Concept

Sacrifice

Overview

offering to gods

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Sacrifice is discussed.

As is demonstrated the first sacrifice was nothing else than “an act of social fellowship between the deity and his worshipper”. Things to eat and drink were brought as sacrifice; man offered to his god the same things as those on which he himself lived, flesh, cereals, fruits, wine and oil. Only in regard to sacrificial flesh did there exist restrictions and exceptions. The god partakes of the animal sacrifices…
Sigmund Freud, Totem and taboo
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It is as a sacrifice, a mode of “mortification,” that obedience is primarily conceived by Catholic writers, a “sacrifice which man offers to God, and of which he is himself both the priest and the victim. By poverty he immolates his exterior possessions; by chastity he immolates his body; by obedience he completes the sacrifice, and gives to God all that he yet holds as his own, his two most precious goods, his…
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
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19. _On the reasonableness of offering, as the true religion teaches, a visible sacrifice to the one true and invisible God._ As to those who think that these visible sacrifices are suitably offered to other gods, but that invisible sacrifices, the graces of purity of mind and holiness of will, should be offered, as greater and better, to the invisible God, Himself greater and better than all others, they must be…
of Hippo Augustine, The City of God, Volume I
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This is strikingly shown by the above-mentioned sacrificial festivals, in which, prior to being offered as a sacrifice, the individual was himself reverenced as the god to whom he was to be offered. True, the fact that the human individual, as well as the animal, possesses a value for those who bring the sacrifice, also introduces the idea of a gift; added to this, moreover, in the case of human sacrifice, is the…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
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Paul's thought is this: The sacrifices of the Old Testament have passed. Now all sacrifices are powerless but that of Christ himself; he is the sweet-smelling savor. This sacrifice is pleasing to God. He gladly accepts it and would have us be confident it is an acceptable offering in our stead. Moreover, there is no other sacrifice the Christian Church can offer for us. The once-offered Christ alone avails.
Martin Luther, Epistle Sermons, Vol. 2
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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Pythagoreanism.

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