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At least the Aztecs didn’t waste all that long pork. Stupid Christians only ritually eating Christ.
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May 8, 2024 23:36
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Mister Olympus posted:widespread taboos on human sacrifice significantly predate christianity. it's culturally-bound but not to some singular cause. if anything, christianity is against it more because its two main components (jewish law and roman ideas of morality) both don't like it, than it is against it for any self-justifying reason
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May 8, 2024 23:36
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Orbs posted:It's mainly christians trying to act like they are morally superior to the cultures they conquered/wiped out. It's widely tolerated in our culture because christianity is dominant in it. But death is death, regardless of whether you say it was to appease the gods, or to punish a criminal in the name of God, or whatever. Neither are exactly my ideal society, but frankly the christian ones enslaved and killed a whole lot more people, so I find myself extremely unimpressed whenever westerners and others in their christian tradition (even atheist or agnostic ones) talk about how uniquely evil human sacrifice is, way worse than plain old torture and murder. Yeah this is nonsense. The most obvious counter example would be the Romans, who where being hella sanctimonious about how the Carthaginians (among others) practiced human sacrifice back during the Punic Wars (even when things were going very badly for them and they were themselves doing the occasional human sacrifice), you know, some 200 years before Christ was born, and some 500 years before the Roman political class was interested in adhering to Christian norms.
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May 8, 2024 23:37
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Orbs posted:Both Jewish law and Roman morality got wrapped up in western christian culture, thanks to the Roman empire adopting it. We have a pretty good idea of what both of those traditions of thought were like prior to the existence of Christianity. Jewish law especially. They wrote a lot down.
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May 8, 2024 23:38
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah this is nonsense. The most obvious counter example would be the Romans, who where being hella sanctimonious about how the Carthaginians (among others) practiced human sacrifice back during the Punic Wars (even when things were going very badly for them and they were themselves doing the occasional human sacrifice), you know, some 200 years before Christ was born, and some 500 years before the Roman political class was interested in adhering to Christian norms. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the taboo is Roman rather than christian, but I don't think that's a worthwhile distinction (in the question of 'why does modern society not like human sacrifice') because of the empire adopting and spreading christianity for thousands of years.
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May 8, 2024 23:38
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Tunicate posted:The existence of a state is predicated upon securing the power to hurt and kill people. so this is why massachusetts is a commonwealth
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May 8, 2024 23:39
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Orbs posted:Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the taboo is Roman rather than christian, but I don't think that's a worthwhile distinction (in the question of 'why does modern society not like human sacrifice') because of the empire adopting and spreading christianity for thousands of years. But that wasn't the question. The question was why cultures that at some point practiced human sacrifice ceased practicing human sacrifice. The examples given were Egyptian and Chinese sacrifices of servants to accompany dead royalty, neither of which ceased because of anything to do with Rome or Christianity.
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May 8, 2024 23:50
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Kylaer posted:But that wasn't the question. The question was why cultures that at some point practiced human sacrifice ceased practicing human sacrifice. The examples given were Egyptian and Chinese sacrifices of servants to accompany dead royalty, neither of which ceased because of anything to do with Rome or Christianity.
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May 8, 2024 23:52
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Records of the Grand Historian 126, Biographies of Jesters posted:In the time of Marquis Wen of Wei (c. 446-396 BC), Ximen Bao was prefect of Ye. When he went to Ye, he met with the elders and asked them what the people suffered from. The elders said: “They suffer from having to provide a wife for the Lord of the River. That is why they are poor.” Moral of the story (imo): human sacrifice is a useful way to form an elite and get rid of people. It also does not benefit everyone, most obviously those who are sacrificed, and therefore the sacrificing elite have a way of getting sacrificed in turn by arrivistes.
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May 9, 2024 00:00
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skasion posted:Moral of the story (imo): human sacrifice is a useful way to form an elite and get rid of people. It also does not benefit everyone, most obviously those who are sacrificed, and therefore the sacrificing elite have a way of getting sacrificed in turn by arrivistes.
