Jesus the Sacrifice: A Historical and Theological Study 9781978713895, 9781978713901, 1978713894

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Notes
Chapter 2: Sacrifice in the Ancient Mediterranean World
What Is Sacrifice?
The Varieties of Sacrificial Practice
Notes
Chapter 3: Sacrifice in the Jewish Scriptures
The Nature and Significance of Israelite Sacrifice
Sacrifice as Communion with God
Sacrifice as Gift
Sacrifice as Means of Atonement
The Object and Means of Atonement
How Do Sacrifices Atone? The Substitution Theory
The Hand-Laying Ritual
How Do Sacrifices Atone? The Power in the Blood
Distinctive Aspects of Israelite Sacrifice
The Divine Option to Reject Sacrifice
Sacrifice in the Larger Religious System: Purity, the Temple, and Holiness
Types of Israelite Sacrifice
The Olah: The Burnt Offering
The Shelamim: The Offering of Well-Being
The Hattat: The Purification Offering
The Asham: The Guilt Offering
The Minhah: The Grain Offering
Other Sacrificial Terms and Concepts
Occasions for Sacrifice
The Tamid
Passover
The Day of Atonement
Did the Prophets Reject Sacrifice?
Notes
Chapter 4: Sacrifice in Second Temple Judaism
The Continuing Importance of Sacrifice
Continuing the Three Purposes of Sacrifice
Sacrifice as Communion with God
Sacrifice as Gift
Sacrifice as Means of Atonement
Tracing Sacrificial Traditions to Pre-Mosaic Times
Sacrifice in Diaspora Texts
Sacrifice After the Second Temple
Questioning Sacrifice
Sacrifice in the Septuagint
Notes
Chapter 5: Sacrifice in the New Testament
The Three Purposes of Sacrifice
Communion
Gift
Atonement
Types of Sacrifice
Occasions for Sacrifice
Questioning Sacrifice
Heavenly Sacrificial Imagery in Revelation
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 6: Jesus the Sacrifice
The Covenant Sacrifice
Mark 14:22–25
Matthew 26:26–29
Luke 22:15–20
1 Corinthians 11:23–26
Ephesians 2–3 (and Colossians 1)
1 Peter 1:2
Hebrews 9:15–22
The Passover Lamb
The Gospel of John and Revelation
1 Corinthians 5:6–8
1 Peter 1:18–19
Atoning Sacrifices
Hebrews 9:1–10:18
1 John
Romans 3:25 and 5:6–11
Romans 8:3
1 Corinthians 15:3 and Galatians 1:4
Eclectic and Unique Texts
John 6:47–56
The “For Us” Texts
Ephesians 5:2
John 17:19
Passages That Are Not about Sacrifice
2 Corinthians 5:14–21
Galatians 3:13
1 Peter 2:24
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 7: Historical and Theological Implications
JESUS Death as Sacrifice and the Formation of the Early Church
Sacrifice and Atonement
Sacrifice, the Problem of Violence, and the Necessity of Jesus Death
Notes
Bibliography
Subject Index
Ancient Texts Index
About the Author

Citation preview

Jesus the Sacrifice

Jesus the Sacrifice A Historical and Theological Study

Scott Shauf

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom Copyright © 2022 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shauf, Scott, author. Title: Jesus the sacrifice : a historical and theological study / Scott Shauf. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book is a study of the New Testament interpretations of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice. Scott Shauf shows that such interpretations are not limited to the idea of atonement but serve in multiple ways to relate Jesus’ death to early Christian identity and practice”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022005607 (print) | LCCN 2022005608 (ebook) | ISBN 9781978713895 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978713901 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Jesus Christ—Crucifixion. | Sacrifice—Christianity. Classification: LCC BT450 .S53 2022 (print) | LCC BT450 (ebook) | DDC 232.96/3—dc23/eng/20220303 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005607 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005608 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgmentsvii 1 Introduction 1 2 Sacrifice in the Ancient Mediterranean World

7

3 Sacrifice in the Jewish Scriptures

17

4 Sacrifice in Second Temple Judaism

67

5 Sacrifice in the New Testament

95

6 Jesus the Sacrifice

115

7 Historical and Theological Implications

189

Bibliography 203 Subject Index

215

Ancient Texts Index

217

About the Author

229

v

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the many colleagues, students, and others whose support, input, and encouragement contributed to the writing of this book. Throughout the time of my work on it, I have been on the faculty at Gardner-Webb University. Gardner-Webb provided me with a course release for a semester when I was starting on the project and a full sabbatical semester when I was in the final stages. Without this institutional support, the book simply would not have been possible, and I am thankful to the leaders at Gardner-Webb for giving me the opportunity to research and write. My colleagues in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy have been supportive in many ways; special thanks go to Dr. Kent Blevins and Dr. Eddie Stepp for covering my department chair duties while I was on sabbatical. Several graduate assistants assisted me along the way; to Zach Emory, Jeremiah Hamby, and Nathan Wray I am grateful for their help in tracking down resources and checking my work, among other things. The idea for this book first came to me while I was teaching an undergraduate course in the General Epistles at Gardner-Webb. To the students in that class and to all the other students I have taught and continue to teach, I am immensely grateful for the challenging questions, provocative conversations, and insightful interpretations of the biblical texts. You make me a better teacher, a better interpreter, and a better researcher. The staff at Fortress Academic have been a pleasure to work with, and special thanks go to Neil Elliott for first approaching me with interest in publishing this book. Special thanks also go to Dr. Christian A. Eberhart of the University of Houston for providing feedback on an earlier draft in the publication process; I am particularly appreciative of Dr. Eberhart’s feedback because his own work on sacrifice has been influential in my own thinking about the topic. vii

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Acknowledgments

My Doktorvater, Dr. Carl Holladay of Emory University, has long been encouraging of my work, and I owe much to him. I am particularly grateful for his suggestions for improvement on the not-quite-completed manuscript. Finally, my wife April has been supporting my research and other craziness for twenty-five year now, and without her, I could have done none of this; she makes me better in so many ways. My children, Jonathan and Katrina, future academics themselves, I suspect, have been keeping me on my intellectual toes for many years now. To Katrina I am especially thankful for producing the artwork for the cover.

Chapter 1

Introduction

One of the foundational beliefs that shaped the emergence of Christianity in the first century was that Jesus’ death was a sacrifice. While historically the Romans’ killing of Jesus was merely the execution of a failed, would-be king, Christians claimed that Jesus’ death meant something beyond the Roman intention, that his death accomplished something beneficial for others. This claim has been central to Christian faith ever since. While there are multiple ways that his death is described as being beneficial in the writings that came to make up the New Testament, chief among them is the claim that his death was a sacrifice. The New Testament Gospels, in fact, attribute this claim to Jesus himself, as we will see. Several other New Testament authors, most notably Paul and the author of Hebrews, make much use of this claim in presenting their ideas about what the Christian movement was in its essence, of what God was doing in the world through this small but growing group of believers. The claim that Jesus’ death was a sacrifice, however, is far from a simple one. The claim is made in a variety of contexts in the New Testament writings, and varying implications are ascribed to it. What exactly was the meaning of these varying interpretations of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice? In order to answer this question, we first have to understand sacrifice as a general practice in the ancient world. We cannot understand what the New Testament authors meant in interpreting Jesus’ death as a sacrifice if we do not first understand sacrifice itself. This, then, is the goal of this book: to understand the practice of sacrifice in the ancient world so that we can then understand what the New Testament authors meant in interpreting Jesus’ death as a sacrifice. We want to understand their interpretations—note the plural “s”—in all their variety and complexity.

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Chapter 1

This goal has both historical and theological dimensions. On the historical side, we will first see that sacrifice in the ancient world was not understood and practiced the way that people today generally imagine it to have been. We will look carefully at the practice of sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean world in general and at its practice in Judaism in particular. We will spend much more time on the latter, since the Jewish practice is what chiefly informs the New Testament writings. We will then see that this better historical understanding of sacrifice enables a better understanding of the ways that Jesus’ death is interpreted as a sacrifice in the New Testament. The theological dimension of this study comes as a result of the improved understanding of the New Testament texts. When sacrifice is understood well, and when the interpretations of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice are understood well, there is potentially a tremendous payoff for Christian theology. There are significant barriers to the modern understanding of the interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, particular for those in western cultures. The first is the foreignness, the strangeness, of the ancient practice of sacrifice itself. Sacrifice has long ceased to be practiced in western cultures, and hence most western Christians’ view of sacrifice is shaped almost exclusively by the way Christians have traditionally interpreted Jesus’ death as a sacrifice. The result is that sacrifice is seen as being done solely for the purpose of achieving forgiveness of sins, or, put more technically, as inherently atoning. One of the major points of the opening chapters will be that this is a distorted view of sacrifice, that in fact sacrifice was usually performed for reasons having nothing to do with atonement. Why did the ancients sacrifice? This is a central question of our study. In overcoming this barrier, there is a certain parallelism between the historical and theological dimensions of our study. The historian of the ancient world and the biblical theologian have, indeed, parallel tasks. The task of the historian is to make the often-strange customs and ideas of the ancients understandable to modern learners. The task of the theologian is to make the often-strange world of the Bible understandable and applicable to modern people of faith. The parallelism continues: before these ancient texts, persons, and practices can be made understandable, the historian and theologian must first show that they are, indeed, strange. The temptation for moderns is always to assume that the ancients thought and acted the same way we do and to assimilate their ideas and practices to our own. This is perhaps the single greatest impediment to understanding the ancient world in general and, for the purposes of this book, the Bible in particular. Sacrifice, we will see, is a strange practice. It reflects a fundamentally different way of looking at the world from the way people do today. If we are going to understand the meaning of the New Testament interpretations of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, we must do our best to engage the meaning of the ancient practice, to see

Introduction

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the ancient practice with the eyes of the ancients. To do so, we need a robust historical imagination. A second barrier to understanding the interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice is the way the topic is usually framed in Christian theological discourse. This barrier is related to the first one in that the topic of atonement is usually the starting place—and often the ending place—for studies of the meaning of Jesus’ death. In Christian systematic theology, sacrifice has traditionally been viewed as one among a handful of “theories” or views of the atonement, others of which have names like the “the Christus victor view” and “the penalsubstitutionary view.” In effect, sacrifice is thereby seen as a subcategory of atonement. Jesus’ death may be viewed as atoning for humankind in various ways, and sacrifice is one of these. In more conservative theological circles, when these different views are explained and evaluated, the idea of sacrifice is often subsumed under the idea of substitution. Sacrifice is understood as being fundamentally about the sacrificial victim dying in place of the person for whom the sacrifice is made. The idea of Jesus’ death being a sacrifice is then that Jesus died in the place of Christians, that he was killed the way that humans deserve to die because of their sin. The upshot is that the sacrificial view of the atonement becomes a variation on the penal-substitutionary view, the idea of which is that in dying, Jesus took the punishment that we as sinful human beings deserve. A key point of our study will be that this conception of the relationship between sacrifice and atonement is backward. Sacrifice should not be understood as a subcategory of atonement. Rather, atonement was one of many possible purposes for which sacrifices were made in the ancient world. Sacrifice was a multivalent practice, its specific purpose and meaning varying according to the context in which it was performed. This was true of the practice of sacrifice in general, including in Judaism, and it is also true of the ways Jesus’ death was interpreted as a sacrifice in the New Testament writings. The New Testament authors did not always have atonement in mind when they interpreted Jesus’ death as a sacrifice. There were other meanings ascribed to Jesus’ sacrificial death. Moreover, we will also see that ritual sacrifice in general was not based on a principle of substitution. A third barrier to understanding Jesus’ death as a sacrifice is the bias exhibited against sacrifice in both scholarship and theology. In scholarship broadly, sacrifice has often been seen as a primitive practice that humanity has managed to overcome en route to becoming enlightened and modern (more on this in the next chapter). In many Christian theological circles, especially more progressive ones, sacrifice is often viewed negatively as being a form of divinely sanctioned violence. Why would a loving God command or take pleasure in the death of an animal or person? Consider the following such critique:

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Is it any wonder that there is so much abuse in the modern society when the predominant image of the culture is of “divine child abuse”—God the Father demanding and carrying out the suffering death of his own son? If Christianity is to be liberating for the oppressed, it must itself be liberated from this theology. We must do away with the atonement, this idea of a blood sin upon the whole human race which can be washed away only by the blood of the lamb.1

This critique is built on the traditional equation of sacrifice and atonement, and thus in some sense, this study will address such critiques. The question of violence is admittedly a difficult one, but studying the practice of sacrifice carefully in its ancient context will help. We will revisit the problem of sacrificial violence as a theological issue in our concluding chapter. There has, however, been a recent trend in scholarship to “rehabilitate” sacrifice.2 This scholarship emphasizes that sacrifice was a fundamental and ubiquitous practice in ancient religion, Jewish or otherwise. Among scholars in this trend, violence is held to be less central to sacrifice than is usually supposed, at times even being seen as almost incidental. Sacrifice is not seen to be fundamentally about punishment or appeasement but rather about basic communion with the divine. This book will build on some important contributions to the scholarship of sacrifice in this trend. Sacrifice can be understood in a way that does not require such a negative assessment of its purpose and value. When sacrificial practice is viewed with derision or abhorrence, it is difficult to achieve the historical imagination necessary to understand it well. It is all the more difficult to appreciate what the New Testament writers meant when they referred to the death of Jesus as a sacrifice. This book’s ultimate contention is that an informed historical understanding of the multivalent nature of sacrifice in the ancient world, including in the Old Testament and in the Judaism of the New Testament time period, will necessitate a reevaluation of the meaning of the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. Furthermore, such a reevaluation will be of positive benefit for Christian theology, enabling the sacrifice of Jesus to continue to be of foundational value in the understanding of Jesus, God, and the church. We will proceed as follows: following this introduction, chapter 2 will give an overview of the practice of sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean world. This overview will include an examination of the basic definition of sacrifice and a brief look at recent scholarship on sacrifice. Chapter 3 will then explore the practice of sacrifice in the Jewish scriptures, the Christian Old Testament. The Jewish scriptures form the backbone of the practice of sacrifice as understood in Judaism and in the New Testament itself. This chapter will thus provide the key points of understanding sacrifice needed to interpret the references to Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament texts. Next, chapter 4 will cover sacrifice in Second Temple Judaism, the period leading

Introduction

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up to and encompassing the time of the New Testament. Contrary to what some have claimed, we will see that sacrifice remained a vital practice for Jews in this period, while we will also see some Jews questioning its value. Two chapters will then cover sacrifice in the New Testament itself. Chapter 5 will first look at how sacrifice is generally portrayed in the New Testament, apart from the places where sacrifice appears as an interpretation of Jesus’ death. We will see that the New Testament picture largely echoes what we see in Second Temple Judaism. With chapter 6, we arrive at the heart of the argument. Here, we will examine closely the many New Testament texts that interpret Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, paying careful attention to the different ways these interpretations draw on sacrificial imagery and to how these interpretations function in the writings in which they appear. Lastly, chapter 7 will offer some concluding observations on the implications of the previous chapters; in keeping with the theme of the book, these conclusions will include historical observations, about the formation of early Christianity, and theological observations, about the value of our study for Christians today. NOTES 1. Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, “For God So Loved the World?” in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, ed. Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn (New York: Pilgrim, 1989), 26. Quoted here from Charles B. Cousar, “Paul and the Death of Jesus,” Interpretation 52 (1998): 38–52. I first found this quote in Henri Blocher, “The Sacrifice of Jesus: The Current Theological Situation,” European Journal of Theology 8 (1999): 23–36. 2. See Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 17–47, for a review. There have been other important works in this trend since Klawans’s book was published, such as Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi, eds., Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) and Göran Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric in the Prophetic Literature of the Hebrew Bible (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2012).

Chapter 2

Sacrifice in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Sacrifice was a central practice in ancient Mediterranean religion, and it would not be hard to argue that it was the most important one. While the details of its performance and meaning varied across the differing constituent cultures, prior to the arrival of Christianity, its status as the primary means of human communication with the divine was ubiquitous and enduring. Given its foreignness to most of the modern world, understanding sacrifice thus becomes crucial to understanding the religious context of the ancient world, which forms the basis for understanding the meaning of sacrificial language in the New Testament. WHAT IS SACRIFICE? Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss classically defined sacrifice as an act that “consists in establishing a means of communication between the sacred and the profane worlds through the mediation of a victim, that is, of a thing that in the course of the ceremony is destroyed.”1 While the word “victim” today tends to imply an animal or human being, the “victim” in ancient sacrifice could also be a plant or liquid (and human sacrifices were exceedingly rare). The real key in the “victim” designation is that the entity sacrificed is partially or wholly consumed, used up, in the sacrificial act. In this process, the entity is understood to be transferred from the possession of the offerer—from the common human realm—to the possession of the divine being to whom the sacrifice is made—to the divine realm.2 Whether the entity sacrificed is an animal, plant, or drink, the entity through its involvement in the sacrificial ritual is transferred from the offerer to the divine, and through the sacrifice, some communication takes place between the offerer and the divine. 7

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The result of the sacrifice almost always entails a changed moral or religious state on the part of the offerer bringing the sacrifice. That is, the offerer expects—and typically experiences, at least psychologically—to be in a better position with respect to the divinity to whom the sacrifice is made—and perhaps also more broadly—than was the case prior to the sacrifice.3 The nature of this improvement will vary according to the sacrifice’s purpose. It might involve the expectation of blessing, purification from sin or impurity, knowledge imparted from the deity, an increase in divine good will toward the offerer, or a host of other possibilities to be discussed later. Note that the “offerer” here could be an individual or a group. The performance of sacrifice usually occurs according to a common pattern, while once again there are many variations in the details.4 Sacrifice is most often performed at a previously established sacred place, usually a temple or at least an altar. Sometimes it occurs in a more spontaneous setting, and if this is the case, then some preparation of the location is necessary. The entrance of the participants into the sacred area of the sacrifice involves some ritual preparation, typically some combination of purification rites, prayer, and ritual procession. Then the animal (if the victim is an animal) is slaughtered. At least some parts of the slaughtered animal will then be burned (so also if the sacrificed object is not an animal). The burning is a particularly important step, as it is through burning that the victim is understood to be transferred to the divine realm.5 Other parts of the sacrificed object may be used in various rites, such as the reading of entrails in a divinatory sacrifice, where some divine message is conveyed through the condition of the entrails (the technical term for this type of sacrifice is extispicy). In Jewish sacrifice, what is done with the blood is particularly important. Finally, the meat is divided and consumed by the participants, except in the case of the whole burnt offering (holocaust) where the entire animal is burned up, a form of sacrifice common in Judaism but much less so elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean world. There may also be rituals to mark the transition back from the divine to the mundane world. It will be observed that this definition and description attempts to be as general as possible while still being useful.6 Modern persons tend to associate the idea of sacrifice with giving something up, typically reluctantly, with a sense of loss or deprivation, and when used in a Christian context almost always for the purpose of seeking forgiveness for sins. In the ancient Mediterranean world, however, sacrifice was used for a wide variety of specific purposes and could be performed with attitudes and emotions from anywhere on the spectrum of human possibility—and more often than not with a celebratory rather than a grim countenance.7 The gulf between ancient practice and modern connotations is wide enough that some scholars prefer to jettison the term “sacrifice” altogether for the purpose of studying ancient religion,8 but this

Sacrifice in the Ancient Mediterranean World

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seems to me an exaggerated response, a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bath water. Sacrifice is an identifiable practice in ancient religion; the description I have given fits a large body of evidence from across many time periods and cultures in the ancient Mediterranean world. It is true, however, that we must be careful not to laden the term with modern connotations, whether from Christian tradition or from secular usage. THE VARIETIES OF SACRIFICIAL PRACTICE There are two points on which there seems to be a strong consensus in recent scholarship regarding sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean world: (1) Its importance in ancient religion is hard to overemphasize; and (2) there can be no single theory that can explain the origin and significance of all sacrifice. Both points have emerged largely out of the vigorous but unsuccessful twentieth-century quest to determine the essential nature and origin of sacrifice. One major strand of this quest has been elucidating the connection between sacrifice and meals, on the one hand, and between sacrifice and human violence, on the other. The former of these had its origins in the late nineteenth-century work of William Robertson Smith but in the twentieth century was argued most persuasively by Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant in their 1979 volume The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks.9 The view that violence lies at the heart of sacrifice has its origins in the early twentieth-century work of Sigmund Freud and Karl Meuli but was argued most influentially by Walter Burkert in his aptly named 1983 work Homo Necans; René Girard’s 1972 work Violence and the Sacred has also been influential, especially in more popular circles.10 Burkert saw sacrifice as the ritualization of killing, having its origins in primitive hunting and becoming fully developed in ancient city cultures. Detienne and Vernant, on the other hand, took the violence involved in sacrifice as being almost incidental, with the real focus being on eating, though eating not just as a personal act but as having far-reaching social and even political implications. A scholarly generation later, the consensus is that such “great theories,” as Fritz Graf calls them,11 have failed. Scholars of sacrifice today generally do not try to account for the origin and ubiquitous practice of sacrifice in such reductionistic fashion—sacrifice cannot be shown to have had a single origin, and sacrifice has been shown to vary tremendously in its meaning and function. As Gary Anderson puts it, sacrifice is a “multivalent entity.”12 The point that has survived and continues to be held, however, is one that was shared by both sets of theories, namely, that sacrifice was central in ancient religion. But rather than this centrality being because sacrifice can be traced to some fundamental major human impulse like violence or eating,

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the prevailing view today is that sacrifice is important precisely because it encompasses or relates integrally to a wide range of human inclinations, cultural activities, and social relationships. As Jennifer Wright Kunst and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi, editors of a recent volume on ancient Mediterranean sacrifice, put it, sacrifice was “both a dominant metaphor and a widespread practice in antiquity,” whose importance “more often than not . . . could simply be assumed,”13 yet its practice was diverse, its interpretation fluid and contested, so that any single definition or theory of sacrifice cannot adequately be produced. Even if one considers only a specific instance of sacrifice, the instance was often open to multiple interpretations by those participating.14 Thus, the performance of sacrifice itself had an intrinsic value not always connected to any specific interpretation of its performance. Asking ancients about why sacrifice was important might be like asking lovers why kissing is important—the certainty of the act’s importance would be agreed upon, even if providing an explanation as to why might be difficult! One of the particularly unfortunate features of much past scholarship on sacrifice has been the tendency to treat sacrifice as one of the defining features of “primitive” cultures over against more “advanced” or “modern” cultures. Jonathan Klawans has written ably on how studies of sacrifice have so often taken an evolutionary approach, focusing on the origins of sacrifice (often with the connection to violence), passing through various “primitive” stages where sacrifice was religiously central in its practice, from there to where sacrifice became more of a religious metaphor (“spiritualized,” as it is often said), and then finally to religions like Christianity and modern Judaism where sacrifice is not practiced at all.15 Thus, the study of sacrifice has often served to denigrate the practice and reinforce the modern sense of religious or secular superiority, moderns having left such barbarous practices behind. The aforementioned definition of sacrifice does entail a single—but broad—general purpose for sacrifice: communication with the divine. For almost any purpose for which ancient persons might have wanted to communicate with the divine, sacrifice was likely to be involved. For ancient individuals and groups, sacrifice was simply a basic, fundamental, generally necessary feature of religious life. Its role was usually assumed, unquestioned and unexplained. Maria-Zoe Petropoulou, speaking of Greek animal sacrifice in particular, offers five particular functions such sacrifice could have: “offering, divination, purification, propitiation, sealing of an oath.”16 The functions were not mutually exclusive, “and the offering-type was almost omnipresent, since even sacrifices performed for reasons such as propitiation, or divination, were offered to deities.”17 Jacob Milgrom summarizes possible purposes for sacrifice as being to provide the deity food, to assimilate the life force of the victim, to achieve union with the deity, and to induce the deity’s aid with a

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gift.18 Such lists could be multiplied and simply attest to the range of meanings, functions, and settings attached to the performance of sacrifice.19 The connection of sacrifice to eating and meals is especially noteworthy, since it is especially foreign to moderns. Stanley Stowers argues that for most ancients, sacrifice was a fairly mundane religious act that entailed an “everyday social exchange” with the gods: The overwhelmingly dominant forms of sacrifice were ritualized versions of festive food preparation and eating practices with very special guests [i.e. the gods]. . . . In the religion of everyday social exchange, animal sacrifice was not a dramatic action, but a relatively mundane occasion in which meat was shared with the gods as it was eaten.20

Ramsay MacMullen likewise emphasizes the connection of sacrifice to typical meals: For most people, to have a good time with their friends involved some contact with a god who served as guest of honor, as master of ceremonies, or as host in the porticoes or flowering, shaded grounds of his own dwelling. For most people, meat was a thing never eaten and wine to surfeit never drunk save as some religious setting permitted.21

The connection of sacrifice to meals, particularly involving meat, is attested in the New Testament by the Corinthian Christians’ struggle with the practice, dealt with by Paul in 1 Corinthians 8–10 (a passage we will examine later). A list of more special occasions on which sacrifice would be expected to be involved is virtually endless: weddings, funerals, memorials, dedicatory services, political assemblies, civic celebrations, military ceremonies, significant business events—all these aside from more explicitly religious occasions. And there were all sorts of personal occasions for individuals, such as to thank the gods for healing or safe travel, to seek divine blessing on some personal venture, or to ward off a feared divinely bestowed disaster. Consider the following ancient accounts of sacrifices being offered: Philip, having pitched his camp early in the day, sacrificed a thank-offering to the gods for the success of his late enterprise and invited all his commanding officers to a banquet. (Polybius, Histories, 5.14.8 [LCL, Paton]) And when he ascended the throne upon the death of his father, being filled with confidence by reason of his earlier exploits he undertook to conquer the inhabited earth. There are those who say that he was urged to acquire empire over the whole world by his own daughter Athyrtis, who, according to some, was far more

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intelligent than any of her day and showed her father that the campaign would be an easy one, while according to others she had the gift of prophecy and knew beforehand, by means both of sacrifices and the practice of sleeping in temples, as well as from the signs which appear in the heavens, what would take place in the future. (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 1.53.7–8 [LCL, Oldfather]) After that, while subduing some of the rest of the islands, she was caught in a storm, and after she had offered up prayers for her safety to the Mother of the Gods, she was carried to one of the uninhabited islands; this island, in obedience to a vision which she beheld in her dreams, she made sacred to this goddess, and set up altars there and offered magnificent sacrifices. (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 3.55.8 [LCL, Oldfather]) The facts are these: Once when Oeneus had an excellent crop of grain, he offered sacrifices to the other gods, but neglected Artemis alone; and angered at him for this the goddess sent forth against him the famous Calydonian boar, a creature of enormous size. (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 4.34.2 [LCL, Oldfather]) When Fabius endeavored to take the auspices before leaving Tarentum, the fowls were again and again unfavorable. And when with the slaughter of a victim also he consulted the gods, the soothsayer declared that he must be on his guard against a ruse of the enemy and against an ambuscade. (Livy, History of Rome, 27.16 [LCL, Foster]) At Olympia he saw many sights which he considered worth seeing but he was stirred to the quick as he gazed on what seemed Jupiter’s very self. Therefore he ordered a sacrifice prepared larger than usual, just as if he had been going to sacrifice on the Capitol. (Livy, History of Rome, 45.28 [LCL, Schlesinger]) And so, that the flagrant murder might yet be cleansed away, by some kind of expiatory rite, the father was commanded to make atonement for his son at the public cost. He therefore offered certain piacular sacrifices, which were thenceforward handed down in the Horatian family, and, erecting a beam across the street, to typify a yoke, he made his son pass under it, with covered head. (Livy, History of Rome, 1.26 [LCL, Foster]) Then his friends went to the temples, and, an example having once been set, the neighbouring towns of Campania testified their joy with sacrifices and deputations. (Tacitus, The Annals, 9.14.10 [LCL, Church and Brodribb]) When at length the day arrived which had been fixed for the espousals, and Clisthenes had to speak out and declare his choice, he first of all made a sacrifice

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of a hundred oxen, and held a banquet, whereat he entertained all the suitors and the whole people of Sicyon. (Herodotus, Histories, 6.129.1)22 After this all the allies gave Brasidas a public burial in the city at a spot facing what is now the market-place, following his body in full armour. And the Amphipolitans fenced in his monument and have ever since made offerings to him as a hero, giving honours and instituting games and yearly sacrifices. (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 5.11.1 [LCL, Smith])

As the variety of circumstances indicates, sacrifice could be a part of invoking a god’s or the gods’ benevolent presence for almost any reason (a malevolent presence was also possible, if one wanted one’s enemies cursed). Were there critics of sacrifice or those who rejected it altogether? Yes, but they were few and far between, at least who did so publicly. They were mostly philosophers, the Orphic and Pythagorean schools most prominent among them.23 For most people, sacrifice was simply an accepted aspect of life, even for those not devout in their religion. Sacrifice was also a stable, conservative institution. Sacrifice neither declined nor changed significantly as a practice over the course of time, prior to the emerging dominance of Christianity. Petropoulou notes that the practice of sacrifice changed hardly at all from pre-classical times through the second century ce.24 Lucian of Samosata’s description of a sacrifice toward the tail end of this time period is indistinguishable in practice from those described by Homer many centuries earlier.25 When writers from the end of this period discuss the sacrifices of the ancients before them, they do not find the older practices alien or problematic.26 Given the general reverence for ancient traditions in this time period, the conservativeness of traditions regarding sacrifice is not surprising.27 There tended to be a general fear of changing such traditions—a fear of angering the gods.28 A detailed study of pagan sacrifice is outside the scope of the present study, but recognizing the ubiquity of sacrifice and the diversity of its practice is an essential point. If you had asked an average person from about any time or place in the ancient Mediterranean world why sacrifices were performed as a part of worship, the person probably would have been as puzzled at the question as most worshipers today would be if asked why music is included in so much worship. Sacrifice then, like music today, was simply a natural part of religious activity and experience. Its inclusion seemed natural, and its omission would have seemed bizarre. As we will see in the next chapters, sacrifice in Judaism differed little from sacrifice in the rest of the ancient Mediterranean world, a point no doubt surprising to many today, given that the very restricted understanding of sacrifice in Christian tradition is what has shaped most present-day understanding of the practice.

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NOTES 1. Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Functions, trans. W. D. Halls (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 97 (emphasis original). This work was originally published in 1899. It is certainly unusual for such an old work to still be considered a chief authority, but as Gary A. Anderson writes, the work of Hubert and Mauss “continues to command considerable respect among anthropological theorists and constitutes the starting point for all modern discussion of the problem” (“Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings: Old Testament,” ABD 5:871). Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus, 3 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991–2001), 441, expresses similar approval. 2. As say Hubert and Mauss, Sacrifice, 11, in sacrifice “the thing consecrated serves as an intermediary between the sacrifier, or the object which is to receive the practical benefits of the sacrifice, and the divinity to whom the sacrifice is usually addressed.” “Sacrifier” here refers to the subject who gets the benefit of the sacrifice (10). Milgrom, Leviticus, 441, also emphasizes this aspect of sacrifice. 3. So Hubert and Mauss, Sacrifice, 13: “Sacrifice is a religious act which, through the consecration of a victim, modifies the condition of the moral person who accomplishes it or that of certain objects with which he is concerned” (emphasis original). 4. My description combines elements of Hubert and Mauss, Sacrifice, 19–49, and Jennifer Larson, Understanding Greek Religion (New York: Routledge, 2016), 200–204. 5. Christian A. Eberhart, The Sacrifice of Jesus: Understanding Atonement Biblically (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 97–98, elucidates this step especially helpfully in regard to Hebrew sacrifice. See also John Goldingay, “Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ,” in Atonement Today: A Symposium at St. John’s College, Nottingham, ed. John Goldingay (London: SPCK, 1995) 3–20, esp. 12–15. 6. For further discussions of the definition of sacrifice, see J. H. M. Beattie, “On Understanding Sacrifice,” in Sacrifice, ed. M. F. C. Bourdillon and Meyer Fortes (London: Academic Press, 1980), 29–44; Maria-Zoe Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greek Religion, Judaism, and Christianity, 100 BC to AD 200 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 28; Larson, Understanding Greek Religion, 200. 7. That joy and celebration was the typical attitude of ancient offerers is a point made by many. See, for example, Royden Keith Yerkes, Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and Early Judaism (New York: Scribner, 1952), 4–5; Robert J. Daly, “The Power of Sacrifice in Ancient Judaism and Christianity,” Journal of Ritual Studies 4 (1990): 181–98, esp. 183; Christian A. Eberhart, “Sacrifice? Holy smokes! Reflections on Cult Terminology for Understanding Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible,” in Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice In the Bible, ed. Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 17–32, esp. 21. 8. See, for example, David Frankfurter, “Egyptian Religion and the Problem of the Category ‘Sacrifice,’” in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, ed. Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 75–93; Christopher A. Faraone and F. S. Naiden, eds., Greek and Roman Animal Sacrifice:

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Ancient Victims, Modern Observers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 10; James W. Watts, “The Rhetoric of Sacrifice,” in Ritual And Metaphor: Sacrifice In The Bible, ed. Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 3–16. 9. Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks, trans. Paula Wissing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); the French original was published in 1979. William Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (New York: Meridian, 1956), originally published in 1889. 10. Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, trans. Peter Bing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1972). On the importance of Freud and Meuli, see Knust and Várhelyi, Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, 7–9. That Girard’s book has been taken at all seriously among scholars is evidence that even in the academy the desire for a thesis to be true can be more important than actually having evidence to support the thesis. Girard’s evidence for his thesis that “violence is the heart and secret soul of the sacred” (31) is almost entirely anecdotal, and his argument revolves around interpreting fictional literary works. For a lengthier astute criticism, see Fritz Graf, “One Generation after Burkert and Girard: Where Are the Great Theories?” in Greek and Roman Animal Sacrifice: Ancient Victims, Modern Observers, ed. Christopher A. Faraone and F. S. Naiden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 32–51, esp. 39–40. 11. Graf, “One Generation After Burkert and Girard.” 12. Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings,” ABD 5:872. 13. Knust and Várhelyi, Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, 4; similarly, Frances M. Young, Sacrifice and the Death of Christ (London: SPCK, 1975), 101. 14. A point made by Daniel Ullucci, “Contesting the Meaning of Animal Sacrifice,” in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, ed. Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 60–61; and Göran Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric in the Prophetic Literature of the Hebrew Bible (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2012), 31. See also Watts, “Rhetoric of Sacrifice,” who notes that cultures who practiced sacrifice actually did little theorizing about its significance. 15. Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3–13. See also Knust and Várhelyi, Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, 3–31; Timothy Wardle, “Who Is Sacrificing? Assessing the Early Christian Reticence to Transfer the Idea of the Priesthood to the Community,” in Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice in the Bible, ed. Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 99–114, esp. 100–101. 16. Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice, 33–34. 17. Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice, 34 (emphasis original). 18. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus, 3 vols (New York: Doubleday, 1991–2001), 440–43. 19. See, for example, M. F. C. Bourdillon, “Introduction,” in Sacrifice, ed. M. F. C. Bourdillon and Meyer Fortes (London: Academic Press, 1980), 1–27. E. E. EvansPritchard came up with fourteen motivations for sacrifice in his study of the Nuer

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people: “communion, gift, apotropaic rite, bargain, exchange, ransom, elimination, expulsion, purification, expiation, propitiation, substitution, abnegation, and others” (Nuer Religion [Oxford: Clarendon, 1956], 281). Quoted in Milgrom, Leviticus, 442. I am sure that in the ancient Mediterranean world there were at least that many. 20. Stanley Stowers, “The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings Versus the Religion of Meanings, Essences, and Textual Mysteries,” in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, ed. Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 35–56, here 40. Ullucci, “Contesting the Meaning of Animal Sacrifice,” 62–63, argues similarly. 21. Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 40. Similarly, John Scheid, “Roman Animal Sacrifice and the System of Being,” in Greek and Roman Animal Sacrifice: Ancient Victims, Modern Observers, ed. Christopher A. Faraone and F. S. Naiden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 84–95, esp. 90–93. 22. Herodotus, The History of Herodotus, trans. George Rawlinson (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952). 23. See James B. Rives, “The Theology of Animal Sacrifice in the Ancient Greek World: Origin and Developments,” in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, ed. Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 187– 202; Fritz Graf, “A Satirist’s Sacrifices: Lucian’s On Sacrifices and the Contestation of Religious Traditions,” in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, ed. Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 203–13. 24. Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice, 25–27. 25. Ibid., 40–42. 26. Ibid., 58. 27. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire, 3. 28. Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice, 62.

Chapter 3

Sacrifice in the Jewish Scriptures

The goal of this chapter is to present an overview of sacrifice as it appears in the scriptures of Judaism. This goal serves two purposes as it relates to our ultimate goal of understanding how the New Testament interprets Jesus’ death as a sacrifice. First, since the New Testament authors explicitly draw on the framework of sacrifice provided in these texts, it is necessary to understand the picture given therein in order to make sense of the New Testament conceptions—one cannot understand the New Testament picture without understanding the Old Testament picture. Second, the Jewish scriptures provide the basis for the understanding of sacrifice in Second Temple Judaism, which is the subject of the next chapter and which provides the most immediate religious context for understanding conceptions of sacrifice in the New Testament. In other words, understanding sacrifice in the Jewish scriptures has both a direct and an indirect relationship to understanding sacrifice in the New Testament. Studying sacrifice in the Jewish scriptures is a problematic task from the start due to the fact that there is no single, unified presentation of sacrifice in these texts. Biblical scholars today are virtually unanimous on the view that these texts originated from a variety of sources written in different times and places, which then went through a multi-stage editing process—also in different times and places—before ending up in the form we have them in today. The result is that individual texts are not always consistent even within themselves and are all the more inconsistent when compared with each other. To give one key example, the book of Leviticus is generally held to be a product of two primary sources, the priestly source “P” and the holiness source “H.” The priestly source, comprising mainly chapters 1–16 and usually held to be the earlier of the two, has a complex, technical vocabulary when it comes to describing and prescribing sacrifices. The holiness 17

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source, however, comprising mainly chapters 17–27, does not maintain the same technicality of terminology as the priestly source, with the result that, as Jacob Milgrom puts it, “H consistently blurs the rigid distinctions in P’s terminology.”1 Thus, the same word might have one sense in the P part of Leviticus and a different sense in the H part. The narrative portions of the Pentateuch likewise do not reflect P’s technical usage of sacrificial vocabulary.2 Thus, there is not a single picture of sacrifice in the Pentateuch nor even within Leviticus itself. Naturally, the same also holds true for the remaining Jewish scriptures. For our purposes, no attempt will be made to sort out all the inconsistencies and nuances of meaning within and across the different texts. Present interests do not include the history of ancient Israelite traditions nor the formation of the Hebrew canon. Our task will simply be to describe the main points about sacrifice in these texts for the purpose of understanding sacrifice in Second Temple Judaism and in the New Testament. It is impossible to avoid issues of sources and editing altogether, and likewise the resulting inconsistences, but such issues will be noted rather than detailed, and by no means will we attempt to solve all the problems that arise when interpreting them. THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF ISRAELITE SACRIFICE There is general agreement that sacrifice as described in the Jewish scriptures served three main purposes for the people of Israel: to establish communion with God, to provide gifts to God, and to make atonement.3 There is some debate about which of these is more primary—but it is worth noting that the debate is between the first two, with atonement widely recognized as being secondary (or, to be precise, tertiary).4 As the idea of sacrifice being a means of establishing communion between the people and God is the purpose moderns are least familiar with, it is worth bringing this significance of sacrifice out in some detail. Sacrifice as Communion with God The narrative of YHWH’s appearance to the people of Israel following the exodus from Egypt, which includes the giving of the covenant and the establishment of his regular presence among the people, takes up the entire second half of the book of Exodus (chapters 19–40). The inclusion of sacrifice in this relationship follows right after the giving of the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:22–24):5

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The Lord said to Moses: “Thus you shall say to the Israelites: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I spoke with you from heaven. 23 You shall not make gods of silver alongside me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. 24 You need make for me only an altar of earth and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your offerings of well-being, your sheep and your oxen; in every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.’” 22

It is noteworthy here that the offering of sacrifices is connected to YHWH’s presence with and blessing of the people from the start. The divine command to make an altar and sacrifice on it is immediately followed by the divine promise to be with them and to bless them. The chapters following this dictum specify the ordinances the people are to follow (Exod 21–23), which are then followed by a narration of the covenant ceremony (Exod 24). The covenant ceremony is a key moment in the overall narrative of Exodus and will also be a key text for understanding the New Testament’s interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, so it warrants careful attention. It is here that the Israelites agree, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do” (v. 3). Moses builds an altar and has sacrifices offered on it (vv. 4–5). Half of the resulting blood is dashed against the altar (v. 6), and, after the people repeat their promise to follow YHWH, the rest of the blood is dashed on the people (vv. 7–8a). Moses declares the meaning of this latter act: “See the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words” (v. 8b). Moses, Aaron, and other leaders then ascend the mountain, “and they saw the God of Israel” (v. 10a). We are given here an unusual description of the appearance of God: “Under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness” (v. 10b). Moses is then immediately called up to the mountain again (vv. 12–14), and we are then told that “the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai” (v. 16). We are given another unusually vivid description of God’s glory: “Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel” (v. 17). In this episode, we can again see the connection between sacrificing and the presence of YHWH. The sacrifices are what make binding the people’s covenant to follow only YHWH and lead to the dramatic presence of YHWH with the people. The importance of the sacrifices in the covenant ceremony is brought out further when one considers that the moment is anticipated as a central goal in the entire exodus event. When YHWH first appears to Moses at the burning bush, YHWH instructs Moses to gather the elders of Israel and to give them the divine command (Exod 3:18b): You and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; let us now go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, so that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.”

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The account of Moses and Aaron first going to Pharaoh plays out this command straightforwardly (Exod 5:1–3): Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.’” 2 But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go.” 3 Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has revealed himself to us; let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God, or he will fall upon us with pestilence or sword.”

This desire to sacrifice to Israel’s God is repeated throughout the account of the plagues that follows the initial confrontation with Pharaoh (see 5:8, 17; 8:8, 25–29; 10:24–26). Sacrifice is thus seen as a major goal of the exodus, as the embodiment of the relationship that YHWH is forging with Israel. After the covenant ceremony in Exodus 24, the bulk of chapters 25–29 covers the building of the tabernacle and the establishment of the Aaronic priesthood. The latter entails the ordination of Aaron and his sons as priests, a process in which various sacrifices are the primary components (29:1–37). Recalling from our previous chapter that the sacrificial act results in a changed state for the offerer, the changed state in the ordination sacrifices for Aaron and his sons is that they are now consecrated as priests of YHWH. The process described also results in the altar itself being consecrated (vv. 36–37). We are then presented with the first instructions for sacrifices that are to be offered on an ongoing basis (Exod 29:38–46): Now this is what you shall offer on the altar: two lambs a year old regularly each day. 39 One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer in the evening; 40 and with the first lamb one-tenth of a measure of choice flour mixed with one-fourth of a hin of beaten oil, and one-fourth of a hin of wine for a drink offering. 41 And the other lamb you shall offer in the evening, and shall offer with it a grain offering and its drink offering, as in the morning, for a pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the Lord. 42 It shall be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the tent of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you, to speak to you there. 43 I will meet with the Israelites there, and it shall be sanctified by my glory; 44 I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar; Aaron also and his sons I will consecrate, to serve me as priests. 45 I will dwell among the Israelites, and I will be their God. 46 And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them; I am the Lord their God. 38

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This daily offering of two lambs came to be called the Tamid in later Jewish tradition (from the Hebrew of v. 42, ‫‏עֹ לַת ּתָ ִמיד‬, “regular burnt offering”). Its performance was regarded as a symbol of the divine presence and thus of the very existence of YHWH’s covenant relationship with Israel. The language of vv. 42–43 and v. 45 especially emphasizes the connection of the sacrifices to God’s presence and communication: “I will meet with you, to speak to you there. I will meet with the Israelites there . . . I will dwell among the Israelites, and I will be their God.” The sacrifices include grain, oil, and drink components (the various types of sacrifices will be covered further in the chapter), and the divine reception notes God’s pleasure at the offering—“for a pleasing odor” (v. 41, also a concept to be covered later in the chapter).6 Note that no other purpose of this daily offering is specified. The sacrifice is simply a natural and necessary aspect of establishing a relationship between the people of Israel and their God. As we will see further below and also in the next chapter, from the time of its inception through the Second Temple period, the Tamid’s importance remained foundational for Jewish understanding of their relationship to God—and the notion that the Tamid might cease was abhorrent. The conclusion of the Exodus account of the installation of the tabernacle, priesthood, and sacrifices—and thus the conclusion of Exodus itself—likewise emphasizes the connection between sacrifice and God’s presence. After the tabernacle and all its furnishings are completed, Aaron and his sons installed as priests, and the commanded sacrifices and purification rituals performed, we then get the result (Exod 40:34–38): Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 35 Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 36 Whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on each stage of their journey; 37 but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day that it was taken up. 38 For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey. 34

The institution of sacrifices as a part of the regular worship of God, then, goes hand-in-hand with the very idea of God being present with Israel. It is not only in Exodus that we see such a connection. Leviticus also contains an account of the installation of the priestly service (chapters 8–10). After Moses gives Aaron the instructions for the sacrifices, Moses then tells Aaron the purpose: “This is the thing that the Lord commanded you to do, so that the glory of the Lord may appear to you” (9:6). After the sacrifices are made, we are then given the result (Lev 9:22–24):

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Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them; and he came down after sacrificing the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the offering of well-being. 23 Moses and Aaron entered the tent of meeting, and then came out and blessed the people; and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. 24 Fire came out from the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the altar; and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. 22

Gary Anderson suggests that this scene was, for the P author, the climax of the Pentateuchal narrative: “Whereas prior to the revelation at Mt. Sinai, God had appeared to his chosen only sporadically, now this divine presence could be routinized and made available on a regular basis.”7 This is what sacrifice was fundamentally about for the people of Israel: achieving regular communion with God. If sacrifice is conceived in this sense, it should be no surprise that sacrifice was often performed and observed with joy rather than somberness or cringing. Mark Biddle, commenting on Deuteronomy—which is significant since thus far we have dealt with Exodus and Leviticus—expresses this point well: In contrast to modern understandings of the very idea of “sacrifice” as loss or expiation, Deuteronomy—consistent with ancient Israelite understandings— emphasizes the sacredness of all life and the idea of joyful celebration and communion with the deity. The worshiper does not give up something valuable. In sacrifice the worshiper acknowledges YHWH as the creator of life and enjoys the gift of meat and the privilege of table fellowship with YHWH.8

Numerous scenes from the history of Israel as narrated in the Jewish scriptures attest to this sense of sacrifice as being more usually celebratory rather than melancholy. A run-through of such scenes will illustrate this point and further emphasize the basic nature of sacrifice as a primary means of communion between human and divine. Most such scenes occur at important moments in Israel’s history. Deuteronomy 27:1–8 contains instructions Moses gives to the Israelites on how to enter the promised land. Upon the people’s crossing the Jordan into the land, Moses commands them to make an altar and offer sacrifices: “Then offer up burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God, make sacrifices of well-being, and eat them there, rejoicing before the Lord your God” (27:6b–7). It will be a joyous occasion, and the sacrifices will be a part of the celebration. These sacrifices are indeed carried out in the covenant renewal ceremony on Mount Ebal when Joshua leads the Israelites into the promised land (Joshua 8:30–35). 1 Samuel 6 tells of the return of the ark of the covenant to Israel after a seven-month stay in Philistine territory. When the ark is returned, those who

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saw it coming “went with rejoicing to meet it” (v. 13). Their response, both immediately and after the ark is more properly received, is to offer sacrifices (vv. 14, 15). No reason is specified for the sacrifices; sacrificing is simply a natural response to the return of the ark. After Saul becomes king and defeats the Ammonites (1 Sam 11:1–13), Samuel suggests a ceremony renewing Saul’s kingship. The description needs no comment at this point: “So all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. There they sacrificed offerings of well-being before the Lord, and there Saul and all the Israelites rejoiced greatly” (1 Sam 11:15). When David becomes king, he has the ark brought to Jerusalem for the first time, with a ceremonial procession full of pomp and joy (2 Sam 6:12b–15, 17–19): So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing; 13 and when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed an ox and a fatling. 14 David danced before the Lord with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. 15 So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet. . . . 17 They brought in the ark of the Lord, and set it in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it; and David offered burnt offerings and offerings of well-being before the Lord. 18 When David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the offerings of well-being, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts, 19 and distributed food among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, to each a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins. Then all the people went back to their homes.

Sacrifice both begins and forms the climax of the larger celebration. The connection of the sacrifices to the meal that follows sounds very much like the descriptions of sacrifices as meals from our previous chapter. The most complete and dramatic descriptions of joyous sacrifices all come from scenes pertaining to the Jerusalem temple—its establishment and later scenes of renewal. The first of these occurs when Solomon dedicates the temple he has had built (1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 7). The reported counts of animals sacrificed are astounding, and the overall scene is narrated dramatically (1 Kings 8:62–66; cf. 2 Chron 7:4–10): Then the king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifice before the Lord. 63 Solomon offered as sacrifices of well-being to the Lord twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the people of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord. 64 The same day the king consecrated

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the middle of the court that was in front of the house of the Lord; for there he offered the burnt offerings and the grain offerings and the fat pieces of the sacrifices of well-being, because the bronze altar that was before the Lord was too small to receive the burnt offerings and the grain offerings and the fat pieces of the sacrifices of well-being. 65 So Solomon held the festival at that time, and all Israel with him—a great assembly, people from Lebo-hamath to the Wadi of Egypt—before the Lord our God, seven days.66 On the eighth day he sent the people away; and they blessed the king, and went to their tents, joyful and in good spirits because of all the goodness that the Lord had shown to his servant David and to his people Israel.

The lavishness of the sacrifices is underscored, and the joyful nature of the event cannot be missed. If this scene is impressive, even more so is the story of king Hezekiah’s restoration of the Jerusalem temple service after years of neglect under the previous king (2 Chronicles 29). While we are first told of the somber sacrifice of sin offerings (vv. 20–24), the narration of the restoration of the regular sacrifices is detailed and dramatic—and clearly brings out the joy of the situation (vv. 25–36): He stationed the Levites in the house of the Lord with cymbals, harps, and lyres, according to the commandment of David and of Gad the king’s seer and of the prophet Nathan, for the commandment was from the Lord through his prophets. 26 The Levites stood with the instruments of David, and the priests with the trumpets. 27 Then Hezekiah commanded that the burnt offering be offered on the altar. When the burnt offering began, the song to the Lord began also, and the trumpets, accompanied by the instruments of King David of Israel. 28 The whole assembly worshiped, the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded; all this continued until the burnt offering was finished. 29 When the offering was finished, the king and all who were present with him bowed down and worshiped. 30 King Hezekiah and the officials commanded the Levites to sing praises to the Lord with the words of David and of the seer Asaph. They sang praises with gladness, and they bowed down and worshiped. 31 Then Hezekiah said, “You have now consecrated yourselves to the Lord; come near, bring sacrifices and thank offerings to the house of the Lord.” The assembly brought sacrifices and thank offerings; and all who were of a willing heart brought burnt offerings. 32 The number of the burnt offerings that the assembly brought was seventy bulls, one hundred rams, and two hundred lambs; all these were for a burnt offering to the Lord. 33 The consecrated offerings were six hundred bulls and three thousand sheep. 34 But the priests were too few and could not skin all the burnt offerings, so, until other priests had sanctified themselves, their kindred, the Levites, helped them until the work was finished—for

Sacrifice in the Jewish Scriptures

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the Levites were more conscientious than the priests in sanctifying themselves. 35 Besides the great number of burnt offerings there was the fat of the offerings of well-being, and there were the drink offerings for the burnt offerings. Thus the service of the house of the Lord was restored. 36 And Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced because of what God had done for the people; for the thing had come about suddenly.

Although the number of sacrifices is less than in Solomon’s ceremony, the significance of the sacrifices as part of the celebration is emphasized in similar fashion. While sacrifice in the Second Temple period will be our primary concern in the next chapter, it is worth including here one later scene that continues this theme of the joyful nature of sacrifice in connection with the divine presence, again in connection to the temple. 1 Maccabees 4 tells of the rededication of the temple in 164 bce after its desecration by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV. The scene resembles the 2 Chronicles 29 scene in its detailed description and in its joyful tone (vv. 52–58): Early in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, which is the month of Chislev, in the one hundred forty-eighth year, 53 they rose and offered sacrifice, as the law directs, on the new altar of burnt offering that they had built. 54 At the very season and on the very day that the Gentiles had profaned it, it was dedicated with songs and harps and lutes and cymbals. 55 All the people fell on their faces and worshiped and blessed Heaven, who had prospered them. 56 So they celebrated the dedication of the altar for eight days, and joyfully offered burnt offerings; they offered a sacrifice of well-being and a thanksgiving offering. 57 They decorated the front of the temple with golden crowns and small shields; they restored the gates and the chambers for the priests, and fitted them with doors. 58 There was very great joy among the people, and the disgrace brought by the Gentiles was removed.

