Sacrifice [further Considerations]
SACRIFICE [FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS]. Since Joseph Henninger's outstanding summary of the literature and practices of sacrifice in world religions, scholars have continued to explore the sacrificial practices, meanings, and conundrums of these types of violent, symbolic practices. New studies of human sacrifice, bloodletting, biblical sacrifices, animal sacrifices, and the role of women and gender in sacrifice have been carried out. The rise in terrorism with its various forms of martyrs has also led to new reflections on the meaning of sacrifice. As one scholar, concerned about whether the origin of violence in human beings is to be located in biology or culture, writes, "The one thing that cannot be denied is that violence is ubiquitous and tenacious and must be accounted for if we are to understand humanity" (Hamerton-Kelly, 1987, p. vi). In what follows, we will review a handful of more recent studies on sacrifice that have tried to "account" for the ubiquity, tenacity, and mystery of ritual violence and its creative and destructive powers in human society.
One of the most fascinating studies of sacrifice has come from the historian of Greek religion, Walter Burkert, in his Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (1972).
