Giving All To God

It is well known that Greeks rarely offered holocaust sacrifices – sacrifices in which the entire animal is offered to the gods by being consumed in the fire. the most common sacrifice was the thysia, which always culminated with a meal.

Alongside the rare holocausts were the equally rare “moirocausts,” in which an an entire leg or some portion of flesh was burned, reducing the meat available to the human worshipers.

Early in the twentieth century, it was thought (by Jane Harrison among others) that holocausts were reserved for chthonic deities, but that category is now questioned. Gunnel Ekroth suggests that the difference between the thysia and the holocaust didn’t have to do with the divine recipient but the “intensity” of the rite. Low-intensity sacrifices were done on a regular basis “for the upkeep of order, when no unusual or threatening events have taken place.” High-intensity rituals, including holocausts were offered “when disasters and misfortunes have occurred, events which are taken as signs that the relations to the gods have been damaged” (90-1; full bibliographic information below).

Ancient Greeks themselves noticed a difference between Greek and Hebrew sacrifice on this point. Ekroth writes, “The use and meaning of holocausts seem to be fundamentally different in Greek sacrifices as compared

with Israelite rituals. Theophrastos (referred to by Porphyrios, De abstinentia II, 26, 1–2) even
claims that if the Greeks would have to sacrifice like the Jews, they would cease doing it, since the
latter
do not eat the sacrificial victims but burn them completely. In Israelite cult, the burning of
entire victims was a standard part of the ritual, especially of the daily ritual in the temple in Jerusalem,
and considered as the best gift that could be offered to God. The purpose seems primarily to
have been purificatory, but the fact that a holocaust actually would leave no meat for the worshippers
to dine on seems also to have been central, since the renunciation of the meat by the humans in
order to turn it over entirely to God increased the importance and value of the offerings” (92, fn. 28).

Perhaps we can explain in terms of Ekroth’s theory: Israel offered daily holocausts because they were under constant threat of damaged relations, because the world was in a state of permanent disaster. If so, the cancellation of daily sacrifice takes on a heightened significance: It means that the crisis of millennia is over.

Ekroth, “Burnt, Cooked or Raw? Divine and Human Culinary Desires at Greek Animal Sacrifice” in Eftychia Stavrianopoulou, et. al., eds., Transformations in Sacrificial Practices: From Antiquity to Modern Times (Berkin: LIT, 2008) 87-111.