Here, as in the previous scenes, sacrifice is part of the celebratory response to an experience of God’s gracious presence among the people and powerful action on behalf of the people. For the Israelites and later Jews, as was the case for most people in the ancient Mediterranean world, sacrifice was a natural response to experiences of the divine and a natural way of engaging the divine. This is not to say that sacrifice was always done with such positive feeling. There are plenty of recorded instances of sacrifice taking place in less than happy circumstances. The Israelites also sacrificed as a way of appealing to God in times of trouble or when they themselves had failed (e.g., see Judges 2:5; 20:26; 21:4; 2 Sam 24:18–25; 1 Kings 18:20–40). I have emphasized

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these joyous occasions because the idea of a joyous sacrifice tends to run counter to modern associations with the idea of sacrifice. The joyous and non-joyous occasions have in common the desire to engage the divine. This is, recall, the overall point here—the first and primary purpose of sacrifice was simply to establish communion with the divine. Sacrifice as Gift It will perhaps have already been observed that some of the sacrifices described earlier sound much like gifts from the offerer to God, and this takes us to the second main purpose of sacrifice for the Israelites. Some scholars, indeed, see gift as the overarching function of sacrifice, so thus as more primary than communion.9 In reality, it is very difficult to separate the functions of gift and communion, as Göran Eidevall’s argument for the function of gift being primary itself illustrates: I would therefore suggest that the primary function of the sacrificial system(s) described in the Hebrew Bible can be defined in the following way: By means of a continual exchange of gifts, the sacrificial cult served to establish and maintain a reciprocal and beneficial relationship with YHWH.10

Even as he argues for the primary sense of gift for sacrifice, he cannot avoid language of communion.11 Indeed, the whole concept of gift seems to imply a relationship and thus the concept of communion itself. Conversely, when a relationship in the ancient world is clearly one of a superior to an inferior, as in the divine-human relationship, communion between the two parties will almost necessarily entail a gift. As John Hartley points out, Israel’s understanding of its relationship with YHWH was modeled on the understanding of subjects to their king, and since a subject “would not presume to enter the presence of a king without a gift[,] neither would a worshiper approach Yahweh, the King of Israel, without a gift.”12 The concepts of sacrifices as gifts and as establishing communion are thus intimately connected, even if, as is certainly the case, in individual contexts one or the other may move to the foreground. A matter of some ongoing debate related to this point is the question of to what extent, if any, sacrifices are conceived of as providing food for YHWH. While this idea will sound strange, perhaps even repugnant, to modern religious people, it is generally agreed among scholars that at least in the background of the Hebrew scriptures lies the idea that sacrifices were actually consumed by the divine. It is also usually agreed, however, that the idea in the scriptures appears merely as a vestige of a bygone era of understanding, and that YHWH himself is not depicted as consuming or being

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sustained by sacrifices.13 So while there are various references to God’s food (Lev 21:6, 8, 17, 21, 22; Num 28:2; Ezek 44:7), we never read of God actually eating it.14 Food language thus serves primarily as a metaphor for communion.15 While we do not see God eating in the scriptures, we do have many references to God smelling the aroma of the sacrifices, in the oft-used expression, “pleasing aroma” (Heb ַ‫)ריחַ ־נִ יחֹוח‬, ֵ found thirty-five times in Leviticus and Numbers (but seldom elsewhere, and outside of the Pentateuch only in Ezekiel). It is difficult to determine precisely how the phrase should be taken. Many scholars suggest that the phrase as used in the scriptures has a technical sense, thus a metaphorical one, signaling divine acceptance of the sacrifice.16 Hartley, however, offers a more literal interpretation: The phrase ‫ ריח ניחח‬means that the aroma arising from the sacrifice moved Yahweh to be favorably disposed to its presenters. Should Yahweh be angry, the aroma placated his anger. More importantly it stimulated his memory. There is an intimate tie between smell and memory.17

However literally we take the language of food and smell, both concepts are a part of the notion that in the sacrifice, the offerer presents a gift to God. All types of sacrifices in the Hebrew scriptures are included under the umbrella of korban (‫)קָ ְרּבַ ן‬, a term with the broad meaning of “offering” and encompassing not only sacrifices but gifts to God made in other contexts, such as spoils of war dedicated to YHWH (Num 31:50) and contributions to the tabernacle (Num 7:3).18 The idea of presenting God a gift sounds strange to many modern people, because we are accustomed to thinking of the purpose of a gift as being to provide for the wants or needs of the recipient. But in the ancient world, as in many cultures still today, the significance of the gift was that it honored the recipient; it was an expression of the relationship between the two parties. The usefulness of the gift for the recipient was not the point. So in sacrificing, the Israelites did not think of the sacrifice as providing for some need or utility for YHWH but merely of showing him the proper respect.19 Sacrifice as Means of Atonement The third main purpose of sacrifice for the Israelites was atonement. It is hopefully clear that the sacrifices we have discussed so far were not for the purpose of atonement, and it is worth repeating that these first two purposes of sacrifice were more primary than the purpose of atonement. Atoning sacrifices were certainly important for the Israelites and Jews, but atonement was a special function of certain sacrifices, not the general function of all sacrifices.

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The notion of atonement presupposes the idea that the relationship between God and God’s people can be ruptured and thus that the status of the people before God can be damaged. Atonement is the process whereby the relationship and status are restored. As B. Lang has observed, the rupture is conceived as a legal matter rather than an emotional one and hence requires a specific process to repair.20 Today, Christians and others most often conceive of this situation as a matter of sin and forgiveness, but, as we will see, the biblical picture is more complicated. The English word “atonement” has a remarkably simple etymology—“atone-ment”—and is usually seen by scholars to convey the biblical idea well, denoting as it does the restoration of a broken relationship. “Atonement” and the related words (“atone,” “atoning,” etc.) generally translate words from the Hebrew root ‫ּכפר‬. The verb ‫ כִ ּּפֶר‬is the most common form; while it is often translated simply as “atone” or “make atonement,” other translations in various contexts include “expiate,” “propitiate,” “ransom,” and “purge.”21 Most of the debates about its translation have focused on the difference between expiation and propitiation.22 Propitiation means appeasing the divine’s anger after having caused some offense, or, more broadly, trying to please or placate the divine in some way. Expiation entails removing the presence and effects of sin or impurity, of whatever has caused the ruptured relationship.23 While there is no doubt that there are places in the biblical texts where ‫ּכפר‬ words are used to express the idea of appeasing divine or human anger (e.g., Gen 32:20; Prov 16:14; Num 25:13),24 scholars overwhelmingly prefer the idea of expiation over propitiation as an explanation of biblical atonement, particularly in texts dealing with sacrifice.25 Sacrifices atone through expiation, thus by removing sin, impurity, and the effects of these on the status of the person or persons seeking atonement. But how do sacrifices atone? That is the million-dollar question, not least because answering the question regarding Old Testament sacrifices plays a large role in determining how the death of Jesus as a sacrifice is understood in the New Testament. But before we can begin to answer that question, some surprising observations must be made about the way that atonement language is used in the Jewish scriptures, particularly as relating to sacrifice. The Object and Means of Atonement First, atonement pertains not only to people and not only to sin. Consider the following passage from the instructions given at Sinai for the establishment of priestly rituals (Exod 29:36–37): Also every day you shall offer a bull as a sin offering for atonement. Also you shall offer a sin offering for the altar, when you make atonement for it, and shall

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anoint it, to consecrate it. Seven days you shall make atonement for the altar, and consecrate it, and the altar shall be most holy; whatever touches the altar shall become holy.

We see here that atonement is made not only for the priests but also for the altar itself. This occurs as a part of the consecration process of the altar, in essence the process whereby the altar becomes the altar. This passage is not unique. The incense altar (which will be treated further below) is similarly atoned for according to instructions given shortly thereafter (Exod 30:10). Leviticus also contains instructions for making atonement for the altar (8:14– 15), as does Ezekiel in his vision of the restored temple service (43:20, 26). On the annual Day of Atonement (also to be treated further in the chapter), atonement is made not only for the altar but also for the temple and particularly for the innermost part of the temple, the Holy of Holies. The overall accomplishment of the annual Day is summarized at the end of Leviticus 16 (16:33): He [the high priest] shall make atonement for the sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly.

Atonement, then, is a process pertaining not only to people but also to places or items that bear a special relationship to YHWH. We need only broaden our earlier definition of atonement slightly for this to make sense—these special places and items have a certain relationship to God that must be established and, when ruptured, restored through atonement rituals. This sense of atonement as focusing on consecration also appears in the instructions for the ordination of the Aaronic priesthood in Exod 29:33. Atonement also pertains to the restoration of a diseased house in Lev 14:53 and to the defiled land of Israel itself in Num 35:33.26 Places and things that are a part of Israel’s covenant relationship with God also need atoning in order to relate to God properly. Since this is the case, it is perhaps not too surprising that we also find atonement applied to people in situations that are not a matter of sin. The status of persons before God could also be affected by events causing ritual impurity. Purity and impurity will be treated separately later; here we merely note that impurity caused a rupture in the divine-human relationship, and its removal therefore was accomplished through atonement rituals in essentially the same way that sins were atoned for, at least in some situations. When a woman gave birth, for example, she was instructed to make a sacrifice, and the priest then was to “offer it before the Lord, and make atonement on her behalf” (Lev 12:7). Similar instructions are given when a leper is to be

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cleansed (Lev 14:31), when both men and women experience genital discharges (Lev 15:15, 30), and when a Nazirite comes in contact with a corpse (Num 6:11); all these require sacrifices that atone, clearly for reasons that are not about the individuals involved having sinned.27 The second surprising observation about atonement is that atonement does not always require an animal sacrifice or even a sacrifice of any kind. This point is perhaps especially surprising because many Christians are familiar with the statement of the book of Hebrews that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin” (9:22). While the understanding of sacrifice in Hebrews will be addressed in a later chapter, this verse cannot be taken as a general description of the means of atonement in the Old Testament. Two passages in particular make this clear. The first is Lev 5:11–13, where offerings consisting only of grain are among the sacrifices permitted specifically to atone for sin: “you shall bring as your offering for the sin that you have committed one-tenth of an ephah of choice flour for a sin offering. . . . Thus the priest shall make atonement on your behalf for whichever of these sins you have committed, and you shall be forgiven.” The second is the Day of Atonement ritual, where the sins of the people are atoned for not by a sacrifice but by the scapegoat ritual, where a goat carrying the people’s sins is sent away into the wilderness (Lev 16, esp. vv. 20–22). The Day of Atonement will be covered more completely later in the chapter, but this key point here is straightforward. Besides these regular acts of atonement made apart from animal sacrifice, there are two stories from the Israelites’ journey to the promised land where atonement is made in unusual ways when the people rebel against YHWH. In the first (Num 16:41–50), Moses and Aaron prevent the wrath of YHWH from consuming the Israelites by offering incense. The language is striking: “He [Aaron] put on the incense, and made atonement for the people. He stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stopped” (vv. 47b–48). In the second story of rebellion (Num 25:1–13), a more famous one, Phinehas makes atonement by impaling two of the worst perpetrators in the rebellion, an Israelite man and his new Midianite wife, “through the belly” (v. 8). YHWH speaks to Moses about the incident, and the language is again striking: “Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the Israelites by manifesting such zeal among them on my behalf that in my jealousy I did not consume the Israelites . . . because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the Israelites” (vv. 11, 13). Less exciting but still worth attention are a few other places where atonement is achieved without sacrifice. In Exod 30:11–16, the half shekel offering that is required of all Israelite adults is said to “make atonement for your lives” (v. 15) and is referred to as “atonement money . . . a reminder to the Israelites of the ransom given for your lives” (v. 16). In Num 8:19,

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the dedication of the Levites to temple service is said to be in order “to do the service for the Israelites at the tent of meeting, and to make atonement for the Israelites, in order that there may be no plague among the Israelites for coming too close to the sanctuary.” While a strange-sounding verse to modern readers, the idea is that the Levites form a buffer of sorts between a holy God and a less-than-holy people for whom the divine presence could be dangerous.28 The main point to observe here is simply that language of atonement is used to express multiple ways in which the proper relationship between YHWH and his people is maintained. How Do Sacrifices Atone? The Substitution Theory With these points in mind, we can now address the question of how sacrifices are able to make atonement. One common theory, historically probably the most commonly held theory, is that sacrifice atones by means of substitution. This understanding has been quite common among Christian interpreters, especially those of earlier scholarly generations, and is probably the most common understanding among Christians in general. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., states the basic idea succinctly: Basic to the whole theory of sacrifice in the OT is the concept of substitution. The life of the victim is substituted for the individual human life in such a way that the offender averts the necessity of forfeiting his or her own life, which God could have demanded because of the offense committed. Had not the life of the substituted victim intervened, exposure to the divine wrath would mean certain death to the offender. But the blood, symbolizing the lifeblood of the victim yielded up in death, comes between the offender and the wrath of God to rescue the offender from the just penalty for the sin.29

A significant virtue of this theory is its simplicity. It entails a straightforward notion of divine justice and makes sense of why God would see the death of an animal as a significant religious act. For Christians, it easily transfers to the understanding of the atoning significance of Jesus’ death on the cross. As Christians commonly hold that Jesus died in our place, sacrifice becomes more understandable when understood in terms of substitution. The strangeness of the ancient ritual becomes less strange and more easily suitable to non-ancient minds. Despite these advantages, there are significant problems with maintaining this theory in light of the Old Testament evidence, and recent interpreters tend to downplay or reject the idea of substitution as a comprehensive explanation of Israelite and Jewish sacrifice.30 To see why, first consider one of the descriptions from Leviticus for how a sacrifice that is made to atone for

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sin is to be performed, a description that is typical of such atoning sacrifices (Lev 4:27–31): If anyone of the ordinary people among you sins unintentionally in doing any one of the things that by the Lord’s commandments ought not to be done and incurs guilt, 28 when the sin that you have committed is made known to you, you shall bring a female goat without blemish as your offering, for the sin that you have committed. 29 You shall lay your hand on the head of the sin offering; and the sin offering shall be slaughtered at the place of the burnt offering. 30 The priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and he shall pour out the rest of its blood at the base of the altar. 31 He shall remove all its fat, as the fat is removed from the offering of well-being, and the priest shall turn it into smoke on the altar for a pleasing odor to the Lord. Thus the priest shall make atonement on your behalf, and you shall be forgiven. 27

Note that the slaughter of the animal is mentioned only in v. 29. The greater part of the ritual focuses on what is to be done with the different parts of the animal after it is killed; this is actually even more the case than what appears here, because the part of the ritual involving the removal of the fat in v. 31 assumes a lengthier description given earlier in Leviticus (3:14–16). Note also that it is the offerer, the one who has sinned, who slaughters the animal,31 while the priest performs all the rituals with the blood and the fat— since it is the priest who is said to make atonement for the offerer in v. 31, the implication clearly is that it is the post-slaughter rituals that are central to the act of atonement, not the slaughter itself. This does not square well with the idea that the sacrifice atones via substitution, because in the idea of substitution, the death of the animal in place of the offerer is the focus. If the substitution of the animal for the offerer were the key to understanding the whole act, why would the rituals performed after the slaughter be identified specifically as what atones? Moreover, why would not the priest do the slaughtering?32 This observation might seem like a case of hair-splitting, but the lack of emphasis on the slaughter or death of the animal is pervasive throughout the descriptions of atoning sacrifices. As Robert Daly notes: It is very important to keep in mind that, throughout the Jewish tradition, very little importance was attached to the slaughtering of the victim. There is no trace of any concern over the fact or the significance of the death of the animal, or over any suffering it might endure; the slaughtering of the victim seems to have been looked upon primarily as a means to obtain the sacrificial flesh and, above all, the sacrificial blood.33

Sacrifice in the Jewish Scriptures

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To this, we should add the upshot of our surprising observations from earlier text. If atonement is achieved through substitutionary slaughter, why is atonement made for the altar, the temple, houses, and the land? Why are atoning sacrifices made for women after childbirth or for the other medical reasons in the same way that atoning sacrifices are made for sin? Perhaps most importantly, how do we make sense of the atoning rituals that do not require the death of an animal? As we saw, grain sacrifices can atone for sin, and on the Day of Atonement, the scapegoat who atones for the people’s sin is not killed. To this, we can add that some of the atonement rituals where animals are slaughtered also include instructions for including grain and drink offerings (e.g., Num 15:22–26; Ezek 45:13–17); how do these make sense from a substitutionary standpoint? It would be even odder to try to make the case that all of Israelite sacrifice was based on the idea of substitution. As we have seen, often sacrifice is made on joyous occasions and has nothing to do with atonement. For these sacrifices, the idea that the animal’s life substitutes for the life of the offerer does not even make sense. The Hand-Laying Ritual One particular detail of the sacrifice rituals has often been debated in the context of the meaning of sacrifice, especially where the question of substitution is at stake. Included in the Leviticus instructions for several types of sacrifice (namely the burnt offering, the offering of well-being, and the purification offering; these will be discussed further in the chapter) is a step where the offerer lays his or her hand on the head of the animal before slaughtering it. Note that this step is included in the instructions for sacrifice in Lev 4:27–31, quoted earlier (v. 29; see also 1:4; 3:2, 8, 13; 4:4, 15, 24, 33). The question is: What is the significance of this hand-laying act? The interpretation of this ritual detail has been of surprising importance, primarily because of its role in arguments about substitution. Leviticus itself offers little help in interpreting the act. In the instruction for the burnt offering, a connection to atonement is implied: “You shall lay your hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be acceptable in your behalf as atonement for you” (1:4). None of the other mentions of the act make this connection, however, and since, as we will see further, the offering of well-being was not connected with atonement, it is unlikely that the connection made specifically for the burnt offering is meant to provide the general significance of the act. A variety of interpretations of the act have been suggested.34 Most of them can be classified under one of three categories. First, some suggest that the act served the function of transference; the offerer transferred his or her sins to the animal. Second, others suggest that the act served the function of identification; the offerer and animal become identified with each other.

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This identification can then play out in varying ways. The animal can be seen as a substitute for the offerer, dying in the offerer’s place. Or instead the offerer can be seen as participating in the death of the animal, symbolizing complete submission to God. Or the soul or life-force of the offerer may be seen to become part of the animal. Third, the act may indicate the offerer’s possession of the animal; by the act, the offerer merely claims that the animal belongs to him or her and thus that the sacrifice is done on his or her behalf. While a detailed consideration of these interpretations is beyond the scope of this book, the first two interpretations tend to founder on two points. First, it is hard to square them with offerings made for non-atoning purposes. Both tend to focus on the nature of sacrifice as atonement, and many of the sacrifices made where the hand-laying act is a part are not about atonement (especially the offerings of well-being).35 Second, both heavily emphasize the importance of the death of the animal, and we have just seen that the animal’s moment of death is not of primary importance in sacrifices, atoning or otherwise. Moreover, surely it is unwise to base a theory of Israelite or Jewish sacrifice on the interpretation of a ritual that is itself not interpreted in the Jewish scriptures. This might seem like an obvious point, but Christian scholars in particular have at times been eager to interpret the act as a way of leading to a particular understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice. To give one brief example, the eminent New Testament scholar James Dunn, in making a case for how the New Testament understands the death of Jesus as a sacrifice, makes the meaning of the hand-laying ritual a significant part of his argument.36 A point from the previous chapter also bears repeating here, that sacrifice was a basic ritual the performance of which was generally assumed to be important and thus was often open to multiple interpretations, even by those participating in the act. Thus, different offerers might have understood the hand-laying ritual differently. Philo of Alexandria actually provides us with an example of this. In his discussion of the ritual, he emphasizes the importance of the worshiper’s conscience, writing the following (Spec. Laws 1.203–204 [LCL, Colson]): As he lays his hands on the victim, he can boldly and with a pure conscience speak in this wise: “These hands have taken no gift to do injustice, nor shared in the proceeds of plunder or overreaching, nor been soiled with innocent blood. None have they maimed or wounded, no deed of outrage or violence have they wrought. They have done no service of any other kind at all which might incur arraignment or censure, but have made themselves humble ministers of things excellent and profitable, such as are held in honour in the sight of wisdom and law and wise and law-abiding men.”

Sacrifice in the Jewish Scriptures

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Doubtless this interpretation was idiosyncratic to Philo, but the fact that such an interpretation was put forth underscores the nature of sacrifice as being open to varying understandings. It is therefore best to state any general significance of the hand-laying ritual as broadly as possible while still being meaningful. Clearly the act implied a connection between the offerer and the animal, however this connection might be understood. The benefits of the sacrifice would accrue to the person or group performing the act (while usually an individual, in Lev 4:15 it is a group).37 While in specific situations or with certain individuals it may be possible to specify the meaning more narrowly, this can only be done on a case-by-case basis. The point about the possibility of different interpretations should serve as another warning here, however, a warning of a different kind. We cannot preclude the possibility that sacrifices could have been interpreted by some involved as working in substitutionary fashion. While substitution is difficult to maintain as a comprehensive explanation for the meaning of sacrifice, or even of atoning sacrifices in particular, this point does not mean that in individual circumstances, a sacrifice might not be interpreted as atoning in substitutionary fashion. Moreover, the rejection of substitution as a comprehensive theory of sacrifice does not mean that substitution could not otherwise be a part of Jewish or Christian thinking. In fact, it is quite clear that the idea of individuals taking on the punishment deserved by others will indeed become a part of Jewish and Christian thinking in other ways. We will return to this point in a later chapter, where we will also then have to consider whether this idea of vicarious suffering and death then becomes a part of thinking about sacrifice. How Do Sacrifices Atone? The Power in the Blood We have seen that the emphasis in the descriptions of atoning sacrifice is not on the killing of the animal but on what is done with the animal afterward, especially with its blood. Given the ubiquity of these blood rites in the performance of sacrifices, and that these rites make atonement for people, the altar, and the temple, it seems appropriate to use Milgrom’s phrase “ritual detergent”38 to describe how blood is able to cleanse sin and impurity from persons, places, and things that stand in close relationship to God. The Jewish scriptures do not provide a theoretical discussion as to why blood is able to have this effect. We do, however, have one verse that is highly suggestive, Lev 17:11. This verse is probably the most frequently discussed verse in all of Leviticus dealing with sacrifice, and its interpretation has been of foundational importance. As Kaiser observes, how one interprets this verse “will literally determine one’s whole approach to the book of Leviticus and the sacrificial institution as a whole.”39

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To understand the verse properly, we must begin with its context. Leviticus 17 opens with a prohibition of the slaughter of animals outside of the context of temple sacrifice—any animal that will be eaten must be presented as a sacrifice (vv. 1–9; it is specifically an offering of well-being, to be discussed further in the chapter). Verse 10 then prohibits the eating of blood, a prohibition echoed elsewhere in scripture (Gen 9:4; Lev 3:17; 7:26–27; 19:26; Deut 12:16, 23–25; 15:23; 1 Sam 14:31–34). Then the key v. 11 provides the reason for the prohibition of eating blood: For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.

Verses 12–14 expound on the prohibition, extending it to wild game and sternly warning Israel to observe the prohibition. The immediate context of the verse, then, is about the prohibition of eating blood, and the broader context is about the necessity of the consumption of animals occurring as a part of the sacrificial system. The context is not about the nature of sacrifice or atonement in general. This should give us pause about making too much of the verse. Nonetheless, since, as Hartley notes, “this is the only text in the OT that comes close to giving a reason why blood effects atonement,”40 the verse does demand our attention. The verse makes two essential connections, between blood and life, and between blood and atonement. The consequence is that the reason that blood can atone is that blood is the carrier of life. These connections thus tell us why blood rites play such a central role in sacrifices of atonement. But they still do not spell out precisely how the blood atones, only that it is “as life” (as translated by the NRSV) or “by the life” (so ESV).41 Proponents of the substitutionary understanding of atoning sacrifices often use this verse to support their case.42 Central to the argument that substitution is the basis for Israelite sacrifice is the equation of blood and life, which is indeed a point made in this verse. Given the centrality of blood rites in Israelite sacrifice, the connection of blood to life is necessary if one is to argue that the sacrificed animal substitutes for the death of the offerer. However, the verse does not say that the blood-life of the animal substitutes for the life of the offerer. That conclusion can only be reached by presupposing the substitutionary view when coming to the verse. The verse does fit well with a substitutionary understanding of atonement, but it cannot be the rationale for holding a substitutionary view in the first place, and the verse makes sense without a substitutionary view, too.

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Along with rejecting substitution as the basis of Israelite sacrifice in general, most recent interpreters reject the idea that this verse provides the basis for a substitutionary theory of atonement or sacrifice.43 To the points already given, a few points made by others are worth including. States Hartley, “a person’s sin is not transferred to the sacrificial animal since it is inconceivable that the flesh of an animal made unclean by their sins would be burned on the altar.”44 Sacrificed animals, after all, are to be blemishless. In the Day of Atonement ritual, it is the non-sacrificed goat to which the people’s sins are transferred, to the goat that is sent off into the wilderness, not to the sacrificed goat. An animal made sinful is not sacrificed. Milgrom adds the observation that the mention of the altar in 17:11 should not be overlooked: “It is not the blood per se that expiates, but only blood on the altar. To be more precise, it is not the blood at all; it is the altar.”45 After all, bloodless sacrifices can atone, too—but also on the altar. Thus, Milgrom concludes, “Blood is life. Hence it is powerful, but only God can activate it. This happens when the blood is sanctified; that is, when it is in contact with the altar and other sancta [i.e., holy objects].”46 Blood, then, is a life-giving agent that can make atonement when used according to the divine ordinances. “The life of the flesh is in the blood,” and because of this connection, blood is the divinely ordained atoning agent.47 As Hartley helpfully summarizes, “Blood had this power because Yahweh had so endowed it, because it carried the animal’s life force, and because it represented a life surrendered to the holy on behalf of the life of the offerer.”48 Of course, not to be forgotten is the main point of the verse in its context, that this status of blood means that it must not be consumed; it is worth noting that the equation of blood and life as the rationale for not eating blood is also made in Gen 9:4 and Deut 12:23, without any mention of atonement. Despite its significance, the verse should not be taken to provide an overall theory of either sacrifice or atonement. Here our earlier surprising observations are again important. While blood makes atonement and is the most common means of doing so, blood is not the only means of atonement. Grain offerings atone, and in one story offering incense atones; in neither case do we have an explanation of how this atonement works—is it propitiation? Nor is atonement the sole importance of blood in sacrifices. Blood rites are important even in sacrifices that serve no atoning purpose (e.g., the offering of well-being, which will be covered further in the chapter, described in Lev 3). Blood is important, sacrifice is important, atonement is important—but while these three are certainly connected, the connections are not simple. The consequence is that when dealing with texts that refer to any of these, we must be careful not to assume straightforward connections that come from our own preconceptions.

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DISTINCTIVE ASPECTS OF ISRAELITE SACRIFICE How did the purpose and practice of sacrifice for the ancient Israelites compare with its purpose and practice in the Mediterranean world more broadly? While there were some distinctive aspects and emphases, to a large extent sacrifice in Israel was much the same as sacrifice elsewhere. As E. P. Sanders has observed, when other cultures commented on Judaism, they did not notice anything special about Jewish sacrifice; practices such as Sabbath observance and dietary restrictions seemed strange to many, but not the Jews’ practice of sacrifice.49 Likewise, when Jews explained their customs to outsiders, their practice of sacrifice required little comment. This can be seen in the writings of both Josephus and Philo (first century ce). Josephus describes Jewish sacrifices in some detail, but entirely matter-offactly, expecting no trouble in understanding them on the part of his Roman audience (Ant. 3.224–257; Ag. Ap. 2.194–198). Philo treats the Jewish system as the perfection of sacrifice, but he sees the practice itself as a fundamental human activity (see Spec. Laws 1.66–70, 195).50 Nonetheless, there were distinctive aspects of Israelite sacrifice, and these distinctives also carried forward into the period of Second Temple Judaism. The most significant of these are a matter not of the performance of individual sacrifices but rather of the larger context—the who and where of sacrifice. In regard to the “who,” the Israelites’ and Jews’ system of requiring sacrifices to be performed by priests from a hereditary tribe was distinctive in the ancient Mediterranean world, at least by Greco-Roman times.51 While the precise nature of this restriction changed and was controversial in various times, especially regarding the high priesthood, the basic restriction of the priesthood to Levites was perennial. Similarly, the location of sacrifice for Jews was ultimately restricted to the Jerusalem temple. I say “ultimately” because there is quite a long history to the question of where sacrifices should be performed. There is a strong scholarly consensus that the restriction came about in the seventh century bce in the southern kingdom of Judah as a part of the reforms of the king Josiah, of which a chief thrust was the centralization of worship in Jerusalem.52 Prior to this period in the biblical narratives, sacrifices are performed in many places outside of Jerusalem (see, e.g., 1 Sam 1:3–5; 6:15; 20:6; 1 Kings 18:20–40). But Deuteronomy 12:13–14 restricts sacrifices to “the place that the Lord will choose in one of your tribes,” and for most Jews, this was Jerusalem. The fact that Jerusalem is not mentioned by name in Deuteronomy gave rise occasionally to other interpretations. Groups of Jews built temples in Leontopolis and Elephantine in Egypt, and the Samaritans had their own temple on Mount Gerizim; the Qumran sect may have sacrificed at their

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complex even without a temple.53 But the dominant tradition by far for Jews was that the Jerusalem temple was the only legitimate place for sacrifice to occur. This contrasted with the other cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world, where temples were ubiquitous and sacrifice could often be performed about anywhere if the proper rites were observed. This contrast gave the Jerusalem temple a status for Jews unparalleled in the ancient world as the seat of the divine presence. It also meant that the sacrificial activities in the Jerusalem temple were of utmost importance for most Jews. We will see how this importance played out in the Second Temple period in the next chapter. While the restrictions of temple and priesthood are the most important distinctive features of Israelite and Jewish sacrifice, there are others, most of them a bit more technical: • The holocaust, a sacrifice where the victim is entirely burnt up rather than parts being eaten in a subsequent meal, was much more common in Israelite and Jewish sacrifice than it was in other cultures.54 Sanders suggests that due to this and the restrictions on the priesthood, sacrifice was more expensive for Jews than for others.55 The different types of sacrifice will be discussed further below. • Rituals performed with the animal’s blood were more important in Jewish sacrifices than in other cultures’ sacrifices.56 These rituals are prescribed throughout Leviticus, most often involving dashing the blood against the sides of the altar (e.g., Lev 1:5, 11; 3:2, 8, 13). Other actions include sprinkling blood on objects or persons (e.g., Lev 4:6, 17; 8:11, 30; 16:14, 15) and pouring the blood out at the base of the altar (e.g., Lev 4:7, 18, 34; 8:15; 9:9). • The use of libations, that is, liquid sacrifices, was restricted in Jewish sacrifices to accompanying animal sacrifices.57 They were never done on their own. Individual libations were quite common outside of Judaism. • Sacrifice was never performed for the purpose of divination in Judaism; outside Judaism divination was common among the many possible goals of sacrifice.58 Deuteronomy 18:10 prohibits divination altogether. • In Judaism, sacrifice was less frequently done on a scale that involved broad communal feasting with the sacrificial meat than in the rest of the ancient Mediterranean world.59 No doubt this was related to the limitation of Jewish sacrifice to the Jerusalem temple. In the first century ce both Josephus and Philo contrasted Jewish sobriety in offering sacrifices with the revelry of pagans in doing so (Ag. Ap. 2.194–198; Spec. Laws 1.190–193). The more common use of the holocaust in Judaism, as mentioned earlier, also squares well with this distinction.

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THE DIVINE OPTION TO REJECT SACRIFICE Sacrificing did not create an obligation for God. YHWH was free to accept or reject the sacrifices offered to him.60 We have already seen that the “pleasing aroma” language was an indication of the divine acceptance of a sacrifice. In order for divine rejection to be indicated, a divine message was required—hence the word of a prophet. We get these in a number of places. YHWH’s message to the boy Samuel regarding the punishment for the sins of Eli and his sons includes such a message: “Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever” (1 Sam 3:14). Jeremiah includes more extensive statements, targeting the people as a whole (Jer 6:19–21): Hear, O earth; I am going to bring disaster on this people,   the fruit of their schemes, because they have not given heed to my words;   and as for my teaching, they have rejected it. 20 Of what use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba,   or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable,   nor are your sacrifices pleasing to me. 21 Therefore thus says the Lord: See, I am laying before this people   stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble; parents and children together,   neighbor and friend shall perish. 19

In another passage, Jeremiah is less poetic but equally condemning (Jer 14:11–12): 11

The Lord said to me: Do not pray for the welfare of this people. 12 Although they fast, I do not hear their cry, and although they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I do not accept them; but by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence I consume them.

Hosea has a similar assertion of the divine rejection of Israel’s sacrifices (Hos 8:11–14): When Ephraim multiplied altars to expiate sin,   they became to him altars for sinning. 12 Though I write for him the multitude of my instructions,   they are regarded as a strange thing. 11

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Though they offer choice sacrifices,   though they eat flesh,  the Lord does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity,   and punish their sins;   they shall return to Egypt. 14 Israel has forgotten his Maker,   and built palaces; and Judah has multiplied fortified cities;   but I will send a fire upon his cities,   and it shall devour his strongholds. 13

The essential point of all these messages is the same: The level of the sins of the people (or of Eli’s house) has reached the point where God is no longer willing to receive their sacrifices (Mal 1:6–14 has another such message of the same point). While these passages do not explain exactly how much sin results in God’s rejection of the sacrifice—one gets the sense in all but the first that the sins are legion—later Jewish authors would describe more specifically what results in divine rejection of sacrifices. Ben Sirach (second century bce) gives the following warnings (Sirach 34:21–24): If one sacrifices ill-gotten goods, the offering is blemished; 22 the gifts of the lawless are not acceptable. 23 The Most High is not pleased with the offerings of the ungodly,   nor for a multitude of sacrifices does he forgive sins. 24 Like one who kills a son before his father’s eyes   is the person who offers a sacrifice from the property of the poor. 21

 

Sirach’s special concern is clearly offering stolen or unjustly gained goods, but the second and third lines offer a more general principle—the moral status of the offerer is the key to the sacrifice being accepted. Philo shows similar concerns as Sirach, arguing that God does not accept the sacrifices of the unjust, while also showing special concern for offerings unjustly gained (Spec. Laws 1.277–279). Jubilees 30:16 (second century bce) provides a very specific concern: the sacrifices of men who marry Gentile women will not be accepted. Jonathan Klawans has observed that the relationship between sin and sacrifice exhibited in such places is precisely the opposite of the typical understanding.61 Sacrifice is not portrayed in these passages as the answer to sin—the prophets do not tell the people that they need to offer more or better sacrifices so that God will forgive them. Ben Sirach’s line is perhaps most striking—“nor for a multitude of sacrifices does he forgive sins” (v. 23). Rather, what we see is that serious sin has the effect of invalidating sacrifice.

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The moral disposition of those offering the sacrifices is important to God. This principle is in line with the primary purposes of sacrifice, relationship, and gift, discussed earlier. The main purpose of sacrifice was to establish communion with God. A too-high level of sin violates this communion, so God will not accept the sacrifices. In other words, God is not interested in communion with such sinners. This is not to deny the connection between sacrifice and the forgiveness of sin, but it is a reminder that the primary purpose of sacrifice was not what many, especially in the Christian tradition, have supposed it to be. SACRIFICE IN THE LARGER RELIGIOUS SYSTEM: PURITY, THE TEMPLE, AND HOLINESS Sacrifice was not an isolated ritual act but existed as a part of a larger religious system. In this section, we briefly set the practice of sacrifice in this broader context, in particular, the understandings of purity, the temple, and holiness. It is impossible to understand sacrifice in Judaism adequately without understanding purity. A broad definition is simply that purity is the state required for a human to approach the divine. It was a concern not only in Judaism but also in the rest of the Mediterranean world, though our focus will only be with the former. In Judaism, there were three sources for impurity: death, genital discharges, and skin disease.62 Death here refers not to one’s own death, of course, but to the death of others—that is, contact with corpses. Genital discharges included semen and menstrual blood (but not urine). Skin disease included not only the stereotypical leprosy but any type of scale disease. Becoming pure thus involved separating from these things and performing rituals to cleanse oneself from whatever contact one had had with them. As Milgrom, Klawans, and others have pointed out, what unites these sources of impurity is their connection to human mortality, to death.63 Purification was thus a movement from death to life, of putting off mortality in order to enter the divine realm, where death can have no place.64 Klawans suggests that as sex and death were the two key distinctions between humans and the divine, it makes sense that to enter the divine realm—to approach god-likeness oneself—one must become separate from these thoroughly human, non-divine, things.65 Purity was not a constant obsession for Jews, contrary to some Christian stereotypes. One did not need to be in a state of purity in every moment of one’s life. While toward the end of the Second Temple period, there does seem to have been a movement among some Jews to live in states of purity beyond what was strictly necessary66—we see this especially in the sectarian Qumran community—as a general rule, purity was only necessary when ritually approaching the divine. Since the Jerusalem temple was the seat of

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the divine presence, purity was of particular concern for those entering the temple. Given that priests worked in the temple, it was crucial for them; a priest operating as such did need to be in a constant state of purity. Purity was also a matter for the temple itself; the sanctuary itself must be kept pure, especially the altar, and there were prescribed rituals for purifying these (see Exod 29:36–37; 30:10; Lev 8:14–15; 16:15–19, 33). Of chief importance here, purity was then also a requirement for the performance of sacrifice.67 Since sacrifice always involves communication with the divine, it was seen as necessary to be in a state of purity in order to perform a sacrifice. One could not approach God in a state of impurity without causing great offence. This fits in, once again, with the emphasis we have been making on sacrifice as primarily a matter of communion with God, and it also fits in with the general pattern of sacrificial rituals described in the previous chapter (the ritual preparation of the participants). There were also specific sacrifices that were designed to deal with impurity, as we will see further in the chapter. The concept of purity is intimately related to another, more familiar topic to most, that of holiness. The idea that a special state is required to approach the divine makes no sense apart from a fundamental distinction between ordinary things and the divine, and it is this specialness, this set-apart-ness, that the term holy expresses. Things that are holy are different in essence from things that are common (this distinction is also expressed using the terms sacred and profane, but the word “profane” today tends to have unhelpfully negative connotations). Leviticus 10:10 commands the Israelites to observe the distinction: “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean.” In the Jewish scriptures, holiness is a fundamental characteristic of God in distinction from every other being and thing. As Hartley writes, “Holiness is not one attribute of Yahweh’s among others; rather it is the quintessential nature of Yahweh as God. . . . Holiness thus distinguishes Yahweh from all other creatures (1 Sam 2:2).”68 Other things and beings may become holy, but only in a derivative sense, only as they stand in relationship to God.69 It is because YHWH is holy that humans must be pure in order to approach him. The ultimate goal of the human relationship to God is human holiness. This is stated in the central dictum in Leviticus: “For I am the Lord your God; sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:44). But it is noteworthy that this dictum occurs in the midst of a section dealing with impure animals. Impurity is antithetical to holiness. The concepts of purity and holiness thus both involve becoming more like the divine. They are not the same—holiness fundamentally pertains to God and purity to humans and things (God says “I am holy,” not “I am pure”), but they relate closely. With regard to things, rather than persons, sacrifice functions as a bridge from

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purity to holiness. Only pure animals may be sacrificed, and when they are sacrificed they become holy (see, e.g., Lev 6:24–30; 14:10–13). As Bruce Chilton aptly describes the relationship, “what might be sacrificed is clean, what is sacrificed is holy.”70 There is a second kind of impurity spoken of in the scriptures, a moral impurity, which is in fact a good bit more serious than the ritual impurity being treated here (see, e.g., Num 35:30–34).71 It is the moral impurity— sin—that leads to the divine rejection of sacrifice and to the severe punishments of the people. The fact that the fundamentally ritual language of purity extends into the moral sphere is an indication of the interconnectedness of sacrificial and moral discourse in the scriptures. Some later Second Temple Jewish authors would go a good deal further than the scriptures in trying to explain the rituals of the Pentateuch in moralistic terms; for example, the second century bce author of The Letter of Aristeas says that weasels are not to be eaten because of their base moral nature (144, 165–66). The basic connection between sacrificial rituals and morality, however, is made in the scriptures themselves. The integration of sacrifice into the larger covenant life of the Israelites and the Jews is an aspect of sacrifice not to be overlooked.72

TYPES OF ISRAELITE SACRIFICE There are three basic dichotomies that can be used to describe the purposes and settings of Israelite sacrifice. These dichotomies do not result in a straightforward schematic for understanding the different types of Israelite sacrifice—the biblical system of sacrifice is just not so tidy—but they are helpful in understanding the occasions and purposes of sacrifice and in seeing how the different types fit in the whole system. First, sacrifices could be offered on an individual or communal basis. Second, some sacrifices were made because they were necessary—that is, specifically commanded—while others were voluntary, the freely offered sacrifices of the worshiper(s). Third, sacrifices could either be burnt entirely on the altar, or instead portions could be shared among the priests or offerers. It was mentioned earlier that one of the distinctive aspects of Israelite sacrifice in the ancient world was the frequent use of the holocaust, the sacrifice that was entirely burnt up. There were still plenty of occasions, however, for sacrifices to provide food for those participating in the ritual. With these distinctions in mind, brief descriptions of the types of Israelite sacrifice are given further.

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The Olah: The Burnt Offering The Hebrew word olah (‫ )עֹ לָה‬is traditionally translated as “burnt offering”; sometimes “whole offering” or “holocaust” is used (the latter comes from the Greek words meaning “wholly burnt”). The olah is the sacrifice that is entirely consumed on the altar, and, as mentioned previously, its frequent use was distinctive of Israelites and Jews among ancient Mediterranean peoples. It is the quintessential Hebrew sacrifice, being extremely common throughout the Hebrew Bible, both the legal and the narrative sections,73 and it is used in about every kind of situation where sacrifice is performed. It is the sacrifice used in the Tamid and is the principal sacrifice for every public feast on the Jewish calendar.74 It is thus no accident that Leviticus opens with instructions for the olah (1:3–17). The animal to be sacrificed may be a bull, male goat or sheep, or a turtledove or pigeon. If it is one of the quadrupeds, the offerer brings the animal to the entrance of the sanctuary, lays a hand on the animal’s head (the meaning of this part of the ritual is disputed, as discussed earlier), and slaughters the animal. The priests dash the blood against the side of the altar, and then all of the rest is burned on the altar after some arranging and washing. If a bird is used, a priest wrings off the bird’s head, drains out the blood against the side of the altar, and burns the bird on the altar. Most of the other sacrifices we will cover follow similar steps as these. The purposes and occasions for which the olah is used may be enumerated as follows:75 ( 1) The Tamid (Exod 29:38–46; Num 28:1–8). (2) For the main sacrifices of the major feasts (Num 28–29; these will be covered further in the chapter). (3) As a royal sacrifice (e.g., 2 Sam 24:18–25; 1 Kings 9:25; 2 Kings 16:15). (4) During purification rites, whether for a mother after childbirth (Lev 12) or from cleansing from leprosy (Lev 14:19, 31) or genital discharges (Lev 15:15, 30). (5) As a sacrifice of atonement, including on the Day of Atonement (the latter is in Lev 16:3, 5, 24; for others, see Lev 4–5; see further in the text on the Day of Atonement). (6) To use when petitioning YHWH for help (e.g., Num 23:14–16; Judg 21:3–5; 1 Sam 7:9–10). (7) To express thanksgiving (e.g., Judg 11:31; 1 Sam 6:13–15; Ps 66:8–15). (8) To express joy and to recognize YHWH’s presence and superiority. Many of the sacrifices discussed earlier in the topic of sacrifice as establishing communion with YHWH were olah sacrifices (or at least included olah sacrifices). (9) To solemnize the completion of a vow (e.g., Num 6:13–21).

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( 10) When consecrating priests (Exod 29:16–25; Lev 8:18–21). (11) For personal voluntary sacrifices of individuals (Lev 1:2–12; Num 15:1–10). As the variety of uses demonstrates, the olah had no set narrow meaning. Milgrom describes its basic purpose as the very general “entreaty,” noting that “entreaty covers a wide range of motives: homage, thanksgiving, appeasement, expiation.”76 He suggests that it was originally the main Israelite sacrifice, which explains its variety of uses and the fact that many of its uses overlap with the other sacrifices (to be covered further in the text) whose purposes are more specific.77 In the first century ce, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria wrote that the olah was the best of the sacrifices, precisely because the offerer received no tangible benefit from it and hence focused solely on God (Spec. Laws 1.195–198). As discussed earlier, the contrast between the solemnity of Jewish sacrifice and the revelry of pagans was a point of Jewish pride, and the use of the olah squared well with this. The Shelamim: The Offering of Well-Being The sacrifice designated in Hebrew as shelamim (‫;ׁשל ִָמים‬ ְ more fully, ‫ )זֶבַ ח הַ ְּׁשל ִָמים‬is usually translated as “offering of well-being,” though a variety of other translations have been used, including “peace offering” and “shared offering.”78 The Hebrew root is the same one we get the term shalom from, referring to peace or wholeness. The shelamim’s main purpose is celebration; Milgrom calls it “the joyous sacrifice par excellence.”79 It is seldom commanded but frequently offered—it is the spontaneous sacrifice for when an individual or the community wants to express thanksgiving or other positive regard for God. The label “well-being” thus expresses the motive out of which the offering is made, a feeling of well-being. The basic instructions for the shelamim are given in Leviticus 3. It is performed similarly to the olah, with the chief difference being that only part of the animal is burnt on the altar. The idea is thus that the participants in the sacrifice consume the rest, and the rules pertaining to this consumption are given in Lev 7:11–38 and 19:5–8. These rules explain who gets to eat what, the amount of time allowed for the consumption, and what grain and oil items are to accompany the animal offering. Leviticus 7:11–18 specifies three subcategories of the well-being offering, these being for thanksgiving, to mark the fulfillment of a vow (a votive offering), and as a freewill offering, the latter being for all occasions not covered by the first two. Most of the instances where we read of the shelamim being offered in Israel’s story involve national celebrations of one-time events. Many of the examples given earlier to illustrate the connection of sacrifice to communion

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and celebration involved the shelamim, often together with the olah. The use of the shelamim is especially noteworthy in dedications and rededications of altars and temples (Josh 8:30–31; Judg 21:4; 2 Sam 24:25; 1 Kings 8:63–64; 2 Chr 5:12–13; 15:8–15; 29:27; 33:16). It is also used to celebrate Israel’s entrance into the land (Deut 27:1–8), David’s installation of the ark in Jerusalem (2 Sam 6:17), Solomon’s famous dream (1 Kings 3:15), and the dedication of the rebuilt Jerusalem walls (Neh 12:35–41).80 The only times when the offering is commanded to be made are at the installation of Aaron as high priest (Lev 9:4) and at the Festival of Weeks (Pentecost; Lev 23:19); thus the latter is the only regularly scheduled use.81 As is apparent from these uses, the offering of well-being was not for atonement.82 The key verse discussed earlier, Lev 17:11, occurs in the context of the discussion of the shelamim, but, while it is debated, it seems unlikely that the verse was meant to be limited to the shelamim.83 Here it should simply be noted that, whatever the larger significance of 17:11, in both the legal descriptions of the shelamim and in its uses that we read about in Israel’s story, no atoning function is ever ascribed to it. The Hattat: The Purification Offering The hattat (‫ )חַ ּטָ את‬sacrifice has traditionally been translated “sin offering,” for the very good reason that hattat means “sin” when it is used outside of sacrificial contexts. Most English translations continue to use “sin offering,” but I join the Common English Bible and most recent commentators in agreeing that “purification offering” is a more accurate label for what the sacrifice accomplishes.84 Even commentators who use or defend the traditional translation (primarily on etymological grounds) acknowledge that the sacrifice’s primary purpose is purification.85 The problem with calling the hattat “sin offering” is that it is used to remedy situations that have nothing to do with sin. Leviticus 12:6–8 prescribes it for a woman’s purification after giving birth. Numbers 6:13–17 prescribes it for the ritual of completion for the Nazirite vow. Leviticus 15:13–15 prescribes it for purification from an irregular genital discharge. It is used in a priestly consecration ritual (Lev 8:1–17). All these uses make sense in a context of purification but not in a context of sin. The main instructions for the hattat are given in Lev 4:1–5:13.86 They are said there to be used for situations of unintentional breaking of the commandments. Different instructions are given in chapter 4 depending on the status of the perpetrator (priest, ruler, ordinary person, or the community) and in chapter 5 depending on economic means. The primary difference in the performance of the sacrifice from those we have already discussed is what is done with the blood. Rather than the blood being dashed against the sides of

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the altar, some of the blood is brought into the sanctuary, some is sprinkled in front of the curtain, some is put on the horns of the altar, and the rest is poured out (not all of these are done in each situation). The fact that the chief distinctive feature of the hattat sacrifice involves applying the blood to parts of the temple structure brings out another important aspect of the hattat, which is that the purification accomplished by the sacrifice is, at least in large part, for the temple itself and not merely for the offerer. This is in line with our earlier discussion of the distinction between holy and common places and the importance of purity in communion with God. The hattat purges the temple of the pollution caused by breaking the commandments and from other sources of impurity, and the application of the blood is how the purification is accomplished. The blood is the purifying agent, as we saw earlier. The precise working of the hattat here is a debated matter. Is the hattat primarily or even exclusively for the temple rather than the offerer, or does it work for both? Milgrom has argued that the purification pertains only to the temple. However, as there is much language in Lev. 4:1 – 5:13 about the guilt and forgiveness of the offerer (4:3, 13, 20, 22, 26, 27, 31, 35; 5:1–5, 10, 13), it seems more likely that the accomplished purification pertains to both temple and offerer.87 As we saw earlier, there is a tight connection between ritual and moral purity in places in the Jewish scriptures. The primary places where we see the hattat offering being made are in the instructions for the regular festivals of the Israelites, described in Numbers 28–29, to be discussed further. The hattat was prescribed as a part of the regular monthly offering (28:15), Passover (28:22), the Festival of Weeks (28:30), the Festival of Trumpets (29:5), the Day of Atonement (29:11), and the Festival of Booths (29:16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31, 34, 38)—thus a part of all the regular prescribed sacrifices except for the Tamid (28:1–8) and the Sabbath sacrifices (28:9–10).88 Outside of the Pentateuch, the hattat is hardly mentioned except in Ezekiel’s vision of the restored temple (Ezek 40–48; elsewhere, only 2 Kings 12:16; Ps 40:6; Ezra 6:17; 8:35; Neh 10:33; 2 Chr 29:21–24; and perhaps Hos 4:8; Jer 17:1).89 Perhaps the offering was too perfunctory to bear mention in most narrative accounts, or perhaps, as Milgrom argues, it was a late addition to the system of Israelite sacrifices.90 The Asham: The Guilt Offering Leviticus and Numbers prescribe the asham (‫)אָ ׁשָ ם‬, the guilt offering, as a reparation to be made for certain types of transgressions (it is thus also called the “reparation offering”). There are two broad situations plus four quite specific ones where it is prescribed. The first broad situation is the unintentional violation of “any of the holy things of the Lord” (Lev 5:14–16). “Holy things” here refers to any entity or place that has been designated as

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such. The command is thus based on the fundamental distinction between holy and common discussed earlier, and the violation of such holy things requires reparation. The second broad situation is the case of a sin committed “without knowing it, doing any of the things that by the Lord’s commandments ought not to be done” (Lev 5:17–19). While this sounds quite broad, the immediate context dealing with “holy things” and the close similarity of the language to the situation where the purification offering (hattat) is prescribed in Lev 4:1–12 suggest that originally the passage was still addressing violations of “holy things”—specifically, the situation where the offerer suspected he or she may have committed such a violation but could not identify it.91 The four specific situations involve swearing falsely for property offenses against a neighbor (Lev 6:1–7), the purification ritual for lepers (Lev 14), the reconsecration ritual for a defiled Nazirite (Num 6:9–12), and the case of a man having sexual relations with a slave woman betrothed to someone else (Lev 19:20–22). Because the use of the asham was so situation-dependent, it was not included in any of the regularly offered sacrifices. Its protocol is described in Lev 7:1–6 and differs little from the sacrifices already described. It does have one peculiarity, namely that it could be converted into a monetary equivalent (Lev 5:15), which is odd but emphasizes the reparative nature of the offering. While it was clearly primarily a sacrifice for individuals, the two main examples where we read of its use in the story of Israel both have a communal focus. When the Philistines keep the ark of the covenant for seven months and therefore experience divine retribution in the form of tumors, they send the ark back to Israel with guilt offerings included (1 Sam 6:1–12). Many generations later, when Ezra convinces the Jewish men who have returned to Jerusalem to divorce their foreign wives, the men who do so make guilt offerings (Ezra 10:19). Other than in these two stories, the asham is hardly mentioned outside of its prescriptions in Leviticus and Numbers and in Ezekiel’s descriptions of the restored temple service (Ezek 40–48).92 The Minhah: The Grain Offering The Israelite system of sacrifice included a grain offering called the minhah (‫)מנְ חָ ה‬, ִ a term which outside of sacrificial contexts meant merely “gift” or “tribute.” The instructions for it are given in Leviticus 2 and 6:14–18. The offering was made from flour mixed with oil, salt, and sometimes frankincense, and there were several options for how to cook it. A portion of it was burnt up on the altar, and the rest was eaten as a holy meal by the priests. The minhah could be offered on its own, as is described in a ritual for the anointing of priests in Lev 6:19–23, but much more often we read of it being used as a component of the other types of sacrifices. All the prescribed

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regular sacrifices (daily, weekly, and monthly) and set festivals, including the Day of Atonement, included grain offerings, and also drink offerings, among the sacrifices offered (Numbers 28–29). We also frequently read of minhah offerings in the narrative portions of scripture whenever other sacrifices are mentioned, although it may be that in some cases, it has the broader meaning of “gift” and so refers to sacrifices in general rather than specifically to grain offerings.93 Milgrom argues that the minhah was the “poor man’s burnt offering,” a substitute for those who couldn’t afford the olah.94 The range of contexts in which it is used matches that of the olah, and its instructions come directly after those of the olah in Leviticus. Later rabbinic tradition also expressed such a view of the olah (e.g., m. Menahot 13:11), as did Philo (Spec. Laws 1.271).95 On the other hand, the fact that in the regular sacrifices, the minhah is prescribed for use along with the burnt offering, and the fact that it is prescribed on its own for the priestly anointing mentioned earlier, suggest that the minhah was not merely a substitute but was meaningful in itself. Its use is a reminder of the connection of sacrifices with the ideas of communion with God and of giving gifts to God. OTHER SACRIFICIAL TERMS AND CONCEPTS The term zevah (‫ )זֶבַ ח‬refers to a sacrifice where the offerer shares a meal with the sacrificial meat.96 In the technical priestly language of the Pentateuch (the P source), it thus refers mainly to the shelamim, and the two terms are often used together. Other writers in the Hebrew Bible do not tend to maintain the technical distinctions of P, but still in these authors’ use, the zevah is a festive sacrifice implying a shared meal. In some cases, it seems to refer to the whole celebration and not just the sacrifice itself (e.g., Judg 16:23; 1 Sam 9:12– 13).97 It is sometimes used in combination with either the olah or minhah to refer to the whole sacrificial system.98 The cognate verb, ‫זָבַ ח‬, is the generic verb meaning to sacrifice, and the related noun ַ‫ ִמזְּבֵ ח‬is the word for “altar.”99 Another term occurring in many texts dealing with sacrifice is isheh (‫;אּׁשֶ ה‬ ִ its use is almost exclusively in the Pentateuch). Its precise meaning is disputed. Traditionally, it has been translated “fire offering” because of its seeming etymological connection to the Hebrew word for fire. It was thus taken to refer to any sacrifice where part or all of the victim was consumed on the altar by fire (which, of course, is most of them).100 Many recent commentators, however, dispute this meaning, suggesting instead that it refers to the sacrifice in its aspect as a gift to God.101 Perhaps these two meanings are not mutually exclusive, since the burning of the offering was the means by which the offering was transmitted to the divine realm.

