Animal sacrifices

[ajcstr]

Question on animal sacrifices - I am reading through Exodus and I always thought that animal sacrifices were instituted as sort of a punishment for Israel worshiping a golden calf. But earlier in Exodus, Moses tells Pharaoh that the Israelites need to make an animal sacrifice and can’t do it in Egypt because it would offend the Egyptians.

So when was the practice of animal sacrifices started?

 

[PLeeD]

Abel’s offering was from his flock.

 

[Gem]

People have always realized that their food was the result of the plenty created by God (or the god they believed in) - a miracle from the soil and part of Creation. It’s natural to want to give some back in thanksgiving, or to try to bargain with God/a god to have further good harvests.

The particular animal sacrifices of the Jews were defined by God to Moses in Exodus. But these sacrifices for sin prefigure the sacrifice of Christ which is perfect and all- fulfilling. Under the new convenant, no further sacrifices are necessary for sin.

 

[Ron_in_minden]

Question on animal sacrifices - I am reading through Exodus and I always thought that animal sacrifices were instituted as sort of a punishment for Israel worshiping a golden calf. But earlier in Exodus, Moses tells Pharaoh that the Israelites need to make an animal sacrifice and can’t do it in Egypt because it would offend the Egyptians.

So when was the practice of animal sacrifices started?

The sacrifices God commanded Moses to make were animals the Egyptians worshipped as gods. Pharoah did not “know” God, so Moses and his people were commanded to sacrifice those gods in order to remember the one true God, to bring Isreal out of their darkness of worshiping Egyptian gods and back into the covenant of the one true God, to prove that the Egyptian gods were not gods at all. Hence the command for a three day journey away from the armies of the pharaoh, for the safety of Gods first born nation. The golden calf was an Egyptian god.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Question on animal sacrifices - I am reading through Exodus and I always thought that animal sacrifices were instituted as sort of a punishment for Israel worshiping a golden calf. But earlier in Exodus, Moses tells Pharaoh that the Israelites need to make an animal sacrifice and can’t do it in Egypt because it would offend the Egyptians.

So when was the practice of animal sacrifices started?

There were different types of sacrifices: burnt, thanksgiving, sin, etc - all of which had a unique purpose but also all of them in essence were an act of true worship (when done with the right disposition and to the one true God).

There is a popular theory (esp among Protestants) that the animal was being killed in place of the sinner, but that’s an unbiblical myth (see here).

 

[bmonk]

Question on animal sacrifices - I am reading through Exodus and I always thought that animal sacrifices were instituted as sort of a punishment for Israel worshiping a golden calf. But earlier in Exodus, Moses tells Pharaoh that the Israelites need to make an animal sacrifice and can’t do it in Egypt because it would offend the Egyptians.

So when was the practice of animal sacrifices started?

I’d say that, historically, animal sacrifices were a way to return a gift to God–and to share a meal between God and the community. That’s why Leviticus specifies who gets each portion–part goes to God (burnt on the altar), part to the priest who offered the sacrifice, and part to the person (family) offering the sacrifice.

When did they begin? Before recorded history. It seems to be a part of human tradition to offer back to the gods something of their gifts to us. As mentioned, Abel offers a sacrifice–and Cain tries to. Noah (in the J tradition) brings seven pairs of the clean animals and birds–so when he offers sacrifice, those clean animals will not be killed off. Abraham certainly offers sacrifice, most notably when he “cuts a covenant” with God in Genesis 15. But all of these seem to reflect a prior tradition and understanding.