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Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice (Hardcover, New)
Loot Price: R3,127
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Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice (Hardcover, New)
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Examining the diverse religious texts and practices of the late
Hellenistic and Roman periods, this collection of essays
investigates the many meanings and functions of ritual sacrifice in
the ancient world. The essays survey sacrificial acts, ancient
theories, and literary as well as artistic depictions of sacrifice,
showing that any attempt to identify a single underlying
significance of sacrifice is futile. Sacrifice cannot be defined
merely as a primal expression of violence, despite the frequent
equation of sacrifice to religion and sacrifice to violence in many
modern scholarly works; nor is it sufficient to argue that all
sacrifice can be explained by guilt, by the need to prepare and
distribute animal flesh, or by the communal function of both the
sacrificial ritual and the meal.
As the authors of these essays demonstrate, sacrifice may be
invested with all of these meanings, or none of them. The killing
of the animal, for example, may take place offstage rather than in
sight, and the practical, day-to-day routine of plant and animal
offerings may have been invested with meaning, too. Yet sacrificial
acts, or discourses about these acts, did offer an important site
of contestation for many ancient writers, even when the religions
they were defending no longer participated in sacrifice.
Negotiations over the meaning of sacrifice remained central to the
competitive machinations of the literate elite, and their
sophisticated theological arguments did not so much undermine
sacrificial practice as continue to assume its essential
validity.
Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice offers new insight into the
connections and differences among the Greek and Roman, Jewish and
Christian religions.
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