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An easily overlooked but important aspect of the Israelite sacrificial system was the offering of incense.102 The temple contained a golden altar dedicated specifically to the burning of incense, described in Exod 30:1–10 and 37:25–29, and its use is prescribed as a part of the daily offering, the Tamid (30:7–8). The offering of incense is referred to dozens of times throughout the scriptures and also in many later Jewish texts.103 While it usually just seems to be a part of the nature of sacrifice in maintaining communion with God, we saw earlier one instance where Moses and Aaron make atonement for Israel by offering incense (Num 16:41–50). The continuing value of the incense offering can be seen in New Testament times in the story of the annunciation of John the Baptist’s birth to Zechariah, which occurs as Zechariah is offering incense in the temple (Luke 1:8–11). OCCASIONS FOR SACRIFICE The first aforementioned two dichotomies for types of Israelite sacrifice have to do with the occasions on which sacrifices were made. Sacrifices could be either individual or communal, and they could be either specifically prescribed in Torah or else up to the free decision of the offerer. Each possible pairing of these dichotomies warrants comment, though the prescribed, communal sacrifices will require the most attention. Individual sacrifices were prescribed for various happenings in one’s life. Most of these had to do with certain sources of impurity, such as childbirth (Lev 12), skin disease (Lev 14), or genital discharges (Lev 15). There were also prescribed sacrifices if one happened to be a Nazirite (Num 6), a Levite (Num 8), or a priest (Lev 6:19–23). Individuals who committed certain offenses were required to make a guilt offering, as described earlier, and likewise those who unintentionally broke one of the commandments were required to make a purification offering. In many of these latter situations, of course, the fulfillment of the required sacrifice was up to the conscience of the individual. The offering of well-being was the main voluntary sacrifice for individuals, though the burnt offering could also be used (see the last item in the earlier list for occasions of the burnt offering). The three sub-categories of the well-being offering—thanksgiving, vow fulfillment, and free-will—suggest the most common situations where an individual would make a voluntary sacrifice, though the free-will type could be used on about any joyous occasion. Voluntary communal sacrifices mostly consisted of times of national celebration, such as those described earlier in this chapter when we looked at the function of sacrifices of establishing and maintaining Israel’s relationship

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to God. In times of communal crisis, sacrifices could also be made as a part of petitioning God. Sacrifices on behalf of the entire people of Israel were prescribed both at set intervals and for annual set occasions. These are described collectively in Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28–29; some are described in other places, too. The sacrifices prescribed at set intervals included sacrifices to be offered every day, every Sabbath, and at the beginning of every month. Annual occasions when sacrifices were prescribed included Passover, the beginning of the harvest, the Festival of Weeks (Pentecost), the Festival of Trumpets, the Festival of Booths (or Tabernacles), and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur)—in other words, every special occasion for the Israelites. In essence, then, every meaningful division of time and every special occasion on the calendar was marked with sacrifices, a regular reminder and enactment of their relationship to their God. The sacrifices prescribed on each of these occasions included animal, grain, oil, and drink components. For the daily and weekly sacrifices, the only animals were two lambs; for the others, there were varying combinations of lambs, goats, and bulls. In terms of the types of sacrifices enumerated earlier, included were burnt offerings, purification offerings, and grain offerings. Drink offerings (libations) accompanied; as mentioned earlier, drink offerings were never offered individually in the Israelite sacrificial system but were frequently made alongside the other sacrifices. Of these occasions, three merit individual explanation: the daily sacrifice (the Tamid), Passover, and the Day of Atonement. The latter two of these will be especially important in understanding the interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament. The Tamid We saw earlier that the establishment of the relationship between Israel and YHWH through sacrifice was one of the chief goals of the exodus and that the establishment of the daily sacrifice of two lambs was the culminating expression of that goal (Exod 29:38–46). Here, we merely note that this daily offering, the Tamid, is the first given in the Numbers 28–29 account of the regularly prescribed sacrifices for Israel (28:1–8). The Numbers prescription explicitly makes the connection to the exodus account: “It is a regular burnt offering, ordained at Mount Sinai for a pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the Lord” (28:6). The “pleasing odor” language is used three times in the description (vv. 2, 6, 8), and no other purpose for the offering is given. The purpose of the Tamid, again, was to express, maintain, and celebrate the covenant relationship between Israel and God. The ongoing importance of the Tamid in Second Temple Judaism will be covered in the next chapter. There is one place in the Jewish scriptures

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themselves, however, where its importance is illustrated vividly. Daniel 8 records a vision of coming evil that climaxes with the arrival of a “little horn” that becomes great (v. 9), even growing “as high as the host of heaven” (v. 10).104 The ultimate act of the horn’s arrogance is that it even acts arrogantly toward God—“it took the regular burnt offering away from him and overthrew the place of his sanctuary” (v. 11). Thus, the importance of the Tamid is stated as going hand-in-hand with the importance of the Jerusalem temple itself, and the prevention of the offering of the Tamid is treated as the ultimate wicked act. Passover Passover was the annual celebration of the Israelites’ liberation from Egypt. The day itself was followed by the seven-day Festival of Unleavened Bread; the technically separate events are usually treated as a unit, as is the case in Num 28:16–25. The sacrifices that are prescribed there all occur during the Festival of Unleavened Bread and are similar to those prescribed for the monthly sacrifices and the other annual festivals. The Passover celebration itself, however, is special; it is described in Exod 12, Num 9:1–14, and Deut 16:1–8. Here we run into a problem of inconsistency in the sources. According to Exod 12:21–27, when Moses gave the Israelites the instructions about slaughtering the Passover lambs and putting the blood on the lintel and doorposts of their houses, he commanded them to do this in their future observances (vv. 25–27a): When you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. And when your children ask you, “What do you mean by this observance?” you shall say, “It is the passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.”

Note thus that the Passover sacrifice (zevah) was slaughtered in homes, not in the temple, and that no priests were necessarily involved—certainly a unique type of sacrifice!105 However, Deut 16:5–6 directly contradicts the Exodus impression: You are not permitted to offer the passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you. But at the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, only there shall you offer the passover sacrifice.

This is in keeping with Deuteronomy’s tendency to centralize worship in the Jerusalem temple.

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In the Second Temple period, at least by the first century ce, it appears that in the land of Israel itself, the restriction of the sacrifice to Jerusalem was observed, except that the sacrificial meat was consumed outside the temple, though still in Jerusalem.106 In the Diaspora, however, there is evidence that some Jews maintained the tradition of performing the Passover sacrifice in their homes.107 Philo gives us the clearest description of this (Spec. Laws 2.145 [LCL, Colson]): In this festival many myriads of victims from noon till eventide are offered by the whole people, old and young alike, raised for that particular day to the dignity of the priesthood. For at other times the priests according to the ordinance of the law carry out both the public sacrifices and those offered by private individuals. But on this occasion the whole nation performs the sacred rites and acts as priest with pure hands and complete immunity.

Thus, while the Passover celebration was of major importance for all Jews, for some, it provided a uniquely priestly experience. The Day of Atonement On the annual Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the high priest made atonement for the entire people of Israel and for the temple itself. Leviticus 16 describes the purpose of the day as follows (vv. 30, 32–33): For on this day atonement shall be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before the Lord. . . . The priest who is anointed and consecrated in his father’s place shall make atonement. . . . He shall make atonement for the sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly.

While Num 29:7–11 includes a typical festival-set of sacrifices to be offered on the day, the distinctive feature of the day is a ritual involving two goats, described in Lev 16. The first goat is slaughtered as a sacrifice, and then its blood is sprinkled on the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies, the innermost room of the temple (v. 15). “Thus he shall make atonement for the sanctuary, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel, and because of their transgressions, all their sins” (v. 16a). Blood is also sprinkled on the altar, to “make atonement on its behalf . . . to cleanse it and hallow it from the uncleannesses of the people of Israel” (vv. 18–19). Thus, the sins of the people actually defile the temple itself, and part of the day’s purpose is to purge the temple of this defilement.108

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More famously, the second goat carries away the sins of the people. Lev 16:21 describes this ritual as follows: Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task.

This goat is traditionally referred to as the “scapegoat” (following the KJV translation of 16:8–10, still so translated in the NIV and some other modern translations), though the NRSV and some other modern translations refer to it as the goal “for Azazel.” Though there is some debate, most commentators regard Azazel as the name of a demon from some early stage in Israel’s past, though if that is the case, the demon is accorded no real role or even reality in the biblical ritual.109 The important point for our purposes is simply to note that, as discussed earlier, the Azazel goat is not sacrificed, a point agreed upon by commentators both ancient and modern.110 The people’s sins are atoned for by being carried into the wilderness, while the sacrificed goat is for the temple itself.111 Thus, surprisingly, the chief act of atonement for the people does not actually consist of a sacrifice. DID THE PROPHETS REJECT SACRIFICE? We conclude our study of sacrifice in the Jewish scriptures by looking at a question that arises from the larger canonical context. Many Protestant Christians, fond of contrasting the value of faith and justice with the performance of religious rituals, are familiar with passages from the prophetic books that criticize the Israelites’ sacrificial practices. Isaiah begins one such diatribe as follows (1:11): What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?   says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams   and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls,   or of lambs, or of goats.

After continuing in this vein for a few more verses, he concludes with (1:17):   learn to do good; seek justice,

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  rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan,   plead for the widow.

Better known and more often quoted are the words of Amos 5:21–24: I hate, I despise your festivals,   and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,   I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals   I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs;   I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters,   and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

And perhaps best loved of all is Micah 6:6–8: “With what shall I come before the Lord,   and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,   with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,   with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,   the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good;   and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness,   and to walk humbly with your God?

Other such passages include Jer 6:20; 7:21; 14:11–12; Hos 6:6; 8:11–13; Amos 4:4–5; and Mal 1:6–14.112 An older generation of biblical scholars (almost always Protestant, often German) used such passages to argue that the prophets were fundamentally opposed to the priestly establishment in general and to sacrificial practices in particular. Often along with this argument went the claim that the prophets represented an earlier, and therefore truer, form of religion than that of the priestly writers. It is not hard to see how such a construal bolstered the sense of Protestant superiority to Catholicism and Judaism.113

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Today, and in reality for more than a half-century, scholars very seldom see the prophets as fundamentally rejecting sacrifice or other ritual practices.114 Rather, the prophets are responding to priestly abuses and to the offering of sacrifices by people of a depraved moral status. We noted earlier that God was always free to reject offered sacrifices and did so because of the sinful state of the offerer. The prophets were the deliverers of the message of rejection, and the passages mentioned here are places where just such messages are given.115 Thus, while these passages do indeed reject sacrifices, their rejections are highly situational, responding to the perceived moral decay of their times.116 The chief problem with the view that sees the prophets as completely rejecting sacrifice is that the number of these passages is, as Robert Daly puts it, “pitifully small in weight when compared to the massive body of OT prophetic literature and the numerous places where the prophets show a positive attitude towards the cult, or take it for granted in Israel’s life.”117 Probably the places where this positive attitude is most evident are those passages that envision an eschatological or otherwise utopian future where the temple practices are restored for Israel or even spread to encompass outsiders to Israel. Isaiah 19:19–22 provides us with one such vision:118 On that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the center of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord at its border. It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior, and will defend and deliver them. The Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians; and the Egyptians will know the Lord on that day, and will worship with sacrifice and burnt offering, and they will make vows to the Lord and perform them. The Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing; they will return to the Lord, and he will listen to their supplications and heal them.

Focusing on the restored Jerusalem temple is the vision of Malachi 3:3–4: He [the messenger of the covenant] will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

Jeremiah’s vision of a restored Israel is similar (33:17–18): For thus says the Lord: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, and the levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to make grain offerings, and to make sacrifices for all time.

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When the prophets imagined the ideal future of Israel, they included a restored temple with sacrifices being offered. When we again remember that the foremost reason for the practice of sacrifice was to establish and maintain the relationship between God and Israel, it is not hard to imagine why the prophets would include sacrifice in their visions of the future—the offering of sacrifice symbolized the right relationship between God and the people of God. We should thus conclude that the prophets did not reject sacrifice in principle, only in certain situations. When done by a righteous people, sacrifice was central in expressing and maintaining the relationship between God and God’s people. When done by unrepentant sinners or out of base motives, God rejected it. At the same time, passages like those quoted from Amos and Micah— really, primarily those two119—certainly relativize the value of sacrifice in the overall covenant relationship between Israel and Israel’s God. There are also a few passages from the Psalms that do the same, such as 69:30–31: I will praise the name of God with a song;   I will magnify him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox   or a bull with horns and hoofs.

These and other places in the Psalms (most notably 40:6; 51:16–17) are more briefly stated than what we get in the prophets, and just as contextually dependent, but they exhibit the same kind of relativizing. We should likely see in such places the beginnings of a certain wondering that will continue in Second Temple Judaism about the necessity and value of sacrifice, a wondering resulting primarily from the fact that in the Diaspora, many Jews would be too far from Jerusalem for sacrifice to be a regular part of their religious life.120 It is not surprising that in this situation, questions would be raised: Is sacrifice really necessary? What is its value? We will return to these questions in our next chapter.

NOTES 1. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus, 3 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991–2001), 38. Similarly, Gary A. Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings: Old Testament.” ABD 5:873–75, who suggests that P’s development of vocabulary is typical of the specialization that occurs in centers of religious ritual. See also Philip J. Budd, Numbers (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 72. 2. See Robert J. Daly, Christian Sacrifice: The Judaeo-Christian Background Before Origen (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1978), 20–23.

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3. See John E. Hartley, Leviticus (Dallas: Word, 1992), lxix; Göran Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric in the Prophetic Literature of the Hebrew Bible (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2012), 32–33; Moshe Halbertal, On Sacrifice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 12–15. My list also matches that of H. H. Rowley, From Moses to Qumran (Guildford, Surrey: Lutterworth, 1963), 78–81, cited in Philip Hefner, “The Cultural Significance of Jesus’ Death as Sacrifice.” Journal of Religion 60, no. 4 (1980): 412–13. Slightly different but basically compatible lists are given by E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 bce–66 ce (London: SCM, 1992), 104 (“worship of and communion with God, glorification of him, thanksgiving, purification, atonement for sin, and feasting”) and Maria-Zoe Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greek Religion, Judaism, and Christianity, 100 BC to AD 200 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 18. 4. Hartley, Leviticus, lxix, argues for communion being primary, while those arguing for gift include Christian A. Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie: Opfer- und Sühneterminologie im Neuen Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 42–50; Halbertal, On Sacrifice,1–23; and Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric, 34–37. 5. English translations of the Bible in this chapter are from the NRSV except when otherwise specified. 6. Cf. Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 71: “The purpose of the daily burnt offering—and perhaps some other sacrifices as well—is to provide regular and constant pleasing odors to the Lord, so that the divine presence will continually remain in the sanctuary.” 7. Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings,” ABD 5:877. 8. Mark E. Biddle, Deuteronomy (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2003), 217. Similarly, Royden Keith Yerkes, Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and Early Judaism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 4–5. 9. See, for example, Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric, 37–42; Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik, 42–54. 10. Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric, 41 (emphasis original). 11. I believe that the same thing is true of Eberhart’s argument for gift being primary, as seen, for instance, in the following: “Die kultische Verbrennung ist der Abschluss einer rituellen Dynamik hin zum Heiligtum Gottes, bei der es zu einer Begegnung zwischen Menschen und Gott kommt, die je nach Anlass von Freude oder von Bußfertigkeit geprägt ist” (Kultmetaphorik, 50). 12. Hartley, Leviticus, lxix–lxx. 13. For example, Budd, Numbers, 315; Hartley, Leviticus, lxxii; Sanders, Judaism, 254–56. But for a contrary view, see William H. C. Propp, Exodus 19–40 (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 702. 14. Hartley, Leviticus, lxxii. 15. So Sanders, Judaism, 256: “The crude idea, that they shared God’s food, had passed into history. . . . But the idea of participation was built into the sacrifice, and most people probably grasped it in one way or another.” 16. See Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 189; Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 14; Timothy R. Ashley, The Book of Numbers

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(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 279. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 70–73, suggests that in Gen 8:21 the phrase is meant literally but elsewhere is metaphorical. 17. Hartley, Leviticus, lxviii. The notion that the phrase indicates God’s pleasure at receiving the sacrifice is expressed by others, for example, Baruch A. Levine, Numbers, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1993, 2000) 1:390, 2.402. 18. See Hartley, Leviticus, 11; Milgrom, Leviticus, 145. 19. Described similarly by Christian A. Eberhart, The Sacrifice of Jesus: Understanding Atonement Biblically (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 69. 20. B. Lang, “Kipper,” TDOT 7:292. 21. For discussions see Hartley, Leviticus, 63–66; Milgrom, Leviticus, 578, 1079–81; Lang, TDOT 7:288–303; Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 43–44, 98–100; Yerkes, Sacrifice, 172–82. For a different view of how to translate it, see Propp, Exodus 19–40, 467. 22. See Lang, TDOT 7:293. 23. Similarly, Hartley, Leviticus, lxviii, 65–66; see also Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 44. 24. Hartley, Leviticus, 64. 25. For a defense of the importance of propitiation, however, see Stephen Finlan, The Background and Content of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Atlanta: SBL, 2004), 29–47. 26. Observed by Lang, TDOT 7:292–93. 27. These references provided by Lang, TDOT 7:293. 28. I borrow here the helpful explanation of Thomas B. Dozeman, “Numbers 7:1–10:10, Holiness and the Tabernacle,” in The Book of Numbers, vol. 2 of The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), https:// www​-ministrymatters​-com​.ezproxy​.gardner​-webb​.edu​/library/#​/tnib​/349​88f2​37b0​ fc07​7d7c​7612​e77992194​/numbers​-71​-1010​-holiness​-and​-the​-tabernacle​.html. For a more detailed discussion, see Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (Philadelphia: JPS, 1990), 369–71. 29. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., “Leviticus 17:1–26:46,” in The Book of Leviticus, vol. 1 of The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), https://www​-ministrymatters​-com​.ezproxy​.gardner​-webb​.edu​/library/#​/tnib​/f33​f120​ 75ba​f33f​0b01​8015​0b40555a6​/leviticus​-171​-2646​.html. 30. For example, Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 120–27; Milgrom, Leviticus, 1474– 79; Hartley, Leviticus, 19–21, 273–76. 31. The NRSV is actually ambiguous here due to translating the verb with a passive construction. Presumably this is a result of the translators’ efforts to use gender-inclusive language. In the Hebrew, the verb is active, and it is clear that the subject of all the verbs in vv. 27–29 is the same. Most English translations besides the NRSV make this clear, as well. Interestingly, in the LXX, the verb for “slaughter” is made plural, probably indicating that the priest was understood to do the killing rather than the offerer. See John William Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Leviticus (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 4, 7, 25, and so forth. See my note at the end of this section reminding about the possibility of multiple interpretations of sacrificial acts.

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32. Milgrom, Leviticus, 1477, makes a similar point. So also John Dunnill, Covenant and Sacrifice in the Letter to the Hebrews (SNTSMS 75; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 94, 102. 33. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 107. See also Eberhart, Sacrifice of Jesus, 28, 96–101; Yerkes, Sacrifice, 5; John Goldingay, “Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ,” in Atonement Today: A Symposium at St. John’s College, Nottingham, ed. John Goldingay (London: SPCK, 1995), 3–20, esp. 12; David M. Moffitt, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 257–59, 271. 34. For more detailed discussions of all the points in the next two paragraphs, see Milgrom, Leviticus, 150–53; Hartley, Leviticus, 19–21; and Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 100–107. 35. Similarly, Eberhart, Sacrifice of Jesus, 82. 36. James D. G. Dunn, “Paul’s Understanding of the Death of Jesus as Sacrifice,” in Sacrifice and Redemption: Durham Essays in Theology, ed. S. W. Sykes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 35–56, esp. 44–47. 37. This is similar to the way Hartley, Leviticus, 21, summarizes the view of Rolf Rendtorff, Die Gesetze in der Priesterschrift, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), 35–40. It seems also to fit with the conclusions of David Calabro, “A Reexamination of the Ancient Israelite Gesture of Hand Placement,” in Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement in Early Judaism and Christianity: Constituents and Critique, eds. Henrietta L. Wiley and Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 99–124. Likewise, Finlan, Background, 87, holds that the ritual serves merely to identify the offerer. 38. Milgrom, Leviticus, 711. 39. Kaiser, “Leviticus 17:1–26:46.” 40. Hartley, Leviticus, 273. 41. The precise nature of the Hebrew preposition ‫ ְּב‬here is much discussed but difficult to discern. See Hartley, Leviticus, 274–76. 42. See, for example, R. B. Jamieson, Jesus’ Death and Heavenly Offering in Hebrews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 128–39, who provides numerous references to others who hold the view. 43. For discussions, see: Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 112–36; Hartley, Leviticus, 273–77; Milgrom, Leviticus, 1474–79. 44. Hartley, Leviticus, 276. 45. Milgrom, Leviticus, 1479. 46. Ibid. 47. Cf. the summary of Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 120: “the blood-life (nepeš) relationship, the technical term ‫ְּב רֶּפִּכ‬, and finally the structure and train of thought in Lev 17,11, especially when seen in its full context, all point to just one meaning: The blood of the sacrificial animal atones by means of and by power of the life (nepeš) contained in this sacrificial animal.” 48. Hartley, Leviticus, lxix. 49. Sanders, Judaism, 49.

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50. For a helpful discussion of Philo on this point, see William K. Gilders, “Jewish Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function (According to Philo),” in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, eds. Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 94–105. 51. See Sanders, Judaism, 49–50. 52. See, for example, Moshe Weinfeld, “Deuteronomy, Book of,” ABD 2:168– 82; or about any scholarly commentary on Deuteronomy. 53. See Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 161–72. 54. See Sanders, Judaism, 49–50; Yerkes, Sacrifice, 126–28. 55. Sanders, Judaism, 49–50. 56. See Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 87–88. 57. See Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice, 119. 58. See Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice, 207. 59. See Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice, 117–26. 60. For more detailed treatments, see Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 78–84; Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric, 42–48. 61. Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 72. 62. See Milgrom, Leviticus, 46–47. 63. Milgrom, Leviticus, 46; Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 56–58; Hartley, Leviticus, 141–42. See also David P. Wright, “Unclean and Clean,” ABD 6:729–41, who covers various theories of impurity but finds the death connection more helpful than the others. 64. Similarly, Milgrom, Leviticus, 889. 65. Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 56–58. 66. Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 161–72. 67. See Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 56; Sanders, Judaism, 252. Sanders lists this as his first point in the theology of sacrifice that was common to all Jews. 68. Hartley, Leviticus, lvi. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus, 731: “That which man is not, nor can ever fully be, but that which man is commanded to emulate and approximate, is what the Bible calls qādôš ‘holy’” (see also ibid., 1711–12). 69. Similarly, Hartley, Leviticus, lvii. Hartley provides a helpful chart of degrees of holiness starting with the divine presence in the temple and moving outward. 70. Bruce Chilton, The Temple of Jesus: His Sacrificial Program Within a Cultural History of Sacrifice (University Park, PA: Penn St. University Press, 1992), 54. 71. See Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 70–72. 72. So Sanders, Judaism, 49–50. 73. A BHS search of the lemma using Logos Bible Software 7 produced 286 occurrences in 260 verses. It is much less common in the hymnic and wisdom material and in the prophets other than Ezekiel. 74. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 16. 75. I have combined the lists of Robert J. Daly, The Origins of the Christian Doctrine of Sacrifice (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 16, and Yerkes, Sacrifice, 140,

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reconfiguring both and adding in some additional scripture references (and omitting some of theirs). See also Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 42–49. 76. Milgrom, Leviticus, 175. 77. Milgrom, Leviticus, 176–77. 78. See Milgrom, Leviticus, 220–21, for a discussion of the different suggested translations. Levine, Numbers, 224, translates it as “sacred gifts of greeting”; Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 89–93, argues for “covenant sacrifice.” 79. Milgrom, Leviticus, 224. 80. Many of these examples come from Milgrom, Leviticus, 224–25. 81. So noted by Milgrom, Leviticus, 224, 2007; Hartley, Leviticus, 386. 82. Emphasized by Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings,” ABD 5:878– 79; Milgrom, Leviticus, 204, 221–22; Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 92–93. Ezekiel 45:13– 17 does mention atonement being accomplished by a group of sacrifices that include the offering of well-being along with grain offerings, sin offerings, and burnt offerings. 83. With Hartley, Leviticus, 275. 84. So Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings,” ABD 5:879–80; Ashley, Book of Numbers, 146; Budd, Numbers, 72; Hartley, Leviticus, 55–57; Milgrom, Leviticus, 253–54; Goldingay, “Old Testament Sacrifice,” 8. Among the great majority of translations continuing to use “sin offering” are the NRSV, ESV, and NIV (so also the KJV). 85. For example, Propp, Exodus 19–40, 459–60; William Johnstone, Exodus 20–40 (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2014), 306; Levine, Numbers, 378–79. 86. The relationship between the instructions given in chapter 4 versus those in 5:1–13 is a matter of some dispute and is well beyond the scope of what can be covered here. See Milgrom, Leviticus, 307–18. 87. Milgrom is quite aware of the guilt and forgiveness language in Lev 4–5; he has a sophisticated argument to account for it. While disagreeing with Milgrom is admittedly a dangerous game, to me, his argument is “too clever by half,” resulting in overly fine distinctions that I doubt most readers, ancient or modern, would discern. For discussions, see Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings,” ABD 5:879–80; Joshua M. Vis, “The Purgation of Persons through the Purification Offering,” in Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement in Early Judaism and Christianity: Constituents and Critique, ed. Henrietta L. Wiley and Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 33–57. Finlan, Background, 32–35, criticizes Milgrom in similar fashion as I do, with more detail. 88. See Milgrom, Leviticus, 281. 89. See Milgrom, Leviticus, 284–88, though Milgrom does not include all of these (and I have given English verse references where the Hebrew differs). In the final two references, it is debated as to whether hattat means “sin” or the sacrifice. 90. Milgrom, Leviticus, 288–89. 91. I have summarized here a very complex argument. See Milgrom, Leviticus, 331–35; Hartley, Leviticus, 82–83; Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings,” ABD 5:880–81. 92. Hartley, Leviticus, 79–80, has helpful discussions of these and the few other brief mentions.

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93. See Hartley, Leviticus, 29–30; Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 31–32. 94. Milgrom, Leviticus, 195–96. 95. For other rabbinic references, see Milgrom, Leviticus, 195. 96. See Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 11–32; Milgrom, Leviticus, 218; Hartley, Leviticus, 273; Christian A. Eberhart, “Sacrifice? Holy smokes! Reflections on Cult Terminology for Understanding Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible,” in Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice In The Bible, ed. Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL, 2011) 17–32, esp. 26; Yerkes, Sacrifice, 146. 97. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 24. 98. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 24, 27. 99. See Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings,” ABD 5:873. 100. For this understanding, see, for example, Yerkes, Sacrifice, 129; Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 170; Duane L. Christensen, Deuteronomy 1:1–21:9, rev. ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001), 396. 101. Milgrom, Leviticus, 161–62, suggests “food gift” as a translation. Hartley, Leviticus, 22 defines ‫ הֶּׁשִא‬as “those parts of a sacrifice that are given to God, wither willingly or in response to a duty.” 102. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 64–69, provides a helpful description. 103. For a few especially interesting examples from later Jewish texts, see 1 Macc 4:50; Sirach 45:16; Sib. Or. 3.772–73. 104. The horn is usually interpreted as being a reference to the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes, whose acts against the temple and Jewish law resulted in the Maccabean revolt in the second century bce. 105. Eberhart, Sacrifice of Jesus, 120, argues that the Passover lamb was not a sacrifice, since it is not offered in a sanctuary and since none of it was burnt. But both Exodus and Deuteronomy use clear language of sacrifice to discuss it (in both the MT and LXX). Philo obviously understood it as sacrifice (see the following quote), as did Paul in 1 Cor 5:7 (see chapter 6). 106. See Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 198–99. 107. See Sanders, Judaism, 133–35. 108. Milgrom, Leviticus, 1059–84, emphasizes the notion of atonement as purgation (see esp. 1079–81). 109. Milgrom, Leviticus, 1021. 110. For example, Finlan, Background, 77–84; Vincent Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice: A Study of the Passion-Sayings in the Gospels (London: MacMillan, 1937), 51; Philo, Spec. Laws, 1.188; m. Yoma 4:1–3; 5:4; 6:1–8. 111. As Milgrom, Leviticus, 1043, puts it: “the blood purges the impurities of the sanctuary and the scapegoat purges the sins of the people.” 112. These are the passages treated in Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric, 77–136; the same list with minor variations will be found in about any source discussing the topic. 113. On the past tendency of scholars to see the prophet-cult dichotomy, see Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 3–13, 75–100; Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 37–38; Milgrom, Leviticus, 482; Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings,” ABD 5:881–82; Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric, 5–30.

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114. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 37, suggests that the last serious attempt to defend the older view was published in 1957. More recently, however, Stephen Finlan has argued for a strong prophetic rejection of sacrifice; see Background, 53–57; Sacrifice and Atonement: Psychological Motives and Biblical Patterns (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016), 50–54. 115. As states Aaron Glaim, “‘I Will Not Accept Them’: Sacrifice and Reciprocity in the Prophetic Literature,” in Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement in Early Judaism and Christianity: Constituents and Critique, ed. Henrietta L. Wiley and Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 125–49, “The portrait of Yahweh rejecting sacrifices thus adheres to sacrificial logic and does not, as a matter of course, constitute some critique of ritual in general or sacrifice as a particular mode of worship” (126). 116. Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric, 77–136, in evaluating these passages, often concludes that they offer a total but situational rejection of sacrifice. Hefner, “Cultural Significance,” 415, suggests seeing the prophetic critique as an interpretation of sacrifice rather than a rejection of it. 117. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 37–38. 118. This passage and the next two, along with many others, are discussed in Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric, 172–214. 119. Though Glaim, “‘I Will Not Accept Them,’” argues that even these passages do not offer a general critique of sacrifice but only assert the inefficacy of sacrifice due to Yahweh’s anger with Israel. 120. See Eidevall, Sacrificial Rhetoric, 169–71.

Chapter 4

Sacrifice in Second Temple Judaism

In this chapter, we will examine sacrifice as it was understood and practiced in the Second Temple period of Judaism, roughly 515 bce–70 ce. Since, as it is usually held, the final editing of most books of the Jewish scriptures took place in Second Temple times, we cannot distinguish sharply between Old Testament practices and Second Temple practices, especially early in the Second Temple period. To give one example of material covered in the previous chapter, Baruch Levine argues that the prescribed sacrifices for the major feasts given in Num 28–29 represent Second Temple practice.1 Nonetheless, it is not hard to examine sacrifice in Second Temple Judaism as a matter unto itself. Many Jewish writings were produced in this time period, especially during the latter half of the period, that assume the normativity of the scriptural texts but that then also contribute distinctive ideas. It is this combination of assuming and building on the scriptures that is the key to understanding Second Temple views of sacrifice. As it is the period leading up to the New Testament that is of most interest here, examining texts from the latter half of the Second Temple period will be our focus. The ideas of this period will be most directly applicable to understanding sacrifice in the New Testament, including how Jesus’ death is interpreted as a sacrifice. We begin by looking at the views of Jesus Ben Sira, the influential Jerusalem teacher from the early second century bce. Consider his following words about sacrifice (Sirach 35:1–13):2 The one who keeps the law makes many offerings; 2 one who heeds the commandments makes an offering of well-being. 3  The one who returns a kindness offers choice flour,   4 and one who gives alms sacrifices a thank offering. 5  To keep from wickedness is pleasing to the Lord, 1

 

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  and to forsake unrighteousness is an atonement. 6  Do not appear before the Lord empty-handed,   7 for all that you offer is in fulfillment of the commandment. 8  The offering of the righteous enriches the altar,   and its pleasing odor rises before the Most High. 9  The sacrifice of the righteous is acceptable,   and it will never be forgotten. 10  Be generous when you worship the Lord,   and do not stint the first fruits of your hands. 11  With every gift show a cheerful face,   and dedicate your tithe with gladness. 12  Give to the Most High as he has given to you,   and as generously as you can afford. 13  For the Lord is the one who repays,   and he will repay you sevenfold.

At the beginning of this passage, it would seem that Ben Sira has a relative disregard for sacrifice, as vv. 1–5 all state that doing other things—keeping the law, acting kindly, and giving alms—can substitute for sacrificing or can accomplish what sacrifice normally accomplishes—pleasing God or making atonement. Verses 6–13, however, quite clearly encourage sacrifice and attribute eternal value to it, even picturesquely describing the “pleasing odor” rising to God. How do the two parts of the passage fit together—how can the author hold both of the seemingly contradictory sentiments expressed in them? On the whole, the book of Sirach is quite positive about the importance of sacrifice. The author encourages sacrifice in other passages (7:29–31; 38:11) and warns about the moral character necessary for sacrifices to be accepted (7:8–9; 34:21–24; 35:15), admonitions assuming the basic value of sacrifice. In Sirach’s long hymn honoring heroes of the Jewish past (chapters 44–50), the biblical figure who gets the most attention is not Abraham, Moses, or David, but rather Aaron (45:6–22); included is the following praise (vv. 15–16): Moses ordained him,   and anointed him with holy oil; it was an everlasting covenant for him   and for his descendants as long as the heavens endure, to minister to the Lord and serve as priest   and bless his people in his name. He chose him out of all the living   to offer sacrifice to the Lord,

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incense and a pleasing odor as a memorial portion,   to make atonement for the people.

The long hymn ends with a section honoring a high priest from Ben Sira’s recent past, Simon son of Onias (50:1–21). About half of the section focuses on Simon’s service in the temple, in particular the offering of the daily sacrifices (the Tamid), describing the celebratory nature of the sacrificial ceremony in some detail (vv. 11–21). Without a doubt, then, Sirach exhibits a positive attitude toward sacrifice in continuity with what we saw in the Jewish scriptures in the previous chapter. Sacrifice for Ben Sira is a vital part of Jewish religious life, embodying the covenant relationship between the Jews and God.3 Yet we still have the words of 35:1–5 that keeping the law and ethical actions can accomplish what sacrifice normally is held to accomplish. In the remainder of this chapter, we will see that Sirach is fairly representative of Second Temple Jewish attitudes toward sacrifice. On the whole, sacrifice continues to be an important aspect of Jewish piety, much the same as it is in the scriptures. There will also be, however, some wondering about the necessity of sacrifice, about whether what sacrifice normally does might be accomplished by other means. The latter will especially be the case for Jews living far from the Jerusalem temple. There are also some developments in Jewish thought about the nature of sacrifice in this period. Despite the fact that Jews had every intention of maintaining the practice of sacrifice as it was prescribed in scripture, sacrifice was by no means a static institution in the Second Temple period. THE CONTINUING IMPORTANCE OF SACRIFICE The evidence that sacrifice remains a vital aspect of Jewish religion throughout the Second Temple period comes from a wide variety of sources and is, quite simply, overwhelming. As Lawrence Schiffman puts it, “Second Temple Jews considered sacrifice to be the highest form of worship and a manner of concretizing their spiritual relationship to God.”4 In fact, even after the Jerusalem temple is destroyed (70 ce), sacrifice continues to be a matter of great concern for some Jews. There is no better place to begin in order to see this continuing importance than with the writings of the first-century ce Jewish historian Josephus, who on multiple occasions in his Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War attests to the value of sacrifice for Second Temple Jews. As a priest himself, Josephus was probably biased in a prosacrifice way,5 but his depiction will comport well with the picture we will see elsewhere, so while likely exaggerated to some degree, there is good reason to deem his basic picture accurate.

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On multiple occasions, Josephus asserts the importance of sacrifices to the Jews in Israel in order to explain specific happenings in the history he relates. One of the more impressive assertions comes from his narration of Herod’s struggles to get and maintain power in Israel following the Roman conquest and control of the land in 63 bce. In the relevant part of the story, Herod’s rival-du-jour, Alexandra, tries to take advantage of a serious illness Herod suffers from (Ant. 15.247–248 [LCL, Marcus and Wikgren]): When Alexandra, who was staying in Jerusalem, learned of his condition, she made an effort to seize control of the fortified places in the city. There were two of these; one (guarded) the city itself, and the other the temple. Whoever was master of these had the whole nation in his power, for sacrifices could not be made without (controlling) these places, and it was impossible for any of the Jews to forgo offering these, for they would rather give up their lives than the worship which they are accustomed to offer God.

Josephus goes on to explain that Alexandra thus tried to gain control of these fortifications but was unsuccessful. Another similar assertion of the importance of sacrifice comes from a part of the history where Josephus himself plays a role; Josephus is appealing to a Roman official for justice for some Jews who believe their rights have been violated. The speech includes the following (Ant. 16.35 [LCL, Marcus and Wikgren]): And if someone should ask them which of these two things they would rather have taken from them, life or their country’s customs, including the processions, sacrifices and festivals which they observe in honour of the gods in whom they believe, I know very well that they would rather suffer all manner of things than violate any of their country’s customs.

Both passages have in common the idea that sacrifice was a central way the Jews of the time period worshiped God. More important as evidence than these statements by Josephus himself are places where the importance of sacrifice plays a clear role in the events Josephus narrates. There are quite a few of these, and they are of varying character. One memorable moment is Josephus’s description of the Roman general Pompey’s invasion of the temple when Pompey took control of Jerusalem for Rome. Josephus reports that the priests continued their sacrifices as if nothing were happening (J.W. 1.148 [LCL, Thackeray]; also described in Ant. 14.64–68): Just as if the city had been wrapt in profound peace, the daily sacrifices, the expiations and all the ceremonies of worship were scrupulously performed to

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the honour of God. At the very hour when the temple was taken, when they were being massacred about the altar, they never desisted from the religious rites for the day.

This commitment to sacrifice in the face of death is echoed in the account of the later war between the Jews and Rome of 66–70 ce (J.W. 5.11–20). In another place, Josephus describes the forces of Herod and the Romans besieging Jerusalem, a siege that probably took place in 37 bce6 (Ant. 14.477– 478 [LCL, Marcus and Wikgren]): And when the outer precincts of the temple and the Lower City had been captured, the Jews fled into the inner precinct of the temple and the Upper City; and fearing that the Romans would prevent them from offering the daily sacrifices to God, they sent an embassy to beg that they would permit them to have only victims brought in for them; and this request he granted, in the belief that they would yield.

This kind of concern that the sacrifices might be interrupted also plays a role in the build-up to the war of 66–70 ce. The rebel Jewish party was wanting to stop sacrificing on behalf of any foreigner; their opponents argue that this is impious and will be taken as an act of war, since regular sacrifices for Caesar were a key display of the Jews’ allegiance to Rome. They are also concerned that this will then lead to the loss of them being able to sacrifice for themselves, which would be a disaster (J.W. 2.408–416). Toward the end of the war, Josephus reports that the daily sacrifice (the Tamid) did cease and that the people were consequentially “terribly despondent” (J.W. 6.94); for Josephus, this was a momentous enough occasion that he reports the precise date. A final place where Josephus indicates the continuing importance of sacrifice is his account of the completion of Herod’s reconstruction of the Jerusalem temple. As in the scenes of dedication or rededication described in our previous chapter, the celebration included large numbers of sacrifices (Ant. 15.422 [LCL, Marcus and Wikgren]): Then the king sacrificed three hundred oxen to God, and others did similarly, each according to his means. The number of these (sacrifices) it would be impossible to give, for it would exceed our power to give a true estimate.

The dedication of the Jews in Israel to their regular sacrifices and the value of sacrifice for the Jews thus come out strongly in Josephus’s works. The period leading up to and during the Maccabean revolt (around the 160s bce), when the Jews in Israel rebelled against their Seleucid rulers, presents

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a fairly obvious situation demonstrating the continuing value of sacrifice for the Jews. The cause of the revolt was the Seleucid king Antiochus IV’s interference in and suppression of Jewish religious practices, including sacrifices. According to 1 Maccabees, Antiochus forbade “burnt offerings and sacrifices and drink offerings in the sanctuary” (1:45), ordered sacrifices to be made outside of the Jerusalem temple (1:47–54), “erected a desolating sacrilege on the altar of burnt offering” (1:54), and then sacrificed on top of this altaron-the-altar (1:59). These acts, along with other ordered violations of Jewish law, led the Jews to revolt. When the latter succeeded in regaining control of Jerusalem, the rededication of the temple was the culminating celebratory act (4:41–58). The celebration included large numbers of sacrifices; the description of this scene from 1 Maccabees was included in the previous chapter. Josephus reports the events of the Maccabean revolt in much the same way 1 Maccabees does (Ant. 12.248–326). 2 Maccabees adds some of its own perspective to these events. In the lead-up to the revolt, 2 Maccabees reports that due to the Hellenizing influence of the wicked high priest Jason, the priests became lax in their temple service, “despising the sanctuary and neglecting the sacrifices” (4:14). When Antiochus defiles the temple, the author considers it divine punishment for the sins of the Jerusalem Jews (5:15–20)—the loss of the temple service, note, is a punishment for the Jews, the loss of a divine blessing. 4 Maccabees 4:20 expresses a similar view of Jason’s disregard for the temple service. Besides these places where the importance of sacrifice is front and center, there are many, many texts where reference is made to sacrifice in a by-theway fashion, where sacrifice is not the focus but its value is assumed. In the apocryphal book of Tobit (third or second century bce), for instance, sacrifice by no means plays a major role in the story, yet at the beginning Jerusalem is referred to as the city “chosen from among all the tribes of Israel, where all the tribes of Israel should offer sacrifice and where the temple, the dwelling of God, had been consecrated and established for all generations forever” (1:4). Tobit then contrasts the impiety of those of his own tribe, who sacrificed to Jeroboam’s calf, with his own attention to the festivals, sacrifices, and other offerings in Jerusalem (1:5–8). Likewise, the apocryphal book of Baruch (probably second or first century bce) is overall little concerned with sacrifice, yet it includes a letter purportedly sent to Jerusalem by the exiles in Babylon in which the first concern is to have sacrifices made on behalf of the exiles (1:10). In the Prayer of Azariah, an apocryphal addition to the book of Daniel (also probably second or first century bce), while in the fiery furnace, Azariah (Abednego) laments that the exiles have “no ruler, or prophet, or leader, no burnt offering, or sacrifice, or oblation, or incense, no place to make an offering before you and to find mercy” (v. 15; LXX 3:38). In the Testament of Job, a first century bce or ce expansion of the story of Job, Job

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includes in his claims of piety that he daily sacrificed “300 doves, 50 goat’s kids, and 12 sheep” (15:4).7 In such places, we can see how sacrifice continued to play a role in the life of Jews, how its value was assumed even when it was not a focus of discussion. We will see more such texts as we continue. Continuing the Three Purposes of Sacrifice We saw in the previous chapter that sacrifice had three primary purposes for the Israelites: to establish and maintain communion with God, to offer gifts to God, and to make atonement. All three of these purposes continued to be important for Second Temple Jews. Sacrifice as Communion with God The Josephus texts above all attest to the ongoing role of sacrifice in maintaining the Jews’ relationship with God—they are all about the regular, mainly daily, sacrifices. The Maccabean texts mentioned earlier also express the idea that the offering of the regular sacrifices was central to the Jews’ understanding of their relationship with their God. Unsurprisingly, many other texts supporting this point can be adduced. Two Second Temple Jewish texts, both interpreting and expanding Old Testament traditions, illustrate especially vividly how sacrifice continued to be understood as a central part of the Jews’ relationship to God. In the first of these, 2 Enoch, a work probably dating to the first century ce,8 the writer expands on the story from Genesis 5:21–24 of Enoch being taken up to God. In 2 Enoch’s account, Enoch’s being taken up is treated as a great sign of God’s favor, and the people respond by building an altar, making sacrifices, and celebrating joyfully for three days (68:5–7). Enoch’s son Methuselah is then divinely chosen to be the priest for the people from that time forward; in this divine appointment, God speaks to Methuselah as follows (69:5):9 I am the Lord, the God of your father Enoch. Give heed to the voice of these people and stand in front of my altar, and I shall glorify you in front of the face of all the people, and you will be glorified all the days of your life, and I shall bless you.

This appointment is treated as an act of divine grace (69:7). The installation service is described in some detail, including the many sacrifices and the “blazing crown” that Methuselah is given to wear (69:7–17). The climax of the ritual is when in response to Methuselah’s prayer the altar is shaken, “and the knife rose up from the altar, and leaped into [Methuselah’s] hand in front of the face of all the people” (69:16). Methuselah then uses the knife

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to slaughter the sacrifice, “and rejoiced greatly, and they made merry in front of the face of the Lord and in front of the face of [Methuselah] on that day” (69:18). We are then told that during Methuselah’s time God “was gratified by his sacrifices and by his gifts and by every kind of service which he performed in front of the face of the Lord” (70:2). As in the examples from the previous chapter, the language denoting the divine presence and the people’s joy is striking. The second text is from a first-century ce work called Biblical Antiquities, by an unknown author referred to today as Pseudo-Philo. The work is usually thought to represent popular Judaism of the time period and so is especially relevant to our study.10 The passage of relevance is a retelling of a not very well-known story from Joshua 22:10–34 where, after the Israelites’ conquest of the land, three of the tribes—Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh—build an altar east of the Jordan River. The other tribes consider this an act of war, a rebellion against YHWH. Disaster is adverted when the three tribes swear that they had no such intent, that the altar was only a memorial of the true altar. In Pseudo-Philo’s version, there are interesting differences. While in the biblical account it is emphasized that no sacrifices were offered on the altar (vv. 23, 26, 28, 29), Pseudo-Philo says that they were indeed offering sacrifices on it (22:1). The altar thus was no mere memorial. The tribes’ explanation of the altar is then as follows (22:3):11 Now the Lord God of our fathers knows that none of us nor we ourselves have done this act out of wickedness but rather for our posterity’s sake so that their heart may not be separated from the Lord our God and that they may not say to us, “Behold our brothers who are across the Jordan have an altar and sacrifice on it, but we in this place do not have an altar and are far from the Lord our God; for our God is so far from our ways that we may not serve him.”

Not having an altar, not being able to sacrifice, is taken as a sign of the absence of God. The subsequent narrative discusses that sacrifices were performed at Shiloh prior to the temple being built in Jerusalem. The reason that sacrifices were allowed at Shiloh was that “the Thummim and Urim revealed all things in Shiloh” (22:9). In other words, because of the divine presence at Shiloh, sacrifice was allowed. Sacrifice and the divine presence go together. There are a number of other texts from this period that demonstrate the connection between sacrifice and communion with God either by lamenting the absence felt when sacrifice is not possible or by envisioning an eschatological future that includes sacrifice. The Prayer of Azariah, quoted earlier, is one such place. In another, the Testament of Moses (first-century ce), the author has Moses predicting that the two tribes who return from the Babylonian exile “will remain steadfast in their former faith, sorrowful and sighing because

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they will not be able to offer sacrifices to the Lord of their fathers” (4:8).12 Books three and five of the Sibylline Oracles (second century bce and first century ce, respectively) offer several examples. In lamenting the destruction of the temple, book five includes among its laments the loss of sacrifice as a way of honoring God (5.397–413). In one eschatological vision, it is emphasized that once God ends all wars and establishes a universal kingdom, “all must sacrifice to the great king” (3.808; the full vision is 3.767–808).13 In another, focusing on the restored Israel, the restored worship of God is said to include “all sorts of sacrifices” (5.268). Another vision focuses on Egypt being converted to the true God, at which point “there will be a great holy temple in Egypt, and a people fashioned by God will bring sacrifices to it” (5.501–502). In the Jewish understanding of an ideal relationship with God, sacrifice is a natural part. The Dead Sea Scrolls present us with the special case of a sectarian Jewish community’s perspective. It has often been noted that the Qumran community rejected the Jerusalem temple and saw their own community as a replacement of sorts, a point we will return to later in this chapter. Here we note that, despite their rejection of the temple and priesthood in their own time, in their visions of the future they included a restored temple and the performance of sacrifice. This is especially evident in the Temple Scroll, which includes detailed descriptions of just such a restored temple and sacrificial system (see 11QT 29–47 for the temple and sacrifices; 13–24 includes more on sacrifice). The War Scroll also includes a description of the daily sacrifices to be performed after the victory of the sons of light over the sons of darkness (1QM 2:1–6). In the highly fragmentary New Jerusalem scroll, the eschatological Jerusalem centers around an idealized temple and sacrificial system.14 Jonathan Klawans has observed that the community’s rejection of the current temple and understanding of itself should thus be understood as a “provisional situation,” not at all implying the rejection of the idea of a temple or of sacrifice in general.15 Quite the opposite is the case. As Schiffman puts it, the Qumran writings express the idea of “the ancient sacrificial worship of Israel as the ultimate connector of God and his people, the true service of the Lord, and the guarantor of the spiritual and physical welfare of all Israel.”16 Sacrifice as Gift As noted in the previous chapter, it is often difficult to distinguish sacrifices offered as gifts to God from those that are offered to establish and maintain the people’s relationship to God. In most cases, the two purposes overlap. Hence, many of the examples just given could also be used to illustrate the notion of sacrifice as gift in Second Temple Judaism. 2 Enoch 70:2, for instance, quoted earlier, includes the notion of sacrifices as gifts. Here

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we simply give a few more examples of places where the gift purpose stands out. The book of Judith tells of the title character’s saving of her people by killing the general of an invading army. Before she does so, the people in their fear appeal to God with prayers and multiple kinds of sacrifices (4:14). After the victory, the people come to the temple and offer “their burnt offerings, their freewill offerings, and their gifts” (16:18), a celebration that goes on for three months (v. 20). Both sets of sacrifices are gifts related to exchange—the first in the hope that God would reciprocate, and the second in acknowledgment that God had done so. 1 Maccabees 5:54 reports a similar situation to that following Judith’s victory, where the Maccabean army after returning to Jerusalem from a victorious battle offers sacrifices, in this case because not a single soldier had been lost. The sense of sacrifice as gift is prominent in places where we hear of foreign rulers and dignitaries sponsoring sacrifices to Israel’s God. 2 Maccabees 3:35 tells of the former Seleucid oppressor Heliodorus sacrificing to Israel’s God after recovering from illness. Antiochus himself sacrifices to Israel’s God later in the story, this time in acknowledgment of his defeat (13:23). 3 Maccabees 1:9 relates that when King Philopator of Egypt visited Jerusalem, he “offered sacrifice to the supreme God and made thank offerings and did what was fitting for the holy place.” The Letter of Aristeas 33–46 reports that the Egyptian king Ptolemy sent gifts to Jerusalem in order that sacrifices from him would be offered to Israel’s God. All these are clearly cases of prominent individuals honoring the God of Israel with gifts through sacrifice. Sacrifice as Means of Atonement Sacrifices certainly continued to be offered in Second Temple times for the purpose of atonement. To give just a few examples: 2 Maccabees 3:31–34 reports that the high priest Onias made atonement via sacrifice for Heliodorus, the same oppressor just mentioned earlier. Later in the same work, we hear that after a battle, Judas Maccabeus takes up a collection to send to Jerusalem for a sin offering for the fallen, so that the dead will be ready for the resurrection (12:39–45). Similar to this is when Job (in the Testament of Job again, 42:4–8) sacrifices on behalf of his friends for the forgiveness of their sins. 2 Enoch encourages sin offerings for healing and forgiveness (59:2; 62:1). The second century bce book of Jubilees, in tracing sacrificial practices to the Noah story, describes sacrifice as follows (6:14):17 They shall keep it for their generations so that they might make supplication on your behalf with blood before the altar on every day. And at the hour of

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daybreak and evening they will seek atonement on their own behalf continually before the Lord so that they might guard it and not be rooted out.

Both Josephus and Philo include atoning sacrifices in their discussions of the Jewish sacrificial system (Ant. 3.230–232; Spec. Laws 1.67, 226–246). There is therefore no doubt that atonement remained an important purpose of sacrifice. One harder question to answer is whether atonement actually grew in importance as a goal of sacrifice in the Second Temple period, and, if so, to what extent. Robert Daly has argued that there was indeed an increase in atoning function ascribed to sacrifice in this period, to the extent that an atoning function was attributed to most sacrifices by the time of the New Testament.18 The quote just given from Jubilees gives an example of this tendency—note that this sacrifice mentioned is the Tamid, the daily sacrifice, but that atoning power is clearly ascribed to it. It is also clear that by the rabbinic period, there was a tendency to treat all sacrifices as atoning, though of course sacrifices were no longer being offered by then.19 However, we have already seen plenty of mentions of sacrifice in Second Temple texts where atonement is not in view, and we will see more further in the chapter. While it is true that there are places where atonement is ascribed to sacrifices that are not normally thought of as atoning in the scriptural texts, the evidence does not suggest that all sacrifices were always thought of as atoning.20 The purposes of communion and gift are still as primary in Second Temple times as they are in scripture. Moreover, as we will see further in the text, there will actually be a loosening of the connection between sacrifice and atonement in other texts. Tracing Sacrificial Traditions to Pre-Mosaic Times We saw earlier in 2 Enoch 68–70 that the priesthood and the practice of priestly sacrifice was given a foundation in the story of Enoch and Methuselah. This was part of a tendency found in a number of Second Temple Jewish texts to retroject the Torah commands and practices into the patriarchal period. Torah had become central enough for Jews that they could not imagine that the great heroes of Genesis would not have somehow kept it or that God would not have revealed it to them.21 The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which probably dates to the second century bce,22 establish the priesthood and priestly rituals with the twelve sons of Jacob (hence the work’s title). In the work, each of the twelve sons gives instructions to his children before he dies (references for the work are by individual testament). The testaments of Levi, Judah, and Joseph are much longer than the others. Levi claims that his father Jacob had a vision saying that Levi would be a priest (9:3) and then that his grandfather Isaac “taught

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me the law of the priesthood: sacrifices, holocausts, voluntary offerings of the first produce, offerings for safe return” (9:7).23 He follows up this claim with some instructions on conducting sacrifices (9:11–14). Judah’s testament actually emphasizes the importance of Levi over himself (21:5): And now, children, love Levi so that you may endure. Do not be arrogant toward him or you will be wholly destroyed. To me God has given the kingship and to him, the priesthood; and he has subjected the kingship to the priesthood. To me he gave earthly matters and to Levi, heavenly matters. As heaven is superior to the earth, so is God’s priesthood superior to the kingdom on earth, unless through sin it falls away from the Lord and is dominated by the earthly kingdom. For the Lord chose him over you to draw near to him, to eat at his table to present as offerings the costly things of the sons of Israel.

