XAos13 t1_jcze64w wrote
Reply to comment by StekenDeluxe in Saudi Arabia stone ruins were pilgrimage sites, where an ancient cult gathered to sacrifice animals about 7,000 years ago by marketrent
>blood ... given to the gods to drink. pour the blood of a ram ... into a pit
Requires the blood to be drained. You just cited two examples of what I meant. The parts reserved for the gods are the parts humans don't eat.
StekenDeluxe t1_jczfoeo wrote
I don't understand what you are trying to say.
Earlier, you wrote the following:
> the priest makes sure the knife is as clean as possible. The blood drains completely etc. Anything else would be an insult to God.
Are you saying that the insult would be to include any of the sacrificial animal's blood as part of the offering? Or that the insult would be to include only a part but not all of the sacrificial animal's blood?
Also, you mentioned an "insult to God," but you still haven't specified which "God" this would be. It's all terribly unclear.
> The parts reserved for the gods are the parts humans don't eat.
Which parts are you talking about? The blood? If so, that makes no sense at all. Gods and men alike could consume blood - it was considered perfectly fine food. Blood was famously a main ingredient in the "black soup" of the Spartans. Surely they weren't alone in this. Folks back then could ill afford to discard any part of a slaughtered animal.
EDIT: I don't mind the downvotes, at all, but would much prefer counter-arguments of some kind. Anyone?
IFailedTuringTestAMA t1_jd089p9 wrote
I think he’s just pointing out how the traditions are rooted in logic for the time. Some were to prevent the spread of disease and others are explanations for why the gods got the bits we don’t want. And I’m pretty sure most cultures didn’t consider blood a food or something to be eaten. I wouldn’t mind seeing your source on the Gods enjoying it, though.
StekenDeluxe t1_jd0dx9m wrote
> And I’m pretty sure most cultures didn’t consider blood a food or something to be eaten.
If you could list a few examples from the ancient world of cultures where cooking with blood was considered wrong or taboo, I'd love to see them.
> I wouldn’t mind seeing your source on the Gods enjoying it, though.
Sure thing!
In Billie Jean Collins' Pigs at the Gate: Hittite Pig Sacrifice in Its Eastern Mediterranean Context, she describes how in a rite from Kizzuwatna,
> "the petitioner digs a hole in the ground and kills a piglet […] so that its blood flows into the pit. Various offerings of grains and breads are placed into the pit and the primordial deities are invited to eat the food and drink the blood of the piglet."
Furthermore, in Gary Beckman's Blood in Hittite Ritual, he explains how
> "… The syntagm aulin karp- must indicate the positioning of the victim’s throat to receive the fatal slashing. After the blow had been struck, the officiant could control the direction taken by the resultant eruption of blood, sending it upward or downward. It is this distinction that is expressed by the pair of technical terms ‘slaughter up’ versus ‘slaughter down’…"
And he continues:
> "In this regard the Hittites seem to have observed a practice similar to that of the ancient Greeks by which animals offered to celestial and earthly gods were generally killed with their throats upward, while those intended for chthonic deities met their end with throats turned earthward."
Apparently none of these gods had a problem with being sprinkled with blood - quite the opposite!
As mentioned, Odysseus' sacrifice of the ram and the ewe is described in the Odyssey - the relevant passages are 10.504-540 and 11.13-50.
Oh and another example from the Greek world - in Pindar's Olympian 1, the deified Pelops is explicitly said to receive "blood-sacrifices" at his "much-frequented tomb."
Likewise, Menander Rhetor describes a happy birth thusly - "every relative and friend was full of hope; they sacrificed to the gods of birth, altars ran with blood, the whole household held holiday."
There are many, many more examples of altars being smeared with blood. Picking a few examples at random, you've got the Hyndluljóð, where the young king smears the sacrificial hǫrgr with ox blood - as does a princess in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, and an injured hero in Kormáks saga.
I mean I could go on and on, but yeah - there are plenty of examples.
IFailedTuringTestAMA t1_jd1dk2a wrote
Gods don’t actually exist which is what I was getting at due your phrasing… It’s interesting that now you went out on your own and found all the sources that the person you were originally, pedantically arguing with would’ve found useful to prove you wrong about the blood offerings haha
Also, those are all blood offerings to gods, not those same cultures eating blood… I feel like this is an information dump of irrelevant info
It’s sort of the original commenters point - they offer blood to gods claiming it’s sustenance but those same cultures aren’t necessarily eating that blood. They’re taking the good meat
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