THIS IS MY BODY: SACRIFICIAL PRESENTATION AND THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL Berxhard Uyxg Qu'cst-cc qui constitue le rulte dans une religion quelconque? C'est lc sacrifice. Lne religion qui n'a pas cle sacrifice, n'a pas cle cuke proprement dir. Certe verite est incontestable, puisquc. chcz les divers peuples de la tcrre. les ceremonies religieuses sont nees du sacrifice.1 Francois-Rene dc Chateaubriand. 1802 In this paper we will argue that the Eucharist as instituted bv Jesus and celebrated by his early followers belongs to the category of sacrifice or. more precisely, represents an alternatiye to animal sacrifice.- Jesus does not seem to have inyentcd the ritual handling and consumption of a token piece of bread and the drinking of wine: arguably, what he did was transform a well-known and often practiced form of sacrifice celebrated at the Jerusalem Temple in his period. We will deyelop our argument in three stages. 1 First, we will offer a detailed description of a standard priyate sacrifice as it was celebrated at the Jerusalem Temple. 2 Then we will show how Jesus and his moyement designed the Eucharist on the basis of some of the elements 1 "What constitutes the ritual ot am religion? Sacrifice! A religion without sacrifice has no proper ritual. This truth cannot he denied, for. among all the peoples of the earth, religious ceremonies derive from sacrifice." Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand. denie du Chri\tiaiii\nu [1802]. in: Oamrcs complete Paris: Pourrat. 1836. vol. 1(5. (50 part IV. "Explication de la Messe" . J Our fresh and to some readers no doubt rather daring and surprising reconstruction rests on earlier historical scholarship, especially on the solid work of H. Gese and B. Chilton. I hese two biblical scholars were the first to explain the Lord's Supper in terms of sacrifice. In so doing, thee demonstrated that the origins of one of the central acts ot Christian worship are not lost in the darkness of legendary accounts. See Hartmut Gese. E^ais mi Biblical '[licolug] Minneapolis: Augsburg. 1981 117-40: Bruce D. Chilton. 'Th Ttmph «/'Jo«.v ///.» Sacrificial Program within a Cultural History of Sacrifice L niversitv Park: Pennsylvania State Lniversitv Press. 1992 and A Feast of Meemmgv Eiicharistic 'Tlniilogu v faori Jcmis thmugji jnhannim (arcim Leiden: Brill. 1994. We have developed the argument in Bernhard Lang. Stiirtd (amies: A History of C/irisliriu \\ t>r\liip New Haven: \ ale Lniversitv Press. 1997 which includes a chapter on sacrificial notions in Christian interpretations of worship "The Fourth Game: Sacrifice." 203-81 . 190 b. laxg of this Temple ritual. 3 A third section will present a hypothetical account of the reasons whv Jesus designed a new ritual. 1. Private sacrifice in Jesus' time In order to thank God for benefits received—recovering from illness, returning home safelv from a long journey. and the like—-Jews took a lamb or a goat, went to the Jerusalem Temple, and presented themselves to a priest who then saw to it that the animal was slaughtered, and certain parts burned on the altar. A feast was then arranged for the sacrificer and the hitter's guests. While this description may give a first idea of what happens when a sacrifice is offered, it remains too sketchy for our purposes. There are many more acts invoked, and biblical as well as some other sources can help us to reconstruct some of the procedures and their arrangement as a sequence of sacred acts. The insert that follows lists the most important acts referred to in the ancient sources and tries to reconstruct the "ideal type" of a private sacrifice. In order to sketch the full picture, we also make an effort to fill some of the gaps in the historical record. THE SIX ST HPS OF SACRIFICIAF PROCEDURE PRIVATELY OFFERED SACRIFICE STEP I Preparation. The sacrificer brings the animal and some other .sjifts. including bread and wine, to the Temple and presents them to a priest. STEP II Slaughtering, 'lhe priest slaughters the animal and separates "blood" and "bodv." STEP 111 (-tffering of the blood at the altar. 'Lhe priest tosses the blood against all sides of the altar. We conjecture that before the blood is tossed, the priest presents it to God. pronouncing a formula: "This is X's blood." X being the name ol the sacrificer. STEP IX Presentation oj tin body and the bread at the altar. The sacrificial material brought before the altar is presented and dedicated to Cod with a gesture of elevation. We conjecture that at the presentation at the altar, the priest pronounces these words: "This is X's body." X being the name of the sacrificer. STEP V Disposal oj the icinc. Lhe priest presents the wine at the altar. elevating the cup and invoking the name of Cod. The con-eluding ritual act is the pouring out of the wine at the foot of the altar. STEP XI Communal meal, lhe sacrifice)' receives the bodv of the slaughtered animal back and prepares a feast to which guests are invited. this is my body 191 Sacrifice must be thought of as a costly meal in whose preparation priests are involved and which requires a particular sequence of acts taking place in the Temple. In the first stage, which we may term the preparation, someone takes an animal to the Temple and