Reuben’s testament also encourages listening to Levi, in part because he will teach about sacrifice (6:8). The priesthood clearly occupies a place of special honor in this work, and while its importance goes beyond just sacrifice, sacrifice is an important part of it. We noted earlier that the book of Jubilees traced Israel’s sacrificial practices to Noah. The book purports to be a revelation by God to Moses of the history of the people; in essence, the book thus retells the story of Genesis and the first part of Exodus. The interesting part of the retelling for our purpose is that the role of sacrifice is greatly increased. The patriarchs sacrifice left and right, beginning with Adam himself (3:27). Whenever, for instance, the Genesis account mentions the building of an altar, Jubilees makes it clear that a sacrifice took place (e.g., 13:4, 9, and 16). The most significant part comes in Abraham’s farewell testimony to Isaac (chapter 21), a novel addition to the Genesis account, which covers the practice of sacrifice more than anything else. Abraham claims to have gotten these instructions from “the books of my forefathers and in the words of Enoch and in the words of Noah” (v. 10).24 These instructions are based on Leviticus and the other pentateuchal sacrifice material, so the result is that the Levitical priesthood is given a very early origin. The Enoch connection, of course, we also saw in 2 Enoch. By retrojecting pentateuchal sacrificial traditions into the patriarchal and even primeval periods, these texts give sacrifice the importance of not merely being a part of the divine revelation to Israel at the exodus but also being a part of the basic history of humankind. Israel’s sacrifices are the original ones in the strongest sense. The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs raises the status of sacrifice even more, depicting a heaven where the archangels offer “propitiatory sacrifices to the Lord in behalf of all the sins of ignorance of the righteous ones. They present to the Lord a pleasing odor, a rational and bloodless oblation” (Levi 3:4–6). Sacrifice is a part of the cosmic order, an

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idea we also see in the Dead Sea Scrolls.25 In all these texts, we see the ongoing importance of sacrifice displayed dramatically. Sacrifice in Diaspora Texts Despite the fact that sacrifice could not be a regular part of religious life for diaspora Jews (save for the exceptional situations mentioned in the previous chapter), there is ample evidence that diaspora Jews valued the Jerusalem temple and its practices.26 The habitual payment of the annual half-shekel temple tax is the clearest expression of this value.27 More important for the present discussion is that a number of texts from the Second Temple diaspora engage the practice of sacrifice positively. A few of the works already mentioned were diaspora works, most notably the Sibylline Oracles and the Testament of Job, which are usually thought to have originated in Egypt. The writer of the Letter of Aristeas was certainly a diaspora Jew, a highly Hellenized one also from Egypt. His work, while, as we shall see later, is ultimately somewhat ambiguous about the value of sacrifice, nonetheless displays a keen interest in it and attests to its importance. It includes a lengthy description of the Jerusalem temple, priests, and their practices (83–120), and makes much of the fact that the Egyptian king Ptolemy provided for sacrifices at the Jerusalem temple (33–46). It includes an interesting interpretation of what takes place in sacrifice, as well: “the man who offers the sacrifice makes an offering of every facet of his being” (170),28 which, he says, explains why only domestic animals are offered in sacrifice, as opposed to wild ones. Philo of Alexandria has much to say about sacrifice in his work The Special Laws.29 His discussion of sacrifice occupies most of book one and parts of book two. He gives a thorough review of the entire Jewish sacrificial system, providing philosophical explanations for various parts of it and arguing that the disposition of the offerer is the most important aspect. He suggests that there are two basic reasons why people offer sacrifices, to honor God and to seek benefits from God; the latter may entail atonement for sins or positive blessings (1.67, 195). He sees the Jewish system as perfectly suited to fulfill these two purposes. The burnt offering meets the purpose of honoring God, since the offerer receives nothing in return, and the well-being and purification sacrifices are for receiving blessings and atonement, respectively. He covers all the different types of sacrifice and all the occasions for offering them, giving moral and other types of symbolic explanations as he goes. For example, observing that there are ten total sacrifices commanded to mark the new moon (i.e., the first of a month), he observes that ten is a perfect number; two of these ten sacrifices are calves, which he says is “because the moon as she runs for ever her race forwards and backwards has two motions, one as she waxes till she becomes full, one as she wanes to her conjunction with the

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sun” (1.178 [LCL, Colson]). Some of his explanations are more moralistic, such as his explanation of oxen, sheep, and goats being used as sacrificial animals because they are especially gentle (1.162–167). Philo is above all concerned to emphasize the moral disposition of the offerer as being the key to sacrifice. We saw one example of this in the previous chapter with his explanation of the hand-laying ritual. Another good example comes from his observation that grain sacrifices may substitute for animal sacrifices (1.271 [LCL, Colson]): God does not rejoice in sacrifices even if one offer [sic] hecatombs, for all things are His possessions, yet though He possesses He needs none of them, but He rejoices in the will to love Him and in men that practice holiness, and from these He accepts plain meal or barley, and things of least price, holding them most precious rather than those of highest cost.

Philo clearly values sacrifice, yet he also states that the best sacrifice is “the full and truly perfect oblation of noble living” (1.272 [LCL, Colson]). Apart from such character, sacrifice is not valid—God does not accept the offerings of the unjust (1.277–279). This tendency to both value sacrifice and question its necessity is a tendency we have mentioned before and will return to again. Sacrifice After the Second Temple The destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 ce did not put an end to Jewish interest in or valuing of sacrifice. The most obvious and important evidence for this is the Mishnah. As Shaye J. D. Cohen observes, “More than half of the Mishnah is devoted to one aspect or another of the temple and its cult.”30 The important tractate Abot foregrounds the words of Simeon the Righteous (1:2):31 On three things does the world stand: (1) On the Torah, (2) and on the Temple service, (3) and on deeds of loving kindness.

The Mishnah contains two tractates devoted fully to explaining sacrifice (Zebahim and Menahem), and sacrifice is important in a handful of others (e.g., Tamid, Middot, Qinnim, Yoma, Nazir, and Shabuot). Among other things, there is a detailed description of the operation of the Tamid (Tamid 4:1–3). There are extensive comments about the handling of blood during sacrifices (Zebahim 2–4). There are discussions of how atonement works (e.g., Yoma 8:8–9). We find concern for such details as where precisely

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on the altar each of the different sacrifices was offered (Zebahim 5), and in what order sacrifices had to be offered when multiple kinds were offered together (Nazir 6:7). In short, more than one hundred years after Jews ceased to sacrifice in the Jerusalem temple, we still find an interest in preserving how sacrifice was done and what its importance was. This was done in some measure out of the hope that the sacrifices would one day be performed again, a desire made explicit in Tamid 7:3, at the conclusion of the description of the daily offering: “This is the order of the daily whole offering in the liturgy of the house of our God. May it be [his] will that it be rebuilt, soon, in our own days. Amen.”32 Other works of the time after the temple’s destruction likewise value sacrifice. The Apocalypse of Abraham (late-first century to mid-second century ce), in telling the story of Abraham, makes sacrifice a key component of the establishment of the relationship between God and Abraham, much more so than in the biblical text (chapters 9–15). It also, like other works discussed earlier, envisions sacrifice being performed in the eschaton (chapter 29). The Testament of Isaac (second century ce), continues the trend we saw earlier of retrojecting sacrificial traditions into the patriarchal period (see esp. 4:39–42). And 4 Ezra (end of the first century ce), in telling the history of the world, divides all of time up according to whether sacrifice was offered (10:44–46). That sacrifice remained important in the minds of many Jews long after the practice had ceased is a testimony to its enduring power as a religious practice. QUESTIONING SACRIFICE At the end of the previous chapter, we looked at several passages from the biblical prophets where sacrifice is rejected in certain situations and where sacrifice is devalued in comparison with more morally focused activity. I suggested there that we saw the beginnings of a questioning of the necessity of sacrifice, of a wondering if, especially for those far from the Jerusalem temple, other practices might accomplish what sacrifice normally did. Here we take up this issue. It must first be noted that not a single surviving Second Temple Jewish text takes a position against sacrifice in principle. E.P. Sanders observes that the only place where we find any text from around this period critical of the temple or of sacrifice as a practice comes from book four of the Sibylline Oracles (4.24–30), which in the form we have it was completed in the late first century ce, after the destruction of the temple.33 The lack of such a surviving text does not mean, of course, that there were no Jews who rejected sacrifice. Philo knew of Jews who wanted to take the Jewish laws

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entirely symbolically, not actually practicing them at all (On the Migration of Abraham 89–93), and presumably this would mean that they did not physically sacrifice. But however many Jews there may have been who took this position, they were surely a small minority, and they left no record of themselves. For the great majority of Jews, as for the great majority of all people in the ancient Mediterranean world, sacrifice continued to be a meaningful religious practice, even if, as for diaspora Jews, it could not be a frequent one. This chapter began by quoting a passage from Sirach where we saw a certain ambiguity regarding sacrifice, on the one hand encouraging its performance but on the other hand asserting that other activities can substitute for it. Sirach is not alone in exhibiting this kind of ambiguity. We earlier saw that Philo, too, valued sacrifice but also claimed that “noble living” is the best kind of sacrifice. The Letter of Aristeas, we saw, also showed interest in and regard for sacrifice, but we now note that it also makes a similar claim to that of Philo. In answering the question, “What is the highest form of glory?” the letter gives the reply, “Honoring God. This is not done with gifts or sacrifices, but with purity of heart and of devout disposition” (234). Another work considered earlier, 2 Enoch, which we examined as one of the works that retrojected the sacrificial traditions into the patriarchal period and as showing great regard for sacrifice, contains a similarly contrasting claim (45:3): Does the Lord demand bread or lamps or sheep or oxen or any kind of sacrifices at all? That is nothing, but he demands pure hearts, and by means of all those things he tests people’s hearts.

Judith, in which we saw sacrifice playing an important role, makes a similar claim (16:16): For every sacrifice as a fragrant offering is a small thing,   and the fat of all whole burnt offerings to you is a very little thing; but whoever fears the Lord is great forever.

Even Josephus, who is usually regarded as having a pro-sacrifice bias and who made the strong claims about Jewish devotion to sacrifice that we saw earlier, gives us such a statement. In retelling the story of Samuel’s rejection of Saul, he greatly expands Saul’s claim from 1 Sam 15:22–23 that obedience is more important than sacrifice (Ant. 6.148–149 [LCL, Thackeray and Marcus]): And from such as submit not nor offer the true worship that alone is acceptable to God, even though they sacrifice many fat victims, even though they present to Him sumptuous offerings wrought of silver and gold, yet does He not receive

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these gifts graciously, but rejects them and regards them as tokens of iniquity rather than as piety. But they who are mindful of this one thing alone, to wit what God has spoken and commanded, and who choose rather to die than to transgress aught thereof, in them does He rejoice; from them He requires no sacrifice, or, should they offer any, however modest, more gladly does He welcome this homage from poverty than that of the wealthiest.

It was not at all uncommon, then, for Jewish authors to show a high regard for sacrifice but also to see a pious disposition or moral behavior as more primary and to see these substituting in some sense for sacrificial practice. There are many other places in Second Temple literature where we find these ideas. Of course, there are places to note in the Jewish scriptures themselves. Psalm 141:2 reads, for example, “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice”; Psalm 50:14 instructs the hearer to offer a “sacrifice of thanksgiving.” The non-scriptural Psalm 154:10–11 reads as follows:34 And a person who glorifies the Most High, he accepts as one who brings a meal offering, As one who offers he-goats and baby bulls; as one who anoints the altar with many burnt offerings; as sweet-smelling fragrance from the hand of the righteous ones.

Likewise Psalms of Solomon 3:8 reads:35 He [the righteous] atones for (sins of) ignorance by fasting and humbling his soul,   and the Lord will cleanse every devout person and his house.

The Prayer of Azariah, quoted earlier as lamenting the loss of sacrifice, follows up that lament with the plea for God to accept a substitute (vv. 16–17; LXX 3:39–40): Yet with a contrite heart and a humble spirit may we be accepted, as though it were with burnt offerings of rams and bulls, or with tens of thousands of fat lambs; such may our sacrifice be in your sight today, and may we unreservedly follow you, for no shame will come to those who trust in you.

In Tobit 4:11, we have the straightforward claim that “almsgiving, for all who practice it, is an excellent offering in the presence of the Most High.” In the apocalyptic work 1 Enoch, both prayer and martyrdom are spoken of in sacrificial terms (47:1, 4):36

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In those days, the prayers of the righteous ascended into heaven, and the blood of the righteous from the earth before the Lord of the Spirits. . . . The hearts of the holy ones are filled with joy, because the number of the righteous has been offered, the prayers of the righteous ones have been heard, and the blood of the righteous has been admitted before the Lord of the Spirits.

Similar language occurs in the Wisdom of Solomon 3:6, where the souls of the righteous are said to be accepted “like a sacrificial burnt offering.” 4 Maccabees 17:22 also speaks of the martyrs as accomplishing the work of a sacrifice: And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as an atoning sacrifice, divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated.

Martyrdom as sacrifice is naturally an idea with ramifications for the New Testament interpretations of sacrifice, a point we will return to in subsequent chapters. By the rabbinic period, with the temple having long been destroyed, a host of other activities were understood as having sacrificial force, particularly with respect to atonement.37 For the most part, these echo the sentiments we have already seen, but there are also two other practices understood as atoning: circumcision and the study of Torah.38 The idea that circumcision was a sacrifice of sorts is also found in the Targums, which means that it is possible, though by no means certain, that the idea existed in the Second Temple period.39 The Qumran community provides us with a special case of a group of Jews who, having rejected the Jerusalem temple establishment of their day, came up with alternatives to Jerusalem temple sacrifice. The main alternative was simply joining the community and adhering to its standards. Participation in the community took the place of participation in the Jerusalem temple rituals. This is evident mainly in the Community Rule, the document that gives the standards for joining the community and for its operation. The Community Rule requires those who join the community to enter a covenant, and various negative declarations are made about anyone refusing to enter the covenant, including “He shall not be justified . . . he shall not be reckoned among the perfect; he shall neither be purified by atonement” (1QS III, 3–4).40 We then get the explanation for why this is (1QS III, 6–8): For it is through the spirit of true counsel concerning the ways of man that all his sins shall be expiated, that he may contemplate the light of life. He shall be cleansed from all his sins by the spirit of holiness uniting him to His truth, and his iniquity shall be expiated by the spirit of uprightness and humility.

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The passage continues to say that he is made clean “by the humble submission of his soul to all the precepts of God,” and that if he does not stray, “he shall be accepted by virtue of a pleasing atonement before God and it shall be to him a Covenant of the everlasting Community” (1QS III, 8–12). Justification, purity, and atonement are all tied to participation in the covenant community. A later passage makes it clear that participation in the community specifically substitutes for sacrifice (1QS IX, 3–6): When these become members of the Community in Israel according to all these rules, they shall establish the spirit of holiness according to everlasting truth. They shall atone for guilty rebellion and for sins of unfaithfulness, that they may obtain loving-kindness for the Land without the flesh of holocausts and the fat of sacrifice. And prayer rightly offered shall be as an acceptable fragrance of righteousness, and perfection of way as a delectable free-will offering. At that time, the men of the Community shall set apart a House of Holiness in order that it may be united to the most holy things and a House of Community for Israel, for those who walk in perfection.

The notion of prayer and following the commandments achieving the effects of sacrifice echo ideas that we saw earlier, as does the Rule elsewhere when it says that practicing justice and suffering affliction also atone (1QS VIII, 3–4). The difference is that all such practices are tied tightly to belonging to the Qumran community, that these practices are seen as effective only for those in the community. Belonging to the community, of course, was a serious matter. Joining required a lengthy initiation process, and staying in required strict obedience to the commandments and to the community’s leaders. An inadvertent sin required two years of penance, and deliberate sin resulted in permanent expulsion (1QS IX, 1–2). The substitution for sacrifice at Qumran was by no means an easy one. Not only does the Community Rule describe atonement being achieved by belonging to the community, but it also describes the community itself as providing atonement for the rest of Israel. Concerning the community’s members, we are told the following (1QS V, 6–7): They shall atone for all those in Aaron who have freely pledged themselves to holiness, and for those in Israel who have freely pledged themselves to the House of Truth, and for those who join them to live in community and to take part in the trial and judgement and condemnation of all those who transgress the precepts.

Later we are told that the community will also atone for the land of Israel (1QS VIII, 6). Moreover, the community itself is said to be “a Most Holy

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Dwelling for Aaron” that will “offer up sweet fragrance” (1QS VIII, 8–9). In other words, the community functions as a replacement temple, with its members functioning as priests and its activities functioning as sacrifices.41 There is some debate over whether animal sacrifices might actually have been offered at Qumran; the archaeological record has been interpreted by some to suggest that they were, but the conclusion is not certain.42 If this is the case, it certainly takes the idea of the community functioning as a replacement temple to another level. Either way, however, it is clear that the community’s other practices still functioned as sacrifices. At this point, we need to remember that, despite the Qumran community having understood its role and function this way, the community still longed for the restoration of the actual temple and of the regular sacrificial practices. We saw this earlier in our discussion of the continuing function of sacrifice as establishing communion with God in the Second Temple period. Thus, that membership in the community could substitute for participation in Jerusalem temple sacrifice did not mean that sacrifice was considered unnecessary or undesirable in general, and the community’s function as a replacement for the temple did not mean that the temple and its sacrifices were rejected in principle. The opposite was the case. It was because the temple and sacrifice were valued so much that, in their absence, substitutes were necessary. The Qumran community is thus ultimately not very different from Sirach, Philo, or the other texts examined in the way it continued to value sacrifice while also allowing that other practices could accomplish what sacrifice normally accomplished, including atonement. The fact that a wide variety of Second Temple Jews all expressed this notion should not be overlooked. Ben Sira, Philo, Josephus, and the Qumran community represent quite different groups or perspectives within Second Temple Judaism, yet they all seem to hold the same position about the high value of sacrifice but also of the possibility of relating faithfully to God without it. For most Second Temple Jews, sacrifice was a deeply meaningful and important practice. For most Second Temple Jews, what sacrifice accomplished could also be accomplished in other ways. Both points are important as we go forward, especially as we move to look at the New Testament interpretation of sacrifice. Christian interpreters have often drawn two different but equally mistaken conclusions when looking at the Old Testament and Second Temple Jewish material on sacrifice. The first is what we saw in the previous chapter, that of reading the prophets as having rejected sacrifice altogether, and then seeing the prophets as representing true Israelite religion over against the priestly sacrificial material. When it comes to reading the Second Temple texts, the tendency then is to see sacrifice as being on the decline.43 The New Testament then can be read as the culmination of this decline, when a sacrifice-free

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understanding of faith becomes the norm. We have seen that this understanding of both the prophets and of Second Temple Judaism is mistaken. The second mistaken conclusion is almost the opposite of the first. This mistake goes hand-in-hand with the common Christian view of Judaism as a rigid legalistic system where God is primarily a great scorekeeper or accountant. Every sin is seen as requiring, without exception, some act of blood sacrifice to atone for it. Jesus then comes along as the perfect replacement, the sacrifice that overthrows the sacrificial system and reveals God as a God of grace rather than a tit-for-tat judge. The problem with this view, so far as sacrifice goes, is that sacrifice was not understood so rigidly, either in the Old Testament or by Second Temple Jews. Sacrifice was a dynamic expression of the Israelites’ and Jews’ relationship to God, and its primary purpose was not a part of a tit-for-tat approach to sin. And while atonement was an important function of sacrifice, atonement was never exclusively tied to sacrifice, neither in the scriptures nor by Second Temple Jews—atonement could be accomplished in other ways. Neither God nor God’s people were ever quite so rigid as is sometimes imagined. SACRIFICE IN THE SEPTUAGINT Beginning in the third century bce, the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek, primarily if not exclusively by Alexandrian Jews, Alexandria in Egypt being both a center of scholarship and the home of a large number of diaspora Jews.44 This translation, the Septuagint (LXX), became the scriptures for Greek-speaking Jews throughout the Mediterranean world. It also was the primary version of the scriptures used by early Christians. When the New Testament authors quote scripture, it is usually the LXX.45 Hence, it is worth considering how the scriptures that speak of sacrifice were interpreted by the LXX translators. This both gives us further insight into Second Temple Judaism and prepares us for our examination of the New Testament. We will by no means cover all the possible details here; we will rather look at several major tendencies. First, for the most part, the translators used the typical religious language of the time to translate the Hebrew terms, but in some cases, they found this inadequate or problematic.46 For example, θυσία was the typical Greek word for “sacrifice,” and it is used throughout the LXX to translate multiple Hebrew words related to sacrifice. On the other hand, the typical Greek word for altar was βωμός, but the translators decided not to use this word for the altar in the tabernacle or Jerusalem temple. Instead, they used the much less common θυσιαστήριον for their altar and mainly reserved βωμός for references to pagan or illicit altars.47 Sometimes the translators wanted to preserve

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etymological meanings of the Hebrew terms. Recall that the Hebrew term hattat has been traditionally translated as “sin offering” because the same word indeed means “sin,” though many commentators and I today prefer “purification offering” as more descriptive of what the hattat actually does. The LXX translators used the usual Greek word for “sin,” ἁμαρτία, to translate the hattat, but this presented a problem of understanding, because Greek usage had no concept of a sacrifice that would be denoted using ἁμαρτία. Their solution was to always use ἁμαρτία in the genitive case when referring to sacrifice, usually preceded by the preposition περί.48 With some other Hebrew terms, they forged new Greek expressions that were similar to but not the same as the normal Greek terms for sacrifice, probably simply in recognition that their sacrifices were similar to those of their neighbors but also distinctive.49 In our previous chapter, we observed that the careful distinctions between the different types of sacrifice that were maintained by the P author in Leviticus were not kept by the other authors of the Hebrew scriptures, not even by the H editor in Leviticus. We find that the LXX translators were likewise unconcerned to maintain technical distinctions in the terminology for sacrifice, even less so than in the non-P Hebrew sources. So, for instance, θυσία, the general term for sacrifice mentioned earlier, is used to translate the Hebrews terms zevah, minhah, and isheh (all were discussed in the previous chapter).50 Going in the other direction, the Hebrew olah, the burnt offering, was translated with no less than eight different Greek words—six in Leviticus alone.51 Moreover, the nuances of its translation vary from book to book, with, for instance, Exodus and Numbers being more careful to translate appropriately for individual contexts than Leviticus is.52 R. K. Yerkes suggests that the translators struggled particularly with olah because holocaust offerings in Greek religion were associated with placation and aversion, which contrasts sharply with their more positive use in the biblical practice.53 Sometimes the LXX translators seemed to have translated the same word with different Greek words for no other reason than variety’s sake, with Leviticus being especially prone to this, as the six translations for olah indicate.54 The LXX translators sometimes made modifications to the Hebrew scriptures, or, as they more likely saw them, clarifications. In the Hebrew text of Leviticus, it is clear that with the purification offering, it is the offerer who slaughters the animal; the priest then performs the appropriate rites with the slaughtered animal. In the LXX, however, it is the priests who do the slaughtering; the change is made merely by changing the singleness or plurality of the words, a subtle change to the language but with a significant difference in meaning.55 Another interesting difference is the avoidance of language that refers to the sacrifices as God’s food; the LXX of Lev 3:11, for instance, substitutes the “pleasing odor” language in place of the Hebrew “as

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food.”56 It is not surprising that translators influenced by Hellenistic learning such as one would expect in Alexandria might be uncomfortable with such anthropomorphism. Gary Anderson has observed that one of the phenomena of Second Temple Judaism is that sacrifice becomes not just a religious practice but also a matter of textual interpretation.57 Interpreters like Philo and the authors of Jubilees, 2 Enoch, and the Temple Scroll were not concerned so much with how Jews were actually performing sacrifices but with how sacrifices ought to be performed, and with the meaning of sacrifice as an ideal practice. To a certain extent, we can see this in the LXX, too. Given that the LXX was used primarily by diaspora Jews, the concern with the translation was not to provide a manual for how sacrifice was to be done, but to present sacrifice as the translators understood it. The New Testament authors were also not particularly concerned with the practice of sacrifice but rather with its meaning. To these texts we now turn. NOTES 1. Baruch A. Levine, Numbers, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1993, 2000), 2:393–98. 2. All quotes from the Apocrypha and Old Testament in this chapter are from the NRSV unless otherwise indicated. 3. For an even higher estimation of the value of sacrifice for Ben Sira, see R. Hayward, “Sacrifice and World Order: Some Observations on Ben Sira’s Attitude to the Temple Service,” in Sacrifice and Redemption: Durham Essays in Theology, ed. S. W. Sykes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 22–34. 4. Lawrence H. Schiffman, “Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Actuality of Sacrifice: Past and Present, ed. Alberdina Houtman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 92. 5. See Bruce Chilton, The Temple of Jesus: His Sacrificial Program Within a Cultural History of Sacrifice (University Park, PA: Penn St. University Press, 1992), 69–87. 6. See the notes in Flavius Josephus, The Jewish Antiquities, Books XIV–XV, trans. Ralph Marcus and Allen Wikgren, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 248–49. 7. Trans. R. P. Spittler, “Testament of Job: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 1:845. 8. The work’s date of composition has been a matter of some debate, but most scholars today consider that it could not have come from after the first century precisely because of the importance of animal sacrifice in it. See, for example, John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 243; Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 454.

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9. All 2 Enoch quotes are from F. I. Andersen, “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 1:91–213. 10. See D. J. Harrington, “Pseudo-Philo: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 2:297–377; Howard Jacobson, A Commentary on PseudoPhilo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 195–280; Frederick J. Murphy, Pseudo-Philo: Rewriting the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 3–8; Eckart Reinmuth, Pseudo-Philo und Lukas: Studien zum Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum und seiner Bedeutung für die Interpretation des lukanischen Doppelwerks (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 3–26. 11. All Pseudo-Philo quotes are from Harrington, “Pseudo-Philo.” 12. Trans. J. Priest, “Testament of Moses: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 1:929. 13. All Sib. Or. quotes are from J. J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 1:317–472. 14. Fragments of this scroll include 4Q554–555, 5Q15, 1Q32, 2Q24, 4Q232, and 11Q18. For a discussion, see: Schiffman, “Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 102–103. 15. Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 145–74 (quoting 164). See also Robert J. Daly, Christian Sacrifice: The Judaeo-Christian Background Before Origen (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1978), 157–74; Albert L. A. Hogeterp, Paul and God’s Temple: A Historical Interpretation of Cultic Imagery in the Corinthian Correspondence (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 75–114. 16. Schiffman, “Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 103. 17. Trans. O. S. Wintermute, “Jubilees: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 2:67. 18. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 87–136; also idem., “The Power of Sacrifice in Ancient Judaism and Christianity,” Journal of Ritual Studies 4 (1990): 181–98. 19. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 48, 201, and passim. 20. It is perhaps telling that Daly’s examples of what he identifies as a broad trend come almost exclusively from Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and rabbinic sources. 21. In addition to the texts treated further in the chapter, several Qumran texts also retroject parts of the legal code to patriarchal times. See George J. Brooke, “Jacob and His House in the Scrolls from Qumran,” in Rewriting and Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: The Biblical Patriarchs in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, eds. Devorah Dimant and Reinhard G. Kratz (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 171–88. 22. The origins of the work have been vigorously debated, but I believe this is the consensus position today. For overviews of the debate, see: Howard C. Kee,

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“Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background, ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 1200–205; idem., “Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 775–808, esp. 775–81; Marinus de Jonge, “Patriarchs, Testaments of the Twelve,” ABD 5:181–85; Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 133–36. 23. All quotes from the work are from Kee, “Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A New Translation and Introduction.” 24. All quotes from the work are from Wintermute, “Jubilees.” 25. See Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 128–42, for a helpful discussion of this phenomenon. 26. See Timothy Wardle, “Who Is Sacrificing? Assessing the Early Christian Reticence to Transfer the Idea of the Priesthood to the Community,” in Ritual And Metaphor: Sacrifice In The Bible, ed. Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 99–114, esp. 101; Eyal Regev, The Temple in Early Christianity: Experiencing the Sacred (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 12–14. 27. See Wardle, “Who Is Sacrificing?” 101 n. 11, for numerous attestations of the practice. 28. All quotes from the work are from R. J. H. Shutt, “Letter of Aristeas: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 2:7–34. 29. For a helpful discussion of Philo’s theory of sacrifice, see William K. Gilders, “Jewish Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function (According to Philo),” in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, ed. Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 94–105. 30. Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), 219. 31. All Mishnah quotes are from Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). 32. Cf. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 219, who suggests that the importance of sacrifice and related matters in the Mishnah is “either because the Mishnah is confidently awaiting the time of their restoration, or because the temple cult had been ordained by God and the study of its regulations was now the equivalent of their implementation, or because the rabbis were attempting to create in their minds an ideal and perfect world to which they could escape from the imperfect world around them.” 33. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 bce – 66 ce (London: SCM, 1992), 54. 34. Trans. James H. Charlesworth and J. A. Sanders, “More Psalms of David: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 2:620–21. 35. Trans. R. B. Wright, “Psalms of Solomon: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 2:655.

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36. Trans. E. Isaac, “1 (Ethiopic Apocalypse of) Enoch: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 1:35. 37. See Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 95–97. 38. See Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 187–95; idem., “Power of Sacrifice,” 187–90. 39. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 187–95. 40. All quotes of the Dead Sea Scrolls are from Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin, 1997). 41. Summed up similarly by Schiffman, “Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 90: “the sectarians prohibited the Temple sacrifices and saw themselves as the replacement; life in the sect was a form of sacrifice and the sect was a Temple.” 42. See Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 161–72; Schiffman, “Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 90–91. 43. For a discussion and critique of such “evolutionist” approaches, see Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 7–10. Assertions of such decline can be seen, e.g., in Johannes Behm, “θύω, θυσία, θυσιαστήριον,” TDNT 3:180–90; Stephen Finlan, The Background and Content of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Atlanta: SBL, 2004), 11–72; J. Julius Scott, Jr., Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 122–23, 155. 44. For useful overviews, see Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 29–44; Melvin K. H. Peters, “Septuagint,” ABD 5:1093–1104. 45. The precise relationship between the NT’s scripture quotes, the LXX, and the MT is surprisingly complex, however. See R. Timothy McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). 46. For this general conclusion, see Suzanne Daniel, Recherches sur le Vocabulaire du Culte dans la Septante (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1966), 363–400. 47. Daniel, Recherches, 16–17; John William Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Leviticus (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 4. 48. See Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Leviticus, 484. 49. Thus concludes Daniel, Recherches, 365–71. Examples include ὁλοκαύτωμα and σωτήριον. 50. See Christian A. Eberhart, “Sacrifice? Holy smokes! Reflections on Cult Terminology for Understanding Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible,” in Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice In The Bible, ed. Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 17–32, esp. 27–28; Daniel, Recherches, 201–23; Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Leviticus, 486. 51. The six in Leviticus, according to Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Leviticus, 486–87, are ὁλοκαύτωμα, ὁλοκαύτωσις, κάρπωμα, κάρπωσις, ὁλοκάρπωμα, and ὁλοκάρπωσις. The first is the most common, accounting for more than half of the occurrences. Outside of Leviticus one also finds θυσία and προσφορά used. 52. Daniel, Recherches, 241–44, discusses the way the translators of the different books operated. 53. Royden Keith Yerkes, Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and Early Judaism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 128.

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54. See Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Leviticus, xi–xii, for many examples of such “love of variation.” 55. Ibid., xxii–xxv, 4, 5, 8–9, 25. 56. Ibid., xxii–xxiii, 29. 57. Gary A. Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings: Old Testament.” ABD V:872–73.

Chapter 5

Sacrifice in the New Testament

In this chapter, we will examine sacrifice as it appears in the New Testament apart from references to Jesus’ death. The latter will be the subject of the next chapter. Here our goal is to understand how the New Testament authors’ conceptions of sacrifice fit in with what we have seen in the Jewish scriptures and in Second Temple Jewish texts. We will, along the way, note some distinctive uses the New Testament authors make of sacrificial ideas. We will wait, however, until the next chapter to study these in depth, since these distinctive uses will typically be tied to the understanding of Jesus’ death. There are two broad types of references to sacrifice in the New Testament writings. The first type consists of references to actual sacrifices being performed or discussed. An example of a performance occurs in Luke 2:24, where Mary and Joseph offer a sacrifice of two birds when presenting the baby Jesus in the Jerusalem temple. An example of a discussion appears in 1 Cor 9:13, where Paul speaks of priests sharing in the sacrifices made on the altar. The second type of reference consists of places where sacrificial language is used to describe things that are not sacrifices in a literal sense. For example, in Phil 4:18, Paul calls gifts that the Philippian Christians have sent him “a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.”1 This type is where we will see some distinctively Christian applications of sacrificial language, even though the basic idea is a continuation of what we saw in the previous chapter, such as prayer being considered as incense in Psalms 141:2 or almsgiving being seen as equivalent to a thank offering in Sirach 35:4. On the whole, we will see that the New Testament conceptions of sacrifice fit well in the matrix of sacrificial understandings displayed in Second Temple Judaism and in the broader Mediterranean world. We will see a fundamental regard for sacrifice similar to that displayed in the Jewish scriptures and in Second Temple texts, and we will also see a similar questioning of the necessity of sacrifice. 95

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We will proceed by using the framework established in the previous two chapters. We will look at how references to sacrifice in the New Testament continue to show the three primary purposes of sacrifice, that is, communion, gift, and atonement. Then we will look at how the different types of sacrifice (olah, minhah, etc.) occur in the New Testament, as well as the different occasions on which they were offered. We will look at how the necessity of sacrifice is questioned in the New Testament and how this questioning fits in with the value placed on sacrifice seen elsewhere. Lastly, the book of Revelation requires a brief look on its own, as it contains a peculiar description of sacrifice not seen elsewhere in the New Testament.

THE THREE PURPOSES OF SACRIFICE Communion There are a handful of New Testament passages that depict or discuss actual sacrifices performed primarily for the purpose of communion with the divine. The main place where we see this purpose is in Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 8–10 of the problem of eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols (εἰδωλόθυτα). The practice of eating such meat is based on the type of sacrifice where part of the animal is consumed in devotion to the deity and the rest is eaten by the priests or worshipers, in other words, where communion between the sacrificers and deity is in the foreground.2 We discussed this type of sacrifice in our second chapter in regard to the broad understanding of sacrifice in the Mediterranean world and in the third chapter in regard to Jewish sacrifices (the zevah and the offering of wellbeing, the shelamim). Paul’s concern includes both the eating of such meat as a part of sacrificial rituals and the eating of meat that has been left over from such rituals. Paul offers some leeway on the latter (8:1–13; 10:23–30) but prohibits the former (10:14–22). In arguing for the prohibition, he asks, “Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?” (10:18, κοινωνοὶ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου). Here he refers specifically to the people of Israel, but earlier he had made the point as a broad principle about sacrifice: “those who serve at the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar” (9:13). The point is that in eating the meat, the participant engages in communion with the deity to whom the sacrifice is made, whether that be the God of Israel or a pagan god.3 Paul compares the Christian participation in the Lord’s Supper to this practice, arguing that Christians share in the blood and body of Christ when they partake of the Lord’s Supper (10:16), and he avers emphatically that one cannot partake of both Christ and idols (10:20–22). The eating of meat sacrificed to idols is also mentioned briefly in a few other places in the

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New Testament (Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25; Rev 2:14, 20); in all of these it is straightforwardly condemned. Concern for communion with pagan gods is also the concern of a very different kind of text where sacrifice plays a role, Acts 14:8–18. Here Paul and Barnabas heal a man who “had been crippled from birth” (v. 8), and consequently the onlooking crowd becomes convinced that Paul and Barnabas are gods, specifically Hermes and Zeus, respectively (v. 12). The crowd’s ensuing act makes perfect sense from an ancient perspective—they want to sacrifice to the pair (v. 13). Offering sacrifice was a natural response to an encounter with the divine for pagans in the same way that we saw it was for the Israelites in the Jewish scriptures. The sacrifice has no other purpose; it is merely to establish the appropriate divine-human relationship. Paul and Barnabas, of course, assert their mere humanness and manage to deter the attempt (vv. 14–18). The book of Hebrews, while primarily concerned with sacrifices of atonement, as we shall discuss later, nonetheless shows an awareness in a number of places of other purposes of sacrifices, including communion. In the long chapter 11, where the faith of numerous figures from the history of Israel is praised, twice we hear of such faith demonstrated through sacrifice, and these sacrifices are straightforward expressions of the individuals’ relationships with God. In the first, we are told that Abel’s sacrifice was better than Cain’s (v. 4). In the story from Genesis 4:1–7, the sacrifices are made simply to please God, which works for Abel but not for Cain (Gen 4:4–5). The Hebrews text echoes this purpose, noting that Abel was thereby put in right standing with God (“received approval as righteous”), adding to the Genesis account that the reason for Abel’s sacrifice being better than Cain’s was the former’s faith. The second figure praised for his sacrifice is Abraham (Heb 11:17–19)—or, we should say, the almost-sacrifice, that is, of his son Isaac, from Gen 22. The reason for the sacrifice is merely that God commands it, the ultimate expression of Abraham’s relationship to God (James 2:21 makes a similar point about the near-sacrifice). In praising his faith, Hebrews adds to the Genesis account that Abraham “considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead” (v. 19). With both Abel and Abraham the sacrifices are simply expressions of faith, acknowledgments of the divinehuman relationship. Several passages in the New Testament describe festive meals using language with sacrificial overtones, though whether sacrifice is actually meant is debated. In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet, the king’s slave tells the invited guests that “I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready” (22:4). Likewise, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, there are three references to the fatted calf being slaughtered (Luke 15:23, 27, 30). And in the

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Acts account of Peter’s vision of the unclean animals that prepares him for the evangelization of Gentiles, Peter is told to slaughter the animals (10:13; 11:7). In all three passages, the verb used to refer to the slaughtering of the animals is θύω, the verb used for slaughtering in sacrifice. However, θύω can also be used of killing in non-sacrificial situations. The sense of the verb is thus disputed in each passage.4 Given the frequent connection of the eating of meat in festive situations with sacrifice in the ancient world, it seems likely that many ancient readers would have perceived a reference to sacrifice, but given that sacrifice is not the real point in any of these passages, the point should not be pressed. Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 provides a final brief example of a reference to sacrifices performed for the purpose of communion. In demonstrating the rebellion of the Israelites against God in the wilderness, Stephen refers to the sacrifice made to the golden calf at Sinai and to the repeated sacrifices made to foreign gods during the wilderness period (vv. 41–42). Stephen’s point is merely about Israel’s idolatry; the sacrifices are mentioned because they are the quintessential way of expressing relationship to a deity.5 Some of the examples of actual sacrifices conceived as gifts to be given below could also fit here, but ultimately more interesting are the places where language of sacrifice is used metaphorically to interpret other kinds of activity. We saw this as a common practice in Second Temple Judaism in the previous chapter, and the New Testament examples are not different in kind. Most of the New Testament examples of this practice fall under the category of expressing communion. We return to Hebrews to begin with. Most of Hebrews is focused on convincing the audience of Christ’s superiority as a high priest and atoning sacrifice, but when in the final chapters the author turns to discuss life in the Christian community, in several places language of sacrifice is used to describe this activity. In 12:28, the author concludes a long exhortation to accept divine grace by encouraging the audience to “give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe.” The verb used for offering God worship here is λατρεύω, which refers specifically to cultic worship, especially to sacrifice, both in the LXX and elsewhere in Hebrews.6 More explicit is 13:15–16: Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

The “sacrifice of praise” here is θυσίαν αἰνέσεως, which is the standard LXX translation of the Hebrew thanksgiving offering, one of the three subcategories of the shelamim, the well-being offering (as discussed in

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chapter 3).7 Thanksgiving, praise, good deeds, and sharing are thus all said to fulfill the roles of offering sacrifice, that is, worshiping and pleasing God. More intriguing than these simple claims is the assertion of Heb 13:10: “We have an altar from which those who worship in the tabernacle have no right to eat.”8 The claim builds on the comparison made throughout Hebrews between the sacrifices, priests, and temple of the old covenant and the superior (as Hebrews argues) sacrifice and high-priestly status of Christ in the heavenly temple. Much discussion of the passage has focused on the questions of what exactly is meant by the altar here and whether the reference to eating is about the Lord’s Supper,9 but these questions are really beside the point. The author’s assertion is built on the idea of achieving communion with God through shelamim-style sacrifices, and the point is that the superior communion with God made available through Christ is not available under the old covenant. The kind of metaphorical sacrifices mentioned in 12:28 and 13:15–16 provide communion with God under Christ in the same way the actual sacrifices did so under the old covenant. It is striking that after Hebrews has made a major point of Christ’s atoning sacrifice being once-for-all (to be discussed in the next chapter), the author still finds value in using sacrificial metaphors to describe Christian activity—sacrifice remains a meaningful way of relating to God, even if the sacrifices are metaphorical ones. The book of Acts gives us one straightforward example of a metaphorical sacrifice for the purpose of communion. In 10:4 Cornelius, the Roman centurion who becomes the first ground-breaking Gentile convert is told by a visiting angel that his prayers and alms “have ascended as a memorial before God.” The word for “memorial” here is μνημόσυνον, which is used regularly in the LXX of Leviticus to describe the portion of grain offerings (the minhah) that are burned and hence ascend to God.10 Thus, as we have seen occur elsewhere in Second Temple Judaism, prayer and almsgiving achieve the same effect as sacrificing, even though in this case, the sacrificer is unaware of it. Paul uses language of sacrifice to describe his own activity and that of his churches in a number of places, most of which relate to the purpose of communion. The most well-known of these is Rom 12:1: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” The sacrificial language here is more extensive than the mere mention of the “living sacrifice” (θυσίαν ζῶσαν). As commentators often point out, the specific phrase referring to the presentation of the sacrifice (παραστῆσαι . . . θυσίαν) is technical language frequently used to describe the offering of sacrifices.11 Moreover, the word for “worship” here is λατρεία, which refers specifically to cultic worship in the same way that the cognate verb λατρεύω does, discussed earlier. Paul’s point is similar to what we saw in Hebrews,

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that actions by the addressees are said to enable the kind of relationship to God that is normally accomplished through sacrifice and related ritual actions. As Robert Jewett observes, however, Paul goes further than what we typically see in contemporary Jewish texts or in Hebrews in that he places “the audience’s own bodies on the altar.”12 It is not just their prayers or almsgiving that are said to be sacrifices—it is the people themselves. What Paul means by this is spelled out in the following verse: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” The audience’s transformed lives are the sacrifices that express their relationship to God. Paul returns to the language of sacrifice a few chapters later in Romans, this time in describing his own mission to the Gentiles. In 15:16, he says that he was appointed by God “to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” The language is again more sacrificial than is apparent from the English translation. “Minister” is λειτουργός, aptly defined by Joseph Fitzmyer as “cultic minister.”13 “Priestly service” translates a verb, ἱερουργέω, meaning to do the work of a priest, which in Jewish literature of the time usually refers specifically to the offering of sacrifice.14 The word for “offering,” προσφορά, likewise means specifically the offering of sacrifice.15 Paul thus pictures himself as a priest and his evangelization of the Gentiles as the offering of a sacrifice. Since Paul sees this role as “the grace given me by God” (v. 15), clearly his performance of it is an expression of his communion with God.16 The language of acceptability in v. 16 further reflects this desire for communion. In Phil 2:17, Paul also describes both himself and his audience using sacrificial language, but in a different configuration. In contemplating his own circumstances, he writes, “But even if I am being poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and the offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you.” Here again the Christians’ faith is the sacrifice, but rather than picturing himself as the priest, he is instead part of the offering. Libations, as we saw in chapter 3, were frequently included in the instructions for offering sacrifices. Paul thus sees his own experience as complementing the faith of the Philippians. Commentators debate whether he refers to his possible future martyrdom or rather to his present suffering, but the metaphor works the same either way.17 The faith experiences of Paul and his audience relate them to God in the way that the offering of sacrifice traditionally did.18 A final passage in Paul is more debatable and so will only be mentioned briefly. In 2 Cor 2:14–16a, in again speaking of his own ministry, Paul offers the following thanksgiving:

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But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.

The words referring to the smells here are ὀσμή and εὐωδία, which are used in the LXX to form the expression ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας, translating ַ‫ריחַ ־נִ יחֹוח‬,ֵ “pleasing aroma,” discussed in chapter 3 as the way the divine acceptance of a sacrifice is indicated in instructions for sacrifice. Thus, it would make sense to interpret Paul’s image here as one of sacrifice, which would make the meaning similar to Rom 15:16, if more vividly described. However, it is also possible that the smell imagery here is based on the use of incense in triumphal processions. Perhaps Paul is intentionally ambiguous.19 Of our final passage related to communion there is no doubt. 1 Peter 2:4–5 gives us a use of sacrificial language similar to what we see in Romans and Hebrews: Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Eyal Regev observes that this is the only passage in the New Testament to combine language of temple, priesthood, and sacrifice in the same place.20 The people are envisioned as constituting both the temple and the priesthood.21 This identity is based on the sacrifice of Jesus from 1:18–19 and will be a point we will revisit in the next chapter. Here we merely note that this identity as temple and priesthood leads to the idea of the audience offering “spiritual sacrifices” (πνευματικὰς θυσίας). The author does not specify what these sacrifices are, but doubtless something along the lines of what we saw in Romans and Hebrews is meant. Some commentators attempt to nail it down to suffering, good works, or witnessing to the gospel.22 Karen Jobes felicitously suggests that the sacrifices are meant to encompass “all behavior that flows from a transformation of the human spirit by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit (1:2).”23 The language of acceptability once again indicates that the basic relationship of the audience to God is what is in view with these sacrifices. Gift We have noted previously both that it can be difficult to distinguish sacrifices offered for the purpose of communion from those offered for the purpose of

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gift giving and that in many cases the purposes overlap. The same is true of sacrifice in the New Testament. Many of the examples in the previous section would also make sense in a discussion of sacrifices as gifts, particularly those that use the language of “pleasing aroma” or acceptability, and the examples to be given here could be discussed in the context of communion. However, in the following examples, the purpose of gift giving is emphasized in the way the sacrifices are presented. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus makes reference to sacrificial practices on multiple occasions, and he tends to refer to sacrifices as “gifts” (Gk δῶρα). While the word does bear the technical sense of “sacrifice” in these contexts, that the word which in normal usage means “gift” is chosen over a host of other possible terms for sacrifice is surely meaningful. The first occurs during the Sermon on the Mount, as a part of Jesus’ prohibition of anger (5:23–24): So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.

As most commentators point out, Jesus’ instructions assume the legitimacy of sacrificial practice.24 Jesus uses this example precisely to stress the importance of reconciliation—it is important enough to interrupt a sacrifice over. Hans Dieter Betz observes about this passage that it is based on the unity of love toward God and neighbor—sacrifice is an act of love toward God, but God is not interested in such expressions unless love toward one’s neighbor is also displayed.25 We have seen previously that the emphasis on the sacrificer’s moral status was common in Second Temple Judaism, an emphasis Jesus echoes here.26 The assumption of the legitimacy of sacrificial practice also underlies Jesus’ attack on the casuistry of the Pharisees and scribes in Matt 23:18–22: And you say, “Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.” How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

While the details of Jesus’ logic are not of great interest for our purposes, he asserts the interconnectedness of sacrifice, altar, temple, and God, an assertion based on the validity of sacrificial practice and the sacredness of the temple. This validity is also assumed when elsewhere Jesus tells the leper he

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heals to “show yourself to the priest” and to “offer the gift that Moses commanded” (Matt 8:4). The book of Hebrews also refers to sacrifices as “gifts” (δῶρα again) in five places (5:1; 8:3, 4; 9:9; 11:4), in three of which it is a part of the expression “gifts and sacrifices” (δῶρά τε καὶ θυσίας; 5:1; 8:3; 9:9). While commentators tend to downplay the distinction between δῶρά and θυσίαι in these passages, suggesting that the expression should be taken as a stereotyped expression for sacrifices generally, there are good reasons for rejecting this view: 1. There is no evidence that it was a stereotyped expression. It never occurs in the LXX, and evidence from elsewhere is also wanting.27 2. We have already seen that the author of Hebrews is aware of purposes of sacrifice other than atonement, even though the latter is the chief interest of the writing. One of the uses of δῶρα is in the reference to Abel’s sacrifice discussed earlier (11:4), where the notion of the sacrifice as gift makes perfect sense. 3. δῶρον (the singular) is not the usual word for sacrifice in Hebrews; θυσία is (fifteen occurrences). Thus, some intentionality is implied when δῶρον is used, especially when in combination with θυσία. 4. The other four uses of δῶρα (besides 11:4) all occur in contexts where priestly sacrificial practice in general is under discussion. It makes sense that the author would use an expression meant to capture the variety of purposes of sacrifice. It is reasonable to conclude that the author of Hebrews understands and expresses that gift giving is one of the purposes of sacrifice. Sacrifice is not only about atonement, even in Hebrews. In terms of metaphorical expressions of sacrifice as gift giving, two stand out (again, most of those discussed as communion sacrifices would make sense here, too). The first is Phil 4:18, where Paul, in thanking the Philippians for having sent him gifts, says that these gifts are “a pleasing aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God” (ὀσμὴν εὐωδίας, θυσίαν δεκτήν, εὐάρεστον τῷ θεῷ).28 In the previous verse, Paul had said that he had not sought any gift from the Philippians but that he did “seek the profit that accumulates to your account” by the giving of such gifts. In our verse, Paul thus asserts that the real recipient of the gift is not himself but God, and he makes the point using the sacrificial metaphor. Recall from earlier that ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας is the standard LXX translation of ַ‫ריחַ ־נִ יחֹוח‬,ֵ “pleasing aroma,” and recall from chapter 3 that this is the phrase used in Leviticus and Numbers to indicate God’s acceptance of a gift. Δεκτός, the “acceptable” here, is also used throughout Leviticus to describe sacrifices.29 The Philippians’ gift to Paul is thereby said to please God in the same way that sacrifices do.

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A different kind of metaphorical reference occurs in John 16:2, part of Jesus’ farewell discourse in John. Jesus warns the disciples that persecution is coming and puts it in rather extreme terms: “Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.” The expression for “offering worship” here is λατρείαν προσφέρειν. We already saw earlier that λατρεία refers specifically to cultic worship, and we also saw that προσφέρειν’s cognate noun, προσφορά, refers specifically to offering sacrifice. Thus, as Marianne Meye Thompson puts it, using the two terms together “connotes offering a sacrifice.”30 In the eyes of the persecutors, Jesus avers, killing his disciples will be seen as equivalent to offering God a gift through sacrifice. Atonement What is striking about references to atoning sacrifices in the New Testament— outside of references to Jesus’ death—is their paucity. Hebrews refers to atoning sacrifices quite a few times, such as when the author observes that the high priest “must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people” (5:3; see also 5:1; 9:7, 13; 10:1–4, 6, 8, 11). Most of these references occur in the context of comparison with the superior priesthood and sacrifice of Jesus. But outside of Hebrews, there is not a single direct depiction, discussion, or metaphorical use of atoning sacrifices. The closest is the description of Christ’s sacrifice in 1 Peter 1:19, where it is said that Christ’s blood was “like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.” There are some indirect references. Mentioned earlier were the sacrifices made by Mary and Joseph at Jesus’ dedication at the temple (Luke 2:22–24) and Jesus’ instruction to the healed leper to offer the prescribed sacrifices (Matt 8:4; also mentioned in Mark 1:44 and Luke 5:14). If one reads the actual prescriptions for these two sacrifices given in, respectively, Lev 12:6–8 and Lev 14, some of the sacrifices involved are said to be atoning (recall from chapter 3 that atonement is not always about sin). The passages in the Gospels, however, make no mention of this aspect of the prescribed rituals. Why this lack of interest in atoning sacrifices, especially considering the numerous references to sacrifices for other purposes? Is it because the idea of atonement in the New Testament is so heavily focused on Jesus? Or is there some other explanation? The question will have to wait until the next chapter. TYPES OF SACRIFICE The New Testament authors show little interest in keeping the technical distinctions among sacrifices such as one finds in Leviticus. For the most

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part when referring to sacrifices they use general terms, many of which we have already seen: δῶρον (“gift”) and θυσία (“sacrifice”) for the sacrifices themselves, προσφέρω/προσφορά and θύω for offering them, and λατρεία/ λατρεύω and λειτουργός/λειτουργέω for cultic service generally. The dearth of specific references to the shelamim offering—[θυσία τοῦ] σωτηρίου is the usual LXX translation31—is perhaps the most surprising, given that the purpose of communion dominates the references to sacrifices, especially the metaphorical references. We will see that the technical terms are not used much in the interpretation of Christ’s death as a sacrifice, either. Where can we see references to specific types of sacrifice? There are three accounts of specific rituals being prescribed or performed where we can know what the specific sacrifices involved would have been, even though none of these accounts actually provides such details. We have already mentioned the first two briefly, the ritual for the cleansed leper (Matt 8:4; Mark 1:44; Luke 5:14) and the presentation of the baby Jesus at the Jerusalem temple (Luke 2:22–24). The purification ceremony for the leper, given in Lev 14, included four types of sacrifices: guilt (asham), purification (hattat), burnt (olah), and grain (minhah). In the baby presentation scene, Luke tells his reader that Mary and Joseph sacrificed two birds, which means that one would have been for an olah and the other for a hattat; Lev 12:6–8 says that normally the olah would have been a lamb but that a turtledove or pigeon could be substituted if the mother could not afford the lamb, as was evidently the case with Jesus’ parents. The third account is in Acts 21:17–26. In this passage, Paul, in order to demonstrate to the Jerusalem Jews that he observes the law, participates in a purification ritual with four men who have taken a vow. The details are difficult to sort out, but the ritual involves the men shaving their heads (v. 24), which means that the ritual was some variation of the Nazirite vow, described in Num 6:1–21.32 The end of the account mentions specifically a sacrifice (προσφορά) being made for each of the men. It is not clear which part of the Nazirite instructions this sacrifice is to be matched with, but it would have included at least two birds, one for a hattat and one for an olah (Num 6:10–11), just as in the case of Mary’s purification; it may also have included a lamb as an asham (Num 6:12). If we match up the sacrifice with the part of the Nazirite instructions dealing with the full completion of the vow, there would have been much more: a male lamb as an olah, a female lamb as a hattat, a ram as a shelamim, grain offerings, and libations (Num 6:13–17).33 The most interesting aspect of the account is simply the fact that Christians are represented as participating in animal sacrifices at the Jerusalem temple—so in the mind either of Paul or of the author of Acts (or both), neither Christ’s death nor the spiritual sacrifices that we read about in the New Testament letters meant that participating in actual sacrifices was meaningless or off limits.

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Most of the discussion of sacrifices in the New Testament, whether of actual sacrifices or of metaphors, make the most sense when understood as well-being offerings (shelamim). This is true of Paul’s discussion of eating meat sacrificed to idols, though of course he is talking about the pagan equivalent rather than Jewish rituals. His mention of priests sharing in the sacrifices of the altar (1 Cor 9:13; 10:18) could refer to any of the regular Jewish sacrifices except the burnt offering (olah), as priests regularly received portions of all of them. We saw above that Heb 13:15–16 makes a specific reference to the thanksgiving version of the well-being offering, and Heb 13:10 certainly suggests the well-being offering, with its reference to the community sharing in the altar. The similar references elsewhere (Rom 12:1; 1 Pet 2:5; etc.) likewise make sense as well-being offerings, though burnt offerings and grain offerings would also fit the context. There are a few other specific references. Hebrews 10:4–10, in elucidating the consequences of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice, avers that the old order of sacrifices has been abolished, and the author quotes Psalms 40:6–8, which mentions specifically burnt offerings and purification offerings (olah and hattat); Heb 13:11 also refers briefly to the hattat. We saw earlier that Paul compares himself to a libation in Phil 2:17, and 2 Tim 4:6 uses the same language: “As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come.” The offering of incense is Zechariah’s task at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel when the angel visits him to announce John the Baptist’s birth (1:8–11). Revelation pictures angels offering incense in the heavenly temple (Rev 5:8; 8:3–5), a point we shall return to shortly. OCCASIONS FOR SACRIFICE The sacrifices that were offered on regular occasions are mentioned infrequently in the New Testament. The Tamid, the daily sacrifice of two lambs, as important as it was for Second Temple Jews, is never mentioned directly. Its performance is relevant in the just-mentioned story of the annunciation to Zechariah (Luke 1:8–11); the offering of incense was done specifically to accompany the Tamid (Exod 30:7–8). Jesus’ indication that he pays the temple tax to the authorities in Matt 17:24–27 can be taken as an indirect statement of support for the Tamid and the other regular offerings, since these were largely funded by the tax. The book of Hebrews twice mentions that priests offer sacrifices “day after day” (7:27; 10:11), which probably refers to the Tamid, since the Tamid is the only regular daily offering.34 There will be a few places we will examine in the next chapter where it is possible that the Tamid lies behind references to Jesus as a

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sacrifice. Otherwise the New Testament is silent on the Tamid, likely because it was too much taken for granted to be worth mentioning. While the festival of Passover is mentioned many times throughout the New Testament, the actual sacrifices of the lambs appear in only a few places. Hebrews 11:28 refers to the original institution by Moses as part of the summary of Moses’s faith. Mark 14:12 and Luke 22:7 both mention the sacrifice of the Passover lamb occurring in their introductions to the Last Supper preparations. Intriguingly, Mark’s account actually suggests that Jesus and the disciples were performing the sacrifice, or at least allows such a possibility.35 A literal translation would run thus: “And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they were sacrificing the Passover lamb [ὅτε τὸ πάσχα ἔθυον], his disciples say to him.” While it is possible that the subject of ἔθυον is impersonal, the sentence makes perfect sense if one takes the subject of both verbs as being the given subject, that is, his disciples; this is how one usually construes a sentence with two verbs matching a stated subject. Most English translations translate in such a way as to make this interpretation unnatural or impossible, usually by making the verb passive, as with the NRSV’s “when the Passover lamb is sacrificed” (similarly, NIV, NASB, CEB, NLT).36 Perhaps translators are being influenced by Luke’s account, which does make the verb passive. It is hard also not to suspect a deep antipathy on the part of translators and commentators to the idea of depicting Jesus performing a sacrifice.37 Other than the Day of Atonement rituals, which feature prominently throughout Hebrews and which will be discussed in the next chapter, the only other regular occasion for sacrifice to be mentioned in the New Testament is the first fruits offering. Several passages commanded the Israelites to bring the first fruits of each harvest as an offering to YHWH (Exod 23:19; 34:26; Lev 23:9–14; Num 15:17–21; Deut 26:1–3); pagans had similar sacrifices.38 There are nine occurrences in the New Testament of the word for “first fruits” (ἀπαρχή), seven of them in Paul’s letters. Each occurrence is a metaphorical reference, mostly picturing people becoming a part of the Christian community, such as when Paul refers to the household of Stephanas as the first fruits of Asia (1 Cor 16:15) or when James refers to his audience collectively as “a kind of first fruits of his creatures” (1:18; see also Rom 11:16; 16:5; 2 Thess 2:13; Rev 14:4).39 The image pictures the named group as the first part of a coming harvest, the group thus being especially dedicated to God. The metaphor both accords the named group a place of honor and establishes them as a part of a larger group to come. This combination of being special but not all there is to it also is important in two of the remaining occurrences of the term, which picture Christ as the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead (1 Cor 15:20, 23). The ninth occurrence is a bit different, picturing the Holy Spirit as a first fruits given by God to Christians, thus reversing the usual direction of the metaphor (Rom 8:23).

