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Animal sacrifice is practiced in the states of Assam, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Tripura in Eastern India, as well as in the nation of Nepal. The sacrifice involves slaying of goats, chickens, pigeons and male Water buffaloes. [27] For example, one of the largest animal sacrifice in Nepal occurs over the three-day-long Gadhimai festival.
J. E. Millais: The Return of the Dove to the Ark (1851). According to the biblical story (Genesis 8:11), a dove was released by Noah after the Flood in order to find land; it came back carrying a freshly plucked olive leaf (Hebrew: עלה זית alay zayit), [7] a sign of life after the Flood and of God's bringing Noah, his family and the animals to land.
Animal sacrifice was general among the ancient Near Eastern civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia, as well as the Hebrews (covered below).Unlike the Greeks, who had worked out a justification for keeping the best edible parts of the sacrifice for the assembled humans to eat, in these cultures the whole animal was normally placed on the fire by the altar and burned, or ...
Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practiced by adherents of many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature. It also served a social or economic function in those cultures where the edible portions of the animal were distributed among those attending the ...
The Mendisians, according to this last writer, paid reverence to all goats, and more to the males than to the females, and particularly to one he-goat, on the death of which public mourning is observed throughout the whole Mendesian district; they call both Pan and the goat Mendes, and both were worshipped as gods of generation and fecundity.
This type of worship has sometimes been said to have originated from the goat's increased sex drive. One male goat was capable of fertilizing 150 females. [37] The Greek god Pan was depicted as having goat characteristics, such as hooves, horns, and a beard. Along with Pan, the goat was closely related to Dionysus during the Roman era. [37]
The slaughter of an animal sacrifice is not considered a fundamental part of the sacrifice, but rather is an unavoidable preparatory step to the offering of its meat to God; [23] thus, the slaughter may be performed by any Jew, while the other stages of the sacrifice could only be performed by priests.
"And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel." Lincoln Cathedral. In the Hebrew Bible, the name Azazel (/ ə ˈ z eɪ z əl, ˈ æ z ə ˌ z ɛ l /; Hebrew: עֲזָאזֵל ʿĂzāʾzēl) represents a desolate place where a scapegoat bearing the sins of the Jews was sent during Yom Kippur.