presents it to a priest.' The sacrificer declares which kind of sacrifice he or she wants to offer. The sacrificer also puts his hand with force) on the head of the animal. Slaves and women were not allowed to perform the hand-leaning rite. In addition to the animal, the sacrificer also brings wine and four kinds of unleavened and leavened bread.' The slaughtering of the animal step II follows immediately.1 The priest or the priest's attendant slaughters the animal and separates "blood'" and "bodv." The blood is collected in a bowl. The sacrificer watches from the "court of the Israelites." while the priest does the slaughtering in the sacrificial court. During the following steps, the sacrificer stays in the court of the Israelites. The following two steps seem to be the culmination of the ritual. First comes the offering of the blood at the altar step III ." The priest tosses the blood against all sides of the altar. We conjecture that before the blood is tossed, the priest presents it to God at the altar, pronouncing a formula: "This is X's blood." X being the name of the sacrificer. The sacrificer still watches. Then, the victim's body and some bread are presented at the altar step IV . The sacrificial material brought before the altar consists of part of the bread, the slaughtered animal's breast, and certain parts of the entrails essentially the kidnevs and the fat covering the entrails . All of this is presented at the altar and dedicated to God with a gesture of elevation. Then the entrail parts are thrown onto the pvre that burns on the altar, whereas the breast and the bread remain with the officiating priest who consumes them later. We conjecture that at the presentation at the altar, the priest pronounces these words: "This is X's body,1' X being the name of the sacrificer. The sacrificer watches. ; Lev 3:2: 7:12 13. Mishna Pesahim 3:2; Mishna Menahot 9:8. 4 Bread is referred to in Lev 7:12 13. and wine in Xuni 13:10. ' Lev 1:11: Mishna Zrbahim 2:1 and Mishna Pesahim 3:3. " Lev 3:2. Lev 3:3-4: 7:12 1 4.30: 8:23 29: \um 13:8. The presentation of a live animal before God i.e.. before the altar is referred to as an exception Lev 16:10. On the eorreel understanding of the "elevation" yesuire Hebrew, tenupd . see Jacob MUgroni. .\umbm: 'Ih J PS Tnrah (.<>m»iiiitarr Philadelphia: Jewi>h Publication Socierv. 1990 423 20). After the offering oi' blood, meal, and bread, the priest takes a cup of wine, elevates it. utters an invocation to God. and then pours it at the foot of the alter step Y .;; The sacrificer still watches. After the priest has poured out the wine, he returns the slaughtered animal to the sacrificer for consumption. The communal meal that follows step YI no longer takes place at the altar, but nonetheless near the Temple. Since the meat has to be consumed on the day ol sacrifice.' the sacrificer immediatelv prepares a feast to which guests are invited people who had been present all along, together with the sacrificer watching the priest officiate . Bread and wine arc also consumed. The ritual as we have reconstructed it has a beautiful, symmetrical design with a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion. The preparatory stages I and II are followed bv the offering of bread and the animal's bod}' IY . which is framed bv two libations, first of blood Til) and then of wine \ . A joyous ureal forms the conclusion \ 1 . The main sacrificial material is the slaughtered animal's blood and bodv, but this material is doubled in unbloody form with bread and wine. For the words with which the priest presents the sacrificial gifts at the altar, no ancient sources are available.1" Here our reconstruction relies on the words that Jesus used in his redesigned ritual: "This is mv bodv" and "This is mv blood."1' Placed in a concrete ritual situation, these words lose their enigmatic quality and sound quite natural. In an earlier period, when the sacrificer. and not the priest, officiated at the altar, these could have been the formulae of sacrificial presentation. \\ hen the sacrificer approached the altar with his slaughtered animal, he uttered the words: "This is my body," i.e.. here I bring my sacrificial body: it belongs to me and I place it on vour altar. Similarly, when offerino the victim's blood, he would saw "This is mv blood." i.e.. here 1 offer the blood of mv sacrificial victim. L nfortunately. this interpretation must remain conjectural. Yet. we can point to three sacrificial formulae found or alluded to Xum 1j:]h: P- lib: Li: Sir 5U:l.~i. Ps 111) implies that sacrificers. not priest.