Ritual Sacrifice: Violence or Offering?

Walter Burket presents to us a claim that, ‘there was no religion before there was sacrifice, so to understand sacrifice is to understand religion’ (2002, 210). He develops on a theory of sacrifice that places it at the origin of human religious life, granting it a great deal of importance. This notion is easily understandable, as we can see when we look back throughout human history and begin to notice many religious cultures that partake in such practices. It has been found in many societies both ancient and modern (Boone, 1979, 211), from the human sacrificing of the ancient Aztec’s in the 13th century (Bell, 1997, 30, 113) to more modern times in India with the practice of Sati only just becoming more of a rare occurrence after the 19th century (Bell, 1997, 26). Within my essay I shall be looking at this act of ritual sacrifice, in particular human sacrifice. I shall attempt to co…(short extract)