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QUESTIONING SACRIFICE We have seen a number of passages where sacrificial effect is ascribed to actions that are not literal sacrifices, such as Cornelius’s prayers (Acts 10:4) and Paul’s missionary work with the Gentiles (Rom 15:16). One might suppose that such passages work to downplay the value of sacrifice, since what sacrifice normally accomplishes is said to be accomplished in other ways. None of these passages, however, makes any explicit criticism of sacrifice, and the use of sacrificial metaphors makes little sense if sacrifice is not itself valued. Even Hebrews, which does argue that the Levitical sacrificial system is now obsolete, uses sacrificial metaphors to describe the actions of the community—the idea of sacrifice is not devalued, just a particular mode of its performance. We have also seen that the use of such sacrificial metaphors continues a tradition of Second Temple Judaism that can be found even in the Jewish scriptures (e.g., Psalms 141:2). The same is true of three passages from the Gospels where Jesus questions the value of sacrifice. In fact, all three places are based on the prophetic critique discussed in chapter 3. Two of these occur in uniquely Matthean additions to scenes that also appear in Mark and Luke. The first is at the dinner where “many tax collectors and sinners” are present following the call of Matthew (9:9–13). When the Pharisees ask about why Jesus eats with such persons, Jesus’ reply concludes with a quote of Hosea 6:6: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Matt 9:13a). He uses the same quote from Hosea in the second passage, the scene of the controversy over the disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath (12:1–8; v. 7 contains the quote). Given that the controversy in neither scenario actually has to do with sacrifice, commentators generally agree that “sacrifice” in both passages is a cipher for strict obedience to the law and purity regulations.40 Moreover, since, as we have seen, Matthew’s Jesus in a number of places assumes the validity and value of sacrifice (5:23–24; 8:4; 17:24–27; 23:18–22), commentators are united in agreeing that this passage does not constitute a rejection of sacrifice any more than the original Hosea quote did.41 Ulrich Luz goes so far as to suggest that the “and not” in the quote really means “more than.”42 The third passage is in the uniquely Markan part of the story where Jesus is asked about the greatest commandment (Mark 12:28–34). When the scribe affirms Jesus’ answer, he repeats the importance of love for God and neighbor and then adds, “this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” (v. 33, ὁλοκαυτωμάτων καὶ θυσιῶν). Jesus then affirms the scribe’s statement (v. 34). It is usually thought that the scribe echoes Samuel’s rebuke of Saul’s ill-made sacrifice from 1 Sam 15:22: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obedience

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to the voice of the Lord?”; the LXX uses the same pair of words as Mark’s scribe.43 The questioning of sacrifice that we see in the New Testament, therefore, reflects the kind of questioning displayed in the prophetic literature and in a number of places in Second Temple Judaism, such as was examined in the last chapter. The critique of sacrifice takes place in the context of its assumed value, and the metaphorical use of sacrificial terminology reflects an esteem for the practice of sacrifice even as the writers suggest that other practices can accomplish what sacrifice accomplishes. HEAVENLY SACRIFICIAL IMAGERY IN REVELATION The book of Revelation presents a form of sacrificial imagery unique in the New Testament: heaven described as a temple, complete with an altar and angels performing the priestly duties. While Hebrews contains the idea of a heavenly temple, with Christ being both high priest and sacrifice, the idea in Hebrews is not developed with any further details or scenery. Revelation, however, presents the reader with a vivid display of the action in the heavenly temple. Revelation is not unique in this regard when considered in the context of Second Temple Judaism.44 1 Enoch 14 and T. Levi 3:4–6 describe heaven as a temple with angelic beings serving as priests. The Qumran compositions known as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice do the same (4Q400–407; 11Q17). The notion of a heavenly temple can also be found in rabbinic literature.45 Revelation, therefore, makes use of a common Jewish idea of the time period. The memorable scene in Rev 4–5, when John is first called up to heaven, provides the basic imagery. While the description is heavily based on Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1–2, elements from the temple are also incorporated. These include seven burning torches (4:5), resembling the seven-branched menorah from the tabernacle in Exod 25:31–40, and golden bowls for cultic use (5:8; see Exod 25:29; 37:16; Num 4:7).46 The bowls in Rev 5:8 are said to be full of incense, identified as “the prayers of the saints”; we have seen the idea of prayers being incense before, based on Psalms 141:2. The altar in the temple does not appear until Rev 6:9 but is mentioned seven additional times (8:3 [2x], 5; 9:13; 11:1; 14:18; 16:7). Interestingly, the altar seems to serve both as the altar for sacrifices and as the altar for incense.47 The greatest role for the altar comes in 8:3–5, where incense is again associated with the prayers of the saints but also where fire from the altar is thrown down to the earth. Revelation does not, however, directly depict sacrifices in heaven. This contrasts with the scene from T. Levi 3:4–6, where the angels are said to

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sacrifice on behalf of the righteous for sins done in ignorance. The one place where sacrifice might be implied in Revelation is in 6:9, when after the fifth seal is opened John reports that “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given.” The location of the souls underneath the altar might recall the blood that is poured out at the base of the altar in Levitical sacrifices (Lev 4:7, 18, 34, etc.). Moreover, the word for “slaughtered” here (ἐσφαγμένων) is used throughout the LXX of Leviticus (nearly forty times) to refer to sacrificial slaughter. On the other hand, the reasons given for their slaughter, “for the word of God and for the testimony they had given,” sound more like martyrdom than a ritual action. While the sacrificial overtones are probably meant to point out that the deaths of the martyrs were meaningful, the sacrificial connection should not be pushed too far. The location under the altar probably has as much to do with the closeness of the martyrs to God as anything else.48 The most important aspect of the imagery in Revelation for our purposes is simply that it is another indication of the continuing value of cultic imagery in general. As Revelation is usually dated toward the end of the first century CE, more than two decades after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, it attests to the continuing power of the temple and sacrifices as religious institutions, practices, and ideas. CONCLUSION Taken together, the New Testament references to sacrifice reflect the same range of understandings of sacrifice seen in Second Temple Jewish literature. The continuing value of sacrifice is seen in the many references to its practice and in its metaphorical use to infuse non-cultic actions like almsgiving and suffering with cultic significance. At the same time, these metaphorical references suggest that actually performing sacrifices may not be necessary, and that other actions can accomplish what sacrifice normally does. Moreover, Jesus echoes the prophetic relativization of sacrifice. We also see the same broad range of purposes of sacrifice. In the data we have considered in this chapter, the purposes of communion and gift giving appear far more often than does the purpose of atonement. The data is skewed somewhat, of course, since we have intentionally omitted references to Jesus’ death as a sacrifice. And it may be the case that references to atoning sacrifices are avoided precisely because of the overpowering significance of Jesus’ death in this regard. In any case, the stage is now set. How does the interpretation of Jesus’death in the New Testament fit in and relate to the broader understanding of sacrifice that we have seen? It is time to grab the bull by the horns.

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NOTES 1. All English scripture quotations in this chapter are from the NRSV except where otherwise stated. 2. For a helpful overview and additional bibliography, see David E. Aune, Revelation, 3 vols. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 191–94. 3. Cf. Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 172: “The sacrifice institutes a communal meal, and this means communion with the god to whom the sacrifice is made and to whom the altar belongs.” Similarly, Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 470–71. 4. The strongest case has been made for Matthew 22:4; see Daniel C. Olson, “Matthew 22:1–14 as Midrash,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 67 (2005): 435–53. Darrell L. Bock, Luke, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 1315, argues for the sacrificial sense in the Luke 15 references. Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 1771, allows for the possibility in the Acts references. Most commentaries do not actually address the question. 5. That this is the point is actually somewhat striking, because in v. 42, the reference to the wilderness sacrifices comes from Amos 5, which is one of the prophetic passages relativizing sacrifice. But as Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary, trans. Bernard Noble et al. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 284, points out, the acts speech recontextualizes the quote so that it is merely about Israel’s disobedience. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 55, considers the possibility that Stephen makes the point as a criticism of sacrifice itself but rejects the possibility due to it making little sense of v. 43. 6. See H. Strathmann, “λατρεύω, λατρεία,” TDNT 4:58–65. In Hebrews see 8:5; 9:9, 14; 10:2; 13:10. 7. Harold W. Attridge, Hebrews (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 399–401, has a helpful discussion. 8. My own translation, as the NRSV’s use of “officiate” for λατρεύω and “tent” for σκηνή obscures the cultic connections. 9. Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 708–12, has a helpful review of the debate. 10. See Lev 2:2, 9, 16; 5:12; 6:8. Commentators are generally united in this interpretation; see, for example, Joseph A Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 451; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 183; Carl R. Holladay, Acts (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2016), 230; F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary (London: Tyndale, 1965), 216. 11. See, for example, James D. G. Dunn, Romans, 2 vols (Dallas: Word, 1988), 709– 12; Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 725–31. 12. Jewett, Romans, 728. 13. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2008), 711; see also Dunn, Romans, 859–61; Richard N. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 1038–39.

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14. It is an NT hapax and is not used in the LXX, but as Dunn, Romans, 860, observes, “in Philo and Josephus it consistently denotes the priestly offering of sacrifice.” See also Albert L. A. Hogeterp, Paul and God’s Temple: A Historical Interpretation of Cultic Imagery in the Corinthian Correspondence (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 286–88. 15. It is not common in the LXX, but in the NT, it always refers to sacrifice. See K. Weiss, “προσφορά,” TDNT 9:68; Dunn, Romans, 859–61. 16. Jane Lancaster Patterson, Keeping the Feast: Metaphors of Sacrifice in 1 Corinthians and Philippians (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), 169–70, argues that in both Rom 12:1 and 15:16, the sacrifices depicted are the shelamim. Whether Paul is thinking this technically, he certainly has the goal of the shelamim in mind. 17. Those arguing for martyrdom include Francis W. Beare, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 93–94; Paul A. Holloway, Philippians: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 136–37; Moisés Silva, Philippians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 128–33. Those arguing for his present suffering include Gordon D. Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 250–55; Gerald F. Hawthorne, Philippians (Waco, TX: Word, 1983), 104–106. 18. It is debatable whether the τῆς πίστεως ὑμῶν should be interpreted as a subj. or epex. gen. The choice does alter the meaning of the expression—whether the Philippians’ faith itself is the sacrifice or rather their faith produces the sacrifice—but it does not alter the sense of the metaphor. 19. Jan Lambrecht, Second Corinthians (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 39 takes this approach. Commentators are rather divided on this question. For a good argument in favor of seeing Paul’s language as sacrificial, see Dominika A. Kurek-Chomycz, “Spreading the Sweet Scent of the Gospel as the Cult of the Wise: On the Backdrop of the Olfactory Metaphor in 2 Corinthians 2:14–16,” in Ritual And Metaphor: Sacrifice In The Bible, ed. Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 115–33; also C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 97–103. For an argument for the triumph position, see George H. Guthrie, 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015), 167–70. 20. Eyal Regev, The Temple in Early Christianity: Experiencing the Sacred (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 61–62. 21. John Elliott argues in The Elect and the Holy (Leiden: Brill, 1966) that the phrase “spiritual house” here does not refer to a temple, but recent commentators are nearly unanimous in rejecting his arguments. See, for example, Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 154–59; Donald P. Senior and Donald J. Harrington, 1 Peter; Jude and 2 Peter (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2003), 53–54; Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 145–51. 22. For example, Edward Gordon Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter (London: Macmillan, 1946), 159–63, suggests the first two of these; Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 154–59, the third. 23. Jobes, 1 Peter, 151. 24. See esp. Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 115–16; Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount (Minneapolis:

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Fortress, 1995), 222–26; Ulrich Luz, Matthew: A Commentary, 3 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 1:240; Regev, Temple in Early Christianity, 136; Vincent Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice: A Study of the Passion-Sayings in the Gospels (London: MacMillan, 1937), 69–70. 25. Betz, Sermon on the Mount, 223; similarly, Robert J. Daly, Christian Sacrifice: The Judaeo-Christian Background before Origen (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1978), 211. 26. In regard to this passage, the point is emphasized by Luz, Matthew, 1:240; Regev, Temple in Early Christianity, 136. 27. The claim that it is such an expression is made by Attridge, Hebrews, 142–43; F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 88–89; and Friedrich Büchsel, “δῶρον, δωρέομαι, δώρημα, δωρεά,” TDNT 2:166–67, but each gives as evidence the exact same single instance of the expression outside of Hebrews, Aristeas 234, and even there the phrase (δώροις οὐδὲ θυσίαις) is not the same used in Hebrews. This is hardly evidence for a stereotyped expression. 28. My own translation; the NRSV slightly obscures the sacrificial connotations with its translation of “a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.” 29. Lev 1:3, 4; 17:4; 19:5; 22:19, 20, 21, 29. 30. Marianne Meye Thompson, John: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 336 n. 145. 31. See Suzanne Daniel, Recherches sur le Vocabulaire du Culte dans la Septante (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1966), 273–97. 32. As Holladay, Acts, 410–14, observes, the Nazirite vow is the only known Jewish vow that involved shaving the head. 33. Most commentators favor the former option, but Bruce, Acts of the Apostles, 394, suggests the latter. 34. So R. B. Jamieson, Jesus’ Death and Heavenly Offering in Hebrews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 35; David M. Moffitt, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 270 n. 126; Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 270. 35. Argued by C. F. Evans, Saint Luke (London: SCM, 1990), 373, following Maurice Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (SNTSMS 102; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 223. 36. The ESV keeps the ambiguity. 37. Evans, Saint Luke, 373, on the other hand, provides a vivid description: “Jesus would have slit the animal’s throat, its blood would have been drained.” 38. See Longenecker, Epistle to the Romans, 726; Dunn, Romans, 671. 39. In 2 Thessalonians 2:13, many manuscripts read ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, “from the beginning,” instead of ἀπαρχήν. Some commentators prefer this reading; see, for example, Ernest Best, A Commentary on the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988), 312–14; Charles A. Wanamaker, The Epistles to the Thessalonians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 266. 40. As Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), 126, puts it, “It appears that ‘mercy’ and ‘sacrifice’ are

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used metonymically. They stand for, respectively, a form of piety that focuses on God’s compassion toward human needs and a form of piety that focuses on ritual observances.” 41. David L. Turner, Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 253–54; Francis W. Beare, The Gospel According to Matthew (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 226– 28; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 354–55; Donald A. Hagner, Matthew, 2 vols. (Dallas: Word, 1993, 1995), 239–40; Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 299; Luz, Matthew, 2:33–34, 181–84; Morris, Gospel According to Matthew, 302–305; Regev, Temple in Early Christianity, 136–37. 42. Luz, Matthew, 2:33–34, 182. 43. So Joel Marcus, Mark, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 2000, 2009), 844–45; Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice, 489. 44. See Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 128–42, for more detailed discussion of the following works. 45. See Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 138–42. 46. Aune, Revelation, 356–58, has a detailed discussion of the significance of the bowls. 47. On this phenomenon, see Aune, Revelation, 404–6; Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 283–90; G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 454–60. 48. So Aune, Revelation, 404–6; Beale, Book of Revelation, 390–92.

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Jesus the Sacrifice

There are three primary types of sacrificial images used to interpret the death of Jesus in the New Testament, corresponding to three specific occasions for sacrifice in the Jewish scriptures. These are the covenant sacrifice of Exodus 24, the Passover lamb, and the Day of Atonement ritual. All of these were discussed in our earlier chapter on sacrifice in the Jewish scriptures. We can thus roughly divide up the references to Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament into three categories based on these three occasions. This is how we will proceed in this chapter. We will first look at the use of the covenant sacrifice, then the Passover lamb, and then the Day of Atonement. In this last category, we will also include references to atoning sacrifices not necessarily based on the Day of Atonement. This division is not a rigid one. We will observe along the way an eclectic tendency in the New Testament texts, where interpretations based primarily on one of these images also include aspects of one or more of the other types. There are also a few texts where it is not even possible to say which image is primary; these texts are fundamentally eclectic, and we will consider them separately. Then there a few texts to be examined that are not based on any of these three main images. Lastly, we will also look briefly at a few texts that have sometimes been considered to use sacrificial imagery but that I will argue do not actually do so. As we proceed, we will not simply be cataloging references to sacrifice in the interpretations of Jesus’ death. Rather, we will attend carefully to the function such references have in the writings in which they appear. The use of sacrificial imagery to interpret Jesus’ death always has implications for the understanding of Christian identity. Sacrifices are by nature performed for somebody, and recall from chapter 2 that the performance of sacrifice results in a perceived change in status for the beneficiary of the sacrifice. A central 115

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goal will thus be to understand how the interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice shapes the Christian community’s understanding of itself, how the community’s status as the beneficiary of Jesus’ sacrificial death is portrayed. In this chapter, we will see how this happens in individual texts. In our final chapter, we will consider this question, among others, more broadly. THE COVENANT SACRIFICE We begin with the covenant sacrifice for two main reasons. First, it is the most widespread interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament, appearing in Matthew, Mark, Luke, several of the Pauline letters, 1 Peter, and Hebrews. Second, it is the only sacrificial interpretation of Jesus’ death that is attributed to Jesus himself. One could therefore argue that the covenant sacrifice is the most important, the most foundational, interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament. We covered the covenant ceremony of Exodus 24 in our chapter on sacrifice in the Jewish scriptures. Recall that this event was in many ways the climax of the entire Exodus story, as the need to sacrifice to YHWH was central in Moses’s demand to Pharaoh to release the Israelites, and as the desire to sacrifice to YHWH is repeated throughout the story. The covenant ceremony takes place as a part of the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai. The heart of the account of the covenant ceremony is as follows (24:4b-81): He [Moses] rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and set up twelve pillars, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 He sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed oxen as offerings of well-being to the Lord. 6 Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he dashed against the altar. 7 Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” 8 Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, “See the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

In the Exodus story, the ceremony establishes the formal, ongoing relationship between the people and YHWH. It is no accident that the sacrifices involved are the burnt offering (the olah) and the offering of well-being (the shelamim), as these are the two types of sacrifices commonly used for the purpose of communion. As Exodus continues, as we saw, the institution of the Tamid and the ongoing presence of YHWH with Israel are the culmination of this story line.

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It should thus come as no surprise that when Jesus is portrayed as establishing a covenantal relationship with his followers, the imagery of the Exodus ceremony plays a central role. Jesus does this at the Last Supper he shares with his disciples before being arrested, as recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels and in 1 Corinthians. The narrative parallels between Exodus and the Gospel accounts are themselves intriguing. Just as the ceremony in Exodus takes place as the culmination of a long journey through many difficulties after the people are called out of Egypt to follow YHWH, so also the Last Supper scene takes place at the end of the story of the disciples having been called by Jesus and following Jesus through many difficulties. The Israelites and disciples both have many failures along the way and times when they have to be delivered. Just as YHWH’s instructions to Moses at the burning bush (Exod 3:18), plus the frequent subsequent reminders (Exod 5:1–3, 8, 17; 8:8, 25–29; 10:24–26), emphasize sacrifice as a primary goal of the exodus narrative, so likewise the multiple Passion predictions in the Synoptic Gospels establish Jesus’ death as the central goal of the narrative of his activity (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34; Matt 16:21; 17:22–23; 20:18–19; Luke 9:22, 44; 18:31–33). At the covenant ceremony itself, Moses sets up twelve pillars to represent the twelve tribes (Exod 24:4); all three Gospel accounts emphasize that it is the twelve apostles who are present at the Last Supper (Matt 26:20; Mark 14:17; Luke 22:14). All three Gospel accounts also make it clear that the meal occurs at Passover, thus highlighting the ties to the Exodus story (Mark 14:12; Matt 26:17; Luke 22:7–8, 11, 15). Thus, while we will focus below on the direct connections between the two accounts, the larger narrative parallels are also important. In essence, the Exodus ceremony provides the narrative underpinning for the placement and function of the Lord’s Supper accounts in the Gospels. The direct connections we will look at in detail are the references to blood and the words of institution spoken by Moses and Jesus. It is worth noting that, while the interpretations of many aspects of the Last Supper scenes are hotly contested, particularly as they relate to the ongoing meaning of the Lord’s Supper celebration for Christians, there is almost unanimous agreement among interpreters today that the Last Supper accounts draw on the Exodus 24 imagery, even though the connections are seldom elucidated.2 Mark 14:22–25 We will begin with Mark’s account since, as is so often the case, Mark has the simplest presentation of the scene (14:22–25): While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” 23 Then he took a cup, and

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after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. 24 He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. 25 Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

For our purposes, the main importance of Jesus’ first act, the breaking of the bread, is that it connects the meal to Jesus’ upcoming death. In the earlier scene of the anointing of Jesus’ body by the unnamed woman at Bethany (14:3–9), Jesus had said that she had anointed his body for burial; the same phrase, “my body” (v. 8, τὸ σῶμά μου), is used there as here in v. 22.3 The connection to Jesus’ death becomes all the more apparent with the mention of Jesus’ blood being poured out in v. 24. The phrase “blood of the covenant” is the central link with the Exodus scene; Mark’s phrase is precisely that of the LXX of Exod 24:8 save for the addition of “my”: τὸ αἷμά [μου] τῆς διαθήκης. Jesus’ death is thus the sacrifice that seals the covenant between his followers and God, just as the blood of the sacrificed animals was used to seal the covenant between the Israelites and God in Exodus. Both rituals have a degree of participation that goes beyond that of most sacrifices. In Exodus, Moses throws the blood on the people, and at the Last Supper, the disciples drink the wine that is identified with Jesus’ blood. Much has sometimes been made of the fact that Jesus speaks of drinking blood, an act normally abhorrent to Jews,4 but it seems likely that Jesus was simply making use of an already-established part of the Passover meal.5 In any case, I am sure that all Christians are happy that when they celebrate the Lord’s Supper, they get to drink the wine rather than have it dashed on them!6 This significance of the phrase “my blood of the covenant” is widely agreed upon. On the significance of the rest of Jesus’ words in v. 24, however, there is much debate. There are two parts to consider, the “poured out” and the “for many.” The latter, especially, will require us to chase a rabbit down a twisty maze. The obvious importance of Jesus saying that his blood is “poured out” (ἐκχυννόμενον) is that it makes it clear that he is referring to his upcoming death on the cross. The blood of the covenant is that which will be shed when Jesus is crucified. Some interpreters, however, see the term as an additional sacrificial reference, since the specific verb used here (ἐκχέω) is often used in the LXX to describe the pouring out of blood in sacrificial rituals (e.g., Exod 29:12; Lev 4:7, 18, 25, 34).7 It is certainly possible that the verb was chosen for this reason, but the verb is also used along with “blood” elsewhere in the LXX to refer to non-sacrificial killing (e.g., Num 35:33; Deut 19:10; 21:7). If the verb is taken as having a sacrificial sense, it merely reinforces the clear sacrificial reference in “the blood of the covenant” phrase.8

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That Jesus adds that his blood is poured out “for many” (ὑπὲρ πολλῶν) brings in the thorniest issue. First, however, the immediate, straightforward importance of the phrase should not be overlooked: Mark’s Jesus makes clear that the covenant is not limited to the twelve who are participating in the ritual. He does not say to the twelve that his blood is poured out “for you” (language that we will see below in Luke and 1 Corinthians). Whatever else the phrase implies, this point should not be taken to be so obvious that it is inconsequential.9 The difficulty comes in how one takes the verse to relate to an earlier pronouncement of Jesus, a relationship that in itself cannot be doubted. In Mark 10:45, Jesus makes what is the only other clear statement of the meaning of his death in Mark: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” The “for many” here is not the same phrase as in 14:24; here it is ἀντὶ πολλῶν, thus differing by the preposition translated as “for.” Ἀντί and ὑπέρ are often used interchangeably in the Greek of the era, but ἀντί can carry a stronger sense of “in place of.”10 But because the subject matter in both verses is the meaning of Jesus’ death, and because of the “many” that concludes both verses, the relationship of these two sayings of Jesus must be considered. Many scholars have seen behind the reference to “many” in both places an allusion to the “Suffering Servant Song” of Isa 52:13–53:12. Christians tend to find it impossible not to think of Jesus when they read this passage; as the passage’s importance will be an issue elsewhere, it is worth quoting some of the key parts: He was despised and rejected by others;   a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; . . . 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions,   crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole,   and by his bruises we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray;   we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,   yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,   and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,   so he did not open his mouth.   . . . 10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain. 3

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When you make his life an offering for sin,   he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. . . . 12 . . . yet he bore the sin of many,   and made intercession for the transgressors.

Despite the seeming congruence of the passage with the Passion accounts in the Gospels, the New Testament authors are surprisingly reticent to apply the passage directly to the interpretation of Jesus’ death. Morna Hooker has summed up the situation aptly: We find this remarkable fact, therefore: that, in none of the seven passages where a quotation from Isaiah 52–53 is introduced by a formula indicating that a citation from scripture follows is that quotation interpreted of the meaning of Jesus’ death. In other words, it is not used here in the way we expect—the way which seems so self-evident to the later church.11

The seven passages she refers to are Matt 8:17; Mark 15:28; Luke 22:37; John 12:38; Acts 8:32–33; Rom 10:16; 15:21.12 It is only in 1 Peter 2:22–25 that the song is clearly used to interpret the meaning of Jesus’ death, a passage we will consider later. Part of the New Testament authors’ reticence may be that the LXX version of the passage changes the meaning considerably, weakening the notion of vicarious suffering. The LXX of vv. 10–11a reads, for instance, as follows: And the Lord desires to cleanse him from his blow. If you offer for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived offspring. And the Lord wishes to take away from the pain of his soul.13

Unlike in the Hebrew (on which the aforementioned NRSV translation is based), here the servant does not suffer to redeem others; rather, God desires to rescue him from his suffering. While the Hebrew treats the servant’s death as “an offering for sin” (it is actually the asham, the guilt offering), in the LXX it is the audience who is encouraged to offer a sacrifice for its own sin. While other parts of the LXX version could still fit Jesus’ suffering, the correspondence is not nearly as tight as in the Hebrew.14 What is the actual evidence that Mark 10:45 is drawing on Isaiah 53? Note that Mark 15:28, one of the seven passages Hooker referred to above as quoting the song, is not actually included in modern texts of Mark, certainly being a later scribal harmonization with Luke 22:37.15 Thus, Mark has no explicit reference to Isaiah 53 anywhere. The only textual similarity between

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the two passages is in the word “many,” and the Greek πολύς is so common that making this word the basis for a connection would be quite a stretch. If a connection is to be seen, it has to be in the content. As Adela Yarbro Collins points out, Isaiah 53 provides the only example in the Jewish scriptures of a human suffering vicariously for the sake of others.16 Certainly Mark 10:45 states likewise that Jesus gave his life for others. There is thus a similarity between what the servant is said to have done and what Jesus says his death will accomplish. If Mark did not see the connection himself, it is surely no surprise that others do. One does not, however, need Isaiah 53 to make sense of Mark 10:45. Ransoming was a common practice throughout the ancient world for slaves and prisoners. Language of ransom is also used in legal contexts in the Jewish scriptures, for instance, when a life might otherwise be forfeit (Exod 21:30) or when the Levites are said to substitute for Israelite firstborns in being devoted to God (Num 3:44–51). The idea of Jesus giving his life as a ransom for others has a strong cultural resonance in the first-century world that goes beyond any specific text. For our purposes, the more important question is whether Mark 14:24, Jesus’ saying at the Last Supper, draws on Isaiah 53. Here there is a much weaker case to be made than in 10:45, precisely because, as we have seen, the phrase “blood of the covenant” provides a clear and specific context of interpretation, and the phrase that follows, “poured out for many,” makes perfect sense within that context, as we have likewise seen. Since, as Richard Hays has observed, “it is very difficult to make a case that Isaiah’s Suffering Servant texts play any significant role in Mark’s account of Jesus’ death,”17 there is scant warrant for using Isaiah 53 to interpret Jesus’ words in Mark 14:24. This is not to deny a connection with 10:45, only to deny that the basis of that connection is in Isaiah 53. Both Mark 10:45 and 14:24 provide interpretations of Jesus’ death, one based on the idea of ransom and the other on the idea of the covenant sacrifice. It is not hard to fit the two ideas together: Being brought into Jesus’ covenant entails being freed from bondage, just as Israel’s liberation from Egypt was a necessary part of its entering into covenant with God. Jesus’ death accomplishes both the liberation and the covenant. Such a combination of imagery will be common as we continue to look at interpretations of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice. There is one final point to make about the sacrificial imagery in Mark’s account of the Last Supper. Many interpreters find an additional inter-text in Zech 9:11, which also refers to the blood of the covenant: “As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.” The verse occurs in the context of Zechariah’s prophecy of a coming king who will restore Israel. It is appropriate to see the connection in Mark for two reasons. First, clear allusions to Zechariah

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occur elsewhere in Mark’s Passion account. Zech 9:9, coming just two verses earlier, is the basis for the scene of Jesus’ triumphal entry: “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey.” Shortly after the Last Supper, Jesus quotes Zech 13:7 in Mark 14:27: “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.”18 Second, Jesus’ final words at the Last Supper, stating that he will not drink wine again until the arrival of the kingdom of God (14:25), invoke the kind of eschatological context contained in Zechariah 9. Zech 9:11, itself drawing on the Exodus 24 ceremony,19 states that God’s covenant with the people is the reason for their ultimate liberation; the rest of the chapter continues the theme. At the Last Supper, then, Jesus establishes the covenant with his followers that prepares them for the arrival of God’s kingdom, and his death is the covenant sacrifice that makes their ongoing relationship possible. Matthew 26:26–29 Matthew’s account of the Last Supper is very close to Mark’s (the significant differences are in italics): While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” 27 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

These differences are simple additions to Mark’s account except for the second and last. “Drink from it, all of you” (πίετε ἐξ αὐτοῦ πάντες) turns into part of Jesus’ command what is stated as a fact in Mark (“all of them drank from it”), and “my Father’s” replaces “of God” in reference to the kingdom (ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ πατρός μου instead of Mark’s ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ). The most significant difference is the added purpose of Jesus’ blood being “for the forgiveness of sins” (εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν), which is appended to Jesus’ saying that his blood is “poured out for many.” It is to be noted that Matthew earlier contains the same ransom saying of Jesus as in Mark 10:45, nearly verbatim (Matt 20:28; only the opening conjunction differs), and hence all the issues discussed earlier regarding the relationship of the ransom saying to the Last Supper words apply here. The reference to the forgiveness of sins results in there being a stronger case for a tie to Isaiah 53, since the idea of the servant bearing the audience’s sins is prominent there (vv. 4–5, 8, 10–12; the LXX weakens this idea, but it is still clear in vv. 4, 11–12). There

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is still no quote of Isaiah 53, however, and Isaiah 53 does not use the language of forgiveness, and so, in Hays’s words, “the echo remains faint.”20 A more likely source for the addition about forgiveness is Jer 31:31–34, Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant, a passage that will be important when we examine the accounts in Luke and 1 Corinthians, as well as when we look at Hebrews later in our study: The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Here we have the connection between the idea of a new covenant and the forgiveness of sins (in the LXX, though, v. 34 uses language of mercy rather than forgiveness: ἵλεως ἔσομαι ταῖς ἀδικιαις αὐτῶν).21 This is important, because the covenant ceremony of Exodus 24 says nothing about forgiveness of sins and contains no other language of atonement—it is, as we have discussed, about establishing a relationship between God and Israel. The Jeremiah prophecy provides the connection between covenant and forgiveness, the idea that entering into covenant with God entails the forgiveness of sins. Ezek 16:59–63 contains a similar idea, where God says that “I will establish with you an everlasting covenant . . . when I forgive you all that you have done.”22 Thus, the idea of God establishing an eschatological covenant in which sins are forgiven is not unique to Jeremiah. The combination of covenant and forgiveness also affects the way the sacrificial imagery functions. The image of Jesus’ death as a covenant sacrifice takes on an additional role, that of the purification or guilt offering (hattat or asham). For both of these, the forgiveness of the offerer is a chief function (hattat: Lev 4:20, 26, 31, 35; 5:10, 13; asham: Lev 5:16, 18; 6:7). This merging of the types and purposes of sacrifice in the interpretation of Jesus’ death will be common, as we will see.23 However one evaluates the intertextual echoes of the forgiveness saying, the intratextual echoes—the resonances within Matthew—are yet more important. As Ulrich Luz puts it, “For Matthew the forgiveness of sins stands at the center of Jesus’ mission.”24 We are told as early as the announcement of Jesus’ birth to Joseph that Jesus “will save his people from

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their sins” (1:21). Matthew actually omits the connection between John the Baptist’s baptism and the forgiveness of sins (seen in Mark 1:4, omitted in Matt 3:1–6), likely to emphasize the connection of forgiveness specifically to Jesus.25 Jesus’ own authority to forgive sins is emphasized in the story of the healing of the paralytic (9:2–8), but probably more memorable is the extensive teaching of Jesus in Matthew on the necessity of his followers forgiving each other. In the Sermon on the Mount he puts it bluntly (6:14–15): For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

In his later teaching on life in the Christian community (Matt 18), we have the famous saying about forgiving “seventy times seven” (or seventy-seven) times (v. 22), followed by the parable of the unforgiving servant (vv. 23–35), the lesson of which repeats the warning of 6:14–15. Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, therefore, provide the climax of the theme of forgiveness in Matthew and provide the covenantal basis for the forgiveness that Jesus’ followers are said to receive from God and that they are, in turn, commanded to practice toward one another. The interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in Matthew not only establishes a new covenant, but it also lays the foundation for a key aspect of what life in the covenant community is to look like.26 As discussed in the opening of this chapter, this connection between sacrificial interpretation and community life is one of the key points we will see again and again as we proceed. Other aspects of the larger context of Matthew’s narrative are also important in how we evaluate the Last Supper scene. It is well known that Matthew portrays Jesus as being a Moses-like figure,27 a portrayal seen most clearly in the many parallels between the stories of their births (Matt 1–2 and Exod 1–2) but more importantly in the speeches Jesus makes throughout Matthew in which the giving of moral commandments is prominent (especially, of course, the Sermon on the Mount, Matt 5–7). This portrayal provides a richer context for reading Matthew’s Last Supper scene, since the attentive reader will be all the more prepared for seeing Jesus institute a new covenant in the same way that Moses instituted the covenant in Exodus, and since the scene is more thematically embedded in the larger narrative because of the MosesJesus portrayal.28 The same is the case with the allusion to Zech 9:11. While we saw that it was reasonable to see an allusion to Zech 9:11 in Mark, it is all the more so in Matthew, since Matthew actually quotes Zech 9:9 in his account of the triumphal entry (21:4–5).29 The meaning of the allusion is no different, simply more perceptibly present.

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Lastly, the minor changes observable in Matthew’s Last Supper account that we have not yet covered may also be illuminated this way. Matthew’s Gospel has another well-known emphasis, on the existence and nature of the Christian community (see esp. 16:13–20 and 18:15–35),30 including an emphasis on the community keeping the commandments of Jesus (see esp. 7:24–27 and 28:19–20). These minor changes all resonate with these emphases. The command of Jesus in Mark to “take” the bread is expanded to “take, eat,” and the statement in Mark that the disciples drank the wine becomes in Matthew another commandment, “Drink from it, all of you.” It is hard to imagine that these changes are due to anything other than the Christian community’s ongoing practice of celebrating the Lord’s Supper. So also with the last two changes, Jesus adds “with you” when speaking of drinking the wine in the kingdom, and the more personal “my Father” replaces Mark’s reference to God. Matthew thus again emphasizes that the covenant sacrifice of Jesus shapes the ongoing life of the Christian community. Luke 22:15–20 Luke’s account of the Last Supper differs substantially from that of Mark and Matthew, though for our purposes the differences are not as important as they might at first seem: He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; 16 for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves; 18 for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

The addition of a cup before the sharing of the bread (vv. 17–18) has long puzzled interpreters but matters little for present purposes. As a part of this addition, the abstention saying located at the end of the scene in Matthew and Mark appears earlier (v. 18), and there is an additional abstention saying in v. 16; but, again, these differences do not really affect the interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the passage. It is the differences in the words of Jesus in vv. 19–20 that really matter for us.31 The role of the bread is strengthened with the addition that it is Jesus’ body “given for you” (τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν διδόμενον). Thus, not only is Jesus’ blood said to be “for you,” but also his body. While no one would argue that

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Matthew and Mark meant that Jesus’ body was unimportant, Luke makes the importance explicit. This addition fits well with the image of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, since in sacrifices what was done with the sacrificial flesh was important along with the blood. The reference to “my blood of the covenant” in Mark and Matthew is replaced by “the new covenant in my blood” (ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐν τῷ αἵματί μου). This makes the allusion to the Exodus 24 covenant ceremony less explicit, since the key phrase from Exod 24:8, “blood of the covenant,” is not used. The basic idea of a covenant ceremony involving blood is still the same, however, and thus Exodus 24 remains the central intertext for understanding Luke’s Last Supper scene.32 The addition of the “new” to describe the covenant provides a clear tie to Jer 31:31–34, even without the mention of forgiveness as in Matthew. On the other hand, there is no reference to “many” in Luke’s account—here the cup is poured out “for you” (v. 20). Luke’s Gospel also does not contain the ransom saying of Mark and Matthew. These two points, along with the lack of any reference to forgiveness in Luke’s Last Supper scene, make it even harder to argue for an allusion to Isaiah 53 in Luke than it was in Matthew and Mark.33 The fact that both Jesus’ body and blood are said to be “for you” raises an interesting issue about the relationship of Luke’s Last Supper account to the rest of Luke-Acts. I suggested earlier that the chief importance of the statement in Mark that Jesus’ blood was said to be poured out for “many” was to indicate that the covenant ceremony was not for the twelve alone. Luke’s account lacks any immediate emphasis that the covenant extends beyond the twelve, since “many” is replaced by “you.” In fact, in the opening line of the account, Jesus tells the twelve, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you” (emphasis added), which would seem to tighten the circle of the covenant. But what Luke does have, unlike Matthew and Mark, is the continuation of his story in the book of Acts. While it is debated as to whether the mention of the early Christian community in Jerusalem having been devoted to “the breaking of the bread” (Acts 2:42) is meant to refer to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, there can be no doubt that Acts tells the story of the covenant community extending beyond the twelve—much beyond them! Thus, Jesus’ death being said to be “for you” rather than “for many” does not ultimately serve to limit the scope of the covenant. Rather, it suggests the ongoing importance of the covenant ceremony for the life of the community, a point strengthened by the final distinctive addition in Luke’s account, Jesus saying to “do this in remembrance of me” (22:19), an addition doubtlessly serving to point out that the ceremony is to be repeated in the life of the community. The emphasis on Jesus’ death being “for you” in the Last Supper scene is all the more striking given that, as is well known among Lukan scholars, the

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salvific nature of Jesus’ death is by no means an emphasis in Luke-Acts.34 In fact, the only other place where such meaning is ascribed to Jesus’ death is in Acts 20:28, where Paul refers to “the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son.”35 The precise meaning of this phrase is itself unclear and debated, but it seems most reasonable to see it as a summary of Jesus’ words from Luke’s Last Supper account, since Luke gives no indication anywhere else in his writings of another possible meaning.36 It is noteworthy that in both places, the benefit of Jesus’ death is directed specifically at the Christian community; also noteworthy in Acts 20:28 is that Paul is addressing the elders from the church at Ephesus—Paul speaks about the church to the church. The “for you” in Luke 22:20 thus resonates with the larger context of Luke’s story, however muted the overall importance of Jesus’ death remains. The interpretation of the sacrificial death of Jesus in Luke’s Last Supper scene is in the end similar to those in Mark and in Matthew. Jesus’ death is the covenant sacrifice parallel to the sacrifice performed by Moses in Exodus 24. As in Matthew, the combination of some specific features of Luke’s account and the larger narrative context serves to emphasize the ongoing importance of Jesus’ death for the life of the Christian community. While in Matthew this was accomplished mainly through the forgiveness saying, in Luke, it is accomplished mainly through the “for you” language. In both accounts, the interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice emphasizes the enabled relationship of the new community to God. 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 Paul’s account of the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians resembles Luke’s account: For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

The bread saying lacks the “given” present in Luke, simply saying that it is “for you,” but otherwise it is in substance identical to Luke’s.37 The cup saying omits the “poured out for you/many” phrase present in all three Gospel accounts, and it adds a second sentence, which repeats the command from the bread saying to perform the ritual in remembrance of Jesus. It is otherwise the same as in Luke, retaining the key phrase “the new covenant in my blood,”38 and hence the covenant ceremony of Exod 24:1–8 and the promise of a new

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covenant in Jer 31:31–34 remain the primary intertexts for understanding the significance of Jesus’ death in Paul’s presentation of the event.39 Perhaps for Paul or in the tradition he drew from, the “poured out for you” seemed redundant in the cup saying, since interpreting Jesus’ blood as the blood in the covenant ceremony already provides a sense in which it is “for you.” The distinctive aspects of Paul’s interpretation of the Last Supper, including the interpretation of Jesus’ death contained therein, come from the context in which Paul narrates the event. Paul does not recount the Last Supper as a part of the larger story of Jesus but to address problems that are occurring in Corinth with the community’s regular celebration of the Lord’s Supper. These problems are the focus of all of 11:17–34. The gist of the problems is that, as Paul sees it, the Corinthians are celebrating as if they are eating a private or non-sacred meal (v. 20). Thus, “when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk” (v. 21). This behavior shows contempt for the community as a whole and for the poorer members in particular (v. 22). After recounting the Last Supper, Paul provides the following warning (vv. 27–30): Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. 30 For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.

Paul’s concluding admonitions emphasize waiting for each other in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and eating at home if one is hungry (vv. 33–34). It is also important in considering the context of Paul’s interpretation that this discussion occurs not long after Paul’s discussion of the problem of eating meat sacrificed to idols, which occupies chapters 8–10. As discussed in our last chapter, Paul refers to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in 10:16–17 as a part of his warning to the Corinthians not to participate in pagan sacrificial rituals. These words are relevant here: The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

Verse 17 points to a key aspect of 1 Corinthians as a whole that is relevant throughout chapters 8–11, which is Paul’s emphasis on unity. The divisions over eating meat sacrificed to idols and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper are pieces of the larger problem puzzle addressed by the whole letter, as announced in Paul’s opening admonition, which is really a manifesto for the

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letter: “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose” (1:10). The section immediately following the discussion of the Lord’s Supper problems in 11:17–34 is where Paul most completely lays out his understanding of the Christian community as a unified body (12:1–31). The “body” language that is so striking and prominent in chapters 10 and 11, as seen in the quotes earlier— “we who are many are one body” (10:17) and “all who eat and drink without discerning the body” (11:29; similarly in v. 27)—culminates in Paul’s assertion in 12:27: “Now you are the body of Christ.” Taken all together, it is evident that Paul sees the celebration of the Lord’s Supper as the community’s way of participating in the covenant ceremony instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper.40 It is how they become a part of Jesus’ “for you.” It is then also an affirmation that Jesus’ death was indeed a sacrifice. The Romans killed Jesus in a ritual of execution, but the Christian ritual of the Lord’s Supper transforms the meaning of Jesus’ death for the celebrants from execution to sacrifice.41 By participating in the ritual, the community members receive the benefits of the sacrifice. Jesus’ death took place at a specific time and place in history, but the Lord’s Supper ritual allows his death as sacrifice to become meaningful whenever and wherever the ritual is performed. The Lord’s Supper ritual is not itself a sacrifice,42 but it is an affirmation, an enactment of the sacrificial nature of Jesus’ death and thus of the congregation’s membership in the covenant community. This is why Paul concludes his recounting of the Last Supper in v. 26 by saying that the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is a proclamation of Jesus’ death. As covered in the last chapter, Paul views Christian participation in the Lord’s Supper as parallel to the practice of both Jews and pagans of the shelamim-style sacrifice where the offerers eat the part of the sacrifice that is not consumed on the altar.43 Partaking of the Lord’s Supper involves an intimate communion with Christ, a sharing in his body and blood. In chapter 10, Paul emphasizes that this communion sets the community off from the rest of the world. In chapter 11, still drawing on chapter 10 and extending into chapter 12, Paul emphasizes that this communion with Christ also entails an intimate communion in the church body, for the church body is Christ’s body. In 1 Corinthians 10–12, then, the interpretation of Jesus’ death as the covenant sacrifice is embedded in an interpretation of the nature and life of the Christian community. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper forms the nexus for the remembrance of Jesus’ death and the resulting image of the Christian community as the body of Christ, an image with concrete ethical implications for life within the community and for the community’s relationship to

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the world. Here we see clearly the purpose of sacrifice as an expression of relationship with the divine, for it is Jesus’ sacrificial death that enables and leads to this vision of the church’s life. Ephesians 2–3 (and Colossians 1) The role of the Exodus 24 ceremony is less pronounced in Eph 2–3 than it is in the Last Supper accounts, but there is again widespread agreement about its role in providing a framework for the discussion here, much as in 1 Corinthians. The key references drawing on the ceremony occur in 2:13, 2:18, and 3:12. These all occur in the letter’s discussion of the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s people in 2:11–3:13, a central section presenting a major theme of the letter as a whole. The covenant ceremony allusions serve the role of describing how it is that the Gentiles have become a part of God’s people. Since the covenant ceremony’s purpose in Exodus was to establish the Israelites’ covenant relationship to God, it is not surprising that Ephesians would draw on the ceremony in doing the same for the Gentiles. The role of Christ’s death in this regard fits naturally. The discussion first describes the situation of the Gentiles prior to Christ’s work. The author does not mince words (2:12): “remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” It is especially significant here that the language of covenant is used, but of course used to point out that the Gentiles were outside of the covenant, “strangers to the covenants of promise” (ξένοι τῶν διαθηκῶν τῆς ἐπαγγελίας). The immediately following sentence introduces the role of Christ’s death: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (2:13). Taken on its own, the precise meaning of “the blood of Christ” would not be clear here. The phrase could simply refer to the fact of Christ’s violent death or be a circumlocution for the cross.44 However, the immediately preceding mention of the covenants and the specific accomplishment of Christ’s blood here point to the covenant sacrifice. The language of being “brought near” (ἐγενήθητε ἐγγὺς) certainly refers to the remedying of the situation described in v. 12, thus to becoming a part of the commonwealth of Israel, to becoming included in the covenants, to receiving hope and a relationship with God. As inclusion in the covenants would entail the other items, the reference to the blood of Christ makes best sense interpreted as the covenant sacrifice. The following verses (14–16) emphasize how both groups, Jews and Gentiles, have been united as one people of God, being reconciled both to each other (vv. 14–15) and to God (v. 16). Reconciliation to God is specifically accomplished “through the cross,” which works well as a summary of

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the accomplishment of Christ’s blood in vv. 12–13. Verses 17–18 then finish this thought: So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; 18 for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Verse 17 repeats the language of being far and near from v. 12 (both places are often thought to echo Isa 57:19, which uses such language to describe God’s healing of the scattered people of Israel45). Verse 18 then culminates the thought by stating that Jews and Gentiles both “have access” to God. To modern ears, language of having “access” to God likely sounds rather blasé after the more vivid language of the preceding verses. For the original readers and hearers, however, this is language of ritual engagement with God, of entering the realm of the holy.46 While the Greek noun translated as “access” here, προσαγωγή, is not used in the LXX, the cognate verb appears throughout the Pentateuch, especially in Leviticus, to describe approaching God or a priest in rituals.47 It is used both of the offering of sacrifices (e.g., Lev 1:2, 3, 10; 3:1; 4:3) and of persons being presented to a priest or to God (e.g., Lev 7:35; 8:13; 16:1). That having access to God is said to be “through the Spirit” in Eph 2:18 strengthens the sense of the idea of access as entailing close engagement with God, as do the following verses, which describe the jointly reconciled groups as “members of the household of God” (v. 19), “a holy temple in the Lord” (v. 21), and as “a dwelling place for God” (v. 22). Ephesians 3 then turns to discuss further this “mystery” (μυστήριον, vv. 3, 4, 9) of the inclusion of the Gentiles and of Paul’s role as the bearer of this good news. The mystery is summed up in v. 6: “the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” The reference to the “promise” here picks back up on the former state of the Gentiles spelled out in 2:12, “strangers to the covenants of promise,” the situation transformed by Christ’s blood, by his covenant sacrifice. This whole section of Paul’s argument concludes with the notion of access again. The revelation of the mystery “was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him” (3:11–12). The reference to “God’s eternal purpose carried out in Christ Jesus” is no doubt meant to encompass the full range of Jesus’ story, but it certainly includes his sacrificial death, and the language of access sums up the picture of the Gentiles now brought into the covenant and being a part of the temple where God dwells. As a final note concerning Ephesians, it is worth observing that there had been a reference to Jesus’ blood earlier in the letter. 1:7 is a part of the

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letter’s opening benediction: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” Here no context of the inclusion of Gentiles has been established, nor is there any immediate mention of the covenant. The notion of redemption appears in a wide variety of contexts in the Jewish scriptures, from the buying back of physical property (e.g., Ruth 4:3–4) to deliverance from slavery (e.g., Lev 25:48–49) to more general notions of deliverance (e.g., Job 5:20). The most striking uses are the numerous places where it describes God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt (e.g., Exod 6:6; Deut 13:5) or God’s future deliverance of Israel from other enemies (esp. prominent in Isaiah, e.g., 1:27; 47:4; 59:20).48 It is not a term, however, closely connected with sacrifice, and so “redemption through his blood” could be taken to mean generally that Christ’s death resulted in deliverance from bondage, perhaps from sin. On the other hand, this redemption is equated with “the forgiveness of our trespasses,” and thus the reference to Christ’s blood could well be taken to mean an atoning sacrifice, such as a purification or guilt offering. As discussed earlier regarding Matthew’s account of the Last Supper, forgiveness was associated with these offerings. The reference to Christ’s blood in 2:13, then, while still carrying the primary sense of the covenant sacrifice, could then be seen to refer back to 1:7. Thus, as we saw happen in Matthew’s Last Supper account, the covenant sacrifice becomes combined with the idea of an atoning sacrifice in the interpretation of Jesus’ death. We will continue to see this kind of combination of multiple types of sacrifice in other places, as well. Colossians 1 contains some language similar to what we see in Ephesians, but the idea of sacrifice is muted. 1:13–14 refers to God having rescued the audience from “the power of darkness” and then in Christ having provided “redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” The combination of redemption and forgiveness here is like Eph 1:7, but without any reference to Christ’s blood—or even his death—there is little warrant for seeing a reference to sacrifice.49 Redemption and forgiveness were paired in places like Isa 44:22 and Psalm 103:3–4 without any reference to sacrifice.50 More importantly, the famous Christ-hymn of Col 1:15–20 concludes with the statement that God reconciled “all things” to himself, “by making peace through the blood of his cross.” Verse 22 then explicates these words by saying that God “has now reconciled [you] in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.” The mention of Christ’s blood and flesh in close proximity perhaps sounds like a sacrifice, and the goal of presenting the audience “holy and blameless” (ἁγίους καὶ ἀμώμους) echoes requirements for sacrificial animals.51 Note, however, that this latter language refers to the audience, while the blood and flesh language refers to Christ, so there is not a unified sacrificial picture here. Moreover, the controlling imagery used throughout is that of reconciliation, which is based in the

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realm of diplomacy, not of sacrifice.52 It seems reasonable to conclude that there are echoes of sacrifice here, but they are fit into another framework, that of reconciliation, and hence lack a focused meaning.53 1 Peter 1:2 1 Peter 1:2 contains only a brief reference to the Exodus 24 covenant ceremony, but when viewed in the overall context of the letter, it is rich in meaning. The opening verse of the letter identifies the audience as “exiles of the Dispersion” (παρεπιδήμοις διασπορᾶς) located in five regions together making up the bulk of what is today Turkey. Verse 2 then provides a theological description of the audience: “who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood.”54 It is the image of the people being sprinkled with Jesus’ blood that draws on the covenant ceremony, as that is precisely what Moses does with the blood there.55 Paul Achtemeier points out that the mention of obedience here also reflects the covenant ceremony, since the people’s agreement to obey the law was part of the ceremony’s confession: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient” (Exod 24:7b).56 The presence of the idea of the covenant ceremony and sacrifice in 1:2 resonates deeply with the rest of the letter, a striking feature of which is the way the Gentile audience is described as having become God’s people.57 This description simply transfers traditional language of Israel’s self-understanding to the Gentile Christians. We discussed in the previous chapter how 2:4–5 portrayed the audience as “a spiritual house,” that is, a temple, and as “a holy priesthood,” resulting in language of offering spiritual sacrifices. Perhaps more striking yet is 2:9–10: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people,   but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy,   but now you have received mercy. 10

Verse 9 makes use of the fundamental identity ascribed to Israel by YHWH at Mt. Sinai at the giving of the covenant (Exod 19:5–6), and v. 10 combines Hosea 1:6–9 and 2:23. The former of these references is part of the same overall narrative as the covenant ceremony in Exodus 24. Clearly the emphasis in 1 Peter is on the change brought about in the audience’s status because of their new relationship to God. Christ’s death, as the covenant sacrifice, is

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what enabled this change to take place. The audience thus exists in a covenant relationship to God parallel to that of Israel under the Sinai covenant. The picture is similar to what we saw in Ephesians, which likewise emphasizes the change in status for Gentile Christians brought about by Jesus’ sacrificial death. The difference in 1 Peter is that there is no concern for Jew-Gentile unity; the covenantal language is simply applied wholesale to the Gentile Christians.58 We will see further below that the portrayal of Christ’s death as a sacrifice in 1 Peter will also draw on imagery of the Passover lamb. The point of that additional sacrificial imagery, however, will be the same, that Christ’s death as a sacrifice has brought the people into a new covenant relationship with God. Hebrews 9:15–22 Hebrews 9:15–22 contains the most extensive engagement of the Exodus 24 covenant ceremony in the New Testament. It is somewhat difficult to deal with, however, because the passage occurs toward the end of Hebrews’s complex presentation of Jesus as the heavenly high priest who offers his own blood in sacrifice. We will address Hebrews’s overall understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice in our following section on the interpretation of his death as an atoning sacrifice; here we will limit ourselves to the role of the covenant sacrifice. That Jesus established a new covenant, superior to the Mosaic covenant, is one of the central theses of Hebrews. This is a distinctive emphasis of Hebrews within the New Testament as a whole. Hebrews contains seventeen of the thirty-three uses of διαθήκη (“covenant”) in the New Testament;59 only one other book has as many as three (Galatians). These occurrences in Hebrews are concentrated in the second half of the book; the first is not until 7:22, and twelve of the seventeen are in chapters 8–9. The basic point of Jesus mediating a better covenant is made in Hebrews 8, and it is based on Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant in Jer 31:31–34, the passage quoted earlier when we looked at Matthew’s Last Supper account, and which we saw also being important in the Last Supper accounts of Luke and Paul. Heb 8:8–12 quotes the entire passage from the LXX. The key conclusion is then given in 8:13, that Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant meant that the former Mosaic covenant has become obsolete. Heb 9:1–10 covers the fact that under the Mosaic covenant, there were instructions for constructing the earthly temple and regulations for how worship was to be performed in it. The restricted access to the Holy of Holies, the inner room of the temple where only the high priest could go, and then only once per year, is taken as a symbol of the limited efficacy of the sacrifices of the Mosaic covenant in transforming the worshiper; these sacrifices

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“cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper” (9:9). This limitation is then contrasted with the accomplishment of Christ (9:10–14), who as a high priest operating in the superior heavenly temple offered his own blood, superior to that of the earthly sacrifices, because “the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God,” can “purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!” (9:14). It is here that our passage of interest occurs. The author first points out that Jesus’ death signaled the end of the first covenant and the beginning of the new covenant (9:15), relying on the fact that διαθήκη can mean both “will” and “covenant” to argue that a διαθήκη requires a death to be inaugurated, since a will only goes into effect when the one who made it dies (9:16–17). Here the author then recounts the covenant ceremony from Exodus 24 (9:18–21): Hence not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. 19 For when every commandment had been told to all the people by Moses in accordance with the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the scroll itself and all the people, 20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God has ordained for you.” 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship.