-., present ilu- vine, but b\" New Testament time--, this apparently had changed. Lex- 7:l.i. The Old 1 estament dor. nut include am pi-aver text-- or weirds of offeriti'j; recited at -acrihcc-.. but 2 Chr 30:21 22 implies the existence of such prayers. Matt 2(i:2ti.'JH and parallel p.csjuf-. For "bodv" Greek y~imi and "blood" aniiiit; a» belonsrina to the -acriheial vocabulaiT. see Hebr 1:5:11. this is my body 193 in the Old Testament. The book of Deuteronomy prescribes a text to be pronounced by the peasant as he presents his harvest gifts to the Temple. It includes a presentation formula, to be said at the handing oyer of the basket to the deity, represented by a priest: "Now I bring here the first fruits of the land which you. Yahweh. haye gfyen nie" FJeut 26:11 . This example shows that the bringing of a gift to the temple involved a formal act of presentation in which it was customary to use certain prescribed words. Formulae pronounced by priests and related to the ritual use of blood bring us closer to "cucharistic" language. In the book of Exodus, there is an expression that Moses used when applying sacrificial blood to people: "Behold the blood of the covenant that Yahweh has made with vou" Exod 24:8 . A third example comes again closer to the words spoken by Jesus. An Old Testament legend recounts how King David, during a war. makes a sacrifice to Yahweh in the abbreviated, substitute form of a libation. As no animal could be slaughtered, water serves as a substitute for blood. David pours out the water in the name of the men who in a daring act have fetched it from a cistern under the enemy's control. In ihc absence of an altar he pours the water out onto the ground and says: "This is the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives" 2 Sam 23:17 . Priests may have used similar expressions when tossing sacrificial blood at the altar, presenting the victim's breast or bread and wine, or when throwing parts of the victim into the fire burning on the altar. A sacrifice must be formally presented and the sacrificer identified. Actually, the presentation, and not the killing of the victim, scents to have been the central ritual act. 2. Jesus' new sacrifice The earliest form of the Eucharist, as far as we can reconstruct it. consisted of three simple parts. First, a communal meal was eaten by a small number of people: here we mav of course think of Jesus and his narrower circle of the twelve as mentioned in the gospels. Then, the presider presented some bread to God in a gesture of elevation, saying. "This is my body." Those present shared the token piece of bread offered to God. The third and concluding act repeated the bread rite with a cup of wine. Here again, the words of presentation were pronounced. " I his is my blood." and the cup was 194 b, lang shared by those taking part in the celebration. What we have here is patterned on private sacrifice as celebrated at the Temple. We can best understand Jesus' new sacrifice as an abbreviated form of the six-step ritual described above. One item remained essentially unchanged: as in the Temple ritual, bread was presented to God with the formula. "This is my bodv." and was then eaten (without being burned on the altar . Other features were changed. Jesus introduced two main alterations: 1 He transferred the ritual to the realm otitside the Temple; as a consequence, everv act involving the cooperation of a priest had to be omitted. Since no priest was involved, no animal could be slaughtered, no blood could be sprinkled, and nothing could be burned on the altar. 2 Jesus reduced the Temple ritual to its unbloodv part.1" and here he reversed the order of the various ritual acts: the meal no longer formed the conclusion, but was now placed at the beginning and was followed by ritual gestures with bread and wine. There is some ambiguity as to the sequence of these gestures. The gospel of Luke places the wine rite first, whereas Mark and Matthew place it after the bread rite.1:1 Both sequences make sense. The sequence wine rite —bread rite may be seen as replicating the original sequence of the animal sacrifice which required the quick disposal of the victim's blood • which had to be tossed against the altar before congealing . Those placing the wine rite last no doubt simply imitated the priests who concluded sacrificial celebrations with a libation of wine. The new. unbloodv ritual, while completely redesigned, still served the same purpose of honoring God with a present and giving him thanks for benefits received. Therefore Christians often called it by - An interesting parallel 10 rhejouank omission of the "bloods" part of sacrifice crams trom India, where grain, originally a gift accompanying the sacrifice ol a goat, came to stand for the entire ritual. The Indianisi Wendy Doniger O'Flahcrry compares this development with the encharistic sacrifice in Christianity: "The hucharist thus stands at precisely the same remove trom human sacrifice as the 'suffocated' rice cake in Hindu ritual stands at its own remove from the sacrifice ol a goat. Indeed, in both instances we have what is more precisely not the replacing of flesh bv grain but the supercession of flesh bv gram. That is. in the earliest records of both the ancient Hebrew sacrifice and the ancient Yedic sacrifice, the killing of the animal was accompanied bv an ofleriny of grain rice and barlev in the \ edic sacrifice or. in the case ot the \ eclic stallion, balls of rice . [hose sacrifices were thus ambivalent from the very start: thev involved not onlv an animal surrogate for a human victim but the substance that first complemented and [eventually. B.L.J replaced that surrogate." Wench" Doniger OTlaherty. Other People's Mrlhs New York: Macmillan. 198!) 