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May 9, 2024 00:04
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The biggest obvious difference is that execution is a punishment for bad things the person as done, while with sacrifice the person didn't necessarily do anything wrong, and sometimes it's even preferable for them to be innocent. But also it's pretty easy just to see the difference in how the actual cultures talk about it. Plain and simple. The things people say matter, culture is a real thing. Maybe you can argue about some executions being more sacrifice-y depending on how much pageantry and celebration there is around it, but certainly the system we have now where executions are in private in front of a small audience and after a long legal journey is probably as far away as you can get from human sacrifice and still have the government killing people. Although there is a lot of room for ambiguity with cultures that didn't leave a lot of records so we don't really know all of what their personal thoughts on the killing process were.
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May 9, 2024 00:12
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And the killing of the shaman, disciples, and district elder in that historical example is execution for evil acts committed, and is presented in a way that the reader is clearly intended to view it favorably.
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May 9, 2024 00:13
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Did people sacrifice humans by throwing them in volcanoes or is that just pulp fiction trope?
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May 9, 2024 00:24
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Fish of hemp posted:Did people sacrifice humans by throwing them in volcanoes or is that just pulp fiction trope? I think it would be very difficult to get close to an active volcano for that to work; although the Incas did sacrifice young girls atop tall mountains I believe.
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May 9, 2024 00:29
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Kylaer posted:And the killing of the shaman, disciples, and district elder in that historical example is execution for evil acts committed, and is presented in a way that the reader is clearly intended to view it favorably. Sure, Sima Qian does expect you to view this as a triumph of Ruist good sense and reason over old time superstition. The story is supposed to be funny (and is, imo). Sima Qian also expects you to be a cultivated scholar-knight of the sort who would sadly but dutifully submit to get his dick and balls cut off for the sake of the Han. I don’t think we need to get overly invested in defending the morality of the rationalizing state here.
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May 9, 2024 00:36
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I’m definitely reading this too literally, but people in that story seem to sink immediately and disappear without trace as soon as they enter water. ‘River’ didn’t seem like a very good way of killing uncooperative people unless you attach big rocks to them first or something.
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May 9, 2024 00:46
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sullat posted:I think it would be very difficult to get close to an active volcano for that to work; although the Incas did sacrifice young girls atop tall mountains I believe. That’s why build a long slide for. No reason this can’t be a fun experience for whole clan.
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May 9, 2024 00:57
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The Lone Badger posted:I’m definitely reading this too literally, but people in that story seem to sink immediately and disappear without trace as soon as they enter water. ‘River’ didn’t seem like a very good way of killing uncooperative people unless you attach big rocks to them first or something. This is the Yellow River which is pretty big, and he does wait a while for them to “make their report”. I imagine him having his men take them out in a boat and dumping them overboard, like how the bride is supposed to be floated out into midstream. Idk
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May 9, 2024 00:58
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The Lone Badger posted:I’m definitely reading this too literally, but people in that story seem to sink immediately and disappear without trace as soon as they enter water. ‘River’ didn’t seem like a very good way of killing uncooperative people unless you attach big rocks to them first or something. People who can't swim sink pretty fast. skasion posted:This is the Yellow River which is pretty big, and he does wait a while for them to “make their report”. I imagine him having his men take them out in a boat and dumping them overboard, like how the bride is supposed to be floated out into midstream. Idk Yeah also big rivers like that have all kinds of weird undertows that can drown even the strongest swimmers. As an aside, it does sound like a lot of the Shang-era sacrifice was a kind of sympathetic magic. Drown the victim to prevent floods. Burn the victim or tie them to the stake to die in the blazing sun to prevent droughts. Etc.
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May 9, 2024 01:19
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The Lone Badger posted:I’m definitely reading this too literally, but people in that story seem to sink immediately and disappear without trace as soon as they enter water. ‘River’ didn’t seem like a very good way of killing uncooperative people unless you attach big rocks to them first or something. Like I can see the reasoning for blue ocean sailors -- it's not like they're going to be able to easily turn back for you, so you might as well get it over with quickly. Even so!
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May 9, 2024 01:39
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If God wanted us to swim he'd have given us fins.
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May 9, 2024 01:40
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Nessus posted:For some reason I do not comprehend apparently learning how to swim has, historically, been loving rare throughout the world, including in places like England or Ireland where if your little fishing coracle capsized you might well have a reasonable chance of making it to shore. I always wonder if this is the reason there's so many malicious water spirits in folklore. Jenny Greenteeth, Peg Powler, kelpies, bunyips, etc as warnings for loving with bodies of water.
