Theorizing Animal Sacrifice II

AbstractThis chapter surveys two interrelated discourses of animal sacrifice that treated it as a matter of crucial philosophical importance. The first section examines the idea of a hierarchy of cult offerings correlated with a divine hierarchy of beings, according to which animal sacrifice is directed to beings at the lowest level. Platonic philosophers Porphyry and Iamblichus agreed on this conceptual framework but sharply disagreed on the value of animal sacrifice. Although the notion of a hierarchy of beings goes back to Plato, its correlation with a hierarchy of offerings perhaps originates with Apollonius of Tyana. The second section surveys the early Christian demonological discourse of animal sacrifice, whose basic elements were established in the mid-second century CE by Justin Martyr. Since the sacrificial interpretation of Jesus’s life and death left no room for actual sacrifice, Christian apologists utilized this demonological discourse to justify their rejection of it. These thinkers agreed that the popular understanding of animal sacrifice as a marker of piety was inadequate; only someone with the correct understanding of the cosmos could reveal its true significance. Integral to the production of these discourses were claims to social power on the part of those who shaped them.