Sacrifice has been the fundamental institution of all natural religions. It is found at one time or another with the same general features in nearly all parts of the world. The same human wants have everywhere found the same embodiment. As a general rule its historical development among different peoples keeps pace with the progress of their thoughts regarding the nature of the divinities they worship. Sacrifice is primarily a sacramental meal at which the communicants are a deity and his worshippers, and the elements the flesh and blood of a sacred victim. Primitive tribes everywhere seem to regard themselves as related to their gods by the bond of kinship, and every tribe has certain sacred animals which it regards as related to the tribal god by precisely the same bond. These sacred animals are probably a survival of the totem-stage through which all civilised races seem to have passed. In any case they play a most important part in primitive religion. They are regarded with reverence as sources or media of supernatural influences. Their lives are protected like those of kinsmen. To slaughter one of them for private use is an act of sacrilege or murder. Sacrifice is a rare and solemn public function. The significant part of it is not the slaying of the victim, but the sacrificial meal which follows. During this meal the life of the sacrosanct animal with its mysterious virtues is supposed to pass physically into the communicants, whereby the natural bond of union between the god and his clients is sacramentally confirmed and sealed.
While this sacrificial meal occurs with the same general features in all natural religions, there is infinite diversity in detail. (1) There are differences as to the portions assigned to the divine and human communicants. As a rule one or more parts which are regarded as either peculiarly sacred or peculiarly choice—the blood, the fat, the head, the shoulders, the viscera—are given to the deity, and the rest is eaten by the worshippers. Sometimes a whole victim is given to the deity, while another is eaten by his commensals. Sometimes the portion of the god, sometimes that of the worshippers, is eaten by priests—but that is a late refinement. (2) There are differences as to the minor offerings which usually accompany the great sacrifice and help to furnish forth the feast. Fruit, cakes, honey, wine, milk, butter, and oil are the most common of the secondary oblations. What is prescribed in one country is forbidden in another. Each people naturally offers the choicest produce of its own land. (3) There are differences as to the times and seasons of sacrifice. Among pastoral tribes the great sacrifices occur at the time of yearning, among agricultural peoples during vintage and harvest. (4) Finally there are important differences as to the way in which the portion of the deity is conveyed to him. At first men believe that he actually eats the flesh of sacrifice. He is supposed to dwell in certain hallowed spots in his dominions—in stones, trees, fountains, caves. At these natural shrines his worshippers meet and sacrifice, and there they lay out his portion and leave it. At this stage sacrifice is literally the food of the gods. After a time men rise above this crude conception. The deity comes to be regarded as an ethereal being whose home is the upper air, and he can no longer be supposed to partake of solid food. The difficulty that now arises is overcome partly by the use of fire, which etherealises the sacrifice and sends it up to the deity in savoury clouds of smoke and vapour, partly by the multiplication of liquid offerings, especially blood and wine, which sink into the ground and may readily be supposed to be drunk up by the god.
These are the details and non-essentials of primitive sacrifice. The essentials are the public assembly, the shrine, the sacred victim, the banquet, and the supposed presence of the god as a guest-friend. The object is always to renew and strengthen the ties of kinship and friendship between the god and his worshippers, and so to secure the continuance of material prosperity. This primitive sacrificial system is not without religious value. If it is not lofty, it is genuine. It is no mere imposing or touching ceremony.
The ideas which it embodies are to every worshipper realities. Religion and ritual are still one. The system has also considerable ethical value. It binds the worshippers not merely to their god but to one another. The goods it seeks are material, but they are always public and social, never selfish goods. It gives the individual no place except as a member of the commune or tribe.
