Painting by Italian painter Sebastian Ricci “Sacrifice Polissy”. The size of the painting is 77 x 66 cm, oil on canvas. In pagan religions, the idea of sacrifice was subjected to gross distortion. In pagan rituals, sensuality always dominates the idea, and in some cults the sacrifice is frankly bloodthirsty, turning into full cannibalism. Thus, in the West-Semitic cult of Baal and Astarte, these deities were sacrificed girlish honor, and their temples had special states of “sacred harlots and fornicators”.
Bloodthirsty found its highest expression in human sacrifices, which were the custom of many peoples of antiquity, not excluding the classical ones. Although over time they have been canceled, but their existence is clearly witnessed by monuments; for example, on the Assyrian-Babylonian monuments one can often see the image of the offerings of people during sacrifices, in the whole setting of a religious ritual. Most often, parents sacrificed their children, gentlemen – slaves, winners – losers. Such immoral and cannibal sacrifices are completely alien to the Old Testament religion.
The newest criticism, however, is ready to see their traces in the Bible, in support of which it refers particularly to the fact of the sacrifice of his son Isaac by Abraham and to the story of Jephthah’s daughter. However, to see in Isaac’s sacrifice the evidence of the existence of human sacrifices among the Jews, too, means to lose sight of the significance of this fact, like the tests of the firmness of Abraham’s faith. More plausible, apparently, the story of Jephthah, who sacrificed his daughter.
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