oblations is wanting in the primitive and patriarchal religions, and of ejecting from Abel's sacrifice the virtue ascribed to it by the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews.1 This It has been thought, with considerable probability, that all sacrifices prior to the institution of the law were holocausts or whole burnt-offerings. Whether they were expiatory is a difficult point to determine, because the accounts of them proceed from a subsequent writer, who transfers Mosaic rites to the earliest times. Even with the belief that all is chronologically accurate, Davison undertakes to shew that the primitive and patriarchal offerings were not expiatory. He makes out his case, however, with doubtful success. One thing is unquestionable, viz., that some sacrifices under the law were really piacular-those offered for such transgressions as were not punished by the laws of the state, or which were only known to the conscience of the individual-in other words, sin and trespass offerings. What then was the idea which the people connected with the slaying of animals appropriated to these cases? What notion prompted the act of their presentation ? We answer that they were regarded as possessing an atoning, expiatory power-that they were substituted in place of the sinner who brought them, bearing the punishment of his transgression and so procuring its pardon from God. By their means sins were taken away and covered. The Deity was appeased. view is supported by Lev. xvii. 11: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." Here it is stated that the life of the animal, which was in the blood, was given for the life of the offerer. The of the former was in place of the of the latter. The same opinion is confirmed by the fact of the blood being sprinkled; signifying that the life was scattered and annihilated. Something more therefore was intended than the mere slaying of the animals, as in the case of other bloody sacrifices. The act of sprinkling was symbolical, implying that the person who offered the sacrifice had forfeited his life; and that the life of the animal was forfeited instead. Another argument is founded on the analogy of various other sacrifices. Thus in the covenant-sacrifice, a heifer was divided into two pieces between which the contracting parties passed; signifying that if they were guilty of perjury, the same fate as the victim's might befal them (Jer. xxxiv. 18, etc., Gen. xv. 17). Thus the penalty that would overtake the offending party was represented by the death of the victim. There is another rite which shews the 1 Remains, p. 63 et seqq. same idea. A murder whose perpetrator was unknown was expiated by the elders and judges of the nearest city washing their hands over a slain heifer, and asserting that they had not shed the blood of the murdered man. Their guilt was thus supposed to be washed away and transferred to the victim. "Be merciful, O Lord, unto thy people Israel whom thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto thy people Israel's charge and the blood shall be forgiven them" (Deut. xxi. 8). The substitution of the innocent for the guilty is also implied in the ceremony of the scape-goat, where the sins of the whole people were transferred to the head of the goat let loose, that it might carry them away. Thus the idea that one creature might take the place of another, and endure the punishment supposed to be due, is not foreign to the Old Testament. Vicarious satisfaction appears more or less plainly in various parts of the Bible. We see it in 2 Sam. xii. 14, 15, where the child born to David was punished with death for the sin of the father; and also in the same book, where his crime in numbering the people was expiated by three days' pestilence (xxiv. 10, etc.) It is likewise contained in Isaiah liii. 4, etc., where the suffering nation atones by its sorrows for the sins that had been committed; satisfaction being clearly intimated. In like manner, the substitution of piacular victims in place of sinners is supported by the use of the term & in Gen. xxxi. 39, where it means, with the accusative, to atone for, literally to make good the loss of a thing, implying substitution and compensation. The notion of reparation which it here conveys presupposes that of substitution. The word is used of expiation or atonement, in the book of Leviticus. So the term denoting the price of expiation, ransom, an equivalent to another thing; as appears from Isaiah xliii. 3, "I gave Egypt for thy ransom." The noun comes from the verb to expiate, primarily to cover, i.e., to remove or forgive sin; and seems to shew that the idea of substitution is involved in the verb as applied to atonement.1 Traces of the same idea of atonement are found in other nations of antiquity. By means of piacular victims, it was thought that the anger of the gods and impending punishment were averted, because the slain animals suffered the penalty due to the offender, in his stead. Thus Herodotus relates, that among the Egyptians, imprecations were uttered over the heads of the victims in these words: "Should any evil be impending over us sacrificing, or over all Egypt, let it be turned upon this head." The historian adds, that the custom prevailed throughout the land. To the same effect Cæsar writes of the Gauls, "the whole 2 Lib. ii. cap. 39. 1 See De Wette, Opuscula, p. 20 et seqq. nation is exceedingly addicted to superstitious rites; on which account those who are visited with severer diseases, as well as persons amid battles and dangers, either immolate men for victims, or vow that they will immolate them, and use the Druids as instruments in such sacrifices, because they think that the immortal gods cannot be appeased otherwise than by giving up the life of a man for a man, etc."1 The Romans had the same sentiments, as appears from Ovid: "Spare; a small victim dies for a small person, Take, I pray you, a heart for a heart, entrails for entrails; The author of the distichs bearing the name of Cato has the like idea. The thing is aptly illustrated by a passage in Porphyry : "At first nothing with life was sacrificed to the gods; there was not even a law respecting it, because it was forbidden by the law of nature. But at certain times the story is that they first offer a victim, requiring a life for a life." The Jewish doctors have the same view, viz., that a victim was offered up in place of him who brought it-an animal for a soul.5 Many objections have been made to this idea of sacrifice by Sykes, Sueskind, Steudel, Klaiber, Bähr, and others. Yet it appears to us the most natural, as it is most in harmony with the notions of the ancient Hebrews. Bähr's peculiar and artificial theory of symbolical substitution has been rightly rejected by Kurtz, De Wette, and Winer.8 Though the idea of expiation was not connected with the earliest sacrifices, we cannot deny the existence of piacular burntofferings before the law. We admit that it was not the primitive conception, or that which prompted the first offerings. Fruits of the earth were the oldest; and along with them such things as milk, honey, etc. Hence the original idea was that of gratitude for benefits received. As they were in use among the most ancient peoples, Abraham must have been accustomed to see them at Ur whence he emigrated. Because the gods were supposed to have bodily appetites like men, flesh was presented to them as an acceptable thing, either in a raw state or prepared in the way they liked best. This is a gross notion, but not improbable on that account. Sometimes the deity was gratified with the pleasant savour, when it was supposed he did not partake of the flesh. Abraham continued the practice of sacrifice. But 1 De bello Gallico, Lib. vi. cap. 15. 