118. I owe this reference to Lawrence Zalcman. Wine bread: Luke 21:17-19: bread -wine: Mark 1 1:22-2", and Matt 26:26-28. this is my body 195 its old name of eiuhanstia. the Greek term for thanksgiving.14 The central rite by which God was honored consisted of a gesture of elevating bread and wine and presenting these gifts to God saying. "This is mv body—This is my blood." Neither an accompanying praver (as in later Christian worship nor the eating and drinking formed the core. The sacrifice of Jesus consisted exclusivelv in the very rite of presentation, i.e.. the elevation and the words accom-panving this gesture. Why should the abbreviated, unbloodv sacrifice replace the elaborate, expensive, and time-consuming priestlv celebration at the Temple? The idea of replacing a standard sacrifice bv something else is not entirely new. but has precedents in actual ritual practice. In anthropological literature, the classical example of sacrificial lenience comes from the Xuer. a black cattle-herding people Irving in the Sudan.1' When someone cannot afford to slaughter an ox. a tiny little cucumber will do as well, at least as a temporary expedient. The Nuer treat the cucumber a> though it were an animal \ictim: it is presented and consecrated, an invocation said over it. and eventu-allv slain bv the spear. A similaiiv striking instance of sacrificial substitution can be quoted from ancient Egypt.:'' A priest or a scribe could honor a deitv or a deceased person bv pouring some water and uttering the formula: "A thousand loaves of bread, a thousand jugs of beer for X." The water replaced the large amount of bread and beer evoked bv the sacriheer. In Israel, private sacrifice, like its public counteipart. normallv required the killing and offering of a domestic animal. Frequently, the entire animal was burned "for the deity."' so that the sacrificing individual or communitv did not have the benefit of a joyous meal. Onlv the well-to-do could afford frequent sacrifices. One Old Testament story contrasts the poor man. who owned onlv one little ewe lamb, with a rich person, who had very many flocks and herds.1 We can see wiiv the lower classes were excluded from frequent participation in private sacrificial worship. 1 l'ur an early referente 10 the Christian sarrilice as ciichafhha "thanksohjug." see Didache 9 ca. 110/160 CE . See also the verb "to °i\e thanks" Greek cmiuiri-tlein in the Xe\e 'testament report on the Last Supper. Matt 26:27. '' Edward E. Evaiis-Priu hard. ,\«2 42."). 17 2 Sam 12:3. 196 b. lang In certain cases, they were allowed to offer a pair of pigeons or turtledoves instead of a lamb: and if they could not afford to buy these, an offering- of some flour about 4 kg- still a substantial gift: would do as well. The most common substitute for sacrifice, however, was prayer, which ranked as a kind of "'offering of the poor." Visitors to the Temple were ideally expected to bring an offering to the Lord, but if thev came emptv-handed thev were at least supposed to prostrate and utter a prayer. Such an understanding of prayer is reflected in the book of Psalms, the collection of Jerusalem Temple prayers.11 Thus we find a supplicant asking that his prayer "be taken like incense" before the Lord, and his '"upraised hands" that is. the palms raised upward in a customary gesture of prayer' be accepted "like an evening grain-offering" of the public cult. When the psalmist savs. "accept. O Lord, the free-will offering of mv mouth," the poor person actually expects his words to be as acceptable as an animal sacrifice. When he declares that "a broken spirit is a sacrifice acceptable to God" and proclaims that God "will not despise a broken and contrite heart." he has no intention of renouncing sacrifices as such, but merely indicates the fact that a broken spirit, expressed in song or prayer, is all he can offer. He expresses the hope that this spirit will count for him as if it were a "real" sacrifice. A post-biblical Jewish text sums the matter up quite succinctly: "If a man has a bullock, let him offer a bullock: if not. let him offer a ram, or a lamb, or a pigeon: and. if he cannot afford even a pigeon, let him bring a handful of flour. And if he has not even anv flour, let him bring nothing at all. but come with words of prayer.'"2" The last quotation seems to imply that an animal constitutes the original and real sacrificial material, whereas everything else counts as a substitute. However, not all Jews may have looked at it this '" Lev 5:11: 12:8. ■" Ps 141:2: 119:108: 51:19. Our interpretation is indebted to Menahem Hanm, "Temple and Community in Ancient Israel." in MA*. Fox. ed.. Temple in Society Winona Lake: Ei-enbrauns. 1988 17 25. -ee 22. -' Midrash Tanlmmah Buher. Tsaw 8:9b. .is quoted in G.C Montefiore ei al.. A Rabbunc Antlu'ljigy New \ork: Schocken. 1971 346. Lenience in Jewish sacrificial practice is discussed in Gershon Brin. Studio in Biblical Law Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. 1994 74—81. For alternatives to sacrifice among Second 1 cmple Essencs. Pharisees, and Christians, see also Dennis Green. " Lo '. . . send up. like the smoke of incense, the works of the Law." The .Similarity ol \ iews on an Alternative to Temple Sacrifice b\ I hree Jewish Sectarian Movements ol the Late Second Temple Period." in Matthew Dillon ed. . Rtligion in the Ancient World. „\ew Theme-, and Approaches Amsterdam: Hakkert. 