An act or offering made to a deity or spirit, most often an animal or valued good given up by the offerer, carrying a spiritual significance that distinguishes it from an ordinary gift. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountDocumented across the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world, with evidence of ritual animal sacrifice among the ancient Hebrews and Greeks among the earliest attested, and in traditional religious practice worldwide; not confined to any one region or era. 1 Documented YearSourced to the subject's own accountThe year Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss published Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice, the founding academic theory of sacrifice as gift exchange with the gods. Connections
Associated With
Offerings made to or for the dead, propitiating or honoring them, are a documented category of sacrifice that overlaps directly with ancestor veneration practice.
Source Wikipedia: Sacrifice
Both are practices of ritualized violence that anthropologists analyze chiefly for their ceremonial and social function rather than their material or military purpose.
Studied By
Source Wikipedia: Sacrifice
Source Wikipedia: Sacrifice
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Sacrifice
WikipediaOpening definition, description
Sacrifice is an act or offering made to a deity, such as animal sacrifice, having a spiritual significance.
Historical prevalence section, typical region
Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly existed before that.
Purpose section, propitiation and ancestor link
A sacrifice can serve as propitiation, or a sacrifice can be an offering of praise and thanksgiving.
Studied By: Emile Durkheim, Article body sentence quoted
Influenced by Robertson Smith, Émile Durkheim in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life argued that sacrifice served a dual function: social communion and divine communion.
Studied By: Marcel Mauss, Article body sentence quoted
Building on Durkheim's functionalist theories of sacrifice, Durkheim's nephew and disciple Marcel Mauss collaborated with historian Henri Hubert to argue that sacrifice is a form of gift directed to the gods with the social expectation that the gods would offer a greater gift at a later date.
View the Source 2. Wikipedia: Marcel Mauss
WikipediaSacrifice and its Function, with Hubert, 1899Quote, Sacrifice and its Function, with Hubert, 1899
The book Sacrifice and its Function which he wrote with Henri Hubert in 1899 argued that sacrifice is a process involving sacralising and desacralising.
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