3 See Grotius de Satisfactione, cap. 10. 2 Fasti, Lib. vi. 160. 4 De abstinentia, Lib. iv. cap. 15. See chap. iii. of the book Reschith Chochma; and Sepher Minhagim, fol. 45, chap. ii. 6 Mosaisches Opfer, p. 32, et seqq. • Realwörterbuch, art. Sühnopfer, vol. ii., p. 544, third edition. Archaeologie, p. 267. the God-consciousness that brought him forth from the surrounding idolatries, could not retain the heathen notion of sacrifice. In offering holocausts, he thought of the one true God, in whose immediate presence he lived and acted. The desire to preserve the favour of Jehovah, as well as gratitude for kindnesses already received, prompted him to present his offerings. Whether his mind was wholly free from the anthropomorphism of the heathen may be questioned; especially as we find a much later person, and one too who represented a national tradition not the oldest, employing the language, "the Lord smelled a sweet savour, and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more," etc. (Gen. viii. 21. See also Lev. i. 9, 13; Num. xv. 7.) It is difficult to determine whether the idea of expiation which belonged to certain sacrifices under the law commonly termed piacular, originated with Moses himself, or was a later conception. Perhaps sin and trespass-offerings were not instituted by so wise a legislator with that intent; as if sins could in reality be expiated or blotted out by such means. We incline to the belief that, though he did not so appoint them, a later age viewed them in that light; for they are worded to imply it. They present in consequence a phase of deterioration. Burnt-offerings generally, or holocausts, to which a kind of piacular virtue had been long attached, were retained by Moses, who introduced the additional ceremony of imposition of hands, giving them increased significancy. It is well known that though the essential parts of the ritual in the Pentateuch proceeded from Moses himself, the composition and various portions did not. The Mosaic elements were in a high sense divine, because the legislator had the Spirit of God in large measure. The idea of the theocracy was a revelation to him. His consciousness of the divine was remarkably pure. So far forth his legal appointments may be called divine. Of course he did not believe that the blood of animals could in itself take away sin. Slain beasts were no more, in his view, than ethical signs intended to stimulate the conscience and keep alive a sense of sin. Whether and how far Moses and the Jews throughout the period covered by the Old Testament writings connected the death of Christ with the expiatory sacrifices of the law, we need not stop to inquire. The proof that he distinctly did so appears to us defective, at least in the canonical Jewish Scriptures. Indeed a suffering Messiah is not seen there; as all recent critics allow who have examined the subject without prejudice. Yet this fact is not inconsistent with the hypothesis, that when Moses instituted sacrifice with a symbolical intent out of the high sphere of God-consciousness, he may have perceived their ulti mate object. His consciousness, clear though it was up to a certain extent, may have been moved, without his personal knowledge towards the ordination of offerings of far-reaching import. It is because many think that the expiatory sacrifices of the law were originally designed as types of the Redeemer's atonement before the eyes of the Jews, that they assert a direct divine command for their institution. But it is unphilosophical, as well as unscriptural, to separate the divine and human by an irreconcilable gulf, as though the latter could not be harmoniously blended with the former.. Instead of saying therefore that the rite of piacular sacrifice was a symbolical action at its commencement, we prefer calling it an ethical symbol, designed by Moses to influence the conscience. Awakened conscience prompted it. Moses perceived its natural operation on the hearts of a sinful people. It was to be a standing memorial of what the sinner deserved. There is no foundation in the Old Testament for asserting that the great legislator of the Jews intended it as a representation of the sufferings and death of Messiah, or a declaration of the doctrine included in that future fact. The latter part of Isaiah, rightly interpreted, does not justify that hypothesis; much less any psalm, or part of Daniel's prophecies. Having thus considered the sin and trespass-offerings in relation to their piacular power we may observe, that burnt-offerings generally, or holocausts, (), the most common of all sacrifices, must be classed with the former so far as some idea of propitiation was associated with them. They were older than the sin and trespass-oblations, which arose indeed out of them, as a species referring to specific transgressions. They were a general symbolical expression of pious devotion to God, presented to him to gain his favour. But we cannot exclude from them some notion of expiation, though it was neither definite nor distinct, as in the case of trespass and sin-offerings. We have thus arrived at an answer to the question whether the sacrifices offered prior to Moses were expiatory. Being holocausts, they were so; though the notion of expiation attached to them was vague and indefinite. It was of a floating nature, not having reached clearness or definiteness. In retaining them, Moses had ethical symbols in view. But his design was imperfectly apprehended by a sensuous people, since we find that a specific power or efficacy to take away sin was afterwards attributed to them. Here was a return to the idea of ages prior to Moses, with the additional circumstance of giving it a fixity which it had not before. The ethical significancy was obscured in proportion as the offerings were supposed to have virtue in themselves of making satisfaction for sin. |