2 Mayıs 2010 Pazar

Eski Yunan'da Kurban

From the Hellenistic period onwards, says Nilsson, individualism
replaced patriotism:62 religion was a personal, not a civic, matter,63
since Greek cities were lost in the wider context of the Hellenistic
kingdoms and the Roman Empire.64 The educated turned to phil-
osophy, and the great mass of people to superstition, mysteries, and
foreign cults. From the Greek cults, only those of Asklepios and
Hecate retained great popularity. p 22

‘...a fire-bearer went round the altars, probably to burn incense (any other sacrifice is
hardly thinkable).’74 Nilsson bases his argument on this mutilated
inscription in order to restore the sequence of a ritual not based on
animal sacriWce. This ritual ‘impressed people and seemed to them to
be a more appropriate veneration of the gods than animal sacriWce
which took place but rarely and at irregular intervals’.75 So, in
Nilsson’s view, Greeks showed an increasing lack of interest in animal
sacriWce, because they began to realize that this practice was inappro-
priate to worship, and favoured other cultic forms instead. p 24.

Among modern scholars, only R. Lane Fox has challenged Nilsson’s
view on the decline of animal sacrificial cult.78 He has insisted on the
fact that bloodless cult was not a new way of worship, starting in the
Hellenistic period. He has correctly advocated the view in favour of
which this book argues, namely that whenever animal sacriWce was
not oVered, this was due more to Wnancial reasons than to moral
hesitation. Unfortunately, his point is not accompanied by references
proving it: ‘The bloodless alternative to sacrifice owed something to
ease and economy, but nothing to growing scruples about shedding
animals’ blood. When pagans could pay for it, they did, and the
scruples of a few philosophers made no impact.” p 24-5.

Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greek
Religion, Judaism,
and Christianity,100 bc–ad 200
MARIA-ZOE PETROPOULOU
OUP 2008

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