1996 165-1/5. this is my body 197 wav. The French scholar Alfred Marx has suggested that in early Judaism there was an emphasis on the unbloody part of the sacrifice, and possibly certain circles saw it as more important than the actual animal sacrifice.-'1 In the cultural world in which earh Judaism developed, a certain opposition to animal sacrifice and its replacement bv offering of bread and drink was known. This was the ritual option of some of the ancient Zoroastrians whose god Ahura Mazda was recognized as the state god of the Achaemenid empire. According to inscriptional evidence dating from ca. 500 bce. Ahura Mazda was honored with daily gifts of bread and wine." At least some Jews admired and emulated Zoroastrian monotheistic belief, insistence on ritual purity, and expectation of resurrection after death. They would even go as far as adopting a vegetarian diet. While the Zoroastrian connection with Jewish Temple ritual and its understanding bv those who practiced it remains conjectural, there is evidence for the prominence of the libation rite that formed the conclusion to both the public and the private sacrifices. The oldest description we have of public sacrificial worship at the Temple refers to the high priest who "held out his hand for the cup and poured a drink offering of the blood of the grape: he poured it out at the foot of the altar" Sir 50:15). The description seems to implv that the gesture of pouring out "the blood oi the grape" was more visible and more solemn than the sprinkling of the animal blood not mentioned at all in this source). One of the psalms refers to a private sacrifice of thanksgiving as follows: "I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord ... I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice" i Ps 116:13.17). Here, the gesture of presenting the cup of wine can sum up the entire celebration. 3. 117/)' did Jesus design this ncic form of sacrifice? It is tempting to see Jesus as the prophet who wanted to bring the Temple ritual and its spiritual benefits within the reach of the poor who could not afford to buy and sacrifice a lamb. It is also tempting - .Alfred Marx. Ijs affrandes vegttales dans I'Andien Testament Leiden: Brill. 1991 I b.->. Heidemaric Koch. "Zur Religion der Achameniden." dj'ddmft fiir die altle^hiinuitiiche Wiwi-iisc/iaft 100 1988 393-40.3. The nnre popular idea that die prophet Zarathtwra rejected animal sacrifice altogether is no longer maintained bv .scholarship. 198 b. lang to see Jesus as the legislator who abolished animal sacrifice, replacing it by simpler, unbloody gifts, thus perhaps unknowingly) adopting Zarathustra's attitude and promoting the Persian prophet's ritual reform. Howeyer attractiye these interpretations may be, they are based on ideas foreign to the mentality of Jesus and his early followers. We haye to look for different reasons win'Jesus felt he should design a new program of sacrifice. While the well-known gospel legend places Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, a small town near Jerusalem. Jesus was a Galilean, born and raised in the northern part of Palestine. To be a Galilean meant being recognized by one's particular dialect, and by one's lack of interest in the priestly worship celebrated at the far-away Jerusalem Temple. Jesus seems to haye belonged to those Galileans who refused to conform to the priestly demands. Horrified at the thought of expressing the relationship to God in a monetary transaction, he opposed the way public sacrifice was organized."' Private sacrifices, by contrast, meant much for Jesus. During his lifetime, his followers, or at least those who listened to him, went to the Temple to offer their sacrifices. In one instance, after a healing, Jesus sent the healed person to the Temple: he did not tell him not to bother about sacrificing. Rather, he would instruct him: "Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded" Matt 8:4 .Jesus respected the law that prescribed a series of offerings that reintegrate a formerly "leprous" and "unclean" person into full membership of the community" Lev 14 . He addressed all those who wished to sacrifice and insisted on a very particular preparation: the restoration of social harmony among people. This injunction is contained in a well-known passage from the Sermon on the Mount: "So when you are offering vour gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother has something against you. leave your gift there before the altar and go: first be reconciled to vour brother, and then come and offer vour gift" Matt 5:24-25 . Disharmony would spoil the sacrifice, make it ineffective, and presumably offend God, provoking his wrath. Here the attitude of Jesus echoes the psalmist's conviction that onlv someone "who has clean hands and a pure heart" can legitimately sacrifice in the Temple Ps 24:4.24 -' Thi. seem to be the implication of Matt 17:24-27: sec Chilton. The Temple oj Jesus. 129. In Ps 24:3. to "stand in the Lord\ holv place" seems to be a technical expression tor the .sacrificing; layman's presence in the Temple. this is my body 199 Jesus, as we saw, accepted the institution of animal sacrifice. He also endorsed the biblical legislation regulating it. But he had his own ideas about the personal situation of the sacrificer. He criticized the procedures involved with the actual offering at the Temple. His critical stance culminated in a dramatic action generally referred to as his "cleansing" of the Temple. .All four gospels report how Jesus, in an angry demonstration, disrupted the transactions at the Temple.