Sacrifice
Secular scholar Keith Akers writes in his as of yet unpublished
manuscript, Broken Thread: the Fate of the Jewish Followers of Jesus in
Early Christianity:
"...it is hard to reconcile any viewpoint with everything in the New
Testament, which is a conglomeration of often widely divergent tendencies.
"Any objective reader of the New Testament becomes immediately aware of
tremendous differences between the letters of Paul and the synoptic
gospels..."
Here's some relevant scholarship:
God makes it known throughout the Bible that He values acts of love, justice
and mercy more than bloody rituals:
"Doth the Lord desire holocausts and victims, and not rather that the voice
of the Lord should be obeyed? For obedience is better than sacrifice:and to
hearken rather than to offer the fat of rams."
--I Kings 15:22
"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? Saith the
Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts,
and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs,or of he-goats.
"When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea, when
ye make many prayers, I will not hear, for your hands are full of blood."
--Isaiah 1:11,15
"Add whole-offerings to sacrifices and eat the flesh if you will. But when I
brought your forefathers out of Egypt, I gave them no commands about
sacrifices. said not a word about them.
"The children of Judah have done evil in My sight...they have set
abominations in the House which is called by My name, to pollute it."
--Jeremiah 7:21-22,30
"Loyalty is My desire, not sacrifice. Not burnt offerings,but the knowledge
of God."
--Hosea 6:6
"As for sacrificial gifts, they sacrifice flesh and eat it. But in these the
Lord has no delight."
--Hosea 8:13
"I hate, I spurn your pilgrim feasts, I do not delight in your sacred
ceremonies. When you present your sacrifices and offerings, I will not
accept them, nor look on the buffaloes of your shared offerings...
"But let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as mighty stream. O
house of Israel, did you offer Me victims and sacrifices for forty years in
the wilderness?"
--Amos 5:21-25
"With what shall I come before the Lord and bow before Him? Shall I come to
Him with burnt offerings,with baby calves? Will the Lord be pleased with
thousands of rams or ten thousand rivers of oil?
"Shall I give Him my firstborn for my transgression?The fruit of my body for
the sin of my soul? He has shown you, o man, what is good. And what does the
Lord require you to do, but justice, love, kindness,and to walk humbly with
thy God?"
--Micah 6:6-8
"God, the Lord God, has spoken and summoned the world from the rising to the
setting sun...
"‘Shall I not find fault with your sacrifices, though your burnt offerings
are before Me always?
"’I will not take a calf from your house, nor a he-goat from your folds. For
all the animals of the forest are Mine, and the cattle in thousands on My
hills.
"’If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the earth and its fullness are
Mine. Shall I eat the flesh of bullocks or drink the blood of goats?
"Offer the sacrifice of praise to God, and pay your vows to the Most High.’"
--Psalm 50:1-14
"Sacrifice and offering Thou hast not desired...Let my prayer be prepared as
an incense offering before Thee, the lifting of my hands as the evening
sacrifice."
--Psalm 40:6, 141:2
"To practice righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than
sacrifice."
--Proverbs 21:3
"Guard your steps when you go to the House of God:to draw near to listen is
better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know they are
doing evil."
--Ecclesiastes 5:1
Secular scholar Keith Akers writes in his 1983 edition of A Vegetarian
Sourcebook that who the messiah is and what he does are not unequivocally
spelled out in either Judaism or Christianity. But he is to fulfill God's
mission: either right away, or on the installment plan.
The title "messiah" was used in ancient Israel to identify the ruling king.
Saul, the first king, was called "messiah." (I Samuel 26:9) The subsequent
rulers form the house of David who ruled in Jerusalem were also called
"messiah."
Proof of this can be found in some of the Psalms, which may have been used
in conjunction with the coronation and enthronement of the Davidic kings.
(Psalm 2:2, 89:51)
The kings were called "messiah," because they had been anointed with oil. (I
Samuel 10:1; I Kings 1:39) There was also the implication of a spiritual
anointing with God’s presence for special service.
Messiah was a title, therefore, which could be used as a designation not
just for kings, but for priests and prophets.
The prophet Isaiah considered Cyrus the Persian ruler a messiah, because he
had been chosen by God to liberate the Jewish captives. (Isaiah 45:1)
Keith Akers writes in his 1983 edition of A Vegetarian Sourcebook that if
the Old Testament prophecies about the messiah restoring the Kingdom of
Peace are to be taken seriously, and Christians claim Jesus as a messiah, it
would be hard to imagine Jesus being anything but a vegetarian!
Did Jesus come to abolish the Law and the prophets, or merely the
institution of animal sacrifice?
Jesus and his disciples lived lives of voluntary poverty and preached God’s
word among “the poor.”
When asked why he ate with sinners, Jesus replied:
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But
go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did
not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” (Matthew
9:10-13; Mark 2:15-17; Luke 5:29-32)
In the 1986 (updated) edition of A Vegetarian Sourcebook, secular scholar
Keith Akers notes that there was a link in Judaism between meat-eating and
animal sacrifices, that the prophetic tradition to which Jesus belonged
attacked animal sacrifices, and that Jesus attacked the practice of animal
sacrifice by driving the money-changers and their animals out of the Temple.
He concludes, “The evidence indicates that for those who first heard the
message of Jesus... the rejection of animal sacrifices had directly
vegetarian implications.”
Meat-eating Christians sometimes dismiss animal rights and vegetarianism
solely as a "Jewish" concern.
But if Jewish vegetarians can reconcile their vegetarianism with Scriptural
accounts of the Flood and animal sacrifice, why can't Christians?
And Christians claim to have the religion of grace!
I guess they wouldn't win as many followers if they advertised themselves as
the religion of the Inquisition and the Ku Klux Klan!
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