The recounting is striking in that it is not a straightforward paraphrase of the Exodus 24 scene but adds in a number of details. Exodus 24 mentions Moses sprinkling only blood on the people, but Hebrews says that water, scarlet wool, and hyssop were added to the blood, and that Moses also sprinkled the scroll, the tent, and “all the vessels used in worship.” The sprinkling of the tent and vessels is especially surprising, since in Exodus 24, the tabernacle had not even been built yet. Why these additions? R. B. Jamieson has provided a helpful analysis.60 The addition of the blood and vessels is likely borrowing from passages dealing with the consecration of the tabernacle, Exod 29:10–14; 40:9–11 and Lev 8:10–21. The addition of water, scarlet wool, and hyssop is based on the use of these materials in rituals of purification from skin diseases and corpse defilement (Lev 14:1–7; Num 19). The upshot is that Hebrews narrates the inauguration of the covenant as also entailing the consecration of the place of worship and the purification of the people. Both additions are important for Hebrews’s understanding of Jesus’ death. Christ’s blood, we already saw in 9:14, enables the purification of human consciences, and it also purified the heavenly temple, as Hebrews’s subsequent words explain (9:23): “Thus it was necessary for the sketches of the heavenly things to be purified with

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these rites, but the heavenly things themselves need better sacrifices than these.” The role of the covenant sacrifice, then, is expanded. We saw this happen in earlier passages, first with Matthew’s Last Supper account, with its addition about the forgiveness of sin. In Hebrews, this kind of combination of the different purposes of sacrifice will be much more thorough-going, as we will see further below when we look at the interpretation of Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice. In the present passage, it is worth noting that 9:22 connects the idea of purification with the forgiveness of sin, so the purpose of purification as accomplished by the covenant sacrifice can already be seen to include atonement. But for now, it is important to note that this interpretation of Jesus’ death as the covenant sacrifice is not limited to this passage. Three times in the subsequent discussion of the letter, the author refers back to the covenant established by Jesus, each time including a reference to the blood used in the covenant ceremony (10:29; 12:24; 13:20).61 Probably the most significant is the one occurring in the letter’s concluding benediction (13:20–21): Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Thus, it is of central importance in Hebrews that Jesus established a new, eternal covenant, and that he did so by offering his own blood as the covenant sacrifice for which the Exodus 24 ritual was but a precursor. As a final note to wrap up our discussion of the covenant sacrifice, there is one other small change made by Hebrews in recounting the Mosaic covenant ceremony. Moses’s first word when he dashes the blood on the people in the LXX of Exod 24:8 is “behold!” (ἰδού). Hebrews changes the ἰδού to τοῦτο, “this,” resulting in “this is the blood of the covenant” (9:20). The phrase is then nearly identical to Jesus’ words when sharing the cup at the Last Supper in Matt 26:28 and Mark 14:24, lacking only Jesus’ “my” and the explicit “is” (ἐστιν, understood in Heb 9:20). It is impossible to say for certain if this change was made intentionally to match the words of Jesus,62 but it is an intriguing connection to another set of texts also interpreting Jesus’ death as the covenant sacrifice. THE PASSOVER LAMB As discussed in our earlier chapter on sacrifice in the Jewish scriptures, at Passover each year Jewish families sacrificed a lamb to commemorate the

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Israelites’ liberation from Egypt, the liberation initiated by the placement of the blood of a slaughtered lamb on the doorposts and lintels of the Israelites’ houses (Exod 12:1–13). In the New Testament, the image of Jesus as the Passover lamb is not as prominent as one might suppose, appearing mainly in the Gospel of John and in Revelation, with brief but enticing appearances in 1 Corinthians and 1 Peter. Its infrequency is not an indication of symbolic weakness—it is a forceful symbol in all of these places. The Gospel of John and Revelation In the Gospel of John, when John the Baptist first spots Jesus approaching him, John famously declares, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). He identifies Jesus again as “the Lamb of God” to two disciples shortly thereafter (1:36). In neither place is any explicit connection made with Passover. In fact, nowhere in either John’s Gospel or in Revelation is Jesus explicitly identified as the Passover lamb. Despite this, there is little doubt that the Passover lamb is the main idea behind the lamb imagery in both books. At first glance, however, the appellation of Jesus as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” would seem unlikely to refer to the Passover lamb, because the Passover lamb was not an atoning sacrifice.63 The larger problem in interpreting the phrase is that lambs were not commonly used in atoning sacrifices at all, such use being restricted to purification rituals, including those for women after childbirth (Lev 12:6), for lepers (Lev 14:10–25), and for Nazirites (Num 6:12).64 The primary use of lambs in Jewish sacrifices, besides Passover, was for the Tamid, which also was not atoning. Lambs were also used in the following other regular sacrifices, in each case alongside other animals: sabbath (Num 28:9–10), the new moon (Num 28:11–14), the festival of Weeks (Lev 23:18–20; Num 28:26–29), the festival of Trumpets (Num 29:1–3), the festival of Booths (Num 29:12–14), and the Day of Atonement (Num 29:7–8).65 Only the last of these has any connection to atonement, and the lambs there are part of the burnt offerings, not a part of the atoning ritual. Lambs could be used in consecration rituals (e.g., Lev 9:1–7; Num 7) and in first fruits offerings (Lev 23:12), sacrifices again having nothing to do with atonement. So identifying Jesus as a sacrificial lamb and as atoning for sin is not the most natural of pairs. The reason scholars are confident in seeing the Passover lamb as the main source of meaning for John’s “Lamb of God” title is that John’s Gospel draws clear parallels between the sacrifice of the Passover lambs and Jesus’ crucifixion. It is well known that John’s Passion chronology differs from that of the Synoptics; rather than the Last Supper taking place as a Passover meal, Jesus is crucified on “the day of Preparation for the Passover” (John 19:14; see also

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19:31), so that the Passover meal would have been held that evening. Jesus is crucified at noon (19:14 again), the same time when the Passover lambs began to be slaughtered.66 That this is the importance of these chronological points is made clear by the author’s statement that when Jesus died without his legs being broken, “These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, ‘None of his bones shall be broken’” (19:36). While this is not a direct quote of any scripture, it reflects the requirement of Exod 12:46 and Num 9:12 that the bones of the Passover lamb not be broken, and John’s wording is quite close to the LXX of both. Many commentators also think that Psalm 34:20 is part of the reference, but as the context there is God’s protection and rescue of the righteous, it would be an odd allusion for John to have made at Jesus’ death.67 One other detail of John’s account probably also is included because of its connection to Passover, the mention of hyssop being given along with wine to Jesus on the cross; hyssop was used in the Passover sacrifice (Exod 12:22). Jesus’ death is thus specifically said to fulfill a scriptural requirement of the Passover lamb. When we consider that Jesus had earlier been identified as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” the significance of the Passover lamb imagery emerges. Just as through the sacrifice of the Passover lamb God delivered the Israelites from bondage and made them God’s people, now Jesus becomes a new Passover lamb, the ultimate fulfillment of the Exodus Passover lamb, whose death enables the salvation of the entire world and enables all to become a part of God’s people. It is quite possible, of course, that the identity of Jesus as the Lamb of God should not be restricted in meaning to Passover imagery. It seems reasonable to conclude that the non-specificity of the term is meant to be more inclusive. Given the mention of the removal of sin, it seems reasonable to see a connection to the atoning sacrifices. Given the importance of the Tamid, and of the well-known use of lambs in the Tamid, it also seems reasonable to see in the lamb appellation the idea that Jesus is now the most important expression of the people’s relationship to God; such an idea would certainly fit well in the overall Christology of John’s Gospel, seen in places like John 14:8–11 and 17:20–24, where the unity of Father and Son and the disciples’ relationship to the Father through the Son are emphasized. Many interpreters hold that Isaiah 53 is also an important connection.68 Since there the suffering servant is compared to “a lamb that is led to the slaughter” (53:7) and to an “offering for sin” (53:10), along with the statements about bearing the sins of others (53:4–6, 12), this likewise seems a reasonable connection. This is especially so since Isaiah is important for John in other places, most notably 12:38–41, where events are said to fulfill two prophecies from Isaiah, leading the author to conclude that Isaiah “saw his [Jesus’] glory and spoke about him” (v. 41).

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The “Lamb of God” title, then, is a multivalent expression, rooted in the Passover lamb imagery prominent in John’s crucifixion account but also alluding to other sacrifices that used lambs and to Isaiah’s suffering servant. Such a combination of a central image with other images is similar to what we saw happen in several places with the covenant sacrifice imagery. We will see such combinations again. John uses the title to encompass the multiple salvific and relational effects of Christ’s death. The image of Jesus as a lamb is also prominent in Revelation. As in the Gospel of John, the Passover lamb is the clearest source of the image, but the image is not given a direct meaning and so likely is again meant to be multivalent. We first encounter the image after John is called up to heaven and shown the throne room of God. The “one seated on the throne” has a scroll in his hand (5:1), but nobody is found “in heaven or on earth or under the earth” who is worthy to open it (5:3). John begins to weep because of this, but he is then told not to weep, because “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” will be able to open the scroll (5:5). The narrative then reads as follows (5:6–10): Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. 8 When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twentyfour elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 They sing a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; 10 you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.”

The immediate description of the lamb suggests sacrifice, as the verb for “slaughtered” in v. 6 and v. 9 (σφάζω) is the verb used for sacrificial slaughter throughout Leviticus and in other places in the LXX. In the song, the sacrificial image is combined with a commercial metaphor. The lamb’s sacrifice was the means by which he “purchased” (better than the NRSV’s “ransomed”; Gk ἠγόρασας) a people for God. The subsequent language (vv. 9b-10) is a reworking of God’s words to the people of Israel at Sinai before giving the covenant (Exod 19:5–6a): Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, 6 but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

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Exodus’s “out of all the peoples” (LXX ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν ἐθνῶν) becomes in Revelation “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (ἐκ πάσης φυλῆς καὶ γλώσσης καὶ λαοῦ καὶ ἔθνους), and Exodus’s “priestly kingdom” (in the LXX, it is “royal priesthood,” βασίλειον ἱεράτευμα) becomes in Revelation “a kingdom and priests” (βασιλείαν καὶ ἱερεῖς). The overall parallel is striking. It is this combination of sacrificial language and use of the Sinai speech that suggests that the Passover lamb is the main idea behind Revelation’s lamb imagery, at least as presented here. Just as the Passover lamb enabled the Israelites to become God’s people, the sacrifice of Jesus enabled people from everywhere to become God’s people. Richard Bauckham felicitously calls this idea in Revelation the “eschatological exodus.”69 God’s formation of a people through the sacrifice of Christ parallels God’s formation of Israel through the Passover events. These ideas appear elsewhere in Revelation, too. This scene in Revelation 5 actually fills out words from the book’s opening doxology: “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1:5b-6). The lamb imagery is not used at this point, but the message is otherwise nearly identical, once again echoing the Sinai divine speech. Similarly, in 12:11, we are told that the martyred saints have conquered Satan “by the blood of the Lamb.” The combination of language of sacrifice and of conquering echoes that of the lamb and lion in chapter 5. Elsewhere the lamb imagery takes on different tones. In 7:14, we are told that the countless multitude robed in white are those who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” While it is possible that the imagery of washing the robes is meant to echo the Israelites’ washing of their clothes at the Sinai epiphany (Exod 19:10, 14),70 it seems more likely that Jesus’ death here is being pictured as an atoning sacrifice. Cleaning of clothes and whitening are used as metaphors for forgiveness of sins in Zech 3:3–5 and Isa 1:18, respectively;71 the latter is well known: “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” Hence, just as the Passover lamb image in John’s Gospel is combined with the idea of an atoning sacrifice, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” in Revelation, the Passover lamb imagery also expands to take on the idea of atonement. Two other sources for the lamb imagery are sometimes suggested. The first is Isaiah 53, with the situation in Revelation being nearly the same as in John. Since Isa 53:7 speaks of “a lamb that is led to the slaughter” (but in the LXX it is a πρόβατον, “sheep,” that is led ἐπὶ σφαγήν, “to slaughter”), the connection is certainly possible. The second is the appearance of lambs in Jewish apocalyptic literature, not as slaughter victims but as victorious and even messianic creatures. This would be an enlightening connection, since in a number of places

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in Revelation the Lamb has no obvious sacrificial character but is instead an authoritative figure, such as when he leads the army of the 144,000 in Rev 14:1–5. This connection is dubious, however, due to the nature of the two apocalyptic texts where lamb imagery is found. One is in the “Animal Apocalypse” of 1 Enoch 85–90, where the lamb imagery occurs in the midst of a complex set of relationships among many animals; such a context is simply lacking in Revelation. The other is in the Testament of Joseph 19, but the relevant section (vv. 8–12) is generally suspected of being a Christian interpolation.72 This takes us to the final place in Revelation where sacrificial imagery is of potential importance in the portrayal of Jesus, 19:13. The interpretation here is contested. The episode (19:11–21) portrays Jesus as an eschatological warrior who conquers and rules the nations. His description includes that he “is clothed in a robe dipped in blood” (v. 13). The question is, whose blood? Is it his own or that of his conquered enemies? The immediate description suggests the latter. We are told, for instance, that “from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations” and that “he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty” (v. 15). At the end of the description of his conquests, we are given the detail that “all the birds were gorged with their flesh,” the flesh of his conquered enemies (v. 21). A number of interpreters do thus favor seeing the blood as that of his defeated foes.73 Other interpreters point to the fact that Jesus’ clothing is stained with blood before he conquers to argue that this is Jesus’ own blood.74 Seen this way, the imagery in the episode reflects the combination of the lamb and lion symbolism from chapter 5 and the broader idea in Revelation that conquering occurs through faithful witness—the sword comes from Jesus’ mouth, after all—and through martyrdom, the same combination we saw in 12:11. Bauckham sums up the idea helpfully: Thus the means by which the Davidic Messiah has won his victory is explained by the image of the Lamb, while the significance of the image of the Lamb is now seen to lie in the fact that his sacrificial death was a victory over evil.75

The decision on this point does not fundamentally change the way the lamb imagery functions in Revelation. Reading the blood as Jesus’ own, however, is by no means a stretch, given the overall context of Revelation’s picture of Jesus, including the interpretation of his death, and the way that conquering throughout Revelation is portrayed as being accomplished not through expressions of literal might but through suffering faithfulness. Jesus’ identity as the Lamb, rooted in the Passover tradition, becomes a symbol not only of the liberation and formation of the people of God—as powerful a point as that is—but also of the character, of the type of behavior, that Christians are called to exhibit.76

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1 Corinthians 5:6–8 We saw earlier that in Paul’s discussion of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 10–12 his interpretation of Jesus’ death as the covenant sacrifice is deeply embedded in his vision of the life of the Christian community. The same is true of his interpretation of Jesus’ death as the Passover sacrifice in 1 Cor 5:7–8, even though we have here a much briefer treatment. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul rebukes the community for tolerating a male member having a sexual relationship with his father’s wife (v. 1). Community members have apparently even boasted about the situation (vv. 2, 6). Paul ultimately instructs the community to expel the man (v. 13), but the pertinent part of the discussion for us is how Paul sees Christ’s death as forming the character of the community. The key portion reads as follows (vv. 6–8): Your boasting is not a good thing. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? 7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Paul draws on the Pentateuchal instructions for the celebration of the Passover requiring the removal of all leaven from the celebrants’ houses (Exod 12:15; 13:7; Deut 16:3–4). The NRSV’s “paschal lamb” here translates πάσχα; one might well translate the phrase as, “For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.” Clearly πάσχα here does refer to the sacrificed lamb, but “paschal lamb” perhaps loses Paul’s emphasis that Christ’s death is the Passover sacrifice. The extent to which Paul pushes the implications of this equation is remarkable. The “our” is not to be missed. Christ is “our” Passover sacrifice, Paul says. For those who are part of the Christian community, Christ’s death accomplished what the original Passover achieved for the Israelites, the establishment of the community as the people of God. The impact is much the same as the interpretation of Christ’s death as the covenant sacrifice, and it is no coincidence that the latter interpretation will occur later in the same letter, as we have seen. The covenant sacrifice in Exodus is the culmination of the story line of which the Passover sacrifice is an early high point, the force that starts the Israelites on the road toward the Sinai ceremony. That Paul identifies Christ’s death as the reenactment of both sacrifices underscores the singular, foundational status of the cross. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul’s immediate concern is the moral crisis brought on by the sinful man’s presence in the community. Paul no doubt uses the Passover sacrifice rather than the covenant sacrifice here because of the potential the former includes for addressing the moral situation. The man’s

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presence in the community is like that of leaven in the traditional Jewish scenario and so must be removed. In v. 8, Paul generalizes the application. All “malice and evil” (κακίας καὶ πονηρίας) is interpreted as the leaven, and the unleavened bread that is acceptable to eat at Passover is identified as “sincerity and truth” (εἰλικρινείας καὶ ἀληθείας). The most remarkable part of this generalization is the opening of the verse, where Paul exhorts the audience, “let us celebrate the festival” (ἑορτάζωμεν). Paul envisions the ongoing life of the community as a celebration of Passover. Passover is not just a feast to be celebrated at a given time but is an expression of the community’s character and regular behavior. This is, of course, important for the present crisis Paul is addressing—he is not suggesting that such sin should be removed for a certain occasion but then readmitted later! This understanding of the community as proactively purifying itself, as needing to remove the leaven of immorality, builds on the identity of the community as the temple of God, established in 3:16–17: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? . . . For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple” (“you” here is plural).77 The holiness of the community is emphasized even in the salutation of the letter, where Paul refers to his audience as “the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1:2). The Greek word translated as “sanctified” here by the NRSV (ἡγιασμένοις) is from the same root as the word for “holy” (ἅγιος), and “saints” simply is the word for “holy” (ἁγίοις). The distinction between the holy and the common, we saw in our earlier chapter, is essential to understanding sacrifice. Paul can describe the community in chapter 5 as a Passover community, with Christ as the Passover sacrifice, precisely because the community is a holy one. This sense of the community as holy, distinct from the rest of the world, is important elsewhere in Paul’s moral exhortation in the letter (e.g., 3:1–4; 6:1–6, 15–20). Recall, too, from our look at Passover in the Jewish scriptures, that Passover was unique in the Jewish sacrificial system in that it provided a priestly experience for average, non-priestly Jews, especially for those in the Diaspora. Paul’s use of Passover imagery to describe the Corinthian community—a nonpriestly, Gentile community—builds on the role of Passover in this regard. The interpretation of Christ’s death as the Passover sacrifice in this context thus packs a heavy punch. The interpretation has deep implications for how the community understands itself. Jane Lancaster Patterson has summed up the force of the interpretation well, noting also that the Jewish character of Paul’s interpretation is especially striking given the Gentile status of the audience. She observes that the Passover interpretation is a call to careful conduct of community life, a call to live as people worthy of the freedom and fullness of life they have been brought into by the cross of

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Christ. . . . The crucifixion of Jesus by Rome has been appropriated by God as a Passover sacrifice, to achieve the deliverance of the gentiles and to bring them into a place where they may live rightly with God and their fellow believers.78

Such a bond between the interpretation of Christ’s death and the character of the community is by no means new here. We saw it with Revelation’s use of the Passover lamb imagery, and we saw it in several places with the covenant sacrifice. The main distinctive point here is the specificity of the moral situation Paul addresses. 1 Peter 1:18–19 We saw earlier that the opening verses of 1 Peter evoke the covenant sacrifice of Exodus 24, with the letter’s audience being said to have been chosen “to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood” (1:2). We also saw that this imagery resonates with Exodus covenantal language elsewhere in 1 Peter, especially in 2:9–10, where language used to describe Israel’s identity as God’s people at Sinai is transferred to the Gentile audience of 1 Peter. The result is that these Gentile Christians are pictured as being God’s covenant people, God’s Israel, having been brought into this relationship through the sacrifice of Christ. In 1:18–19, we see the same point being made but with a shift in the sacrificial imagery. 1:13 is usually recognized as the beginning of 1 Peter’s letter body and as beginning a section of moral exhortation that extends through 2:10.79 The moral exhortation is laced throughout with the language of identity such as we just summarized from our look at 1:2. We can already see a parallel here to 1 Cor 5:6–8, since the Passover imagery there occurred in the midst of moral exhortation. The section begins with an admonition to “gird up the loins of your mind” (KJV).80 This admonition is itself evocative of Passover, since the Passover was to be eaten with “loins girded” (Exod 12:11). A series of additional admonitions follows in vv. 13–17: “set all your hope” (v. 13), “do not be conformed” (v. 14), “be holy” (v. 15), and “live in reverent fear” (v. 17). Verses 18–21 might then be termed a Christological digression, with v. 22 returning to the moral exhortation. Verses 18–21 are not really a digression, however, but form one of the letter’s powerful statements of the audience’s identity, an identity determined by and focused on the story of Christ. It is the identity that provides the basis for the moral exhortations. The first two verses are of primary interest for us: You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.

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The “ransomed” verb here (ἐλυτρώθητε) continues the Passover connections, as this is the verb used throughout the LXX to refer to God’s redemption of Israel from Egypt. Deut 7:8 gives a prime example:81 It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

“Redeemed” would be a preferable translation in 1 Pet 1:18, as well, for the sake of capturing the Passover connection (the NIV, e.g., uses “redeemed”). In 1 Peter, the parallel to Egypt is not a place but “the futile ways inherited from your ancestors,” bondage of a different sort but still requiring redemption. The contrast of Christ’s blood with “perishable things like silver or gold” suggests a broader contrast between the audience’s redemption and the common practice of manumitting slaves through monetary means.82 The audience’s redemption was accomplished with “the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish” (v. 19). While the mention of Christ’s blood would immediately allude back to the sprinkling of his blood in 1:2, thus recalling the covenant sacrifice, the comparison to a lamb shifts the image to the Passover event itself. Bulls, not lambs, were used in the covenant ceremony of Exodus 24. Just as the blood of the Passover lamb was the means by which God delivered Israel from Egypt, Christ’s blood is the means by which God delivered the letter’s audience from their former “futile ways” and brought them into relationship with God. The subsequent two verses emphasize this very point (vv. 20–21): He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. 21 Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

Thus, the nature of Christ’s death as the covenant sacrifice is not left behind here but is rather combined with the idea of the Passover lamb. In picturing the audience having come into relationship with God as a new exodus, Christ’s death is viewed as both the initiation and the completion of the process, the Passover lamb and the covenant sacrifice, just as we saw in 1 Corinthians 5. The reference to the lamb being “without defect or blemish” underscores the sacrificial nature of Christ’s death, since the necessity of sacrificial animals being blemishless is frequently mentioned in Leviticus, 22:17–25 giving the most complete requirements.83 Recall that 1 Pet 1:18–21 occurs in the midst of moral exhortation. The immediate command that these verses appear as supporting is to “live in

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reverent fear during the time of your exile” (v. 17b). The command that immediately follows is to “love one another deeply from the heart” (v. 22b). The interpretation of Christ’s death thus is not presented as an academic or doctrinal matter but rather for shaping the character of the community. Since God has redeemed them through Christ’s death, they must now act in accordance with their new identity as the people of God. The most fundamental of the admonitions given in this section is that of vv. 15–16, that “as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” The scripture quoted is the frequent command that undergirds both the ritual and the legal instructions of Leviticus (11:44–45; 19:2; 20:7, 26). Thus, while the Passover language is central for understanding the audience’s conversion experience, their being brought into relationship with God, for understanding their new identity as a whole other fundamental features of Israel’s identity from scripture are brought to bear. Besides the fundamental holiness command of Leviticus, in v. 17b, we can also see language of the exile, which is also quite prominent in 1 Peter; in the letter’s salutation, the audience is identified as “the exiles of the Dispersion,” for instance (1:1). We talked earlier in connection with 1:2 about the audience being declared “a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (2:9). And here we can now see the relationship with the passage from 1 Peter that we covered in our last chapter, 2:4–5: Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Because of their new identity, they are now both temple and priesthood. Both points of identity can be seen as direct results of the exodus imagery, for the establishment of the priesthood and the construction of the tabernacle were two direct outcomes of the exodus and the Sinai covenant. The idea of offering spiritual sacrifices then follows directly from the people’s identity as priests and temple. The idea of spiritual sacrifices, as discussed in the last chapter, sums up the behavior expected of the people of God. In 1 Peter, then, as in 1 Corinthians, we see an intimate connection between the interpretation of Christ’s death as the Passover sacrifice and the consequent character of the community. Indeed, in both cases, the interpretation is brought in for the very purpose of encouraging the audience to conduct their lives in a certain way. In 1 Peter, the keys are that, first, moral exhortation is based on the identity of the audience as the people of God, and, second, that this identity was enabled by the sacrificial death of Christ, whose blood is both that of the Passover lamb and that of the covenant ceremony. Understanding

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Christ’s death this way implies a new understanding of themselves and of the world around them. It implies a new pattern of disposition and behavior. It is a radically transformative interpretation. ATONING SACRIFICES The third major type of interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament is that of the atoning sacrifice. Hebrews provides us with the most elaborate and detailed such interpretation. There are also important statements of this interpretation in 1 John and in several of Paul’s letters. As we will see, these interpretations will be based heavily on the Day of Atonement ritual. Hebrews 9:1–10:18 Hebrews’s concern with the atoning work of Christ is established in the letter’s introduction (1:1–4). This introduction focuses on the ways that Christ is superior to God’s previous ways of dealing with the people, and among these is that Christ “made purification for sins” (1:3; καθαρισμὸν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ποιησάμενος). In 2:17, the author states that Jesus had to be fully human “so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people” (εἰς τὸ ἱλάσκεσθαι τὰς ἁμαρτίας τοῦ λαοῦ). While in these early chapters the author does not elaborate the understanding of Christ’s atoning work, the expectation that this will be an important topic is made clear. The interpretation of Christ’s death as an atoning sacrifice is given primarily in 9:1–10:18, and we will therefore concentrate on this section of Hebrews. By this point in the letter, the author has already argued that Christ is the heavenly high priest, superior to the earthly high priests who operated under the old covenant. This argument takes the bulk of chapter 7, and the conclusion is as follows (7:26–27): For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. 27 Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself.

Here we get the key point that Christ’s atoning sacrifice was himself, the point that will be elaborated in 9:1–10:18. It is important first to grasp that, as the heavenly high priest, Christ does his work in the heavenly temple. Hebrews

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envisions heaven as the true temple, “that the Lord, and not any mortal, has set up” (8:2), and the Jerusalem temple as “a sketch and shadow of the heavenly one” (8:5). The understanding of heaven as a temple was common in Second Temple Judaism,84 and we saw this idea earlier in Revelation. The unique addition that Hebrews makes is that Christ functions as the high priest of the heavenly temple. The heavenly location of Christ’s high-priestly work is then seen as part of his superiority to the earthly high priests. Hebrews 9 begins with a description of the inner area, the sanctuary proper, of the Jerusalem temple (vv. 1–5). This area consisted of two rooms, the outer “Holy Place” and the inner “Holy of Holies,” and the author observes that regular priestly duties take place in the Holy Place (v. 6). Then comes the decisive observation, that only the high priest ever enters the Holy of Holies and that he does so only once per year (v. 7). While not named, this annual entrance refers to the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) ritual from Leviticus 16, as described in our earlier chapter, and this ritual becomes the crux for Hebrews’s presentation of Christ’s atoning work. Recall from our earlier description of the Day of Atonement that the distinctive ritual consisted of actions taken with two goats. The first goat was sacrificed, and its blood was taken into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled on the ark of the covenant (Lev 16:15–16); this was the high priest’s yearly entrance into the innermost room, as Heb 9:7 mentions. Blood was also sprinkled on the altar (Lev 16:18–19), and together these two acts of sprinkling cleansed the temple from the sins of the people. The first goat, then, was to cleanse—make atonement for—the temple itself. The second goat was used in the scapegoat ritual, and its purpose was to atone for the people (Lev 16:20–22). Hebrews, however, is only interested in the ritual of the first goat. The scapegoat ritual is not referred to at all.85 Perhaps this is because there is no obvious earth-and-heaven comparison to make with the scapegoat ritual. In any case, the focus of Hebrews is entirely on the entrance of the high priest into the Holy of Holies with the sacrificial blood. This is not because Hebrews is not concerned with the people’s forgiveness. Quite to the contrary, Hebrews treats the high priest’s acts in the Holy of Holies as embodying the accomplishment of the entire Day, thus as also bringing about forgiveness for the people. Jesus’ heavenly version of this act, we will see, in addition to cleansing the heavenly temple, is also described as being that which brings about forgiveness for the people of the new covenant. We get the description of Jesus’ actions built on this interpretation of the Day of Atonement ritual in Heb 9:11–14: But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this

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creation), 12 he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

The key moment of Christ’s atoning work was his entrance into the heavenly sanctuary with his own blood, as the earthly high priest entered the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. Note that in this scenario Christ’s death is only the first step in his atoning work. As David Moffitt has so ably demonstrated, the picture of Christ as the heavenly high priest who offers his own blood presupposes the resurrection and the ascension, which enable Jesus to operate as the perfected, eternal but still human high priest.86 Jesus dies, is raised, and then enters heaven to perform his high-priestly work with his own blood. This emphasis on the blood ritual rather than on the death is in keeping with the nature of sacrifice discussed in our earlier chapter. Jesus’ death was a necessary first step, but it is the blood ritual, here modeled on the Day of Atonement ritual, that is the crucial act.87 The result of Christ’s sacrificial act is said to be “eternal redemption” (v. 12, αἰωνίαν λύτρωσιν). This accomplishment is then contrasted with the more limited accomplishment of the earthly ritual, said to affect only the flesh (v. 13). Christ’s sacrificial effect is then restated as being to “purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God” (v. 14). This phrase picks up on what Hebrews had stated was a limitation of the earthly sacrifices in the immediately preceding passage, that they “cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper” (v. 9). Note that the effect of Christ’s sacrifice is not stated at this point in terms of forgiveness but in terms of status and character. Christ’s sacrifice is distinguished from the earthly ones in that it is said to have transformed people from the inside out. Those whose consciences have been purified can worship God in a way that was not previously possible. The word for “worship” in both v. 9 and v. 14 is λατρεύω, which we discussed in the previous chapter as referring specifically to cultic worship, especially to sacrifice itself. We will return to this point shortly. Immediately following this passage is 9:15–22, which we discussed earlier as interpreting Christ’s death as the covenant sacrifice. We observed that Hebrews adds some details to the Exodus description of the event that have the effect of expanding the function of the covenant sacrifice to include the consecration of the temple and the purification of the people. The end of that passage, v. 22, after noting the purifying effect of blood, makes the famous statement that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.”

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This statement sets up the emphasis on forgiveness in the following passage, 9:23–28. This passage is introduced, however, by making a claim about the effect of Christ’s sacrifice on the heavenly temple itself: Thus it was necessary for the sketches of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves need better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

Christ’s sacrifice is thus said to purify the heavenly sanctuary in the same way that the high priest purified the earthly sanctuary through the Day of Atonement ritual. It will no doubt sound strange to modern readers to hear of heaven needing purification, but the idea is the same as with the earthly temple: human sin defiles not only the people themselves but also the temple, and the Day of Atonement ritual therefore atones for both the people and the temple.88 The holiness of the temple is tied to the holiness of the people. At this point, the author compares the fact that the Day of Atonement ritual was performed annually with the fact that Christ died and offered his blood only once (vv. 25–26), and it is here that the result of Christ’s sacrifice as effecting forgiveness is given: “he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” (v. 26b). Christ’s sacrifice was an eschatological event, “at the end of the age” (ἐπὶ συντελείᾳ τῶν αἰώνων), and this gives it its once-for-all character. Shortly thereafter the point is repeated that Christ “was offered once to bear the sins of many” (v. 28). Forgiveness of sin is an important effect of Christ’s eschatological Day of Atonement sacrifice. This once-for-all nature of Christ’s sacrifice becomes the emphasis of the final part of this section of Hebrews, 10:1–18. The author’s purpose in making this emphasis, however, shifts. The author returns to the point made back in 9:9 that the earthly sacrifices “cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper.” The chapter opens as follows (10:1–2): Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered, since the worshipers, cleansed once for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin?

In 10:3–10, the author builds on this point about the inadequacy of the old sacrifices to argue for their obsolescence, an argument whose details we can forgo. In v. 11, he returns to the point of the inadequacy of the old sacrifices,

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this time contrasting their inadequacy with what Christ’s sacrifice accomplished, in a passage that might well be the climax of the whole letter: And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” 13 and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.” 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

The accomplishment of Christ’s sacrifice is stated in almost outlandish terms: the perfection “for all time” of those on whose behalf the sacrifice is made. This climaxes the line of thought begun in 9:9, that the chief limitation of the earthly sacrificial system was its inability to affect the worshipers’ conscience, to actually change people on the inside. Christ’s sacrifice is superior ultimately because of its ability to do just this. We discussed in chapter 2, on the general practice of sacrifice in the ancient world, that one important outcome of sacrifice was a perceived changed relationship on the part of the beneficiary of the sacrifice to the divine recipient of the sacrifice. Hebrews presents Christ’s sacrifice on behalf of the people as the ultimate fulfillment of that goal. Humans are perfected before God. The atonement accomplished by Christ is not pictured in transactional terms but as a matter of human transformation, and a transformation of stunning quality. The entire argument of 9:1–10:18 is wrapped up by quoting again parts of Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant from Jer 31:31–34 (Heb 10:15–18): And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, 16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them   after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts,   and I will write them on their minds,” 17 he also adds,   “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” 18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

The author quotes the parts of the prophecy that emphasize the interiority of the new covenant and God’s forgiveness of the people’s sin, and he concludes that because Christ’s sacrifice of himself was once-for-all, no further sin sacrifices are needed. Christ’s heavenly sacrifice has ended any need for the earthly ones. Christ’s offering of himself in the heavenly sanctuary was thus both the covenant sacrifice that instituted a newly called people of God and the Day of

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Atonement sacrifice that perfects this people, enabling them to live in a relationship to God such as was not possible before. This perfection includes the forgiveness of sin and the purification of the conscience. The resulting relationship with God is described with a remarkable set of vivid images in 12:22–24: But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

At this point it is worth a return to 9:14, where the author stated that the purpose of Christ’s sacrifice was “to purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God.” The ultimate purpose of Christ’s atoning sacrifice was to create a people who can truly worship God. We noted earlier the use of λατρεύω here for “worship,” a word with a strong cultic sense. When we remember also from our last chapter the use of sacrificial language in Hebrews to describe the life of the community, the value and interconnectedness of the sacrificial system for Hebrews stands out. Two of the passages we treated there are the following (12:28; 13:15–16): Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship [λατρεύω again] with reverence and awe. Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Christ’s sacrifice inaugurated a new covenant and was the ultimate atoning sacrifice, making obsolete any other atoning sacrifices, but the newly madepossible relationship to God is still described in priestly and sacrificial terms. The sacrificial system provides the paradigmatic images of the worship of God, and the life of the new community is thus described with these images. The perfected community is fundamentally a worshiping community, where deeds of kindness and sharing are taken up into the sacrificing, worshipful activity of the community. The community perfected by the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus can itself offer sacrifices—can worship—in a way not possible before. To conclude with another verse discussed in our last chapter, “We have an altar from which those who worship in the tabernacle have no right to eat” (13:10).89

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1 John 1 John interprets Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice in a fairly straightforward fashion. The letter’s language suggests the Day of Atonement ritual is the primary source for the letter’s interpretation. The interpretation of Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice relates to two central themes of the letter, the love of God for the world and the love that Christians are to show to each other. The key verse comes in the opening proclamation of the letter (1:5–7): This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; 7 but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

The last phrase is obviously the claim of our main concern. It is the use of the word “cleanses” that specifically suggests the Day of Atonement ritual rather than one of the regular atoning offerings.90 The verb is καθαρίζω, the verb that in Hebrews the NRSV usually translates as “purify.” This is the word used in the LXX description of the Day of Atonement ritual (Lev 16), and in fact the whole phrase is close to the LXX of Lev 16:30a: “For on this day he will make atonement for you, to cleanse you from all your sins before the Lord.”91 The Greek for the parallel parts of 1 John 1:7 and Lev 16:30 are as follows: 1 John 1:7 Lev 16:30

καθαρίζει ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ πάσης ἁμαρτίας καθαρίσαι ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ πασῶν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν

While 1 John 1:7 is not quoting Lev 16:30 (at least not any version that has survived), the similarity is suggestive. Καθαρίζω is used three other times in the LXX description of the Day of Atonement ritual (Lev 16:19, 20, 30b). Conversely, it is not used at all in the descriptions of the regular atoning sacrifices, the purification (hattat) and guilt (asham) offerings. Nor is it used in the description of the burnt offering (olah), which sometimes also was used for atonement. The emphasis on Jesus’ blood cleansing from “all” sin also suggests the expansive effect of the Day of Atonement ritual rather than the regular offerings, which were for specific sins or ritual defilements. This expansive language of cleansing is repeated in 1 John just two verses later, when the claim is made that if we confess our sins, God “will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1:9b). The interpretation of Christ’s death as an atoning sacrifice occurs twice more in 1 John, in 2:2 and 4:10. In both places, it is referred to using the

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word ἱλασμός. These are the only two occurrences of this word in the entire New Testament, and it appears only a handful of times in the LXX. Outside of the biblical literature, it conveys the meaning of “the propitiation of gods, demons, or the departed, from whom demonstrations of favour are sought, or whose wrath has been provoked.”92 1 John 4:10, however, says that God “sent his Son to be the ἱλασμόν for our sins,” and since God is the one making the ἱλασμός available, it makes little sense to translate with a sense of propitiation (although the KJV and ESV do just that). The NRSV, therefore, rightly translates ἱλασμός simply as “atoning sacrifice” (so also NIV; the NLT is similar). This is in keeping with the LXX usage, which is varied among the small number of occurrences, referring to the guilt offering (Num 5:8),93 the purification offering (Ezek 44:27), and to atonement in general (Amos 8:14; Psalm 129:4; 2 Macc 3:33); in Lev 25:9, it is the word for “atonement” in reference to “the Day of Atonement.” Ἵλασμός is general enough a term, therefore, that the context of its use will be largely determinative of its specific sense. Since 2:2 occurs as a part of the same discussion of sin as 1:7, we should see 2:2 as reflecting the claim about Jesus’ sacrificial death in 1:7.94 2:2 reads, “and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” That Jesus is the atoning sacrifice (ἱλασμός) for our sins thus parallels the claim from 1:7 that his blood “cleanses us from all sin.” The important addition in 2:2 is that his sacrifice was effective “for the sins of the whole world.” While the Day of Atonement was effective for all the people of Israel, Jesus’ sacrificial death atones for an even broader people. The second use of ἱλασμός, in 4:10, occurs in the context of 1 John’s famous discourse on God and love (4:7–21), which asserts that “God is love” (4:8, 16) and that the Christian community must therefore show love for one another (4:7, 11, 19–21). God’s sending Jesus to be an atoning sacrifice is presented as the fundamental demonstration of divine love: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (v. 10), where “atoning sacrifice” is again ἱλασμός. Note that the whole phrase, in fact, is the same as in 2:2: “the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (ἱλασμὸν περὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν).95 The use in 4:10 thus clearly reflects its use in 2:2 and hence the meaning of 1:7. The new point is the claim that God’s putting forth Jesus as such a sacrifice is a demonstration of God’s love, in fact is the essence of love itself—“In this is love!” There are several other places in 1 John that do not directly describe Jesus’ death as a sacrifice but that are best read as reflecting these places that do. In 2:12, the author tells the audience that “your sins are forgiven on account of his name.” In 3:5 we have the declaration that “he was revealed to take away sins.” 3:16 actually gives us a preview of 4:10: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for

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one another.” Finally, shortly after 4:10, we read that “the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world” (4:14). While we probably should not limit the meaning of these passages to the idea of Jesus’ death as the Day of Atonement sacrifice from 1:7, certainly we should read these passages as at least including the idea, and probably front and center.96 Not to be missed is the fact that, as in Hebrews, the interpretation of Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice is portrayed as shaping the character of the community. Since Jesus’ death was the demonstration of God’s love, Christians are called to love. Christ’s laying down his life was both a sacrifice and an example to be followed. Note in this combination that the exemplary aspect of Christ’s death is based on the interpretation of his death as a sacrifice— Christ’s death on the cross is seen as the epitome of love precisely because it was an atoning sacrifice. If Christ’s death did not accomplish something for others, it could not be a model to imitate. For Christians, the call “to lay down our lives for one another” in imitation of Christ (3:16) is, of course, not a call to atone for one another’s sins, but to serve one another. The very next verse (3:17) makes this clear: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” The interpretation of Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice, then, is important both in providing forgiveness and in providing an example of love, and the latter of these is dependent on the former. Romans 3:25 and 5:6–11 Paul refers to Christ’s death as an atoning sacrifice in Rom 3:25, in the midst of a section in Romans (3:21–31) always recognized as being central to the letter and to Pauline theology in general.97 Having established the sinfulness of both Gentiles and Jews in 1:18–3:20, beginning in 3:21 Paul presents the key idea that both groups may be made righteous by God’s grace in Christ and that this grace is a demonstration of God’s own character of being righteous. Since it is difficult to appreciate the role that v. 25 plays without the full context, it is worth quoting all of 3:21–26: But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23 since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a ἱλαστήριον by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26 it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

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I have made one change to the NRSV text, of course, which is to leave untranslated the Greek term ἱλαστήριον in v. 25. The NRSV’s translation of this word is “sacrifice of atonement,” and in a footnote it gives the alternative translation of “place of atonement.” The provision of these two alternatives reflects the vigorous scholarly debate over the sense of the word as Paul uses it. This is the only occurrence of ἱλαστήριον in the Pauline corpus, and the only other use of the word in the New Testament is in Heb 9:5. Based on other uses of the word in the time period, there are three basic possibilities for its meaning: (1) In pagan sources, it usually refers to propitiatory offerings, that is, to gifts given to please a deity.98 Sometimes these gifts are for dedicatory purposes.99 (2) In the LXX, throughout Exodus and Leviticus (and once in Numbers, a total of twenty-one times in these three books), it translates the Hebrew ‫כַּפֹ ֶרת‬, traditionally rendered in English as “mercy seat,” the gold slab that was atop the ark of the covenant in between the two cherubim.100 This is the clear meaning in Heb 9:5. (3) In the LXX, five times in Ezekiel (all in 43:14–20) and once in Amos 9:1, it refers to a part of the temple’s altar. The first of these possibilities is behind the translation of “propitiation” used by the KJV and ESV. It has the advantage of being the most common meaning of the day, but as v. 25 asserts that it was God who put forward Jesus as a ἱλαστήριον, it does not fit the context especially well; normally it is humans who propitiate deities, not deities themselves. It also relies on a mainly pagan meaning of the word, rather than on the LXX use. For these reasons (and due also, perhaps, to a common theological aversion of the idea of propitiation), interpreters today tend to avoid this route of interpretation. Of the two LXX uses, there is little to no argument to be made that Paul uses the word specifically in the sense of Ezekiel and Amos. Most interpreters today, therefore, hold that ἱλαστήριον in Rom 3:25 refers to the mercy seat of the ark specifically or, allowing for a broadening of the meaning from the Ezekiel and Amos uses, to a more general “place of atonement.”101 What would Paul mean by saying that God presented Jesus as a “mercy seat” or place of atonement? Without a doubt, it would be a reference to the Day of Atonement ritual, since this is the only time the mercy seat played a role in any atonement ritual. As we have seen, as a part of this ritual the high priest sprinkled the mercy seat with sacrificial blood in order to cleanse the temple from the people’s sins. The reference to Jesus’ blood in Rom 3:25 would fit well with this understanding. The point would be that through Christ’s death

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God has provided a new means of atonement, a means available to both Jews and Gentiles. As the second half of the verse says, God had overlooked the sins previously committed by Gentiles, but now God has provided a means for their forgiveness. For those who have faith in Jesus (or who share the faith of Jesus, as many today prefer to translate v. 26),102 Christ’s death provides the means for justification, for a relationship to God, not formerly available. Some interpreters see a yet stronger point, that in calling Christ a new ἱλαστήριον Paul means that the old means of atonement, the temple cult, has been replaced.103 This claim goes beyond what Paul actually says, however. While it is possible to draw such an implication from Paul’s argument, it is not a course that Paul himself pursues. There is another possible way to interpret ἱλαστήριον in Rom 3:25. It will be observed that none of the three meanings listed earlier lead obviously to the NRSV’s translation of “sacrifice of atonement.” Some interpreters find that none of the three fit the context especially well or that there is not a sufficiently established cultic context for Paul’s readers to be expected to have understood a reference to the mercy seat. They instead suggest turning to the meaning of the verb that ἱλαστήριον is based on, ἱλάσκομαι, which can have the general sense of “to atone” (as in Heb 2:17).104 Thus, it is argued, the word in Rom 3:25 refers to Jesus as an atoning sacrifice, leading to the translation of the NRSV and many other English Bibles.105 Interpreters who argue for this meaning also usually point to a particular instance of ἱλαστήριον in 4 Macc 17:22 that can be read to suggest the idea of an atoning sacrifice. The precise date of 4 Maccabees is unknown, but it is usually held to have been written around the same time as the New Testament. The context of the verse is a discussion of the martyrdom of faithful Jews under the reign of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes, whose persecutions led to the Maccabean revolt. The writing says the following of these martyrs in the verse: “And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as a ἱλαστήριον, divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated” (the NRSV’s translation is “atoning sacrifice”). Since a reference to the mercy seat here seems even less natural than in Romans, it may be argued that the verse interprets the martyrs’ death as an atoning sacrifice, and then that Rom 3:25 may be read in the same sense. There is a problem with this translation, however, which is that there is no evidence outside of Rom 3:25 and 4 Macc 17:22 that ἱλαστήριον can carry this meaning. As Daniel P. Bailey has shown, ἱλαστήριον “never denotes an animal victim in any known source.”106 Bailey argues that in 4 Macc 17:22, the word has the sense of a propitiatory gift, the first sense listed earlier, and that therefore it provides no parallel to the use of the word in Rom 3:25.107 With most recent interpreters, then, I consider that it is most likely that ἱλαστήριον in Rom 3:25 is best understood as a reference to the mercy seat.

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Either way, it is clear that Paul interprets Jesus’ death as the new means of atonement, the advantage of which is that this means is available to Jews and Gentiles alike. Morna Hooker argues for the meaning of the atoning sacrifice for the word, but she still sees the Day of Atonement ritual as what was probably in Paul’s mind, given that the Day of Atonement ritual had the broadest atoning impact on the people of Israel.108 For readers familiar with the LXX of Exodus and Leviticus—and surely Paul and many of his first readers were—it is hard not to see at least an echo of the Day of Atonement ritual behind the use of ἱλαστήριον. Jesus’ death is not mentioned again in Romans until the last verse of chapter 4, where, after his discussion of the importance of Abraham, Paul returns to the importance of Jesus, saying that Jesus “was handed over because of our trespasses and raised for our justification” (v. 25, my own translation; Gk παρεδόθη διὰ τὰ παραπτώματα ἡμῶν καὶ ἠγέρθη διὰ τὴν δικαίωσιν ἡμῶν).109 No explanation is given immediately for how Jesus’ death addressed the problem of “our trespasses,” so it seems likely that Paul meant the phrase to refer back to 3:25, which does, indeed, make perfect sense. It is generally held that the phrase also reflects the LXX of Isa 53:12, which says that the servant “was handed over because of their sins” (διὰ τὰς ἁμαρτίας αὐτῶν παρεδόθη). This may well be, but without any elaboration, it is not clear what effect this allusion would have on the meaning of Paul’s phrase.110 Shortly thereafter, in Romans 5:6–11, we get a more extended discussion of the meaning of Jesus’ death: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. 9 Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. 11 But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

The opening sentences, vv. 6–8, emphasize that Jesus died “for the ungodly” (v. 6, ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν) or “sinners” (v. 8, ἁμαρτωλῶν), without specifying what exactly his death accomplished or how it did so. Martin Hengel has shown that in the Greco-Roman world, the expressions “to die for” and “to give oneself for” were commonly used to describe the voluntary death of individuals, usually in battle, for the sake of their city, friends, or family.111 Jesus’ death is said to be for a very different kind of group—the undeserving.

