Fragrant Aroma

Jacob Milgrom argued that the notion that Yahweh was appeased by sacrificial aromas is rare, and that the notion that Yahweh fed on sacrificial food was found only in “rare linguistic fossils” (Leviticus 1-16, 250).

Finlan (Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors, 30) rightly protests: “Forty-two instances of God (or gods) being soothed by the smoke of
burning flesh, constitutes a standard Pentateuchal usage, not a rare one.
Despite Milgrom insisting that ‘provid[ing] food for the god . . . . [is] not found
in Israel,’ his own evidence shows that it was fundamental. Theology is
moving away from such anthropomorphic notions, but in the Pentateuch, it
has not moved very far. Even prayer is conceived of in a naturalistic manner,
as Milgrom notes: ‘their prayer will travel to God along a trajectory that
passes through their land, city, Temple, and then, at the altar, turns heavenward
(1 Kgs 8:44, 48).’ Milgrom admits that the notion of the gift is present in
many of the Hebrew sacrifices, but he downplays the fact that the gifts are,
in fact, the best available food items, just what an anthropomorphic god
would want.”

In short, “feeding, housing, and mollifying a god, and praying in his direction, are . . . naturalistic notions that occur in pagan and Hebrew traditions
alike.”