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May 9, 2024 01:49
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Important note about the Romans looking down on the Carthaginians for human sacrifice, after Cannae the Romans did it too. That's the central part of my own personal and likely incorrect opinion that if Hannibal had marched on Rome,.he could have taken the city, regardless of whether or not Rome had the troops to withstand a siege.
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May 9, 2024 01:50
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Plenty of forms of execution are elaborately ritualised. Crucifixion became iconic, famously, and witch burnings so much so people forget Salem's 'witches' were hanged. And it continues in modern day. Not a huge stretch to draw comparisons. That said, yeah, the idea of sacrifice being someone who is clearly innocent and even valued or honoured is a significant thing, even if both are often used to get rid of inconvenient people, and/or clearly motivated by bigotry and certain classes of people being devalued in practice. State execution can be seen as having a relative honesty of intent in comparison to explicit ritual. Not surprising it tends to end messily when people become more scared of being sacrificed than whatever it is the sacrifice is supposed to protect them from.
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May 9, 2024 02:36
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I don’t know how true the proposition “rome was against human sacrifice” Is. It was part of their propaganda sure But like as we can see even today, politicians sometimes are bit being sincere when they criticize some other country
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May 9, 2024 02:37
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They certainly didn't describe the practice as praiseworthy.
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May 9, 2024 02:55
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euphronius posted:I don’t know how true the proposition “rome was against human sacrifice” Is. It was part of their propaganda sure Luckily we have historians and archeologists doing the work so we do know.
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May 9, 2024 02:59
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Meh I’m not too impressed with historians.
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May 9, 2024 03:01
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the romans did not do human sacrifice except in the most absolutely dire circumstances and as they became more and more divorced from "scrappy city-state" into "giant empire" it became progressively even more taboo. they recognized that it had spiritual power, lots of spiritual power, but were fundamentally opposed to using that power when goats and pigeons and such worked just fine. however i don't think moral opposition to human sacrifice had anything to do with why carthage must be destroyed that being said christian revulsion toward human sacrifice isn't like, something picked up from the romans only. ancient judaism had exactly the same stance of "yes human sacrifice works, but we don't do it", if you read between the lines a little. christianity gets it honestly from all of its formative influences.
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May 9, 2024 03:31
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But what made human sacrifice a taboo? Did it just never go away and become secularized as capital punishment over time around the world? I don't know if that's possible to answer outside of speculation if the taboos emerged in prehistory. There's so many reasons used to justify killing people that it may just be a matter of semantics or rationale.
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May 9, 2024 03:37
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If feeding a bunch of criminals to wild animals or gladiators isn’t human sacrifice I don’t know what is. It’s simply what it’s dedicated to that seems to be taboo. Entertainment? Awesome! Crime deterrence? gently caress that guy! Preventing the sun from eating the world? Oh nooooo you can’t do that!
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May 9, 2024 03:45
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As WoodrowSkillson says, the Romans did sacrifice two Gaulish and two Greek slaves by burying them in the Forum Boarium after the disaster of Cannae. In the Augustan age Livy tut-tuts about the event and impugns its Romanness. Yet Pliny, generations later, suggests the practice had been repeated in his own time! Not much detail though. One of Plutarch’s “Roman Questions” takes up the incongruity directly and wonders why Romans reproached barbarians for sacrificing humans when they were doing it themselves: was it because barbarians did it wrong by sacrificing to (heavenly) gods, while Romans sacrificed to (chthonic) spirits? Was it excused by the fact that the Sibylline books told them to do it to expiate horrible sex crimes? In his “Life of Marcellus” he claims it was based on an earlier version of the Gaul/Greek sacrifice from shortly after the Punic War, when the Romans fought the Insubrian Gauls, but it doesn’t explain why exactly Greeks had to be involved. In Beginnings of Rome Tim Cornell suggests the ritual might have been a genuine anachronism, since in the archaic period Gaulish invasion from the north and the richer and more powerful city states of Magna Grecia were seen as the greatest threats to Rome.
