The concept of offerings is probably prehistoric. Attaching that to atonement as a kind of special favor is probably impractical to account for. Providing sacrifices to ancestors or the powers of fate or the elements, for immediate favors of abundance or fertility, is presumably nearly as ancient as humankind.
There is much evidence in the older parts of the Hebrew Bible that animal sacrifice was in part a substitute for an even more ferocious practice – human sacrifice. See ** you do not have permission to see this link **. At some point there were folks who sacrificed children to Yahweh.
“For the blood is the life!”
-The madman Renfield in Stoker’s Count Dracula
JAS said
The concept of offerings is probably prehistoric. Attaching that to atonement as a kind of special favor is probably impractical to account for. Providing sacrifices to ancestors or the powers of fate or the elements, for immediate favors of abundance or fertility, is presumably nearly as ancient as humankind.
Humans understand the concept of giving another human something in exchange for a favor. The idea of giving something to a “god” in exchange for something is very natural extension of that.
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