Paper 89 Overview: Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement

Early humans believed they owed a debt to the spirits and needed to be saved from bad luck. They thought spirits enjoyed seeing human suffering, and people tried to win the favor of gods through sacrifices. As time went on, people created rituals to please the spirits and avoid misfortune.

This paper examines how ideas about sin, sacrifice, and atonement developed throughout human history. It explains how early religious practices slowly changed from harmful actions like human sacrifice to more symbolic ceremonies. Religious thinking evolved from fear of spirits to more advanced understandings of forgiveness and redemption.

Early humans believed they were in debt to spirits and needed to be saved from bad luck. They thought a soul came into the world with "original sin" and must be ransomed. As time passed, people became concerned not just with doing wrong things, but also with failing to do required things.

People believed spirits enjoyed seeing human suffering and misery. They created sacrifice rituals to please the gods and avoid immediate bad luck. Only advanced civilizations recognized a consistently kind and loving God, rather than angry spirits that needed to be pleased.

Taboos were humans' attempt to avoid bad luck by not doing certain things that might offend spirits. These rules were first non-religious but later gained spiritual backing and became basic social laws. The fear of spirit punishment was so strong that sometimes people died of fright after breaking a taboo.

The earliest taboos included restrictions on taking women and property. Taboos on food emerged from beliefs about sacred animals, like the pig for Phoenicians and the cow for Hindus. Table manners began as taboos about eating methods, and social class systems started as remnants of ancient prohibitions.

Fear of bad luck drove humans to invent primitive religion as protection against disasters. Every tribe had its own "forbidden fruit" - a collection of taboos saying what not to do. As human minds developed to see both good and bad spirits, the concept of sin appeared.

Sin was seen as breaking a taboo, and death was the punishment for sin. Sin was about actions, not thoughts. This concept developed alongside beliefs about a "golden age" when humans first existed in perfection. Violating taboos was first a vice, then became a crime under primitive law, and finally a sin in religion.

The next step in religious evolution was giving things up as a form of worship. Fasting became common, and people began to avoid many physical pleasures, especially sexual ones. Just as humans stopped wasting resources by burning them with the dead, many began to see material possessions as spiritually dangerous.

Self-denial taught early humans self-control, which was an important advancement in social development. Many religious people practiced physical pain, including flogging and other tortures. Sexual restraint became a widespread practice, especially among soldiers before battle, and Paul's personal views on this greatly influenced Christian teachings.

Sacrifice did not have one simple beginning but developed from many sources. One basic source was the tendency to bow down before power and mystery. Early humans measured the value of a sacrifice by how much pain it caused, starting with cutting hair or flesh and advancing to more complex rituals.

Early in religious evolution, two main ideas of sacrifice developed: gift sacrifices that showed thanks, and debt sacrifices for redemption. Later, humans thought sacrifices could be message carriers to the gods. The concept of sacrifice for original sin developed as people lost touch with the true history of human origins.

Ideas about early cannibalism are often wrong - it was actually part of early society's customs. Cannibalism developed out of necessity and continued because of superstition and ignorance. It was practiced for social, economic, religious, and military reasons.

Early humans enjoyed human flesh and offered it as food to spirits. Almost all early races practiced cannibalism. Eating human flesh often started from hunger, friendship, revenge, or religious rituals. Cannibalism slowly disappeared because of various influences, including community ceremonies, religious rituals, and human sacrifice.

Human sacrifice came from cannibalism but also helped end it. It provided spirit escorts to the spirit world. No race was completely free from human sacrifice at some point in its history. It was practiced by Chinese, Hindus, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and continued until recent times in Africa and Australia.

The story of Jephthah and his daughter shows the conflict between ancient religious customs and advancing civilization. He made a vow to sacrifice whatever first came out of his house if he won a battle, expecting a slave, but it was his daughter instead. Foundation sacrifices (killing someone when starting a new building) were once common and still exist in symbolic form today.

Moses tried to end human sacrifices by creating a system of ransom payments instead. He established fees that people could pay to priests to avoid sacrificing lands, properties, and children. Groups that stopped sacrificing their firstborn soon had advantages over neighbors who continued the practice.

Temple prostitution spread as another substitute for human sacrifice. Women could avoid being sacrificed by dedicating themselves to sacred sex service in temples. This practice spread throughout southern Europe and Asia, with the money earned considered sacred. Other modifications included bloodletting, dedication to virginity, and physical mutilations like circumcision.

Over time, the practice of sacrifice became connected with the idea of covenants or agreements with gods. This was a major step in making religion more stable. Early humans could only imagine making agreements with gods once they developed a concept of dependable deities, which required humans themselves to become more dependable and ethical.

Early forms of prayer were not worship but bargaining with spirits. They were like trading, where pleading replaced something more costly. Just as some people were better traders than others, some were considered better at prayer. Many modern prayer practices have changed little from these ancient beginnings.

Human sacrifice evolved through history from actual cannibalism to higher symbolic levels. The early rituals created later ceremonies called sacraments. In recent times, priests alone would take a small bit of the sacrifice, and then everyone would share an animal substitute.

The sacrament of cakes and wine used by many religions, including Christianity, developed as a substitute for earlier human sacrifices. Blood drinking was part of ancient social brotherhoods and early Jewish fraternity. Paul ended the doctrine of redemption through human or animal sacrifices by teaching that Christ was the last and all-sufficient human sacrifice.

Modern humans need new ways to feel saved, as the old methods no longer work. The awareness of sin remains in human minds, but old ways of finding peace and comfort have become outdated. The spiritual need is still real, but intellectual progress has destroyed the old ways of meeting it.

Sin needs to be redefined as deliberate disloyalty to God. Feeling guilty is not the same as sin - it's just awareness that you've broken social rules. There is no real sin without conscious disloyalty to God. The ability to recognize guilt is not a sign that humans are bad, but that they have the potential for greatness and glory.