his disciples that he intended to bring such a new covenant.[77] Hebrews echoes this idea. The writer paralleled Jesus and Moses as mediators of the two covenants.[78]
Jesus functioned as the new go-between between humanity and God, and
had instituted this covenant with God on their behalf just as Moses did
for the Sinai covenant. Hebrews emphasises heavily the concept of Jesus
as the mediator of this new covenant in which people would live
rightly. With regard to this function, Hebrews portrays Jesus regularly
in a priestly role.[79] This idea that
Jesus brought about a new covenant arose naturally from his mission of
social reform. The early Christians saw him as inaugurating a radical
new Kingdom of God on earth, since his movement transformed their
society and their relationship with God.
Sacrifices often sealed
covenants in the ancient world. The intended goal of such sacrifices
varied widely and no standard meaning existed. In ancient Hittite
agreements, cutting animals to seal a contract symbolised a
ritual-curse which meant that the party who broke the agreement would
be likewise cut into pieces.[80] A covenant between Abraham and God involved this kind of covenant sacrifice.[81] At Sinai, Moses threw blood over the people in a purification ritual and called it a covenant sacrifice.[82]
People also saw sacrifices made to seal agreements and treaties as
gifts to the gods, inclining the gods to look favorably upon the
agreement and perhaps to take action against any who broke it.[83]
Most commonly, though, such
sacrifices functioned simply as a joint meal held to celebrate new
unity and fellowship. For example, the parties in a peace treaty or a
new alliance would mark and celebrate the occasion by eating together.
At the last supper, Jesus instituted a shared meal in which he was
eaten symbolically. The New Testament portrays this as a covenant
sacrifice and it seems to fall into this ‘joint meal’
category.[84] Perhaps this helps to explain why Paul insisted so strongly that Jew and Gentile Christians could eat together.[85]
Elsewhere, Paul likened Jesus to a peace sacrifice, since he removed
the division between Jews and Gentiles created by the Torah of the old
covenant.[86] Of course, since Jesus had
died as a martyr because of his work to inaugurate a new covenant,
Christians could speak of him as the metaphorical
‘sacrifice’ that accompanied this new covenant. Jesus had
cast himself in this role at the Last Supper, and Hebrews also
reinforces this idea.[87]
Conclusion
Morality had replaced sacrifice
for the New Testament Christians, and they rejected the value of the
ritual sacrifice system. They used the language of ritual purity
not because Jesus' accomplishments worked through the same magical
mechanism, but to express the moral transformation Jesus had brought to
their lives. They saw themselves as a temple that Jesus had
purified morally with his 'blood' in a way analogous to the way in
which blood had purified temples ritually in the past. Christ's
martyrdom lent itself naturally to the parallel of a purification
sacrifice. His noble self-sacrifice brought purity to his
followers through his movement that had transformed their lives.
His followers used this language of a new covenant to describe these
profound changes to their lives. Hence, they also cast Jesus in
the role of Priest because he had catalysed this reconciliation between
humanity and God. The early Christians found moral purity through Jesus
in a way that the old sacrificial system could never have wrought.
______________________________________
I highly recommend this book. We have come
so very far removed from the simplicity of the Gospel and the way of
thinking of Christians in the time of Christ.
To order book, click here
Recent scholarship has
challenged post-Reformation ideas about the early Christian doctrines
of salvation. This ground-breaking book draws together the conclusions
of recent scholarship into a compelling and clear view of the early
Christian paradigm of salvation. It presents the case that the early
Christians focused not on Christ's death on the cross or 'saving
faith', but on moral transformation. They saw Jesus as God's appointed
teacher, prophet, and leader, who died as a martyr in order to teach
them a new way of life. Their paradigm of salvation centered upon this
way of life taught by Jesus, and on following faithfully his example
and teachings.
Part 1: How the Gospels present Jesus
explores the way in which the early Christians understood the teaching
of Jesus. It highlights five themes of Jesus' message: economics and
wealth, moral purity, social equality, the temple system, and physical
and spiritual affliction. It shows why people viewed Jesus as a
divinely appointed teacher, prophet, and leader, and saw his death as a
martyrdom for his cause and movement.
Part 2: Doctrines of the early
Christians presents the key early Christian doctrines of salvation and
shows why several post-Reformation doctrines conflict with their views.
It shows that the early Christians believed God's final judgment is
made on the basis of character and conduct. They believed that by
following Jesus and transforming their lives morally, they would obtain
positive judgment and resurrection. This part shows how the early
Christians' ideas of faith, justification, forgiveness and grace all
fit into this paradigm.
Part 3: The importance of Jesus looks
at why the early Christians considered Jesus so significant; they
focused on the moral transformation he brought to their lives. This
part highlights what they believed Jesus achieved for them, and how
they used sacrificial language to explain these beliefs. It explores
the evidence for viewing Jesus' death as a martyrdom, and for seeing
his resurrection as equally important.
Part 4: Ideas throughout history shows
that Christians held this paradigm of salvation for several centuries.
It outlines the key changes that occurred from the 4th century through
to the Reformation, which moved tradition away from the early Christian
ideas. Finally, it offers a critique of modern post-Reformation
doctrines of salvation.
As stated in the Foxe’s Book Of Martyrs, beginning in chapter one.
The dreadful martyrdoms we shall now
describe arose from the persecutions of the Christians by pagan fury in
the primitive ages of the church, during three hundred years, until the
time of Constantine the Great.
The first martyr to our holy religion was
its blessed Founder Himself, who was betrayed by Judas Iscariot,
condemned under Pontius Pilate, and crucified on Calvary.