-' Mark's report is believed to be the oldest one: Then thev came to Jerusalem. And he entered the I emple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the Temple, and he overturned the tables of the money" changers and the seats of those who sold doves: and he would not allow anyone to rarrv a vessel through the Temple. He was teaching and saving. '"Is it not written. AIv house shall he called a house of prayer for all the nations':' But you have made it a den of robbers." And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it. thev kept looking for a way" to kill him: for they" were afraid of him. because the whole crowd was spell-bound bv his teaching. And when evening came. Jesus and his disciples went out of the city! Mark 11:15-19 While historians would generally" agree that the report reflects a historical event, they" are less sure about what actually" happened and what Jesus' intention may have been. For readers unfamiliar with the cultural and religious world of ancient Judaism, the incident suggests that the market place had spilled over into the Temple in the way it often invaded the interiors of medieval cathedrals. In his dramatic action. Jesus restored the original function of the Temple, making it a house of prayer again. However, this reading ignores the cultural setting of the report. The "buying and selling" does not refer to just any transaction done in a market place: rather, we have to think of the buying and selling of sacrificial animals which include die pigeons mentioned in the passage. Does the report indicate, then. Jesus' rejection of sacrifice for which animals had to be bought and his preference for the more spiritual act of praver? Two facts militate against this interpretation, making us aware of quite different implications. As we have seen. Jesus was far from condemning private sacrifice as such: in fact, he endorsed and even recommended it. It also seems that the selling of animals had been introduced into the Temple precinct only recently and did not meet J"' 'The four reports: Matt L'l:ll> 13: Mark 11:15 19: Luke 19:1.3-48: John 1_>: 13-1 7. 200 b. lang with general approval.-" Caiaphas. high priest between ca. 18 and 36 ce. was apparently the first to authorize the sale of sacrificial animals within the Temple precincts, presumably within the outer court. What Jesus wanted, then, was to change what went on in the Temple, to bring it closer to the ideal of unmcdiatcd, direct worship of God. He invoked a passage found in the prophecy of Zechariah: "There shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts" Zcch 14:21 . His bold action may have appealed to popular sentiment, even among the Temple personnel, so that no one bothered or dared to take action against him. If they had indeed been offended, one would expect the Temple police to have taken immediate action, and Jesus would have been challenged and arrested on the spot. W e could stop here and admit that any further interpretation borders on mere speculation. Recent scholarship, however, seems to permit at least tentative suggestions about what Jesus had in mind when "cleansing" or "occupying"' the Temple.-' Although some details of our reconstruction may seem unusual, they can be put forward as at least plausible. By Jesus' day. laypeople wishing to present a private sacrifice seem to have been reduced to the role of paying sponsors. They would pay. in the court of the Gentiles, for a sacrificial animal which was then handed over to the Temple personnel. Sponsors would probably wait for some time until they got certain parts of the slaughtered victim in the case of so-called peace offerings and thank offerings. Paying, laving a hand on the animal's head, and receiving part of a slaughtered animal: this was all that happened in the foreground. Slaves and women sacrificers were not allowed to perform the laying-on of a hand.J;i The actual sacrificing—the slaughter, the collection of the blood, the ritual disposal of blood and fat, sometimes even the laying-on of a hand happened far away, hardly visible to the sponsor. Not being permitted to enter the Temple's court of the priests where the animals were slaughtered and where the altar was located . he or she stood in the "court of the Israelites" and simply watched: this was all that a sacrificing man or woman-11 Victor flppstein. "The Historicity of the Gospel Account of the Cleansing of the Temple." ,~eitichrift fur die ncutcsteimenlliehe Wissenselteift 55 1964 42-58 reconstructs, how the selling of animals was introduced into the Temple. Chilton. The Temple of Jesus. 91 Til. and ,1 Feast of Meanings. 