A new and radically different conception of sacrifice is formed when the tribal system begins to break up. Primitive ideas of the consanguinity of gods, men, and beasts become obsolete. Sacred animals become private property, their flesh begins to be used as common food, and they lose their sanctity. Before a sacrifice can now take place an animal has first to be surrendered by its owner and consecrated. Dedication takes the place of natural sanctity. It is this new and important element that changes the character of sacrifice. The act of surrender, which is at first a mere preliminary, comes to be regarded as the essential feature. A sacrifice begins to be spoken of as a gift or tribute from the worshipper to the deity, and the original sacramental idea is gradually lost sight of. Is this a forward or a backward movement of thought? It may be the one or the other, according to the meaning attached to the gift. Two interpretations are possible. Gifts have either a symbolical or an intrinsic value. If the sacrificial gift is simply an expression of the truth that all private property is a trust from God and ought to be devoted to His service, the new conception is an advance and can do nothing but good. But if it be supposed that God stands in need of gifts, and that the more numerous and costly the oblations the greater their efficacy, the tribute-idea is a backward movement. Sacrifice then becomes nothing but a method of conjuring. Unfortunately the latter view is the common one. The historical outcome of the gift or tribute theory is holocausts, hecatombs, and human sacrifices. These last are a strange instance of reversion to barbaric practice. Human sacrifice is natural among cannibals: the food that is most grateful to man is always presented to the gods. Its revival among civilised peoples is the result of a very different train of thought. Those who begin to measure the atoning power of a sacrifice by its magnitude, splendour, or cost cannot forget that they have possessions more precious than flocks and herds. Hence in times of great distress they begin to conjure the displeasure of their gods with offerings of their own flesh and blood.
As the breaking up of the tribal system leads to a radically new conception of the nature of sacrifice, so the downfall of a nation may always be expected to produce great changes in the sacrificial system. Adversity always puts a great strain on a nation's faith in the efficacy of sacrificial gifts. Repeated calamity shatters its faith. How can it escape from religious negation? Not by any new sacrificial theory. Sacrifice is either a sacramental rite or a tribute. No other conception is possible. The history of Israel, however, proves that two courses are still open to a people whose minds have been purged of the superstition that mere gifts can secure the divine favour. Some few great minds rise above the sacrificial idea to a purely spiritual religion. The majority return to the sacramental idea. Of the latter some revive the sacramental rite in its most primitive form, using as the sacramental elements the flesh and blood of various animals still tabooed or sacred. A greater number adopt the most complex and refined sacramental ritual. Taking it up at the stage where its historical development has been arrested, elaborating it at certain points and recasting it at others so as to make it more fitly express the religious wants of the new time, they begin to practise the whole with a fresh zeal.
In primitive Israel the central feature of sacrifice (shelem, zebah) is always the common meal, provided for by the slaughter of the sacred animal and by various kinds of cereal oblation (minha). Time gradually robs the meal of its sacred character, and then the holocaust (ōla) becomes common. After the Exile the great sacrifice is the sin-offering (asham), which culminates in the solemn ritual of the day of atonement. It is generally supposed that the central idea of the sin-offering is that of substitution—Jehovah accepting the life of the victim for that of the sinner. That is probably a mistake. Just as in the earlier sacrificial meal, so here, the significant part of the rite is not the shedding, but the application of the life-blood, followed by the burning of certain portions of the flesh and eating of others. Some of the details may readily lend themselves to a new interpretation, but the origin and primary significance of the ritual can be understood only when its distinctive features are compared with those of the sacrificial feast.
The thinkers of Greece and the prophets of Israel wage a constant polemic against the popular superstitions connected with the sacrificial system. Some of the latter seem to break away entirely from ritual, others do much to give it an ethical and spiritual meaning. Christianity embraces whatever is true both in the sacramental and in the dedicatory idea of sacrifice. The former idea receives its perfect expression in the first Christian rite, the latter in the first rule of Christian ethics, which transfigures sacrifice into self-sacrifice. But the followers of Christ are slow to rise to the height of His teaching. Material sacrifice is always easier than spiritual. Many of the errors connected with the old sacrificial systems survive as well in crude unethical conceptions of the Christian atonement as in the mass of the Church of Rome.
See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual, and Religion (2 vols. 1887); Tylor's Primitive Culture (2 vols. 1871); J. G. Frazer's Totemism (1887); Wellhausen's Reste arabischen Heidenthumes (1887); and especially Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites (1889).