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It is not until v. 9 that the nature and means of the accomplishment of Jesus’ death is given. Jesus’ death is said to have resulted in justification, and this result was accomplished “by his blood.” Both points are clear echoes of 3:24–25, where justification is said to be accomplished by God having put forward Christ as a ἱλαστήριον “in his blood”; the latter phrase is the same used in 5:9.112 Hence, the nature and means of the accomplishment of Jesus’ death in v. 9 is in essence the same as it was in 3:24–25. Verses 10–11 expand on the accomplishment, adding the idea of being “reconciled to God.” Eschatological salvation from God’s wrath is also mentioned in vv. 9–10, but the reference to Christ’s “life” in v. 10 suggests that Christ’s resurrected status is seen more as the basis for this than his death (we see this also in 8:34), though certainly Paul draws no sharp distinction between the import of the two events. Reconciliation can be seen as a natural extension of the ideas of atonement and justification, since the purpose of putting Christ forward as a ἱλαστήριον was to bring those formally under God’s judgment into covenant relationship with God, thus reconciling them. The opening of Romans 5 made this clear: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand” (5:1–2a). Romans 3:25 is thus clearly the lynchpin for understanding the interpretation of Jesus’ sacrificial death in Romans. It is the passage that specifies how it was that Jesus’ death was atoning and resulted in justification. The later references to Jesus’ death in 4:25 and 5:6–11 assume 3:25, expanding on the accomplishments of his sacrificial death but not on the means of the accomplishments (the same is true of a brief additional reference to Jesus’ death in 8:32113). There is, however, one more reference to Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in Romans to consider, which will expand on the means of the accomplishments slightly. This is in 8:3. Romans 8:3 Romans 8:3 contains a straightforward reference to Jesus as a sin offering (or a purification offering, as discussed in our earlier chapter, but here it clearly is for sin). Unfortunately, the NRSV and many other English Bibles translate the reference so as to miss the point. Here is the NIV of 8:1–4, which translates more helpfully in this regard: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the

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flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

The phrase “to be a sin offering” translates περὶ ἁμαρτίας, which is the precise phrase used throughout the LXX to translate the Hebrew hattat sacrifice, the purification offering. Recall from chapter 3 that the same Hebrew word was used for both “sin” and “purification offering,” the latter of which has traditionally been translated as “sin offering” because of the connection. Since the Greek word for sin, ἁμαρτία, was not normally used to denote a sacrifice, the LXX translators nearly always used the specific form περὶ ἁμαρτίας to make it clear when the sacrifice was meant. Περὶ ἁμαρτίας thus appears dozens of times in the LXX. The greatest number of occurrences are in Leviticus and Numbers, but there are also uses in the narrative and prophetic literature.114 Anyone for whom the LXX was scripture would have recognized the phrase easily. The “to be a sin offering” or “as a sin offering” translation makes perfect sense in the context. Paul established in Romans 7, the preceding chapter, that the law was powerless to free people from bondage to sin, and in 8:1–17, he presents the Holy Spirit as the solution to the problem of sin, as we see laid out in brief in vv. 1–4. In presenting Christ’s role in the achievement of redemption from sin, it is easy to see how interpreting Christ’s death as a sacrifice for sin would fit in. Christ’s death provided the act of cleansing, of forgiveness, and the Spirit enables Christians to live transformed lives free from the slavery of sin. We saw just above that Paul interpreted Christ’s death as a sacrifice in Rom 3:25 and 5:6–11. Able readers are well prepared when they come to Rom 8:3 to understand Christ’s death as an atoning sacrifice.115 Why, then, do so many English Bibles avoid translating the phrase as a reference to sacrifice? It is hard to see any reason for doing so other than anti-sacrifice bias (the NRSV and some others do give the sacrifice option in a footnote). Commentators are much more likely to recognize the sacrificial reference, although a few likewise resist it.116 The alternative is to translate the phrase word-for-word as “for sin” or “about sin,” which leads to a translation of something like “God condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin” (my translation). What “for sin” would mean here is far from clear; the NRSV gives a more expansive translation by using “to deal with sin,” no doubt to provide some clarity. Seeing in περὶ ἁμαρτίας in 8:3 the interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sin offering is the most natural reading of the phrase, and it makes sense in both the immediate context and the larger context of the interpretation of Christ’s death in Romans as a whole. Since the Day of Atonement sacrifice was a sin offering (Lev 16:15), it especially fits well with the important statement about Christ’s death in Rom 3:25 that we discussed earlier. It can be seen to clarify

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that, even going with the “mercy seat” rendering of ἱλαστήριον, Jesus’ death itself was still an atoning sacrifice. 1 Corinthians 15:3 and Galatians 1:4 These two passages both contain the same phrase, that Christ died “for our sins” (ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν).117 Both instances are usually held to be part of pre-Pauline confessional statements or at least to reflect the language of such statements (in 1 Cor 15:3 this is patent). Neither passage makes it clear that Christ’s death is being interpreted as a sacrifice, but for both passages, larger contextual issues suggest that it is, and thus we likely have here two more references to Christ’s death as an atoning sacrifice. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul addresses the problem in Corinth of some community members claiming that there will be no future resurrection of the dead. The details of the problem and of Paul’s way of dealing with it are not important for our purposes, but Paul begins the discussion by reminding the Corinthians of the gospel message “that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received” (15:1). The first part of this reminder contains the portion of our interest: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures” (v. 3). Paul’s real interest in the chapter is in Christ’s resurrection, not his death, so he refers to it here merely because it is part of his basic message, and he does not elaborate on it further. The idea that Christ died “for our sins” does not in itself imply a sacrificial interpretation of Christ’s death. The phrase asserts that Christ’s death addressed the problem of sins, but it does not specify how. One could imagine, for instance, that Paul means here that Christ paid the penalty for our sins, and certainly many have read it that way.118 In the context of 1 Corinthians, however, by the time readers reach chapter 15, they have seen multiple references to Christ’s death as a sacrifice; we have discussed these references as a part of the Lord’s Supper material in chapters 10–11 and the Passover lamb in 5:7. While these earlier references were not to atoning sacrifices, the idea that Christ’s death was a sacrifice “for you” (11:24, ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν) is well established in the letter. The statement that “Christ died for our sins” makes simple, perfect sense as a claim that Christ’s death atoned for our sins as a sacrifice. It is a far simpler explanation of the phrase than seeing a highly subtle yet overwhelmingly significant use of Isaiah 53, an interpretation some have put forth (it ought to be a basic principle of interpretation that subtle allusions cannot become the basis for interpretations of massive importance).119 We have noted previously that there is a tendency in the New Testament to combine types of sacrifice, so it is not hard to imagine Paul’s Corinthian audience adding to their understanding of Christ’s sacrificial death that it was also

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atoning. Of course, Paul assumes that they already know that his death was “for our sins,” anyway, as the verse specifies. In Gal 1:4, the phrase occurs in the midst of Paul’s opening benediction and doxology (1:3–5): Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Unlike 1 Corinthians 15:3, for this passage, there is no established context for the treatment of Christ’s death as a sacrifice. In fact, the entire book of Galatians contains no clear references to Christ’s death as a sacrifice (we will look at two additional possible references below). Thus, our aforementioned caveat about the meaning of “for our sins” applies all the more here. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to see here a sacrificial reference. Given the location of these verses, whether or not the words are from an early Christian confession, Paul must be relying on commonly understood ideas about Christ among early Christian communities.120 A sacrificial interpretation of Christ’s death would certainly fit the bill. Moreover, the combination of an atoning sacrifice with the idea of being rescued “from the present evil age” is similar to what Paul writes in Rom 3:24–25, where language of redemption is combined with the notion of an atoning sacrifice. We see similar combinations in Eph 1:7, in 1 Pet 1:18–19, and in Heb 9:12, all passages we treated earlier. While this conclusion must remain tentative, there is more warrant for understanding the reference as a sacrifice than as anything else. ECLECTIC AND UNIQUE TEXTS Not all references to Jesus’ death as a sacrifice fit neatly under the three previous categories. We have observed several times already the tendency of texts based primarily on one type of sacrifice to include aspects of other types of sacrifice. We saw this first in Matthew’s Last Supper account, where Jesus’ death interpreted as the covenant sacrifice is also said to be “for the forgiveness of sins” (26:28). The place where this combining occurs in most sophisticated fashion is in Hebrews, where it is crucial that Jesus is both the covenant sacrifice and the Day of Atonement sacrifice. In other passages, to be treated here, no one type of sacrifice is clearly at the forefront of the sacrificial imagery; instead, these passages seem to combine different types of sacrifice without being concerned about which is primarily in view. This is the case in one extended passage, John 6:47–56, and in some individual verses where Jesus’ death is said to be “for us” but where

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the precise sense of this claim is not made clear. In addition to these eclectic texts, there are also two unique interpretations of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, one as a sacrifice for consecration (John 17:19), and one to his sacrifice as a gift (Eph 5:2). John 6:47–56 John 6:47–56 occurs near the end of Jesus’ difficult discourse that follows the feeding miracle and the walking on water episode in John. Jesus tells the crowd who has sought him not to work “for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (6:27). The crowd then asks Jesus for a sign such as when the Israelites were fed by manna in the desert (6:30–31). In the ensuing dialog, Jesus gives the well-known “I am” saying, “I am the bread of life” (6:35). It is this idea that he picks up on and repeats at the beginning of our passage (6:47–51): Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

If one follows Jesus’ words up through v. 50, one would probably conclude that eating the bread that is Jesus is merely a metaphor for believing in Jesus. Verse 47 echoes earlier statements in the discourse about the importance of believing in Jesus, including the idea that doing so leads to eternal life (vv. 29, 35–36, 40). Since v. 50 promises eternal life for those who eat Jesus in the same way that v. 47 does for believing, it would be natural to conclude that eating simply means believing. Note, too, that Jesus’ identity as the bread of life has been based solely on the comparison with the manna experience. Up through v. 50, there is no obvious reference to notions of sacrifice. Verse 51 makes the decisive turn. Jesus repeats that he is the bread and that eating this bread leads to eternal life, but then he adds, “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The idea of Jesus “giving” himself certainly suggests his death, all the more so when combined with a reference to his “flesh” (σάρξ). It is the combination of this idea of a meaningful death with the idea of eating that suggests the idea of a sacrifice. With most sacrifices (all except the burnt offering), the priests or offerers ate portions of the sacrifice, symbolizing communion with God, as we have discussed. Jesus’ bringing together the ideas of his death being for others and that others will eat his flesh introduces the sacrificial imagery.121

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As the scene continues, those in conversation with Jesus wonder, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (v. 52). Jesus replies as follows (vv. 53b-56): Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

The significant addition to the imagery here is the inclusion of Jesus’ blood. This addition refocuses the imagery briefly away from the manna story to the idea of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice (not that the manna symbolism is lost; v. 55 still builds on that, and it returns to focus in v. 58). Blood rites, we have seen many times now, were central in the offering of sacrifice. Of course, in Jewish sacrifices, these never involved drinking the blood—that, recall from Lev 17, was forbidden—and thus it is hard to imagine that the introduction of the idea here has any other basis than the Last Supper accounts. And there, the combination of body and blood likewise has its roots in sacrifice. We discussed earlier the prominence of the idea in John’s Gospel of Jesus as the Passover lamb. Since the Passover lamb was eaten as a part of the celebration, one could well suggest that the sacrifice imagery in this passage is based on the identity of Jesus as the Passover lamb. In 6:4, the author tells us, in fact, that the scene takes place near the time of Passover. The lamb identity of Jesus in John’s Gospel, however, as we saw earlier, was itself an eclectic image, combining the idea of Passover with that of atonement, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29). Here Jesus says that he gives himself “for the life of the world” (6:51). The echo of the Last Supper also suggests an allusion to the covenant sacrifice, even if somewhat distant. Finally, v. 56 says that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” This sounds like the kind of communion associated with the shelamim, the offering of well-being. The sacrifice of Jesus in this passage, therefore, with its combination of the promise of eternal life and divine fellowship, takes on the functions of multiple kinds of sacrifices in the Jewish system. It is not hard to imagine why this would be the case. When Jesus’ sacrificial death is perceived as eschatological, as final in some sense, new life can be described as a new covenant, as the forgiveness of sin, as a final exodus, or as communion with God. The passage displays the multivalent power of sacrificial imagery. The “For Us” Texts That Jesus’ death was “for” (ὑπέρ) humans is a fundamental conviction of the New Testament writings, an interpretation even more basic than that of his

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death being a sacrifice. It is expressed in a variety of ways, many of which we have already discussed, including the idea that Jesus’ blood was poured out “for many” (Mark 14:24), that he gave himself “for the life of the world” (John 6:51), and that “while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). The most common types of expressions for the idea are two types found in the Pauline writings, that Jesus “died for” people (“us,” “the ungodly,” etc.; Rom 5:6–8; 14:15; 1 Cor 8:11; 2 Cor 5:14–15; 1 Thess 5:10) and that Jesus “gave himself [up] for” or “was given up for” people (Rom 8:32; Gal 2:20; Eph 5:2, 25; 1 Tim 2:6; Titus 2:14).122 Other similar expressions can be found in John 10:15; 11:50; 15:13; 1 Cor 1:13; 11:24; Heb 2:9.123 On their own, these expressions do not convey any particular idea of how Jesus’ death was “for us,” merely that it was so. We discussed earlier in connection with Rom 5:6–8 that the most common background for such expressions in the Greco-Roman world was the voluntary giving up of an individual for the sake of community, friends, or family, as demonstrated by Hengel. Surely every culture that has ever existed has the notion of one person dying to protect or save another, in a variety of contexts and in a variety of ways. We cannot assume a single idea lying behind the use of these expressions. Rather, we have to attend to the contexts of their use. For our purposes, this means that we cannot assume a sacrificial meaning. In 1 Thess 5:9–10, for instance, we have the following: For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.

There is little to go on here to try to determine what Paul meant by the claim that Christ “died for us,” nor is there any real help in the surrounding verses or even in the rest of the letter. One might conclude that “died for us” here implies the idea of Christ’s death as a sacrifice, but this conclusion could only be drawn if one were to decide from looking at all of Paul’s other uses of the expression either that the expression always has a sacrificial meaning or that none of the other possible meanings fit well here. We will see shortly below that the former is not the case, and I do not think that the latter is, either. The most we can say about the expression in 1 Thess 5:9–10, then, is that a sacrificial interpretation makes sense and would fit with Paul’s ideas expressed elsewhere—but that there might be other possible meanings. Clearly it is not Paul’s purpose in the passage to explain the workings of Christ’s death as a benefit for us. The effect of Christ’s death, that “we may live with him,” is the important point. We have, however, already discussed a number of passages where these expressions do convey a sacrificial sense: Mark 14:24; John 6:51; Rom 5:6–8;

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8:32; and 1 Cor 11:24. To these, we can add two more, Gal 2:20 and Titus 2:14, although the first is tentative. Gal 2:19b-20 is well known: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” There is nothing in the verse itself that suggests a sacrificial interpretation, but we saw just earlier that readers would likely have understood Gal 1:4, “who gave himself for our sins,” as an expression of sacrifice, and since there has been no other mention of Christ’s death between these two verses, it seems likely that “gave himself for me” in 2:20 reflects “gave himself for our sins” in 1:4 (the Greek words for “gave” are different, however, δόντος in 1:4 and παραδόντος in 2:20). This conclusion is not certain, however, since 1:4 is not clear, as discussed earlier, and since Gal 3:13 contains a different interpretation of Christ’s death, as we will see further in the chapter. With Titus 2:14, there is a basis for a sacrificial interpretation in the verse itself. The verse occurs at the end of a long sentence (2:11–14) that combines a statement of God’s saving grace with moral exhortation. In the ESV, which follows the Greek syntax more closely than the NRSV, the passage reads as follows: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

The language of v. 14 is rooted in the exodus tradition. The Greek verb behind “to redeem” here is λυτρόω, the same verb used in 1 Pet 1:18, and in our discussion of that verse earlier we noted that it is the verb used throughout the LXX to speak of God’s redemption of Israel from Egypt. Even more tightly connected is the expression “a people for his own possession” (λαὸν περιούσιον), used five times in the LXX of Exodus and Deuteronomy—and nowhere else in the LXX—to describe God’s choosing of Israel to be the covenant people (Exod 19:5; 23:22; Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18). The first of these is a part of God’s opening words to the Israelites via Moses at Mt. Sinai and hence is foundational for the rest: “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.” “Treasured possession” here is the phrase that in the LXX becomes λαὸς περιούσιος, the “people for his own possession” of Titus 2:14. Our verse in Titus contains echoes of other parts of scripture, too. Ezekiel 36–37 contains the idea of God purifying Israel in order that Israel would be renewed as

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God’s people (see esp. 36:25–33; 37:23),124 and the phrase “redeem us from all lawlessness” is very close to the LXX of Psalm 130:8 (129:8 LXX), which also speaks of God’s redemption of Israel.125 It is the mention of Christ’s death, that he “gave himself for us,” in connection with redemption and purification that entails the sacrificial interpretation. Given the strong exodus ties, one might suppose that the chief image here is of the Passover lamb. Christ’s death provides a new exodus, “salvation for all people” (v. 11), enabling a new covenant people of God, in the same way that the Passover ritual did in the flight from Egypt. However, the language of redemption “from all lawlessness” and purification sounds more like Day of Atonement language, such as is seen in Lev 16:30: “For on this day atonement shall be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before the Lord.” The LXX verb for “cleanse” here is καθαρίζω, the same verb translated as “purify” in Titus 2:14. Thus, we should see the sacrificial image here as eclectic, combining Passover and atonement traditions. The context of moral exhortation is important to note. The people of God’s “own possession” are said to be “zealous for good works,” and this description is fleshed out in v. 12. This context also has exodus ties, for the creation of a special people of God in the Torah brings with it the covenant obligation to keep God’s commandments. Of the places where λαὸς περιούσιος appears in the LXX, Deut 26:18 makes this especially clear: “Today the Lord has obtained your agreement: to be his treasured people, as he promised you, and to keep his commandments.” This combination of sacrificial Christology and moral exhortation is similar to what we saw in 1 Peter 1:18–19. In both places, the exodus setting is key for connecting the importance of Christ’s sacrificial death with the call to live morally. In both places, the Egypt from which the Christian community is redeemed is viewed as life apart from God’s call, “all lawlessness” in Titus 2:14 and “the futile ways inherited from your ancestors” in 1 Pet 1:18. As also seen in Hebrews and in 1 John, the interpretation of Christ’s death as a sacrifice relates intimately to the identity of the Christian community and the resulting behavioral expectations of Christian people. Ephesians 5:2 Ephesians 5:2 presents us with another image of Christ’s death as a sacrifice in the midst of moral exhortation. It is also another instance of the “gave himself up for us” expression. The verse is unique in the New Testament, however, in its portrayal of Christ’s death as a sacrifice for the purpose of gift-giving. Ephesians 5:1–2 reads as follows: Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

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The Greek of the last clause is προσφορὰν καὶ θυσίαν τῷ θεῷ εἰς ὀσμὴν εὐωδίας, which the NASB’s translation captures more precisely than the NRSV’s: “an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.” The key terms are all ones we have seen before in our study. Προσφορά and θυσία are general terms for sacrifice, with προσφορά carrying the specific connotation of an offering. Ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας is the LXX translation of the Hebrew ַ‫ריחַ ־נִ יחֹוח‬,ֵ “pleasing aroma,” the term used to describe God’s acceptance of a sacrificial gift. We discussed in the last chapter the only other New Testament use of this phrase, in Phil 4:18, where Paul describes the gifts sent to him by the Philippians as “a pleasing aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God” (ὀσμὴν εὐωδίας, θυσίαν δεκτήν, εὐάρεστον τῷ θεῷ).126 The language here is quite similar. The unique aspect of this reference is that, rather than Christ’s death being presented as atoning, as initiating a new exodus, or as a covenant sacrifice, it is presented as a gift that pleases God. The point is not that God enjoyed his death but that his death was an act of self-giving love and for that reason pleasing to God.127 His death is a sacrificial gift in the same way that the Philippians’ gifts to Paul were said to be a sacrifice, and thus similar to the other places from our last chapter where we saw various acts of the Christian community being described as a sacrifice. The author of Ephesians exhorts his audience to “live in love,” to show the same kind of love in their lives as Christ showed by giving up his life. The implication is that in doing so, they would be making the same kind of offering to God as Christ did. Later in the chapter, in the instructions given to husbands, we get an echo of 5:2: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (5:25). While there is no sacrificial language here, the parallel to v. 2 is so close that it is hard not to see the instruction to husbands as an example of the exhortation of v. 2. Thus, the implication is that for husbands to show this kind of love would also be accepted as the same kind of sacrifice, a pleasing gift to God. This interpretation of Christ’s death as a sacrifice differs from every other sacrificial interpretation of his death in the New Testament in that it views Christ’s sacrificial death not as a unique, eschaton-defining event but as an exemplary act, a model to be followed. This is not to say that Ephesians does not also view his death as a unique kind of sacrifice; we saw such interpretations earlier in 1:7, in 2:13–18, and in 3:12. Here, however, the point is that Christ gave his life in a way that pleases God in the way that sacrifices do, and the audience is encouraged to love others in the same way. Sacrificial Christology once again relates to the moral life of the Christian community.

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John 17:19 This verse is not as obviously a sacrificial reference as most we have treated, but there is a good case to be made that it should be seen as such, and most commentators do understand it this way. The context is Jesus’ prayer that concludes his “farewell discourse” in John’s Gospel, the long section (chapters 14–17) of Jesus’ teaching (with a little dialog mixed in) following the Last Supper. He is praying on behalf of his disciples, and his words include the following (17:17–19): Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

The phrase of interest is “I sanctify myself” (ἁγιάζω ἐμαυτόν). Probably a clearer translation here would be “I consecrate myself” (so ESV, RSV). Ἁγιάζω is used throughout the LXX, especially in the Pentateuch, to refer to the consecration both of priests and of the tabernacle and its holy furnishings. Occasionally, it is used to refer to the actual practice of sacrifice, such as when the sacrifice is for the purpose of dedicating firstborns to God (e.g., Deut 15:19).128 It is not in essence a reference to sacrifice, however, but refers to the act of setting persons or things aside as holy to God; it is part of the worldview of sacrifice, where there is a sharp distinction between the holy and the common. Consecration involves moving an entity from the common realm to the realm of the holy. The first question to address is: What does Jesus mean here by consecration? The most natural parallel is with the consecration of priests (see, e.g., Exod 28:41; 29:44; Lev 8:30). Prophets could also be said to be consecrated, however (Jer 1:5), so we should not push the notion of a priestly identity too strongly. The point is that both Jesus and the disciples are consecrated to a special task designated by God. Verse 18 emphasizes the mission of the disciples to the world, which mirrors Christ’s having been sent into the world. This parallel between Jesus’ relationship to the Father and the disciples’ relationship to Jesus is one of the overall themes of the whole prayer (see esp. vv. 20–24). The second question is, in what does this act of consecration consist? Most commentators take this as a reference to Jesus’ upcoming crucifixion, and here is where a reference to sacrifice is usually seen.129 The overall focus of the farewell discourse is on Jesus’ departure through the Passion events, and thus seeing a reference to his death here certainly fits the context. In addition, Jesus says that he consecrates himself “for their sakes,” ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν, and ὑπέρ language is commonly used in John’s Gospel to refer to Jesus’

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death (e.g., 10:11, 15; 11:50–52; 15:13).130 Sacrifices were sometimes used specifically for the purpose of consecration (e.g., Exod 29:26–28; Lev 8:30). The idea is that through the cross Jesus consecrates himself as a sacrifice and priest for the purpose of consecrating his disciples. The NLT, in fact, intriguingly translates the phrase as, “I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them.” The picture is reminiscent of what we see in Hebrews, a parallel Raymond Brown has elucidated, suggesting that Jesus here is seen “not only as the incarnation of God’s word consecrated by the Father but also as a priest offering himself as a victim for those whom God has given him.”131 John 17 is indeed sometimes referred to as Jesus’ “high-priestly prayer.” Thus, while a subtle reference, it does seem that we have in John 17:19 a unique interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, a sacrifice done for the purpose of consecration. PASSAGES THAT ARE NOT ABOUT SACRIFICE We treat here briefly three passages that are often understood as interpreting Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, but which I will argue do not actually do so. 2 Corinthians 5:14–21 This passage is part of Paul’s discussion of “the ministry of reconciliation” (v. 18) in 2 Corinthians. Verses at the beginning (vv. 14–15) and end (v. 21) of the passage are sometimes thought to refer to sacrifice, but the cases for seeing explicit references to sacrifice are not very good. The passage begins as follows (vv. 14–15): For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. 15 And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them

Both verses contain instances of the “for us” expression, here with “all” instead of “us.” As we discussed earlier, the expression itself does not denote sacrifice; any sacrificial reference must come from the context in which it is used. These verses contain no language that would suggest a sacrificial interpretation.132 Paul says that “one has died for all; therefore all have died.” Sacrifice did not entail the beneficiaries of the sacrifice themselves dying, neither in a literal nor in a metaphorical sense. The combination of dying and being raised in v. 15 also does not sound like sacrifice; sacrificial victims did not come back to life. The idea here seems more like the idea of dying

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and rising with Christ that we see in Rom 6:1–11, where the experience of believers mirrors that of Christ. This idea appears earlier in 2 Corinthians, too, in 4:7–15. Conversely, there has been no reference to Christ’s death as a sacrifice before this in 2 Corinthians, nor is there any after it. In v. 21, the point of debate is a very specific one. In the verse leading to it, Paul exhorts his audience to be reconciled to God (v. 20). He then asserts in v. 21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” The question is what Paul meant by saying that God made Christ “to be sin.” Quite a few interpreters, relying on the fact that in Hebrew, as we have seen, the word for “sin” can also mean “sin offering” (hattat, the purification offering), argue that Paul does the same with the Greek ἁμαρτία here.133 Among major translations, only the NLT and NJB translate ἁμαρτία here as a sin offering (a few others give it as an alternative translation in a footnote). The Greek for the first half of the verse is τὸν μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν. Does Paul mean “sin” with the first ἁμαρτίαν but “sin offering” with the second one? The case for an affirmative answer to this question is not strong. As we discussed earlier in regard to Rom 8:3, the usual LXX translation of hattat when the sacrifice is meant is not merely ἁμαρτία but rather περὶ ἁμαρτίας. The LXX translators were aware that ἁμαρτία was not commonly used in Greek to refer to a sacrifice and came up with a specific designation for the sacrifice. There are a handful of places in the LXX where ἁμαρτία alone is used to refer to the sacrifice (Exod 29:14; Lev 4:21, 24; 5:9, 12; Num 18:9),134 but in all of these, the context makes it impossible to interpret the use of ἁμαρτία as anything other than a sacrifice; the περί is omitted because the meaning is so obvious. Such is not the case in 2 Cor 5:21. For Paul to have used ἁμαρτία to refer to the offering would have required a περί or some other indication that a sacrifice was meant, and there simply is none.135 Therefore, the great majority of interpreters and English translations are correct in not seeing a sacrificial reference here.136 The idea of Christ being “made sin” is probably best understood as reflecting the Day of Atonement scapegoat ritual, where the goat carries away the sins of the people.137 Put together with v. 15, we have the idea that Christ took on human sin in order that we may take on his righteousness. An exchange takes place. This is a powerful idea, another way in which Christ’s death is “for us,” but it is not an idea derived from sacrifice. Galatians 3:13 Galatians 3:13 occurs in the middle of a dense section of the letter where Paul argues that the idea of justification by faith is pointed to by the scriptures (3:10–14). The details of the argument need not concern us here, as the claim

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of v. 13 is straightforward: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’” The quote at the end is from Deut 21:23, Paul obviously using the quote to interpret the crucifixion. While some interpreters discuss this passage in terms of sacrifice,138 there really is no case to be made for it. Sacrificial victims were not cursed. The context of the Deuteronomy quote is the treatment of the bodies of executed criminals, not sacrifice. The meaning of Paul’s words has been plausibly explained with various background concepts, such as the scapegoat ritual again,139 or the idea of an “exchange curse,”140 or the idea of “an expulsion victim who purges a community by bearing away its curse or sin.”141 None of these concepts involve sacrifice. 1 Peter 2:24 1 Peter 2:18–25 begins as an admonition to slaves to accept the authority of their masters (v. 18), including accepting unjust beatings (vv. 19–20). The end of v. 20 seems to transition to a more general admonition to accept suffering for doing right, and vv. 21–23 present Christ’s acceptance of suffering as a model to be imitated in this regard. Here we have the clearest and most thoroughgoing application of the Suffering Servant Song of Isaiah 53 to the interpretation of Jesus’ death in the New Testament. The song is initially used as a part of the imitatio Christi encouragement, from Isa 53:9: “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22). In vv. 24–25, however, the focus shifts to Christ’s redeeming work: He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

The language of these lines still borrows heavily from Isaiah 53 (53:4–5, 12 in v. 24; 53:6 in v. 25). Christ is said to have borne the sins of others in the same way the servant is described as having done so, and in doing so, Christ frees us from our sins. Given that 1:18–19, as we saw earlier, had a strong interpretation of Christ’s death as a sacrifice, and that the effect of this death was that “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors” (1:18), a sacrificial interpretation of Christ’s death in 2:24 would fit perfectly. The problem is that the description of what Christ did on the cross in 2:24 simply does not work as a sacrifice. Sacrificial victims did not bear sins. Sacrifices were in no sense sinful. Sins were not offered on the altar. To the contrary, the altar was a holy place, and victims had to be blemishless to be

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offered to God. This was no less true of atoning sacrifices than it was for other types. Commentators thus widely agree that the image here is not of sacrifice but that Christ’s bearing of our sins is modeled on the vicarious suffering of Isaiah’s servant.142 This meaning of 2:24 is then also to be taken as the meaning of 3:18, which makes a quite similar claim: “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.” Some commentators suggest that the “for sins” here, περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν, has the sense of “as a sin offering,”143 but there is no good argument for it. While περὶ ἁμαρτίας (singular) is the technical LXX expression for a sin offering (the hattat), in the plural, it does not have this sense. There is only a single use in the LXX of περί + the plural of ἁμαρτία to mean sin offerings (Lev 16:25), and there the context makes it obvious that the offerings are meant. Elsewhere in the LXX περί + the plural of ἁμαρτία refers to sins that people have committed (at least nine times144). Such is the case here. It may be observed that here and in the other two passages where I have argued against a sacrificial interpretation, 2 Cor 5:14–21 and Gal 3:13, Christ’s death works vicariously. In our chapter on sacrifice in the Jewish scriptures, I argued against the idea of seeing substitution as being central to sacrifice, and I have likewise explained the interpretations of Christ’s death as a sacrifice in the New Testament in this chapter without any reference to the idea of substitution. I raised the question in that earlier chapter of whether, given that the meaning of sacrifice was always open to interpretation, it might be possible that the idea of vicarious suffering could become a part of thinking about sacrifice in the New Testament. We can see now that this is not the case. In none of the passages interpreting Christ’s death as a sacrifice, do we see ideas of substitution incorporated. Saying that Christ’s death was a sacrifice does not entail saying that he died in our place. I want to be clear, however, that I am not thereby arguing against the idea of substitution in general or against the notion that substitutionary ideas are present elsewhere in the New Testament. These three passages just treated do give us interpretations of Christ’s death that include the idea that his death in some way substitutes for our own. The idea occurs in far fewer places than many have supposed, but it is present. While the details of these interpretations are outside the scope of this book, both the presence and the paucity of substitutionary ideas are important to recognize. CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have seen that interpretations of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament writings are based primarily on three occasions

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for sacrifice from the Jewish scriptures, the covenant ceremony of Exodus 24, Passover, and the Day of Atonement. We have seen that interpretations of Jesus’ death, however, are not rigid in their use of these sacrifices. There is, rather, a tendency to combine one of these central images with aspects of other kinds of sacrifice, the most common such combination being the expansion of the covenant ceremony and the Passover lamb to include atoning functions. We have also seen that the use of sacrificial imagery to interpret Jesus’ death always has consequences for the early Christian communities’ selfunderstanding and ethical practice. While this might be expected of the covenant ceremony and Passover imagery, since these events were fundamental for Jewish identity, it is no less true of the Day of Atonement imagery, as is seen clearly in Hebrews and in 1 John. The interpretation of Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice is not just about achieving forgiveness from sins but is also about shaping Christian character as a worshiping community in Hebrews and as a community of love in 1 John.145 This connection was not as immediately apparent in the passages we looked at in Romans using the atoning sacrificial imagery (Rom 3:25; 5:6–11; 8:3), but recall from our previous chapter that twice in the second half of Romans, 12:1–2 and 15:16, Paul uses sacrificial imagery to describe the life of the community and his own mission. 12:1 famously begins with “therefore”: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” I would not claim that the “therefore” (οὖν) refers exclusively to Christ’s sacrificial death, but certainly it includes it. Christ is the new mercy seat, the new center of worship for Christians, and therefore living united with Christ, empowered by the Spirit, takes on the character of the offering of sacrifice. In our previous chapters, we focused on sacrifice as being performed for three main purposes in the life of Israel: for communion, for giving gifts to God, and for atonement. We saw that in the New Testament, outside of references to Christ’s death, the mention of sacrifice was almost solely for the first two purposes, for communion and gift giving, and that atoning sacrifices were seldom mentioned. In this chapter, we have seen that references to Christ’s death are focused almost entirely on sacrifices for the purposes of communion and atonement; the only instance of Christ’s death being considered a sacrifice for the purpose of gift giving was in Eph 5:2. The covenant ceremony was about establishing Israel’s covenant relationship with God. The Passover sacrifice was originally about the same thing; in the ongoing life of Israel, the Passover lambs were sacrificed to commemorate the exodus and to maintain Israel’s relationship to God. Thus, the use of these sacrifices to interpret Christ’s death focuses on the establishment of a new covenant people of God and on the maintenance of that relationship. We will explore the relationship of these communion sacrifices to atoning sacrifices when

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interpreting Christ’s death further in the next chapter. For now, we simply note that when looking at the three main purposes of sacrifice in the New Testament’s sacrificial imagery, sacrifices for gift giving are used only to describe the life of the Christian community (except for Eph 5:2), and sacrifices for atonement are used only to describe Christ’s death. Sacrifices for the purpose of communion, however, are used to describe both. Christ’s death as a sacrifice established the new covenant community, and the ongoing activities of the community—even the very lives of community members in Rom 12:1—are described as sacrifices that express and maintain the community’s relationship to God. Our most significant conclusion, however, is that the interpretations of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament texts cluster around three occasions in the life of Israel. Two of the three, the covenant ceremony and Passover, were key events in the story of Israel being called out and formed as the people of God. Two of the three, Passover again and the Day of Atonement, constituted the two most important annual days in the regular life of the Jews. In early Christian thinking, then, it was important to understand Jesus’ death as foundational both in the story of the establishment of the new people of God and as the central event in the ongoing life of the community. The use of sacrificial imagery facilitated this centering of Jesus’ death in both ways. We will revisit this point in the next chapter. Here we observe that it is not possible to group the New Testament interpretations of Christ’s death in what might seem like other obvious ways. We cannot group them according to the use of the regular types of Jewish sacrifices. The New Testament authors show no concern to designate Jesus’ death as a guilt offering versus a purification offering versus a burnt offering, for instance. Indeed, these and the other two, the offering of well-being and the grain offering, are hardly mentioned at all in the New Testament by name. It is also not very helpful to try to sort them by the three purposes just discussed, for we consistently find the purposes of communion and atonement to merge, and the purpose of gift is mostly absent. The interpretation of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice is, above all, about understanding the meaning of Jesus’ death in relationship to the story of God’s people and to the Christian community’s ongoing life.

NOTES 1. English translations of the Bible in this chapter are from the NRSV except when otherwise specified. 2. In the dozens of works consulted for this study, the only significant objection I found to seeing the Exod 24 connection is that of Kenneth Grayston, Dying, We Live: A New Enquiry into the Death of Christ in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 203–12.

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3. Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, trans. Norman Perrin (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966), 221–22, argues that the combination of references to “body” and “blood” in itself implies sacrifice, but this is doubtful. Against Jeremias, see John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 1076. 4. See, for example, Vincent Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice: A Study of the Passion-Sayings in the Gospels (London: MacMillan, 1937), 133–36. 5. There have been many attempts to fit the details of the Last Supper to the details of the Passover meal. Unfortunately, what we know of the latter comes from sources written well after the time of the New Testament. The classic study remains Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus. 6. The parallel status of the two parts of the rituals is noted by Christian A. Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie: Opfer- und Sühneterminologie im Neuen Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 122. 7. For example, R. Alan Culpepper, Mark (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2007), 493–96. 8. Adela Yarbro Collins, “Mark’s Interpretation of the Death of Jesus,” Journal of Biblical Literature 128 (2009): 545–54, takes the importance of the verb a step further by suggesting that it refers specifically to a sin offering, since most of its uses in sacrificial contexts in the LXX are as a part of sin offerings. She thus suggests that Jesus’ death is being interpreted as both renewing the covenant and as expiating sin. While she is also relying on a perceived Isa 53 reference in the “for many” phrase (see further in the text), this seems to me rather a lot to draw out of the use of a verb that can be used in a variety of contexts. For a refutation of her position, see Thomas Kazen, “Sacrificial Interpretation in the Narratives of Jesus’ Last Meal,” in The Eucharist—Its Origins and Contexts: Sacred Meal, Communal Meal, Table Fellowship in Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, eds. David Hellhom and Dieter Sänger (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 1:477–502; to me, Kazen also goes too far, however, in seeing the verb as specifically carrying martyrdom connotations. 9. This importance of the phrase is recognized by Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 226–29, even though Jeremias also pushes the Isa 53 connection. 10. BDAG, loc. cit. 11. Morna D. Hooker, “Did the Use of Isaiah 53 to Interpret His Mission Begin with Jesus?” in Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins, ed. William H. Bellinger, Jr. and William R. Farmer (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 1998), 88–103, here quoting 92 (emphasis original). 12. Ibid., 90–93. 13. NET trans. 14. See David A. Sapp, “The LXX, 1QIsa, and MT Versions of Isaiah 53 and the Christian Doctrine of Atonement,” in Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins, ed. William H. Bellinger, Jr. and William R. Farmer (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 1998), 170–92.; Kazen, “Sacrificial Interpretation,” 483. 15. See, for example,, Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (United Bible Societies, 1971), 119. Hooker, “Use of Isaiah 53,” 93, of course recognizes this.

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16. Adela Yarbro Collins, “Finding Meaning in the Death of Jesus,” Journal of Religion 78 (1998): 175–96, at 178. See also William R. Farmer, “Reflections on Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins” in Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins, ed. William H. Bellinger, Jr. and William R. Farmer (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 1998), 260–80; Kazen, “Sacrificial Interpretation,” 483. 17. Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), 87. 18. On the use of Zech 13:7, see Hays, Echoes, 81–82. Mark’s quote differs slightly from any known manuscript or tradition of Zech 13:7, but the basic sense is not changed. 19. Helpfully observed by Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie, 121. 20. Hays, Echoes, 400 n. 85. 21. In the LXX, the passage is 38:31–34. The majority manuscript tradition of Matthew actually refers to a “new” covenant in 26:28, which would strengthen the tie to Jer 31:31–34 considerably, but there is little case to be made for considering this reading original. 22. It is surprising how few commentators reference this passage, but see Nolland, Gospel of Matthew, 1081. 23. It has sometimes been argued that the covenant sacrifice itself had been interpreted as atoning by Jews in Jesus’ day, but the argument relies upon highly questionable use of the Targumim and rabbinic material. See Kazen, “Sacrificial Interpretation,” 487–88. 24. Ulrich Luz, Matthew: A Commentary, 3 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 3:381. Similarly, Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 367–71. 25. Many commentators observe the omission and see this purpose in it; see, for example, Francis W. Beare, The Gospel According to Matthew (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 509. 26. Cf. R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 994–95, speaking of the Last Supper scene: “Jesus has directed attention to the new community which is to result from his redemptive death. Here then is the essential theological basis for that new community of the restored people of God which this gospel has increasingly set before us as the result of Jesus’ ministry.” 27. The authoritative treatment perhaps remains Dale C. Allison, The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). 28. Similarly, Hays, Echoes, 134. 29. Hays, Echoes, 134. 30. Luke Johnson aptly begins his introduction to Matthew with the statement that “Matthew is the Gospel of the church.” Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 165. 31. Codex D and some early versions omit vv. 19b-20 (ending v. 19 with “This is my body”). While in the past this shorter text was often preferred to the longer text (as a “Western non-interpolation”), today there seems to be a strong preference for the longer reading. See François Bovon, Luke 3: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 19:28–24:53 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 154–55; I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978),

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799–800. For arguments in favor of the shorter text, see: C. F. Evans, Saint Luke (London: SCM, 1990), 783–91; John T. Carroll, Luke: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 432–34. 32. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 1391, goes as far as to say that the reference to Exod 24:8 remains just as strong in Luke as it is in Mark. This may be an overstatement, but I know of no commentator who denies that Luke retains the connection, except for those who argue for the omission of vv. 19b-20. Others who maintain the Exod 24 connection include Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 336–43; Marshall, Gospel of Luke, 795–807; James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 623–30. 33. Similarly, Kazen, “Sacrificial Interpretation,” 489–91; Marshall, Gospel of Luke, 801. 34. This point is actually a key part of the argument of Carroll, Luke, 432–34, that vv. 19b-20 were not original to Luke’s Gospel. 35. The sense of the final phrase is notoriously difficult. The Greek is διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου, lit. “through the blood of his own.” While there is much debate about how to construe the phrase, there is no doubt that the reference is to Jesus’ death. 36. So, for example, Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 3037–40. 37. In the Gk, the “my” (μου) is moved, but this does not change the meaning at all. There are also a number of textual variants, the most significant being the addition of “broken” (κλώμενον) in many manuscripts where Luke has “given.” Here and in v. 25, many manuscripts also contain various harmonizations with the Gospel accounts. 38. In Gk, the word used for “my” is different, here an ἐμῷ before αἵματι rather than a μου after αἵματι as in Luke. 39. There is once again widespread agreement about the significance of these two intertexts. See, for example, C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 268–69; Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 425–35; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 443. 40. So noted by Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice, 211: “St. Paul thinks of the Eucharist as a means of entering into communion with Christ and of sharing in His sacrifice.” 41. On the redescription of the Roman ritual into the Christian one, see Peter-Ben Smit, “Crucifiction? The Reimagination of Crucifixion as Failed Imperial Ritual in Philippians 2:5–11,” BTB 46 (2016): 12–24. 42. Pace Petra Dijkhuizen, “The Lord’s Supper and Ritual Theory: Interpreting 1 Corinthians 11:30 in Terms of Risk, Failure, and Efficacy,” Neot 50 (2016): 441–76. 43. Cf. Frances M. Young, The Use of Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers from the New Testament to John Chrysostom (Cambridge, MA: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1979), 242: “Paul’s discussion therefore shows unambiguously that he regarded the Eucharist as exactly analogous to the Jewish and Greek

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communion-sacrifices in which the worshippers shared in a fellowship-meal with the god.” 44. Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 243, argues for the latter here. 45. See, for example, MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 243; Frank Thielman, Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010), 158. 46. The cultic origin of the term is agreed upon by most commentators, though some also suggest political overtones, since outside of scripture the notion of access to a ruler also appears. See Markus Barth, Ephesians, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 268; Ernest Best, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998), 273–74; Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 149; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 247–48; Thielman, Ephesians, 174–75. 47. There were forty-three occurrences in Leviticus, eleven in Exodus, and twenty-three in Numbers. Not all of these have a ritual sense, but the great majority do. These three books have 77 of the 172 occurrences of the word in the LXX. Outside of the Pentateuch the word is used in a wide variety of contexts. These statistics are from Logos Bible Software version 8. 48. The specific word used in Eph 1:7, ἀπολύτρωσις, is used only once in the LXX (Dan 4:34), but many words with the same root, λυτρ-, are used throughout the LXX to denote redemption. 49. Some later manuscripts have assimilated the verse to Eph 1:7, adding a reference to blood, but there is no argument for seeing the addition as original. 50. The Isa 44:22 reference is observed by Markus Barth and Helmut Blanke, Colossians, trans. Astrid B. Beck (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 193. 51. Observed by James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 109. Being ἄμωμος is a frequent requirement for sacrificial animals (Lev. 1:3, 10; 3:1, 6, 9; etc.). Sacrifices themselves are said to be holy in places like Lev 7:1 and 10:17. 52. Similarly observed by Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie, 109. 53. Similar conclusions about the sacrificial language are reached by Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 217–22; Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 175–77. 54. The precise rendering of the phrase εἰς ὑπακοὴν καὶ ῥαντισμὸν αἵματος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ is debated, specifically the relationship of the “blood of Jesus Christ” to what comes before. Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 88, suggests “for obedience, and for the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” 55. There is widespread agreement on the reference to Exod 24. See, for example, Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 86–89; Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie, 112–14; Leonhard Goppelt, A Commentary on I Peter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 74–75; Grayston, Dying, We Live, 241; Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 71–72; J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter (Waco, TX: Word, 1988), 12–13; Edward Gordon Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter (London: Macmillan, 1946), 120–21. There are two possible alternatives: (1) The sprinkling could be seen as reflecting the red heifer ceremony of Num 19 (so Michaels, 1 Peter, 12), but there

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no blood is sprinkled on the people, and as this ceremony is about dealing with corpse impurity, it is hard to see much relevance to 1 Peter’s argument. (2) In the ceremony for the cleansing of a leper, blood of a bird is sprinkled on the leper (Lev 14:1–9); it is even harder to make a ceremony for this kind of cleansing relevant to 1 Peter’s argument. 56. Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 88–89. Similarly, Jobes, 1 Peter, 71–72. 57. While in the past interpreters often thought that 1 Peter was written to Jews, today commentators are virtually unanimous in seeing the audience as predominantly, if not exclusively, Gentile. See, for example, Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 51; Goppelt, A Commentary on I Peter, 6; Michaels, 1 Peter, liv. The handful of derogatory statements about the audience members’ pre-Christian lives (1:14, 18; 2:10; 4:3) especially seem unsuited to a Jewish audience. 58. Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 69, expresses this point eloquently: “In a way virtually unique among Christian canonical writings, 1 Peter has appropriated the language of Israel for the church in such a way that Israel as a totality has become for this letter the controlling metaphor in terms of which its theology is expressed. . . . In 1 Peter, the language and hence the reality of Israel pass without remainder into the language and hence the reality of the new people of God.” 59. I first found this statistic in Michael J. Gorman, The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014), 16. 60. R. B. Jamieson, “Hebrews 9.23: Cult Inauguration, Yom Kippur and the Cleansing of the Heavenly Tabernacle,” NTS 62 (2016): 569–87. Many commentaries also cover some of the same points that follow. 61. Observations made by Felix H. Cortez, “From the Holy to the Most Holy Place: The Period of Hebrews 9:6–10 and the Day of Atonement as a Metaphor of Transition,” Journal of Biblical Literature 125 (2006): 527–47; Robert J. Daly, Christian Sacrifice: The Judaeo-Christian Background before Origen (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1978), 263. 62. Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 241 suggests it might be; William L. Lane, Hebrews, 2 vols. (Dallas: Word, 1991), 245, is doubtful. 63. Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 196–207, argues that the Passover sacrifice, along with virtually all other sacrifices, had come to be regarded as atoning in the Second Temple period, but his evidence comes entirely from the rabbinic period except for Jubilees 49:15, which does not in fact attribute any kind of atoning effect to Passover. 64. David E. Aune, Revelation, 3 vols. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 372–73, has a helpful list of all the uses of lambs in the Jewish sacrificial system. 65. Ibid. 66. Almost all commentaries lay out these points; see, for example, Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966–1970), 893–96. 67. Pace Hays, Echoes, 316–18; C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (London: SPCK, 1965), 558; and many others. Cf. the Gk of all places: ὀστοῦν οὐ

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συντριβήσεται αὐτοῦ (John 19:36b); ὀστοῦν οὐ συντρίψετε ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ (Ex 12:46b); ὀστοῦν οὐ συντρίψουσιν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ (Num 9:12b); κύριος φυλάσσει πάντα τὰ ὀστᾶ αὐτῶν, ἓν ἐξ αὐτῶν οὐ συντριβήσεται (Psalm 34[33]:21). Hays’s claim that the psalm reference is closer in wording than the other two is odd. 68. For example, Barret Gospel According to St. John, 176; George R. BeasleyMurray, John (Waco, TX: Word, 1987), 24–25; Brown, Gospel According to John, 58–63; D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 150–51; Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie, 198–99; Morna D. Hooker, Not Ashamed of the Gospel: New Testament Interpretations of the Death of Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 97–98; Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice, 227. 69. Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 70–71. 70. Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 325. 71. G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 436. 72. See, for example, Aune, Revelation, 368–71; Craig R. Koester, Revelation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 387; OTP 1.824–25. 73. For example, Aune, Revelation, 1057; Beale, Book of Revelation, 957–59; George R. Beasley-Murray, The Book of Revelation (Greenwood, SC: Attic, 1978), 280; Osborne, Revelation, 682–83. 74. For example, Koester, Revelation, 755–56; Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1996), 173–75; Bauckham, Theology, 105–106; Bruce M. Metzger, Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 91. According to Beasley-Murray, Book of Revelation, 280, this was also the view of patristic commentators. 75. Bauckham, Theology, 74. 76. Hays, Moral Vision, 169–185, provides a much more complete description of this basic point. 77. So Collins, First Corinthians, 208; Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 403. 78. Jane Lancaster Patterson, Keeping the Feast: Metaphors of Sacrifice in 1 Corinthians and Philippians (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), 135. Fee, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 218, also notes that Paul assumes a lot of Jewish understanding on the part of his Gentile audience. 79. See, for example, Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 73; Michaels, 1 Peter, xxxvii; Selwyn, First Epistle of St. Peter, 4–5. 80. Gk ἀναζωσάμενοι τὰς ὀσφύας τῆς διανοίας ὑμῶν. The NRSV and most modern English translations paraphrase here. 81. The LXX is very close to the Hebrew here, so I have stuck with the NRSV. Other salient examples of λυτρόω used this way include Ex 15:13; Deut 9:26; 15:15; 21:8; 24:18; Isa 41:14; 43:1, 14; 44:22, 23, 24; 51:11; 52:3; 62:12; 63:9. The verb is used in many other places in the LXX, especially the Psalms, to speak of God’s deliverance in a variety of contexts.

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82. Most commentaries note this, while also noting that the OT material is the more important source of the verse’s imagery. For example, Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 127; Jobes, 1 Peter, 116–17. 83. Of 1 Pet 1:19’s two words, ἄμωμος and ἄσπιλος, the former is used 45 times in Leviticus and Numbers for this purpose; the latter does not actually appear in the LXX at all. 84. For example, T. Levi 3:4–6; 4Qflor 1:6–7. For a helpful discussion, see Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 128–42. 85. A fairly common observation in Hebrews commentaries. See, for example, F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 193, who also notes that in later Christian literature, the scapegoat was often seen as a type of Christ (e.g., Epistle of Barnabas 7:7–11). 86. David M. Moffitt, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Moffitt’s emphasis is on the resurrection rather than the ascension, as he sees the importance of the resurrection as a neglected area in the study of Hebrews. See also R. B. Jamieson, Jesus’ Death and Heavenly Offering in Hebrews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 23–70. 87. Moffitt, Atonement, 257–85, elaborates this point at length. At times, to me, he seems overly fastidious in distinguishing the presentation of the blood from the death as the moment of atonement—sacrifice was a process, not an instant—but the basic point is on target. See also Jamieson, Jesus’ Death, 71–94; Eyal Regev, The Temple in Early Christianity: Experiencing the Sacred (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 271–78. 88. Most modern interpreters of Hebrews seem to agree with this understanding of Hebrews 9:23. See esp. Jamieson, “Hebrews 9.23,” 577–80; also Gareth Lee Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 416–17; Craig R. Koester, Hebrews (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 421; Lane, Hebrews, 247; Moffitt, Atonement, 220–29. The alternative is the view of Harold W. Attridge, Hebrews (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 260–62, that the cleansing of the heavenly temple is a metaphor for the cleansing of human consciences; Attridge’s bias is apparent when he speaks of the view presented here as “crudely literalistic” (262). 89. Using my own translation from the previous chapter. 90. Hooker, Not Ashamed of the Gospel, 131–32 also links the language of cleansing with the Day of Atonement ritual. 91. My own translation, though it differs from the NET only by using “will” instead of “shall.” 92. Friedrich Büchsel, “ἱλασμός”TDNT 3:310–18, here from 310–11. Similarly, I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 117 (“it conveys the thought of an offering made by a man in order to placate the wrath of a god whom he has offended”); Stephen S. Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 38–39. 93. Num 5:8 does not say that it is specifically the guilt offering, but it is supplementing the guilt offering instructions from Lev 6:1–7.

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94. So Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 38; Georg Strecker, The Johannine Letters, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 39. Judith Lieu, I, II, & III John: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 64, argues for a more general sense of forgiveness, based on the odd claim that there is no cultic context in 2:2; Grayston, Dying We Live, 280, argues similarly. 95. In 2:2, ἱλασμός is in the nominative rather than the accusative of 4:10, and 2:2 has an ἐστιν between ἱλασμός and the rest of the phrase. 96. 5:6–8 also refers to Jesus’ death, specifically to his blood, but with most interpreters, I take the point here to be the reality of Jesus’ death rather than any specific interpretation of it, even though the blood reference may be based on the sacrificial interpretation. See, for example, Lieu, I, II, & III John, 208–14; Marshall, Epistles of John, 231–39; Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 277–78; Strecker, Johannine Letters, 182–85. 97. For example, Luke Timothy Johnson, Reading Romans: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2013), 51, refers to 3:21–31 as the “thesis” of Romans. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2008), 341, calls the passage a formulation of “the essence of Paul’s gospel.” See also James D. G. Dunn, Romans, 2 vols (Dallas: Word, 1988), 1: 163–64. 98. See Daniel P. Bailey, “Jesus as the Mercy Seat: The Semantics and Theology of Paul’s use of Hilasterion in Romans 3:25,” Tyndale Bulletin 51 (2000): 155–58. 99. See Stefan Schreiber, “Das Weihegeschenk Gottes: Eine Deutung des Todes Jesu in Röm 3,25,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 97 (2006): 88–110, who argues for this specific meaning in Rom 3:25 (unconvincingly, in my view). 100. Helpfully described by Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus, 3 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991–2001), 1014. 101. So Bailey, “Jesus as the Mercy Seat”; Richard H. Bell, “Sacrifice and Christology in Paul,” Journal of Theological Studies 53 (2002): 1–27; Christian A. Eberhart, “To Atone or Not to Atone: Remarks on the Day of Atonement Rituals According to Leviticus 16 and the Meaning of Atonement,” in Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement in Early Judaism and Christianity: Constituents and Critique, ed. Henrietta L. Wiley and Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 197–231, esp. 228; idem, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie, 160–70; Stephen Finlan, “Spiritualization of Sacrifice in Paul and Hebrews,” in Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice in the Bible, ed. Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 83–97, esp. 88; idem, The Background and Content of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Atlanta: SBL, 2004), 134–35; Fitzmyer, Romans, 348–50; Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 284–87; Regev, Temple in Early Christianity, 77–80; Jeffrey S. Siker, “Yom Kippuring Passover: Recombinant Sacrifice in Early Christianity,” in Ritual And Metaphor: Sacrifice In The Bible, ed. Christian A. Eberhart (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 65–82, esp. 69–71; Peter Stuhlmacher, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 57–61. 102. This is the long-standing debate over whether pistis christou and similar expressions in Paul’s writings should be translated as “faith in Christ” or “faith of

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Christ,” a debate we will not enter into here. See any of the critical commentaries for numerous references. 103. See, for example, Stuhlmacher, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 57–61; Charles B. Cousar, A Theology of the Cross: The Death of Jesus in the Pauline Letters (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 56–66. 104. Its precise nuance, as well as that of the important compound ἐξιλάσκομαι, is sometimes also hotly debated. See Johannes Hermann and Friedrich Büchsel, “ἱλάσκομαι, ἱλασμός,” TDNT 3:301–18; Leon Morris, “The Use of hilaskesthai etc. in Biblical Greek,” ExpTimes 62 (1950–51): 227–33. 105. So C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 77–78; Cousar, Theology of the Cross, 56–66 (though allowing for the other meanings); Dunn, Romans, 170–71 (but also allowing for the “place of expiation” possibility); Hooker, Not Ashamed of the Gospel, 43–44 (though Hooker thinks that the Day of Atonement ritual is still the primary referent); Sam K. Williams, Jesus’ Death as Saving Event: The Background and Origin of a Concept (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975), 38–41. I wonder if the still-frequent use of the idea of the atoning sacrifice in English Bibles is mainly a matter of an understandable reluctance to include what would be an obscure reference (to the mercy seat) for most modern readers. The CSB is the one major translation I am aware of that does use “mercy seat”; the NIV also refers to it in a footnote. 106. Bailey, “Jesus as the Mercy Seat,” 156. 107. Ibid. 108. Hooker, Not Ashamed of the Gospel, 43–44. 109. The NRSV and most other English Bibles translate both instances of διά as “for,” I assume to maintain the parallelism of the Greek. But διά + accusative normally means “because of,” not “for,” and “because of” gives a much clearer sense of the meaning of the first half of the phrase. 110. See Dunn, Romans, 224–25; Fitzmyer, Romans, 389–90; Hooker, “Isaiah 53,” 101–03; Jewett, Romans, 342–43; Richard N. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 535–37. Stuhlmacher, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 71–75 suggests the phrase is based on the Hebrew text of Isa 53:11–12 rather than on the LXX. 111. Martin Hengel, The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 9–15. Simon Gathercole, Defending Substitution: An Essay on Atonement in Paul (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015), 85–107, gives some extended examples. Gathercole focuses only on cases where one individual dies for another and uses this to argue that Paul means “died for” in this passage in a substitutionary way. He argues for the relevance of only these individual examples based on the singleness of the nouns in v. 7. He ignores the fact that the nouns are plural in vv. 6 and 8. He also ignores the connection to 3:24–25, which, as my next paragraph explains, is crucial. 112. The Greek word order is different, ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι vs. ἐν τῷ αἵματι αὐτοῦ. The point that 5:9 echoes 3:24–25 is made by many commentators; see, for example, Dunn, Romans, 257; Jewett, Romans, 363.

