The arch of Constantine in Rome depicts a bear and boar hunt that ends with a sacrifice to Hercules. Architectural historians suggest that the hunt represents Constantine’s taming of the forces of civil disorder and chaos. One (Mark Wilson Jones) suggests that the sacrifice represents pre-Constantinian pagan religion, while Constantine’s participation in the hunt represents his conquest of bestial social and religious forces.
My interest is elsewhere: Biblical sacrifices were confined to clean animals, and, more specifically, to domesticated clean animals. No wild animal ever ascended to Yahweh’s altar?
What does it say about Israel that it offered only domesticated animals? What does it say that Israel detached the cult from the hunt?
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Ethics of Rhetoric in Times of War
What we say matters. And the way we say it matters. This is especially true in times…
How the State Failed Noelia Castillo
On March 26, Noelia Castillo, a twenty-five-year-old Spanish woman, was killed by her doctors at her own…
The Mind’s Profane and Sacred Loves
The teachers you have make all the difference in your life. That they happened to come into…
