Theorizing Animal Sacrifice I

AbstractThis chapter examines early Greek discourses about animal sacrifice. The first section assesses critiques associated with Orphic and Pythagorean tradition, which deemed it wrong for humans to kill and eat animals because souls could pass after death between humans and animals. Early adherents of these traditions seemed concerned not with animal sacrifice per se but with killing and eating animals generally. The second section surveys the theorization of sacrificial practice in the classical period. Plato’s concern with correct understanding of the gods led him to condemn the belief that people could win them over through sacrifice, but he seems to have accepted the practice on the basis of tradition. Other schools apparently held broadly similar positions. Theophrastus roundly rejected animal sacrifice, yet his views reflect the mainstream philosophical emphasis on correct belief about the nature of the divine. The major classical schools of philosophy, deeply concerned with people’s conception of the gods, seem to have been less concerned with cult practices. Nevertheless, by the first century CE, the development of philosophy had created an alternative framework for social authority that made it possible for certain individuals to promote an understanding of sacrificial practice radically at odds with traditional Graeco-Roman practice.