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113. Some interpreters see an allusion to the near-sacrifice of Isaac in Gen 22 in Rom 8:32, which might slightly alter the sense of the reference, but Jewett, Romans, 536–39 shows that the case for seeing such an allusion has been overblown. 114. By my count, fifty-one occurrences in Leviticus and Numbers, plus the following elsewhere: 2 Kings 17:17; 2 Chr 29:21, 23, 24; 2 Esdras 6:17; 8:35; Ps 39:7; Isa 53:10; Ezek 42:13, 19, 21; 2 Macc 12:43; Baruch 1:10. 115. Cf. Dunn, Romans, 422: “Paul almost certainly intends it in this sense . . . such a sacrificial allusion would be wholly natural and unremarkable in a first-century context.” 116. Those interpreting the phrase as a sin offering include Bell, “Sacrifice and Christology in Paul,” 5–6; Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 239; Dunn, Romans, 422; Finlan, “Spiritualization of Sacrifice,” 87; Finlan, Background and Content of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors, 111–19; Hengel, Atonement, 46; Hooker, Not Ashamed of the Gospel, 44; Regev, Temple in Early Christianity, 76; Stuhlmacher, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 120. Those translating it otherwise include Barrett, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 156; Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie, 172–74; Grayston, Dying We Live, 110; Longenecker, Epistle to the Romans, 694–96. Some commentaries cover both possibilities without indicating a strong preference, for example, Fitzmyer, Romans, 485–86; Johnson, Reading Romans, 127–29. 117. In Gal 1:4, a significant alternative manuscript tradition reads περί instead of ὑπέρ, but as it is agreed that ὑπέρ takes on the meaning of περί here (as was common in Koine Greek), anyway, there is no significant difference in meaning. See Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians (Dallas: Word, 1990), 8. 118. The only real way to see this idea specifically in 1 Cor 15:3 is to see a strong allusion to Isa 53. Fee, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 724, for example, points out that the phrase “our sins” occurs three times in the LXX of Isa 53 (vv. 4, 5, 6) and that there is also a use of the phrase “for sins” (v. 10). But to read the rest of Isa 53 into the brief phrase on this basis (the precise phrase is not there) is quite a stretch. Likewise a stretch is to see “in accordance with the scriptures” as referring specifically to Isa 53 (as in, for example, Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 723–25; Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 47; Gathercole, Defending Substitution, 55–79). 119. See the preceding footnote. Pace Gathercole, Defending Substitution, 55–79, to use this verse as the basis for the assertion of Christ’s substitutionary death is tremendous overreach. I do not deny, however, that in places Christ’s death is interpreted as being substitutionary; see further in the chapter. 120. Most commentators hold that we do have here language from an early confession. So, for example, Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 41; F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 75; Longenecker, Galatians, 7; J. Louis Martyn, Galatians (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 88–90. Douglas J. Moo, Galatians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 72, argues that it is more likely merely to reflect common language of the day. 121. Commentators tend to miss the importance of eating here, even those who see a sacrificial reference in the verse. For example, Beasley-Murray, John, 94, focuses

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on the combination of the words for “give,” “flesh,” and “on behalf of” to suggest a sacrificial meaning but makes no mention of the eating in this regard. Similarly, Carson, Gospel According to John, 295. 122. These lists come from a combination of Finlan, Background and Content of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors, 197; Cousar, Theology of the Cross, 55; Hengel, Atonement, 36–39. 123. Most of these are from Hooker, Not Ashamed of the Gospel, 21 n. 2. 124. Helpfully laid out by Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 762–63. 125. Noted by I. Howard Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles (London: T & T Clark, 1999), 284. 126. As there, this is my own translation. 127. Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie, 25–34, and Max Botner, “The Fragrance of Life: Reconsidering the Sacrificial Logic of Ephesians 5:2,” Biblical Research 64 (2019): 67–82, argue that the reference here is not to Christ’s death but to his life taken as a totality. This is unlikely for three reasons: (1) All other instances in the Pauline writings of the expression that Christ gave himself or was given up by God clearly refer to his death (Rom 8:32; Gal 2:20; 1 Tim 2:6; Tit 2:14). (2) Twice earlier in Ephesians Christ’s death has been referred to as a sacrifice (1:7; 2:13). (3) It would have been easy to avoid the connotations of dying in the term “gave himself up” by using a different expression; conversely, “gave himself up” seems to combine perfectly the ideas of dying and giving of oneself for others that is the point of the passage. Of course, the “loved us” part could be taken to broaden the scope of the whole verse beyond just Christ’s death, so I ultimately do not disagree that more than his death is in view. Commentators almost always regard 5:2 as a reference to Christ’s death; see, for example, Barth, Ephesians, 558–60; Best, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians, 470; Lincoln, Ephesians, 312. 128. Helpfully observed by Carson, Gospel According to John, 567. 129. So Barrett, Gospel According to St. John, 511; Beasley-Murray, John, 301; Brown, Gospel According to John, 765–67; Carson, Gospel According to John, 567. 130. As pointed out by Barrett, Gospel According to St. John, 511; Brown, Gospel According to John, 766. 131. Brown, Gospel According to John, 767. 132. Some interpreters think that all of the places where Paul says that Christ died for X are just shorthand for saying that Christ died for X’s sins, but I am aware of no good justification for such a claim. See, for example, Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 310. The idea of someone dying for someone else was common in the ancient world, as discussed earlier, and many things could be meant by such statements other than sacrifice. 133. So Daly, Christian Sacrifice, 238–39; Hengel, Atonement, 46; Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians (Waco, TX: Word, 1986), 317–18; Regev, Temple in Early Christianity, 75; N.T. Wright, “On Becoming the Righteousness of God: 2 Corinthians 5:21,” in Pauline Theology Volume 2: 1 & 2 Corinthians, ed. David M. Hay (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 200–208.

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134. From a combination of John William Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Leviticus (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 485, and Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 452–53. 135. Harris, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 452–54 argues similarly, suggesting that Paul could have used a verb that would have made a sacrificial sense more apparent. 136. Interpreters who are correct in seeing no sacrificial reference include C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 180; Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie, 174–76; Finland, Background and Content of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors, 98–101; Furnish, II Corinthians, 340; Grayston, Dying, We Live, 60–63; Harris, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 452–54; Hooker, Not Ashamed of the Gospel, 34–35; Jan Lambrecht, Second Corinthians (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 100–101. Richard Bell, “Sacrifice and Christology in Paul,” 8–16, agrees that ἁμαρτία here does not mean a sin offering but oddly argues that the idea of a sin offering is important in the passage anyway. 137. So Siker, “Yom Kippuring Passover,” 69; Eberhart, Kultmetaphorik und Christologie., 174–76. 138. For example, Betz, Galatians, 150–51; Martyn, Galatians, 317–18. 139. For example, Eberhart, “To Atone or Not to Atone,” 229–30; Daniel R. Schwartz, “Two Pauline Allusions to the Redemptive Mechanism of the Crucifixion,” Journal of Biblical Literature 102 (1983): 259–68. 140. Longenecker, Galatians , 121. 141. Finlan, Background and Content of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors, 110. 142. So, for example, Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 202; Goppelt, Commentary on I Peter, 212–15; Hooker, Not Ashamed of the Gospel, 127–28; Michaels, 1 Peter, 148; Selwyn, First Epistle of St. Peter, 180. Hooker suggests that the scapegoat ritual and Deut 21:23 may be influential. 143. For example, Jobes, 1 Peter, 238; Michaels, 1 Peter, 202. 144. Lev 16:16; Deut 9:18; 3 Kgdms 15:30; 16:13; Dan 4:27, 33; Tobit 3:5; Sirach 28:4; 39:5. 145. The community-shaping nature of atonement language in the New Testament is a helpful emphasis of Gorman, Death of the Messiah, though Gorman attends little to the sacrificial nature of atonement or to sacrifice in general.

Chapter 7

Historical and Theological Implications

Our chief result from the last chapter is that the New Testament interpretations of Christ’s death as a sacrifice cluster around three occasions in the life of Israel: the covenant sacrifice, Passover, and the Day of Atonement. These interpretations connected the story of Jesus and the early church to the story of Israel, forming the eschatological climax. Christ’s sacrificial death enabled the existence of the eschatological people of God. Just as important is that these interpretations also enabled the Christian communities to relate to God as sacrificing, holy communities in their ongoing lives. The interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice was integral to their story and to their lives, thus to their complete self-understanding. In this final chapter, we will draw out some additional historical and theological conclusions based on the results of the previous chapters. We will begin with how the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice played a role in the formation of the early church. Then we will discuss further the relationship between sacrifice and atonement. Lastly, we will consider one of the barriers to understanding Jesus’s sacrificial death discussed in the introduction, that of the problem of violence. This problem, we will see, is related closely to another, the question of the necessity of Jesus’s death. JESUS’S DEATH AS SACRIFICE AND THE FORMATION OF THE EARLY CHURCH The New Testament Gospels all attest that the crucifixion of Jesus came as an unpleasant surprise to his disciples. Their complete unpreparedness for and mostly unfaithful behavior during the Passion accounts make this clear. Clearer still are their responses to the three Synoptic Passion predictions 189

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(Matt 16:21–23; 17:22–23; 20:17–19; Mark 8:31–33; 9:30–32; 10:32–34; Luke 9:21–22, 43–45; 18:31–34), where each time they demonstrate a stubborn lack of understanding and a refusal to accept the idea of Jesus’s rejection and death. Perhaps clearest of all are the words of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus following Jesus’s death: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21a). They no longer so hope. His death was taken as a sign of his failure. The resurrection, of course, convinced them otherwise. Granted, however, that Jesus’s death was thus no longer seen as a miserably disappointing end to his story, the question remained: Why did the Messiah sent by God suffer a brutal and humiliating death on the cross? It is important to frame the question this way in order to situate the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice properly from a historical perspective. The first question for the early church was not, how does Jesus’s death solve the problem of human sinfulness? Or, how does Jesus’s death enable me to be saved? The shock and horror of the event made the questions much more basic: Why did it happen at all? What does it mean?1 One of the answers that the early Christians arrived at was that his death was a sacrifice. If the Synoptic and Pauline accounts of the Last Supper are historical in this regard, the basis for the interpretation was in Jesus’s own words. I have no intention of entering the debate over the historicity of Jesus’s words, but we can say, at the very least, that the basis of the interpretation was in the memory of Jesus’s own words. The presence of the memory in 1 Corinthians 11 as an assumed piece of tradition—“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you” (v. 23)—tells us that this memory was established early in the collective Christian consciousness. Even without Jesus’s words, however, it is likely that the church would have arrived at this interpretation on its own. There was a long tradition in the Greco-Roman world of interpreting meaningful deaths with sacrificial language, going back at least as far as the tragedian Euripides (fifth century bce).2 This was often the case for soldiers and others who gave their lives willingly, but even political assassinations could be described by their perpetrators as sacrifices.3 For Jews, Isaiah 53 provided a paradigmatic case for the interpretation of martyrdom as a sacrifice, and 4 Macc 17:22 gives us another such example. And, of course, the actual practice of sacrificing a human, while rare, was certainly an act that all ancient persons were aware did occur. It was thus probably inevitable that Christians would interpret Jesus’s death as a sacrifice. In the ancient Mediterranean world, sacrifice was a natural category to use when assigning meaning to a death caused by human hands. It is important that the Romans who killed Jesus did not do so with sacrifice or any other kind of religious ritual in mind. They executed Jesus as a criminal. This very fact is what allowed the early Christians to redescribe his death

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as a sacrifice, and to do so in a multivalent way. The Roman intention was judged irrelevant, and what became important were the meanings deemed to have been assigned to the event by Jesus himself and by God, meanings then perceived by the early Christians and expressed in the New Testament writings. Since sacrifice was performed on a variety of occasions and for a variety of purposes, the basic interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice could be taken in different directions. It could be seen as a sacrifice to establish a new covenant with the people of God. It could be seen as providing liberation, like the Passover lamb. It could be seen as atoning for sins. The early Christian interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice was thus an empowering move. It radically revised the story of Jesus’s death, making powerful sense of what was on the surface nothing but a shameful execution. The “foolishness” and “stumbling block” of the cross became “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:23–24). Jane Lancaster Patterson describes this well when she observes that by interpreting Jesus’s death as a sacrifice, “the early Christian community claimed agency, purpose, and divine intention at precisely the point in their story when it would seem that they (and their God) were least effective, least powerful.”4 The cruel act of an oppressive ruler became the seed of a new era in God’s dealing with humanity. The particular ways that the early Christians interpreted Jesus’s death as a sacrifice undoubtedly stemmed from their experiences of the power of Jesus’s earthly ministry and from the experiences of his resurrection and the subsequent gift of the Holy Spirit. It would not be sufficient to interpret Jesus’s death merely as a sacrifice to propitiate God for the moment, as in 4 Macc 17:22, or as one of the frequently offered regular sacrifices, whether a burnt offering, a purification offering, or otherwise. Jesus proclaimed the coming kingdom of God, and his resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit were taken as signs of the eschaton. If Jesus’s death was to be considered a sacrifice, it had to be a more foundational one. It had to be in keeping with the conviction that in the story of Jesus, the kingdom of God was arriving. Thus, the three types of sacrifice that we examined in the last chapter were the natural choices. Jesus’s sacrifice was the establishment of a new covenant, the mark of a new exodus, and the ultimate version of the Day of Atonement. Jesus’s death was the eschatological reenactment of the founding of the people of God and of the rituals constituting the people’s relationship to God. These three sacrifices fit the character of the early church’s understanding of Jesus and of what God was doing in their midst and beyond. The move to interpret Jesus’s death this way had deep implications for how the church would then understand itself. Jesus’s identity as the new Passover lamb and as the new covenant sacrifice goes hand in hand with the idea that the community of Jesus’s followers is a new embodiment of God’s people, of

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a reformed Israel. It would go too far to say that the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice was the origin of this idea—surely Jesus’s ministry was that—but the interpretation was an integral part of this self-understanding. The interpretation of the Day of Atonement sacrifice, likewise, had much to do with the church’s understanding of its own holy character. In our chapter on sacrifice in Second Temple Judaism, we saw that there were two seemingly opposing tendencies among Jews of the time period. On the one hand, sacrifice was seen as the quintessential act of the worship of God, as the ultimate expression of Israel’s covenant relationship to God. On the other hand, there was also a tendency to recognize that what sacrifice accomplished could also be accomplished through other means. Particularly for diaspora Jews like Philo, acts of piety and justice could be seen as better sacrifices than physical sacrifices. One of the remarkable aspects of the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice is that it satisfies both of these tendencies. Interpreting Jesus’s death as a sacrifice meant that his death became the ultimate expression of God’s relationship with God’s people. The three particular sacrifices used to interpret Jesus’s death that we have covered—the covenant sacrifice, Passover, and the Day of Atonement sacrifice—all work in this regard. It is hard to imagine a more meaningful interpretation of his death being made in the first-century context than that of sacrifice, and for Jews of these particular sacrifices. But his sacrificial death also meant that other physical sacrifices became no longer necessary. This point is explicit only in Hebrews, but it is implicit in the other New Testament letters. Paul, most notably, clearly has no expectation that his audiences will be performing or participating in any kind of physical sacrifices. Acts 21, we saw earlier, tells us that at least some early Christians did not think that participating in sacrifices was inappropriate, but nowhere do we read of early Christians who thought they were necessary as an ongoing practice. Jesus’s death, then, functions both as the ultimate sacrifice and as a fulfillment of the desire to relate to God apart from physical sacrifice. Further implications result when we add to the picture Paul’s understanding of the church as a temple. While this identification seems to have its roots in the experience of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16–17; Eph 2:19–22), the combination of this identification with the sacrificial interpretation of Christ’s death is theologically generative. If Jesus’s death was a sacrifice, it was not performed in a temple or on an altar, and it was performed without priests. Jesus “handed himself over” to be sacrificed, as Gal 2:20 and other passages assert (Gal 1:4; Eph 5:2, 25; Titus 2:14; 1 Tim 2:6). The foundational status of Jesus’s sacrifice thus displaces the power and status of the traditional priesthood and of the Jerusalem temple. Since the church is seen as a temple, church members are given a more direct and local means of access to God’s presence than the Jerusalem temple accorded. This access is not dependent

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on place. Jesus’s sacrifice is effective everywhere, and the temple of God can be located wherever the Spirit moves among God’s people. The church does continue to offer sacrifices, spiritual ones, as we have seen, but these sacrifices can likewise be offered anywhere, and the only priesthood required is the community itself (Rom 12:1).5 We see the latter idea also in 1 Peter and in Hebrews (1 Pet 2:4–5; Heb 13:10, 15–16). Hebrews, of course, draws an additional conclusion from the fact that Jesus’s sacrifice was performed with no earthly priests: Jesus himself was the priest who offered the sacrifice of himself. Hebrews is likewise more interested in the idea of a heavenly temple where Jesus offers his sacrifice than in the idea of the church as the temple, although the assertion that “we have an altar from which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat” (Heb 13:10) is close to the idea of the church as a temple. In all of these texts, the status of Jesus as a foundational sacrifice is tied closely to the status of the church as a temple and to the idea that the worship and works of the church are spiritual sacrifices that express and maintain the church’s relationship to God. The question of the early Christians’ attitude toward the Jerusalem temple and priesthood is mostly left open in the New Testament, outside of Hebrews. Neither the claims about the church’s status as a temple and priesthood nor the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice nor the interpretation of Christian practices as sacrifices leads to a general disparagement of the Jerusalem temple, priesthood, or sacrifices.6 We never see such disparagement in Paul’s letters. The only real anti-temple rhetoric in the New Testament outside of Hebrews comes in Stephen’s speech in Acts 7, and its force there is much mitigated by the generally reverential attitude toward the temple expressed elsewhere in Acts. The early church regularly met in the temple, according to Acts 2:46, and toward the end of acts we still find Paul speaking respectfully of the temple and high priest (22:17–21; 23:1–5); we discussed earlier Paul’s participation in the sacrificial ritual of Acts 21:17–26. John’s account of Jesus cleansing the temple (John 2:13–22) has often been read as being antitemple and anti-sacrifice, but in my view the case for this interpretation has been greatly exaggerated.7 It is worth stating that the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice does not necessarily imply a replacement of the sacrifices of Judaism—one sacrifice does not invalidate others, particularly when these sacrifices are performed for the purposes of communion and gift. The sacrificial interpretation of Jesus’s death does, however, along with the understandings of the church as a temple and of Christian practices as spiritual sacrifices, relativize the importance of the Jerusalem temple, priesthood, and sacrifices. It does this simply by virtue of offering alternatives, alternatives much more easily accessible for most early Christians. Ultimately, the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 ce made the question of the church’s relationship to the temple a moot point, and the book of Hebrews offered a theological

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explanation for why Christians needed no earthly temple, Levitical priesthood, or physical sacrifices. For Hebrews, Christ’s sacrifice and priesthood are a replacement for the Jewish system. The interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice also facilitated well the inclusion of Gentiles in the early church. We discussed this in the previous chapter in the interpretations of Paul and John. Paul asserts that Christ is a ἱλαστήριον (whether taken as the mercy seat or as a sacrifice of atonement) precisely in the context of his assertion that justification is available to both Jews and Gentiles through Christ (Rom 3:21–25). In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29; so also 1 John 2:2). Gentiles could not fully participate in the rituals of Israel. Christ’s sacrifice allowed for full access to the God of Israel apart from the restrictions caused by the remoteness of Jerusalem and by the regulations of the Jerusalem temple and rituals. The idea of the church as the temple where spiritual sacrifices were offered was a part of this access to God, too. At the same time, the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice remained thoroughly Jewish. Jesus’s death was interpreted using the major sacrifices of Jewish history and practice, as we have seen. Through Jesus’s death, the Gentiles became part of an eschatological re-enactment of the formation of God’s people, and through his death, they participated in the life of the new covenant people of God. Lastly, the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice was important in allowing Jesus’s death to become a paradigm of Christian behavior. For Jesus’s death to become a model of self-giving love, it had to accomplish something, to be a meaningful act. That Jesus’s death could be said to be an act of Jesus “handing himself over” was crucial, and the sacrificial interpretation facilitated this. We discussed this especially in 1 John and Ephesians. The sacrificial interpretation was not the only way in which Jesus’s death was interpreted as being meaningful, however. We looked at several passages in the last chapter that use other metaphors for interpreting Jesus’s death as meaningful; 1 Pet 2:24 especially stands out, since this verse also encourages the imitation of Christ. Still, the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice was by far the most common and most in-depth way the early church ascribed meaning to Jesus’s death, and hence the idea of imitating Christ’s willingness to give himself for others is connected closely to the interpretation. In sum, the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice was of foundational importance in shaping the history and character of early Christianity. It was prompted by the deeply problematic nature of Jesus’s death, and it enabled the earliest Christians to understand how crucifixion could be a meaningful part of Jesus’s story. It provided a connection between the nature of Jesus’s death and the church’s understanding of itself as God’s people. Jesus’s sacrificial death enabled the formation of a new covenant community, and

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it served as the atoning sacrifice so that the community could operate as the holy people of God. It satisfied the longing for the relationship to God provided by sacrifice, and it freed the people from the need to participate in the Jerusalem rituals or any other kind of physical sacrifice. In doing so, it opened up the people of God to all peoples everywhere. And it suggested that being a follower of Jesus was going to entail living a life of worship and self-giving love. SACRIFICE AND ATONEMENT I suggested in my introduction to this book that one of the main barriers to understanding sacrifice in general and Jesus’s death as a sacrifice in particular is a too-easy equation between sacrifice and atonement. Christians are accustomed to thinking of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice solely in the sense of an atoning sacrifice, as achieving forgiveness for sins, without even being aware that sacrifice was more commonly performed for purposes other than atonement, especially for the purposes of communion and gift. We saw in the chapter before last that there is much language of sacrifice in the New Testament that reflects these purposes of communion and gift, and we saw in the last chapter that Jesus’s death is often interpreted with Jewish sacrifices that were primarily for the purpose of communion. Here I want to add two concluding observations about the relationship between sacrifice and atonement. First, as I claimed in the introduction, Christian theology generally has had the relationship between sacrifice and atonement backwards. Usually, sacrifice is seen as one way in which Jesus’s death is said to atone. Theologians traditionally speak of the atonement as a primary category of Christian systematic theology, with there being a handful of models, theories, or images that are then seen as together filling out the picture of atonement. These models, theories, or images typically have names like “the Christus victor view,” “the penal-substitutionary view,” “the ransom view,” “the moral influence view,” and, of course, “the sacrifice view.” Naturally, there is some variety in terminology or choices depending on the theologian, but in my experience, the basic configuration is consistent. We saw in our study of sacrifice in the Jewish scriptures that such a configuration cannot come from an understanding of sacrifice itself. Sacrifice cannot be subsumed under the topic of atonement, nor can atonement be subsumed under the topic of sacrifice. Sacrifices may be performed for the purpose of atonement, and atonement may be accomplished through sacrifice, but neither topic is exhausted by the other. Sacrifices are performed for other purposes—usually so, even—and atonement may be achieved by other means, even though sacrifice is the norm.

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It should now be clear that the traditional configuration does not work when applied to the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice in the New Testament, either. The interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice does not function well as a subcategory of atonement, as one of several “theories of atonement.” Rather, it is the other way around. Atonement is one aspect of sacrifice, one possibility for what Jesus’s sacrificial death can be interpreted as accomplishing. I do not mean that atonement should be considered to be a subcategory of sacrifice, for there are still other ways of explaining Jesus’s death as atoning in the New Testament, ways not connected to sacrifice. But to understand the interpretation of Christ’s death as a sacrifice, one cannot begin and end with atonement. The picture described earlier for how the sacrificial interpretation fits in the history of early Christianity emphasizes this conclusion. If the sacrificial interpretation arose as a response to the problem of Jesus’s crucifixion, rather than to the problem of human sinfulness, then it is easy to see why atonement should be seen as one of several aspects of the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice. Jesus’s death was certainly atoning, but it also accomplished much more. My second observation here might at first glance appear to mitigate the first. This observation is about the meaning of atonement itself. I have thus far relied on the strictly biblical meaning of the term, as seen in the atoning sacrifices of the Old Testament and echoed in places like Hebrews and 1 John in the New Testament. In this strict sense, atonement is a concept that pertains to the commission of human sins and, in the Old Testament, to the problem of impurity. In Christian theological use, however, the term tends to have a broader sense, as addressing the problem of the rupture of the right human relationship to God, however this rupture is conceived.8 In the Christus victor view of the atonement, for instance, the cause of the rupture is humans being held in bondage by Satan, and Christ atones through his death and resurrection by defeating Satan and rescuing the captives. While human bondage to Satan in the model might well be seen as the result of sin, the point of Christ’s atoning work is not to deal specifically with sin in the way that atoning sacrifices in the Old Testament do. With this broader sense of atonement in mind, the interpretations of Christ’s death as the covenant sacrifice and as the Passover lamb might both be understood as relating to atonement. This relevance comes not from the nature of these sacrifices in the Old Testament or in Second Temple Judaism but from the way the sacrifices function in the New Testament. The point of the covenant sacrifice was to establish the covenant relationship between God and the people of Israel. In the Exodus account, this covenant was established in fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and in light of God’s delivering the people from Egypt and of the giving of the law. There

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is no real concern about the status of the people prior to the covenant. In the New Testament, however, the latter is of central importance, in large measure due to the inclusion of Gentiles in the church. If one believes, as Paul expresses in Rom 1:18–3:20, that prior to Christ’s coming the Gentiles stood under divine condemnation, then their inclusion in the new people of God becomes a form of atonement. Christ’s covenant sacrifice becomes a means of atonement. This change in the meaning of the covenant sacrifice is patent in Eph 2–3, where the Gentiles are described as being “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (2:12). Christ’s death as the covenant sacrifice resulted in their being included in Israel, becoming a part of the covenant, being given hope and a relationship to God. The case is similar with the Gentile audience of 1 Peter. This broadly atoning function of the covenant sacrifice is not as clear in the Lord’s Supper accounts, where the inclusion of the Gentiles is not explicitly in view. Recall, however, that Matthew does add that Jesus’s blood “is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (26:28). While this additional language probably comes from Jer 31:31–34, as discussed in the last chapter, it seems likely that Matthew also had the inclusion of the Gentiles in mind, given that Matthew emphasizes that the gospel will be taken to Gentiles (28:19–20). The “many” in Jesus’s Last Supper words surely includes Gentiles. Likewise, the Passover sacrifice was not about atonement in the Old Testament. It was about the redemption of the people from slavery in Egypt. But in the New Testament, when the slavery from which the people are redeemed is pictured as “the futile ways inherited from your ancestors” (1 Pet 1:18), the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s people once again takes on the character of atonement in the broad sense. As with the New Testament use of the covenant sacrifice, the nature of the described atonement is a change in people being alienated from God to being in covenant relationship to God. Rev 5:9–10 gives us a powerful statement of this when describing the accomplishment of the slaughtered Lamb in the song of the twenty-four elders: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; 10  you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.

In John’s Gospel, the Passover lamb image is combined with an atoning function from the beginning: “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of

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the world” (1:29). The expansiveness of the inclusivity of God’s people is emphasized in both passages. In the New Testament appropriation of the Old Testament sacrifices, then, the emphasis on the inclusion of the Gentiles in places transforms the nature of the sacrifices so that they may be said to atone in the broad theological sense. The formation of a new covenant people that includes those who were formerly alienated from God can correctly be described as an atoning process. Note, however, that this recognition does not change our first conclusion. Sacrifice still does not function as a subcategory of atonement, for two reasons. First, sacrifice still does not function as a single model of atonement. The covenant sacrifice can be said to atone, but it is not the same kind of atonement entailed in the Day of Atonement sacrifice. The same is true of the Passover sacrifice. Second, the non-atoning functions of these sacrifices still operate, and the atoning aspects are not always present. Mark’s account of the Lord’s Supper, for instance, does not suggest that atonement is in view in any significant way. The scene depicts the formation of the covenant community of Jesus’s followers through Jesus’s sacrificial death, and for Mark that is a sufficient picture. This is even more clearly the case in Paul’s use of the Passover lamb imagery in 1 Cor 5, where the point remains the moral formation of the community. We have seen in many texts that for the sacrificial interpretation of Jesus’s death, the character of the community is at the forefront. As with sacrifice itself, the interpretation of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice is multivalent, encompassing an array of meanings and implications. SACRIFICE, THE PROBLEM OF VIOLENCE, AND THE NECESSITY OF JESUS’S DEATH One of the barriers to understanding Jesus’s death as a sacrifice covered in the introduction to our study was the problem of violence. Many find the idea of sacrifice bizarre and objectionable because it is usually held that sacrifice implies that God commands or takes pleasure in the death of the victim. While this objection is usually articulated in progressive theological circles, I suspect that many Christians of all stripes find the bloodiness of animal sacrifice to be strange and off-putting. Leviticus is not many Christians’ favorite book of the Bible. While I do not claim to be able to solve this problem altogether, I believe that a correct understanding both of the general practice of sacrifice and of the way that the interpretations of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice function in the New Testament can help considerably. As to the general practice, the point is simple: we have seen that the death of the animal was not the point of sacrifice. The sacrificed animal was not being punished or taking on the punishment of

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others. The death of the animal was necessary only for the purpose of obtaining the flesh and blood, and it was the ritual actions taken with these that were the important part of sacrifice. In many cases, the sharing of the food resulting from sacrifice was a key part of the celebration. The killing of the animal is necessary for sacrifice in the same way it is necessary for eating meat, though admittedly the inclusion of the slaughter in the sacrificial ritual makes it more than merely incidental. But unless and until Christians are broadly willing to become vegetarians, objecting to animal sacrifice because of the entailed violence rings somewhat hollow. The problem of Jesus’s death is more complicated. The objection quoted in the introduction referred to the understanding of Jesus’s sacrificial death as “divine child abuse.” Traditionally Christians have seen the death of Jesus as a necessary event in order for humans to be saved. But, the objection goes, why would God demand the death of another human being, especially God’s own Son, in order to forgive people of their sins? Why especially a death on a cross, a particularly horrible way to die? What does it say about God that God would require this? These are good, tough questions. I believe that our study offers at least an important part of a solution. The key result actually comes from our look at Second Temple Judaism. Recall that one of the key conclusions from that chapter was the ambiguous attitude displayed by many Second Temple Jews toward sacrifice. On the one hand, sacrifice was seen as the ultimate expression of the Jews’ covenant relationship to God and the highest form of the worship of God. On the other hand, most Jews thought that what sacrifice accomplished could also be accomplished in other ways. Sacrifice was highly valued, but it was not seen as being strictly necessary. Diaspora Jews learned to live for a long time without being directly involved in sacrifice on any kind of regular basis. And, of course, after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 ce, all Jews learned to live without it, even though much evidence suggests that they longed for it for many, many years to come. When we apply this result to the sacrifice of Jesus, the conclusion may at first be shocking to some: Jesus’s death as a sacrifice was not necessary, at least not in the sense that it was the only way that God was willing or able to forgive humanity’s sins. If God was willing to forgive the sins of Israelites and Jews without sacrifice, as Micah 6:6–8 indicates, why could God not do so with humanity as a whole? And if God could do so, then there is no reason to see God as an abusive parent or tyrannical judge who demands that Jesus suffer in order to forgive others. The question then becomes, from a theological perspective, why did Jesus die? Was his sacrifice necessary, and if so, why? The answer emerges from our study. Jesus’s sacrificial death was necessary, but it was necessary not because of some quirk of God’s character. It was necessary, rather, because

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of the place that sacrifice held in the ancient world and because of sacrifice’s role in the story and life of Israel, particularly as the latter expands to include Gentiles. Sacrifice was the medium par excellence in the ancient world for conceiving of the relationship of humans to the divine. This was true for Jews and Gentiles alike. Jews longed for sacrifice when they did not have it, as we have seen. More particularly, in the story of Israel, the covenant relationship to God was established through sacrifice. The ongoing relationship of Israel to God was celebrated through sacrifice. The annual atonement ritual involved sacrifice. If Jesus was to establish a new eschatological covenant as a part of the arrival of God’s kingdom, there needed to be a sacrifice to initiate it. If a new people, the Gentiles, were to be liberated from their past lives and included in the reformed people of God, there needed to be a sacrifice. If the new covenant people were to be forgiven and holy, there needed to be a sacrifice. What kind of sacrifice would do? This new people were located all across the Mediterranean world. Were they to build new temples and new altars? Even if they were, how would such things relate to the eschatological identify of the new covenant community? How would they relate to the experience of the Holy Spirit? As Heb 9:23 says, “The heavenly things themselves need better sacrifices than these!” The sacrificial death of Jesus answers all of these questions. The necessity of Jesus’s death as a sacrifice arises from the story and religious life of the people of Israel. Jesus had to die as sacrifice for the story and identity of the new covenant people to make sense. One could certainly ask, could there have been another story? I do not think it is possible to answer this question. But granted that God chose to relate firstly and foremostly to the people of Israel as described in scripture, the sacrifice of Jesus seems the necessary turning point in order for the New Testament continuation of this story to make sense. A new covenant people, liberated from bondage, forgiven and holy, needs the sacrifice that Jesus offered. On the other hand, perhaps “necessity” is the wrong word to use in describing Jesus’s death. Rom 3:24–25 says that the redemption God made available through the sacrificial death of Jesus was by God’s “grace as a gift.” Numerous passages in the New Testament attest to Jesus’s death being a consequence of God’s love for humankind (most notably, 1 John 4:7–21). Perhaps we should see Jesus’s sacrificial death as a consequence of God knowing what we needed in order to relate rightly to God. The problem was not with God but with us. For twenty-first-century Christians, the idea of sacrifice may not seem so necessary, but for first-century Christians, the world was a different place. We must remember that today we are the heirs of a long story. The New Testament language used to describe Christ’s death as a sacrifice fits well with this picture. Never do we hear any claim that God cannot forgive except through sacrifice or that God demands punishment for every

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sin (no, not even Heb 9:22 says this). What we do hear is that Jesus “loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). This conviction, that Jesus’s death was because he willingly “gave himself” for us or otherwise is said to have died for us, is common in the New Testament, as we saw in the last chapter. As I argued in our study of sacrifice in Second Temple Judaism, Christians have often been guilty of being too legalistic in our understanding of sacrifice. This applies when looking at the death of Jesus as a sacrifice, too. Jesus did not die as a sacrifice because God demanded it out of some narcissistic sense of holiness. Rather, Jesus gave himself willingly because God’s new and reformed people needed it to understand who they were and what God was doing among them. The church needed such a sacrifice to understand itself as the people of God’s eschatological covenant who live forgiven and holy lives in communion with God, in worship of God, and with love for others. Like so many things in Christian faith, we would do best to remember that Jesus’s sacrificial death was an expression of divine grace.

NOTES 1. Jens Schröter, “Der Heilstod Jesu—Deutungen im Neuen Testament,” Luther 84 (2013): 139–58, esp. 146, frames the question similarly. 2. Martin Hengel, The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 9–10. 3. See Zsuzsanna Várhelyi, “Political Murder and Sacrifice: From Roman Republic to Empire,” in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, ed. Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 125–41. 4. Jane Lancaster Patterson, Keeping the Feast: Metaphors of Sacrifice in 1 Corinthians and Philippians (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), 14–15. 5. Robert J. Daly, Christian Sacrifice: The Judaeo-Christian Background before Origen (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1978), 230–56, outlines a three-fold theology of sacrifice for Paul, which aligns precisely with what I have laid out here: (1) the church as temple; (2) Christ’s death as sacrifice; (3) Christians offer spiritual sacrifices. 6. Eyal Regev, The Temple in Early Christianity: Experiencing the Sacred (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), emphasizes the positive relationship of early Christians to the Jerusalem temple throughout the book. In my view, he overstates the case, but he offers many helpful analyses of the New Testament writings with this question in mind. 7. Here I agree with Regev, 197–221, and Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 213–45. 8. R. B. Jamieson, Jesus’ Death and Heavenly Offering in Hebrews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 18–19, similarly distinguishes between these two possible senses of atonement.

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Subject Index

asham. See guilt offering atonement: Christian theology and, 3, 195–98. See also sacrifice, as atonement

heavenly sacrificial imagery, 109–10, 148–52 holiness, 43–44, 143, 146, 150, 169 holocaust. See burnt offering

blood rites, 35–37, 39, 47–48, 149, 164, 199 burnt offering, 39, 45–46, 51, 88, 105, 106, 116, 137, 153

imitation of Christ, 141, 155, 167–68, 172–73, 194–95 incense offering, 30, 51, 106, 109 Josephus, 69–71, 82–83

covenant sacrifice, 19–20, 116–36, 142, 144, 146, 149, 162, 164, 174–75, 189, 191–92, 196–98 daily sacrifice. See Tamid Day of Atonement, 29, 30, 33, 37, 54– 55, 147–50, 153–58, 160, 162, 171, 172, 174–75, 189, 191–92 diaspora Judaism, 79–80, 87–89, 143, 199

lambs, 137–41 libations, 39, 52, 100, 105, 106 Lord’s Supper, 96, 117–30, 190 minhah. See grain offering Mishnah, 80–81 offering of well-being, 46–47, 51, 98– 99, 105, 106, 116, 164 olah. See burnt offering

first fruits offering, 107, 137 grain offering, 49–50, 99, 105 guilt offering, 48–49, 105, 120, 123, 132, 153, 154 hand-laying ritual, 33–35 hattat. See purification offering

Passover, 53–54, 107, 136–47, 164, 167, 174–75, 189, 191–92, 196–98 Philo of Alexandria, 54, 79–80 “pleasing aroma,” 27, 52, 68, 88, 101, 103, 168 prophets’ relationship to sacrifice, 40– 42, 55–58, 81, 108–9 215

216

Subject Index

purification offering, 47–48, 88, 105, 106, 123, 132, 153, 154, 159–61, 171 purity, 42–44

Septuagint, 87–89 shelamim. See offering of well-being sin offering. See purification offering substitution, 31–37, 173, 185

Qumran, 75, 84–86 sacrifice: as atonement, 27–37, 76–77, 104, 110, 136, 140, 147–62, 167, 173–75, 191, 195; as communion with the divine, 18–25, 73–75, 96–101, 110, 173–75, 193; as gift, 26–27, 75– 76, 101–4, 110, 167–68, 173–75, 193

Tamid, 20–21, 45, 51–53, 69, 71, 77, 106–7, 138 violence and sacrifice, 3–4, 9, 198–99 Yom Kippur. See Day of Atonement

Ancient Texts Index

1 Corinthians 1:2 143 1:10 129 1:13 165 1:23–24 191 3:1–4 143 3:16–17 143, 192 5:1–13 142, 198 5:6–8 142–44 5:7 161 6:1–6 143 6:15–20 143 chs. 8–10 11, 96 8:11 165 9:13 95, 106 chs. 10–11 161 chs. 10–12 129–30 10:16–17 128 10:17 129 10:18 106 11:20–22 128 11:23–26 127–30 11:23 190 11:24 161, 165 11:27–30 128 11:27 129 11:29 129 11:33–34 128 12:1–31 129

12:27 129 15:1 161 15:3 161–62 15:20–23 107 16:15 107 1 Enoch ch. 14 109 47:1–14 83–84 chs. 85–90 141 1 John 1:5–7 153–55 1:9 153 2:2 153–54, 194 2:12 154 3:5 154 3:16–17 154–55 4:7–21 154, 200 4:10 153–54 4:14 155 5:6–8 183 1 Kings 3:15 47 ch. 8 23–24 8:63–64 47 9:25 45 18:20–40 25, 38 217

218

Ancient Texts Index

1 Maccabees 1:45–59 72 ch. 4 25 4:41–58 72 4:50 64 5:54 76 1 Peter 1:1 133, 146 1:2 101, 133–34, 144, 145 1:13–17 144 1:15–16 146 1:17b 146 1:18 166, 197 1:18–19 101, 144–47, 162, 167, 172 1:19 104 1:20–21 145 1:22b 146 2:4–5 101, 133, 146, 193 2:5 106 2:9 146 2:9–10 133, 144 2:18–25 172 2:22–25 120 2:24 172–73, 194 3:18 173 1 Samuel 1:3–5 38 2:2 43 3:14 40 ch. 6 22–23 6:1–12 49 6:13–15 45 6:15 38 7:9–10 45 9:12–13 50 11:1–13 23 14:31–34 36 15:22 108–9 15:22–23 82 20:6 38

1 Thessalonians 5:9–10 165 1 Timothy 2:6

165, 186, 192

2 Chronicles 5:12–13 47 ch. 7 23–24 15:8–15 47 ch. 29 24 29:21–24 48, 185 29:27 47 33:16 47 2 Corinthians 2:14–16a 100–101 4:7–15 171 5:14–15 165 5:14–21 170–71, 173 2 Enoch 45:3 82 59:2 76 62:1 76 70:2 74, 75–76 chs. 68–70 77 68:5–7 73 69:5–18 73–74 2 Esdras 6:17 185 8:35 185 2 Kings 12:16 48 16:15 45 17:17 185 2 Maccabees 3:31–34 76 3:33 154 3:35 76 4:14 72

219

Ancient Texts Index

5:15–20 72 12:39–45 76 12:43 185 13:23 76 2 Samuel 6:12–19 23 6:17 47 24:18–25 25, 45 24:25 47

Amos 4:4–5 56 ch. 5 111 5:21–24 56–58 8:14 154 9:1 156 Apocalypse of Abraham chs. 9–15 81 ch. 29 81

2 Thessalonians 2:13 107

Baruch 1:10

2 Timothy 4:6 106

Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 22:1–9 74

3 Maccabees 1:9 76

Colossians ch. 1

4 Ezra 10:44–46 81

Daniel 4:34 179 8:9–11 53

4 Maccabees 4:20 72 17:22 84, 157, 190, 191 Acts 2:42 126 2:46 193 ch. 7 193 7:41–42 98 8:32–33 120 10:4 99, 108 10:13 98 11:7 98 14:8–18 97 15:20–29 97 20:28 127 21:17–26 105, 192, 193 21:25 97 22:17–21 193 23:1–5 193

72, 185

132–133

Dead Sea Scrolls 1QM 2:1–6 75 1QS III, 3–4 84 1QS III, 6–8 84 1QS III, 8–12 85 1QS V, 6–7 85 1QS IX, 1–6 85 1QS VIII, 3–4 85 1QS VIII, 6 85 1QS VIII, 8–9 85–86 4Q400–407 109 4Qflor, 1:6–7 182 11Q17 109 11QT 13–24 75 11QT 29–47 75 Deuteronomy 7:6 166 7:8 145

220

Ancient Texts Index

9:26 181 12:13–14 38 12:16 36 12:23–25 36 12:23 37 13:5 132 14:2 166 15:15 181 15:19 169 15:23 36 16:1–8 53 16:3–4 142 18:10 39 19:10 118 21:7 118 21:8 181 21:23 172 24:18 181 26:1–3 107 26:18 166–67 27:1–8 22, 47 Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.53.7–8 12 3.55.8 12 4.34.2 12 Ephesians 1:7 131–32, 162, 168, 179, 186 chs. 2–3 130–133 2:12 197 2:13–18 168 2:13 190 2:19–22 192 3:12 168 5:2 165, 167–68, 174, 175, 186, 192 5:25 165, 168, 192 Epistle of Barnabas 7:7–11 182 Exodus chs. 1–2

124

3:18 19–20, 117 5:1–3 20, 117 5:8–17 20 5:8 117 5:17 117 6:6 132 8:8–29 20 8:8 117 8:25–29 117 10:24–26 20, 117 ch. 12 53 12:1–13 137 12:11 144 12:15 142 12:22 138 12:46 138, 181 13:7 142 15:13 181 19:5 166 19:5–6 133, 139–40 19:10–14 140 20:22–24 18–19 21:30 121 23:19 107 23:22 166 ch. 24 19–20, 116–17, 118, 123, 126–27, 133, 135–36 25:29 109 25:31–40 109 28:41 169 29:1–37 20 29:10–14 135 29:12 118 29:14 171 29:16–25 46 29:26–28 170 29:33 29 29:36–37 28–29, 43 29:38–46 20–21, 45, 52 29:44 169 30:1–10 51 30:7–8 106 30:10 29, 43

Ancient Texts Index

30:11–16 30 34:26 107 37:16 109 37:25–29 51 40:9–11 135 40:34–38 21 Ezekiel chs. 1–2 109 16:59–63 123 chs. 36–37 166–67 chs. 40–48 48, 49 42:13 185 42:19 185 42:21 185 43:14–20 156 43:20–26 29 44:7 27 44:27 154 45:13–17 33 Ezra 6:17 48 8:35 48 10:19 49 Galatians 1:3–5 162 1:4 161–62, 166, 192 2:20 165–66, 186, 192, 201 3:13 166, 171–72, 173 Genesis 4:1–7 97 9:4 36, 37 ch. 22 97, 185 32:20 28 Hebrews 1:1–4 147 2:9 165 2:17 147, 157 5:1 103

221

5:1 104 5:3 104 7:22 134 7:27 106 7:26–27 147 8:2 148 8:3 103 8:4 103 8:5 148 8:8–13 134 9:1–10:18 147–52 9:1–10 134–35 9:5 156 9:7 104 9:9 103 9:10–14 135 9:12 162 9:13 104 9:15–22 134–36 9:22 30, 201 9:23 200 10:1–11 104 10:4–10 106 10:11 106 10:29 136 11:4 97, 103 11:17–19 97 11:28 107 12:24 136 12:22–24 152 12:28 98–99, 152 13:10 99, 106, 152, 193 13:11 106 13:15–16 98–99, 106, 152, 193 13:20–21 136 Herodotus, Histories 6.129.1 12–13 Hosea 1:6–9 133 2:23 133 4:8 48

222

Ancient Texts Index

6:6 56, 108 8:11–13 56 8:11–14 40–41 Isaiah 1:11–17 55–56 1:18 140 1:27 132 ch. 6 109 19:19–22 57 41:14 181 43:1 181 43:14 181 44:22–24 181 44:22 132 47:4 132 51:11 181 52:3 181 52:13 – 53:12 119–21, 122–23, 126, 138, 161, 172–73, 190 53:7 140–41 53:10 185 53:12 158 57:19 131 59:20 132 62:12 181 63:9 181 James 1:18 107 2:21 97 Jeremiah 1:5 169 6:19–21 40 6:20 56 7:21 56 14:11–12 40, 56 17:1 48 31:31–34 123, 126, 127–28, 134, 151, 197 33:17–18 57–58

Job 5:20 132 John 1:29–36 137–40 1:29 164, 194, 197–98 2:13–22 193 6:4 164 6:27–40 163 6:47–56 163–64 6:51 165 10:11 170 10:15 165, 170 11:50–52 170 11:50 165 12:38–41 138 12:38 120 14:8–11 138 15:13 165, 170 16:2 104 17:17–19 169 17:19 169–70 17:20–24 138, 169 19:14 137–38 19:31 138 19:36 138, 181 Josephus, Against Apion 2.194–198 38, 39 Josephus, Antiquities 3.224–57 38 3.230–32 77 6.148–49 82–83 12.248–326 72 14.64–68 70 14.477–78 71 15.247–48 70 15.422 71 16.35 70 Josephus, Jewish War 1.148 70–71

Ancient Texts Index

2.408–16 71 5.11–20 71 6.94 71 Joshua 8:30–31 47 8:30–35 22 22:10–34 74 Jubilees 3:27 78 6:14 76–77 13:4–16 78 ch. 21 78 30:16 41 49:15 180 Judges 2:5 25 11:31 45 16:23 50 20:26 25 21:3–5 45 21:4 25, 47 Judith 4:14 76 16:16 82 16:18–20 76 Letter of Aristeas 33–46 76, 79 83–120 79 144 44 165–66 44 170 79 234 82, 113 Leviticus 1:1 131 1:2–12 46 1:3–17 45 1:3 131, 179 1:4 33 1:5 39

1:10 131, 179 1:11 39 ch. 2 49 ch. 3 46 3:1 131, 179 3:2 33, 39 3:6 179 3:8 33, 39 3:9 179 3:11 88 3:13 33, 39 3:14–16 32 3:17 36 ch. 4 110 chs. 4–5 123 4:1–5:13 47–48 4:1–12 49 4:3 131 4:4 33 4:6 39 4:7 39, 118 4:15 33, 35 4:17 39 4:18 39, 118 4:21 171 4:24 33, 171 4:25 118 4:27–31 31–32, 33 4:33 33 4:34 39, 118 5:9 171 5:11–13 30 5:12 171 5:14–16 48 5:15 49 5:17–19 49 6:14–18 49 6:1–7 49 6:7 123 6:19–23 49 6:19–23 51 6:24–30 44 6:9–12 49 7:1 179 7:1–6 49

223

224

Ancient Texts Index

7:11–38 46 7:26–27 36 7:35 131 8:1–17 47 8:10–21 135 8:11 39 8:13 131 8:14–15 29 8:14–15 43 8:15 39 8:18–21 46 8:30 39, 169, 170 9:1–7 137 9:4 47 9:6 21 9:9 39 9:22–24 21 10:10 43 10:17 179 11:44–45 146 11:44 43 ch. 12 45, 51 12:6–8 47, 104, 105 12:6 137 12:7 29 ch. 14 49, 51, 104, 105 14:1–7 135 14:1–9 180 14:10–13 44 14:10–25 137 14:19 45 14:31 30, 45 14:53 29 ch. 15 51 15:13–15 47 15:15 30, 45 15:30 30, 45 ch. 16 54–55 16:1 131 16:3 45 16:5 45 16:14–15 39 16:15–19 43 16:15–22 148 16:15 160

16:19 153 16:20–22 30 16:20 153 16:24 45 16:25 173 16:30 153, 167 16:33 29, 43 ch. 17 164 17:1–14 36 17:11 35–36, 47 19:2 146 19:5–8 46 19:20–22 49 19:26 36 20:7 146 20:26 146 21:6–22 27 22:17–25 145 ch. 23 52 23:9–14 107 23:12 137 23:18–20 137 23:19 47 25:9 154 25:48–49 132 Livy, History of Rome 1.26 12 27.16 12 45.28 12 Luke 1:8–11 51, 106 2:22–24 104, 105 2:24 95 5:14 104, 105 9:21–22 190 9:22 117 9:43–45 190 9:44 117 15:23–30 97 18:31–33 117 18:31–34 190 22:7–15 117 22:7 107

225

Ancient Texts Index

22:15–20 125–27 22:37 120 24:21 190 Mishnah m. Abot 1:2 m. Menahot 13:11 m. Nazir 6:7 m. Tamid 7:3 m. Tamid 4:1–3 m. Yoma 4:1–3 m. Yoma 5:4 m. Yoma 6:1–8 m. Yoma 8:8–9 m. Zebahim 2–4 m. Zebahim 5, 81

80 50 81 81 80 64 64 64 80 80

Malachi 1:6–14 41, 56 3:3–4 57 Mark 1:4 124 1:44 104, 105 8:31–33 190 8:31 117 9:30–32 190 9:31 117 10:32–34 190 10:33–34 117 10:45 119–21, 122 12:28–34 108–9 14:3–9 118 14:12 107 14:17 117 14:22–25 117–22, 198 14:24 136, 165 14:27 122 15:28 120 Matthew chs. 1–2 124 1:21 123–24 3:1–6 124

chs. 5–7 124 5:23–24 102, 108 6:14–15 124 7:24–27 125 8:4 102–3 104, 105, 108 8:17 120 9:2–8 124 9:9–13 108 12:1–8 108 16:13–20 125 16:21–23 190 16:21 117 17:22–23 117, 190 17:24–27 106, 108 18:15–35 125 18:22–25 124 20:17–19 190 20:18–19 117 20:28 122 21:4–5 124 22:4 97 23:18–22 102, 108 26:20 117 26:26–29 122–25 26:28 136, 162, 197 28:19–20 125, 197 Micah 6:6–8

56–58, 199

Nehemiah 10:33 48 12:35–41 47 Numbers 3:44–51 121 4:7 109 5:8 182 5:38 154 ch. 6 51 6:1–7 182 6:1–21 105 6:11 30 6:12 137

226

Ancient Texts Index

6:13–17 47 6:13–21 45 ch. 7 137 7:3 27 ch. 8 51 8:19 30–31 9:1–14 53 9:12 138, 181 15:1–10 46 15:17–21 107 15:22–26 33 16:41–50 30, 51 18:9 171 19 135, 179 23:14–16 45 25:1–13 30 25:13 28 ch. 28–29 45, 48, 50, 52, 67 28:1–8 45 28:2 27 28:9–10 137 28:11–14 137 28:16–25 53 28:26–29 137 29:1–3 137 29:7–8 137 29:7–11 54 29:12–14 137 31:50 27 35:30–34 44 35:33 29, 118

1.188 64 1.190–93 39 1.195–98 46 1.195 38 1.203–4 34–35 1.226–46 77 1.271 50 1.277–79 41 2.145 54 Polybius, Histories 5.14.8 11 Prayer of Azariah 15 72 16–17 83 Proverbs 16:14 28 Psalm 154 10–11 83

Philippians 2:17 100, 106 4:17–18 103 4:18 95, 168

Psalms 34:20 138 34:21 181 39:7 185 40:6–8 106 40:6 48, 58 50:14 83 51:16–17 58 66:8–15 45 103:3–4 132 129:4 154 130:8 167 141:2 83, 95, 108, 109

Philo, On the Migration of Abraham 89–93 81–82

Psalms of Solomon 3:8 83

Philo, Special Laws bks. 1–2 79–80 1.66–70 38 1.67 77

Revelation 1:5b–6 140 2:14 97 2:20 97

Ancient Texts Index

chs. 4–5 109 5:1–10 139–40, 141 5:8 106 5:9–10 197 6:9 109–10 7:14 140 8:3–5 106, 109 9:13 109 11:1 109 12:11 140, 141 14:1–5 141 14:4 107 14:18 109 16:7 109 19:11–21 141 Romans 1:18 – 3:20 197 3:21–25 194 3:21–31 155 3:24–25 162, 200 3:25 155–59, 174 4:25 158 5:1–2a 159 5:6–11 158–59, 174 5:6–8 165 6:1–11 171 ch. 7 160 8:1–17 160 8:3 159–61, 171, 174 8:23 107 8:32 159, 165, 185, 186 10:16 120 11:16 107 12:1–2 99–100, 174 12:1 106, 175, 193 14:15 165 15:15–16 100–101 15:16 108, 174 15:21 120 16:5 107 Ruth 4:3–4 132

Sibylline Oracles 3.767–808 75 3.772–73 64 4.24–30 81 5.268 75 5.397–413 75 5.501–2 75 Sirach 7:8–9 68 7:29–31 68 34:21–24 41, 68 35:1–13 67–69 35:4 95 35:15 68 38:11 68 chs. 44–50 68–69 45:16 64 Tacitus, Annals 9.14.10 12 Testament of Isaac 4:39–42 81 Testament of Job 15:4 72–73 42:4–8 76 Testament of Joseph 19:8–12 141 Testament of Judah 21:5 78 Testament of Levi 3:4–6 78–79, 109–10, 182 9:3–14 77–78 Testament of Moses 4:8 74–75 Testament of Reuben 6:8 78

227

228

Ancient Texts Index

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 5.11.1 13 Titus 2:11–12 167 2:14 165–66, 186, 192 Tobit 1:4–8 72 4:11 83

Wisdom of Solomon 3:6 84 Zechariah 3:3–5 140 9:9 122, 124 9:11 121–22, 124 13:7 122

About the Author

Scott Shauf is professor of religious studies at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, and the author of The Divine in Acts and in Ancient Historiography (Fortress, 2015), Theology as History, History as Theology: Paul in Ephesus in Acts 19 (de Gruyter, 2005), and a number of scholarly articles.

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