Bloody Israel

Leo Oppenheim (Ancient Mesopotamia, 191-2) observed that the “difference that separates the sacrificial rituals in [Mesopotamia and the West] is the ‘blood consciousness’ of the West, its awareness of the magic power of blood, which is not paralleled in Mesopotamia.”

Burning was another key difference:  “The Old Testament concept is best expressed by the burning of the offered food, a practice which had the purpose of transforming it from one dimension—that of physical existence—into another, in which the food became assimilable by the deity through its scent. . . . There is no trace in Mesopotamia of that communio between the deity and its worshippers that finds expression in the several forms of commensality observed in the sacrificial practices of circum-Mediterranean civilizations, as shown by the Old Testament in certain early instances and observed in Hittite and Greek customs.”

This, I think, overstates the contrast. Since Yahweh is represented as fire, the burning of the animals is both a transfiguration and a consumption, and every Israelite sacrifice was a meal.

Even Oppenheim’s contrast with regard to blood consciousness needs qualifications, argues Abusch (Sacrifice in Religious Experience, 44-5): in the myth of Atrahasis, discussed earlier, the god who led the rebellion was slaughtered and his flesh and blood mixed together with clay in order to create the human creature necessary for the welfare of the gods. The use of flesh and blood in addition to clay in the formation of humanity represents a novum. The flesh and blood are actually unnecessary, for the original model for the creation of humanity in this mythological tradition is that of a potter who creates statues by forming them out of wet clay.”

The blood gave humans fresh abilities that they had lacked: “While the flesh is the source of the human ghost, the blood . . . is the origin of an ability to plan, that is, of human intelligence, and is, ultimately, the source and etiology of the personal god or, rather, the family god who is passed down from generation to generation by the male progenitor. . . . The god is the blood, or is in the blood, and his transmission from father to son creates a relationship of kinship between generations of men by the emphasis on the tie of blood” (45-6).

Abusch considers this a West Semitic intrusion into Mesopotamian mythology, and theorizes, following Nancy Jay, that “those systems of sacrifice that emphasize blood serve to maintain family groups, groups which are organized along common blood lines that are usually, though not necessarily, tribal and patrilinear. That is, blood sacrifice maintains a relationship of kinship between men by the emphasis on a tie of blood and would agree with the emphasis on blood in a clan context” (46). If this is correct, the emphasis on blood makes sense for the semi-nomadic Semites, less sense in the urban environs of Mesopotamia (47). He concludes that “a contrast between kin-based and temple-based communities that we should view the blood-consciousness in the Israelite cult and its apparent absence in the Mesopotamian temple” (48).

This is unconvincing. Jay’s theory rests on a gendered understanding of sacrifice that is far from universal. Besides, the persistence of blood-consciousness in the more urbanized world of monarchical Israel and beyond becomes difficult to explain. It seems something else is motivating the differences regarding blood consciousness.