57-63. J:"; Mishna. Menahot 9:8. -"' When a woman's sacrifice was performed, she had access to the "court of the this is my body 201 could do. This reduced, minimal involvement of lav people naturally made sense: it facilitated the performance of a large number of sacrifices bv priestly specialists, especially on festival days when the Temple became crowded. The practice also kept non-Jews out of the sacred areas, while allowing their sacrificial gifts, simplified to payment or the handing-over of an animal, to be accepted. Xow. Jesus objected to reducing the sacrificial procedure to a financial transaction in which someone would pav for a sheep and then have little to do with the actual sacrifice. In ancient times the actual slaughtering had been the task of the offering person himself: a priest would step in only if the offerer found himself in a state of ritual impurity.For Jesus. God's people were pure.' and thus should have had more involvement with the sacrificial procedure than the Temple establishment granted them. People should first of all buy their animals on the Mount of Olives, where the market was located prior to its transferral to the Temple area itself. They should actually own their victim. Sacrificers should also be present at the actual slaughtering and the ensuing ritual acts. Tradition acknowledges that someone's offering cannot be made "while he is not standing bv its sidc.',J But mere presence, in the eyes of Jesus and other teachers, would not suffice. We can invoke the Talmudic tradition of Rabbi Hillel. almost a contemporary of Jesus, who also objected to the impersonal, clericalized manner of sacrifice.'1 According to Hillel, offerings should not simply and informally be given to the priests for slaughtering. Rather, the owners should always, even during busv festival days, lav their hand on their animals' heads prior to handing them over to the officiating priest. This ritual gesture, prescribed bv law Lev 3:2 , apparently indicated both the ownership of the lamb and served as a gesture of offering. Hillel's suggestion made such an impact on Israelites": Tosefta. Arakhin '2:1—"A women would not lie seen in the court [of the Israelites] except during the offering of her sacrifice." *' lay slaughtering of sacrificial animal: Lev 3:2: priestlv slaughtering in case of lav impurity: 2 Chron 30:17. While the Mislma Zebahim 3:1 and Josephus" account of sacrificial practice in jna\li Anhqwtm 3:22b -27 seem to imply thai in the first centurv CE the lavman killed his victim. Philo in Special Law, 2:145-4(1 denies this: presumably practice varied. 11 Mark 7:14-23. ;J Mishna. Taanit 1:2. " Babylonian Talmud. Betsah/Yom Tob 20a. As Jacob Milgrom pointed out to the author, this text implies the omission of the laving-on of a hand only in the case of private mandatory sacrifices ollered duriny festivals. 202 b. lang one Baba ben Butha that he had large numbers of animals brought to the Temple and gave them to those willing to lay a hand on them in advance of sacrifice. Jesus, like Hillel. wanted people to participate more in their offering. As a theurgist involved with arcane sacramental procedures/4 he had a strong sense of the need to perform a ritual in the proper way. If people bought their animals on the Mount of Olives (rather than in the Temple area . they would actually own them and bring them to the Temple themselves. Jesus may have been aware of the strict rule governing the foremost private sacrifice, that of Passover. The law prescribed that prior to offering the Passover lamb, the sacrificer must own it for four days.'1 Owning the victim, then, must have been important for Jesus. While we do not know anything about Jesus' view of the laying-on of a hand on the animal's head, we can at least speculate about a formula with which he wanted people to designate a sacrifice as their own. Perhaps thev should offer the various parts of the slaughtered and cut-up animal using the formula, "This is mv bodv." i.e.. here I bring mv sacrificial bodv; it belongs to me and I place it onto vour altar. Similarly, they should offer their blood saying. "This is my blood," i.e.. here I offer the blood of mv sacrificial victim. The rest of the storv about Jesus and the Temple is quickly told. Jesus' occupation of the Temple did not lead to any changes in the traditional ritual procedures. Everything staved the wav the priestly establishment had determined. His action had no immediate impact; like Hillel's. it remained an episode remembered by his disciples, passed on orally, and eventually recorded in a few puzzling lines of literature. .Although the priestly establishment may have disagreed with Rabbi Hillel's view on the hand-leaning, we hear of no action against him. Whv. then, were the priests so enraged with Jesus that they wished to kill him? The reason must be sought in another offense and not in this one —an act that threatened their very existence. Historians of carlv Christianity have long since argued that Jesus was killed for having committed an act of provocative disobedience to Israel's sacred law. an act of blasphemy punishable by death. 1 I.e.. baptism John 4:1. v. 2 being a gloss and initiation into meeting dead prophets Mark 9:2-0: see Lang. Saucd dantei. 