Bible Humper

Hi Geotheo,

This was written for you a while ago, but you stopped participating at that time and probably never did even see it.

Bumppity!

lpetrich

There are lots of others who had done burnt offerings at the time.

The oldest Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, have LOTS of descriptions of burnt offerings. Including burnt offering from cow sacrifices (the sacredness of the cow was a post-Vedic invention).

And in Greek mythology, there is a story about how Prometheus tricked Zeus into accepting the unwanted parts as his animal-sacrifice preference, while his worshippers got to eat the tasty parts.

winstonjen

Ewww. I wonder if YHWH is sniffing them 'down there.'

Conchobar

One needs to view the psychology of ancient peoples. Not only Jews, but Romans, Hindus, Celtic peoples, Scythians, Slavs, Norse, and Asatru had sacrifices that often involved burning, always involved killing, and usually involved shedding of blood.

Any ancient people who did not sacrifice living non-human and human animals to their gods is rare indeed. Continental Celts burned people alive in a straw or wicker structure often man shaped. Hebrews prefered to kill the victim, dismember them, dissect the fat from muscle and bone in a grizzly ritual then burn it.

It was in all cases, to appease the Gods for successful hunting, or planting of crops, or harvesting of crops, human fertility, and other such reasons, all aimed at survival of the tribe. The goal was survival. Sacrifice was the tool of survival. The question is who got the idea that God were so cruel and sanguinaceous in their demands for worship by humans?

I am not a psychologist, if any are on the board, I would like to hear from him or her. Why did humans assume gods wanted bloody, painful sacrifice of living things and not some nicely carved hand craft or pretty stones?

Conchobar

mike_decock

I read somewhere that the ancients believed that the blood was the spirit and the soul of the body, when you released the blood, the life "spirit" would pass from the body, so to speak.

I guess burning the blood made the smoke rise to the heavens so it went up to the gods.

That's my amatuer psychological analysis of blood offerings, anyway.

-Mike...

Opera Nut

Excuse me, the word is GRISLY, as in yucky, not grizzly as in bears.

Rhea

My father shot a kangaroo,
gave me the grisly part to chew,
now wasn't that
a terrible thing to do?
To give me to chew,
the grisly part
of a dead kangaroo.

Opera Nut

That's gristle, in other words, cartilage.

hinduwoman

Nearly all religions have this rite. The sacrifical anumal would be killed and burnt. Its portions would be offered to the gods --- and then the priests would eat the best parts.!
Greece, Rome, India --- the same mindset operating here: "we like cooked meat, so God must like it too"!

Spaz

I still don't get why people don't see this.

why god why?