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May 9, 2024 03:45
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Crab Dad posted:If feeding a bunch of criminals to wild animals or gladiators isn’t human sacrifice I don’t know what is. You don't know what is, then.  Sacrifice is a religious ritual. Watching criminals get eaten by leopards is a good time with no particular religious significance.Gladiators are a special case because our evidence heavily suggests gladiatorial combat started as a funerary blood sacrifice ritual, though it was still not human sacrifice since the gladiators were not killed. Over time it lost its religious significance. Human sacrifice is not the same thing as killing people. The reason things are done matters. A killing in offering to the gods is not at all the same thing as a killing to make hamburgers, even if both end with a dead cow.
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May 9, 2024 03:53
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the sponsoring-products-and-being-the-stereotypical-peeps-rich-roman-women-cheated-on-their-husbands-with phase wasn't coincident with the religious blood sacrifice phase, neither. the 6 centuries they mainly did it for was a long-rear end time
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May 9, 2024 03:54
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Ritual sacrifice of animals was just a way for priests to get free meat. It just sounds so scammy all the way down. Think it was the Iliad that described the way the choicest pieces and fat went to the priests and only the bones and offal were actually burnt.
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May 9, 2024 04:04
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Crab Dad posted:Ritual sacrifice of animals was just a way for priests to get free meat. No, it wasn't. You're making a common contemporary mistake of taking the kind of world-weary cynicism people have today and projecting it into places where it isn't appropriate. Ritual sacrifice of animals was part of the religion, which was a thing people took very seriously. Roman priests were not just scamming people, they were participating in a religion that they and their culture believed in. Was the meat eaten afterwards? Generally, yeah. In all situations I'm aware of it was a free feast for all attending, not just the priests. I'm sure there were priests who were cynical and in it for themselves, people are people and those guys always existed, but to portray the entirety of ancient religion as one big scam is ahistorical thinking that cannot be supported by any available evidence.
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May 9, 2024 04:10
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its projecting the current state of western christianity backwards. yeah, televangelists are absolutely cynical scammers, but that wasn't true even a millennium ago, let alone 3. hell, it was materially less true 2 centuries ago
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May 9, 2024 04:11
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Grand Fromage posted:You don't know what is, then. Gladiatorial games are absolutely a religious ritual! Representatives of the Roman state (=the religious establishment) publicly staged these events on festal days with prayers to the gods. The fact that they became “secularized”, privately managed entertainments does not change what was going on. Tertullian wrote a whole book about this to the effect that Christians should not go to the games because, regardless of whether people attended in a pious atmosphere or to have fun, these were idolatrous rites. skasion fucked around with this message at 04:19 on May 9, 2024 |
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May 9, 2024 04:17
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Crab Dad posted:Ritual sacrifice of animals was just a way for priests to get free meat. the gods don't give a gently caress about the meat they want the spiritual energy of the animal. also average romans sacrificed all the time it was not something restricted to a certain class of people. in the roman worldview sacrifice is not done as worship, it is done as payment. you want a god to view you favorably in the future, or you've asked them for help and they followed through, or you feel like you've noticed that a god is helping without being asked - those are occasions that call for sacrifice. the life energy empowers them, it is the only payment that can be made for the many implicit and explicit contracts between the divine and the mortal that come into being every day. a priest is there to be a god-knower, like oh yeah this god likes things to be done in this way, when we do it that way it's successful more often. not to gatekeep the religion in any way because that's not the kind of religion it was. if you project anything even vaguely abrahamic onto the other ancient mediterranean religions you will misunderstand them completely.
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May 9, 2024 04:24
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Grand Fromage posted:No, it wasn't. You're making a common contemporary mistake of taking the kind of world-weary cynicism people have today and projecting it into places where it isn't appropriate. Ritual sacrifice of animals was part of the religion, which was a thing people took very seriously. Roman priests were not just scamming people, they were participating in a religion that they and their culture believed in. Part of it I think is that with primitive food preservation a family can’t eat an entire ox before most of it goes bad. So if you’re going to kill an ox might as well make an event out of it, get everyone together to enjoy some roast ox and make sure the person who provided the ox gets social recognition for it / their piety.
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May 9, 2024 04:30
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