105-6.294 9,3. ' F.xod 12:3.6. this is my body 203 Bruce Chilton has persuasively argued that this act had to do with Jesus' disillusionment with Temple sacrifice.!l> After realizing the impossibility of reforming the sacrificial procedure at the Temple, he came to oppose private sacrifice. He thought of it as procedurally deficient and hence ineffective and invalid. He was not the onlv one to protest against ritual abuses surrounding sacrifice: the Essenes rejected Temple worship as then practiced though for reasons different from those of Jesus: thev held the contemporary high priesthood to be illegitimate:. Unlike the Essenes. Jesus did not consider sacrificial worship as impossible to perform. Rather, he created his own substitute for it. He continued the already well-established tradition of joyous meals. These he shared with large crowds, with "publicans and sinners." with his wealthy sponsors, and with the narrower circle of his disciples. He began to introduce into these meals a new and unprecedented ritual action, one that involved the use of sacrificial language. Jesus declared the eating of bread and wine a new sacrifice. Bread would stand for the sacrificial body of the slaughtered animal and wine for the blood tossed at the foot of the altar. The declarative formulae, "This is rav body" and "This is mv blood." designate bread and wine as unbloody substitutes for private sacrifice. \\ e must beware of reading any hidden meanings into this symbolic gesture. Bread and wine neither take on special, magical qualities, nor is there any link to the sacrificial death of Jesus. A simple and straightforward declaration said over bread and wine had. in the minds of Jesus and his followers, replaced private sacrifice as performed at the Temple. The priestly establishment could have ignored a Galilean rabbi's private cult. Vet. thev vented their anger at him and were successful in their plan to have him killed. The rest of the story is known. Jesus introduced his new ritual in secret among the most intimate of his friends. He practiced it occasionally if not frequently, and the new ritual meal demonstrated his decision not to live in compromise with the Temple establishment of his day. The authorities got wind of it. Wishing to be sure about what was going on, they looked for a witness. A man called Judas betrayed his master's "sacrifice." Jesus had added to and indeed surpassed his earlier extravagant behavior, which had already led to accusations Chilton. 7he Temple <,j Jena. 154. and "The Trial of Jcsu> Reconsidered." in Bruce Chilton and Craio- A. Evans. Jumis in Context Leiden: Brill. 1997 481-500. 204 b. lang of blasphemy.' Now that the crime of blasphemy had been established definitively, the Temple authorities had little difficulty having Jesus executed by order of the Roman procurator. Pontius Pilate. Our tentative reconstruction visibly departs from what we find in the gospels. This departure can hardly be avoided if what we are looking for is the true course of events. The account in the gospels blends reliable information with legendary accretions and shapes them so that they speak meaningfully to Christians of the second or third generation. Yet. there are enough historical facts that can be discerned in the gospel account of a "Last Supper" to suggest some kind of introduction of a new ritual. Viewed against the background of Jesus' original endorsement and eventual rejection of private sacrifice, his ritual of bread and wine makes sense. In the early nineteenth centurv. Chateaubriand in his celebrated Genie du chnsttanisme argued that "among all the peoples of the earth, religious ceremonies derive from sacrifice."iif Stated in this very general wav. Chateaubriand's claim will not convince contemporary specialists. As far as Christianity is concerned, however, he has made a valid point. In Christianity, "les ceremonies religieuses sont nees du sacrifice." Bibliography Bonnet. Hans. Rmlleuknn da ag\fthchtn RcligidthtCic/iicftte. Berlin: de Gntyter, 1952. 424-26: "Libation." Brin. Gershon. Studies in Biblical Lcnc. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. 1994. Chateaubriand. Francois-Rene de. Oeircres completes. Paris: Pourrat. 1836. vol. 16. Chilton. Bruce D. 'Tin: Temple of Jesus: His Sacrificial Program icithin a Cultural History of Sacrifice. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1992. --. .1 Fcasl »./ Mtaiungs: F.ucbaristic Tli,vhgie> from Jtsiis through Johaiiiiine Circles. Leiden: Brill.' 1994. —. "The Trial of Jesus Reconsidered." in Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Leans. Jesus iii Context. Leiden: Brill. 1997. 481 -500. Eppstoin. Victor. "The Historicity' of the Gospel Account of the Cleansing of the Temple." ~ci!sibrift fur die nniltstamertlliclie \\"nsenschcilt 55 1964 42- 58. Evans-Pritchard. Edward L. ,\wr Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1956. Gese. Hariniut. Essays on Biblical llieology. Trans. Keith Crim. Minneapolis: Augsburg 1981. Green. Dennis. "To '. . . send up. like the smoke of incense, the works of the Law.' The Similarity of Mews on an Alternative to Temple Sacrifice bv Three Jewish this is my body 205 Sectarian Movements of the Late Second Temple Period." In Matthew Dillon ed. . Religion in the Ancient World. .W Theme* and Approaches Amsterdam: Hakkert. 1996. 165-175. Haran, Menahem. "Temple and Community in Ancient Track" In Michael Y. fox ied. . Temple in Society. Winona Lake: F.isenbrauns. 1988. 17-25. Koch. Heidemarie. "Zur Religio]] der Achameniden." ~at;chriti für die ttlttc^tamentliche Wissenschaft KM) 1988.895-405. Lang. Bernhard. Sacred (ianies. A Histon ■