Do followers of Abrahamic religion offer sacrifices to God?

[SarathW]

Do followers of Abrahamic religion offer sacrifices to God?
The way I understand Hindus do animals sacrifices.
For instance, are Halal meat and Kosher food a form of sacrificed meat?
Do Christians have similar food?

This question came to my mind as a result of reading the following Sutta.

https://suttacentral.net/snp5.4/en/anandajoti

[Sam Vara]

Do followers of Abrahamic religion offer sacrifices to God?
The way I understand Hindus do animals sacrifices.
For instance, are Halal meat and Kosher food a form of sacrificed meat?
Do Christians have similar food?

This question came to my mind as a result of reading the following Sutta.

https://suttacentral.net/snp5.4/en/anandajoti

The Eucharist (i.e. the sacrament of Holy Communion in which bread and wine are consumed as the body and blood of Christ) is technically a sacrifice, in that it is (in some sense, according to the doctrines of particular churches) a re-enactment of the sacrificial death of Jesus. But it is not, obviously, a sacrifice in the petitionary bargaining sense that the Blessed One explained to Puṇṇaka. Christianity replaced animal sacrifice with the notion of self-sacrifice in the service of God, through a variety of means such as the Eucharist, Baptism, martyrdom, and living according to Biblical teachings.

[SarathW]

martyrdom

What is this?
Does it happen now days?

[Antaradhana]

martyrdom

What is this?
Does it happen now days?

There are cases when сhristians, captured by мuslim fundamentalists, between the proposed adoption of Islam and death, chose death and were executed, without giving up your faith.

[DNS]

Do followers of Abrahamic religion offer sacrifices to God?
The way I understand Hindus do animals sacrifices.
For instance, are Halal meat and Kosher food a form of sacrificed meat?

Halal (Islam) and Kosher (Judaism) have similar ritualistic practices in the slaughter of animals. There is a certain ritual that must be done, including that of a conscious animal, a knife cutting the throat, draining the blood, and prayers recited. So it is somewhat like an animal sacrifice.

The Buddha has a better, bloodless sacrifice, the sacrifice of renunciation:

https://suttacentral.net/dn5/en/sujato

[DooDoot]

Why is it so important to drain all the blood from kosher meat?

Part of the required process in making meat Kosher for consumption includes rinsing, salting, and draining it until no blood is left (or brazing meat until all blood is removed).

Blood has more than a biological function. It is possesses essential life giving spiritual energy, as the Torah writes, "the blood is the soul." By eating blood (albeit from a kosher animal) a person consumes that animal's life energy, and impacts himself in a spiritually negative manner. Blood belongs to the realm of foods that can serve no holy purpose when we eat them. In fact, eating blood causes a person to attach his soul to negative spiritual forces. He strengthens those negative forces in the world at large and degrades his own spiritual status. Blood can only be elevated to holiness when it is used as part of the Temple offerings (which will be renewed in the imminent Messianic Era.)

Blood also represents a person's heated excitement for materialism, just as blood is the warm substance keeping an animal alive. Often, a person's "success" is determined according to his physical gains, prestige, and power. Entire lifetimes are dedicated to the goal of corporeal success, and the drive to obtain more is never satiated, remaining as heated as ever.

The goal of spiritual salting and draining is to rid ourselves of the heated drive for materialistic gain. By rinsing away "bad blood," we attune ourselves to spiritual pursuits and everlasting divine gains. And while we drain away our corporeal aspirations, our heated energies are transferred onto spiritual achievements, never allowing ourselves to be satisfied with whatever "wealth" we have already amassed.

Ask Moses dot com

[budo]

Not consuming blood and salting meat is more of an ancient health practice.

If you look at Weston A Price research, eating unsalted pork causes an immune system reaction in blood, aka "sticky blood"



How blood looks like after eating salted pork


Source: https://www.westonaprice.org/health-top ... the-blood/

Still not ideal compared to normal non-pork meat reaction, but better than unsalted pork.

This is why judaism doesn't allow pork, it's just ancient wisdom that they must have figured out through trial and error.

Personally, the only benefit I see from eating pork, is found in pork chops, which is vitamin K2, but goose and other wild fowl are a way healthier source.

Modern farmed pigs are a man made frankenstein creature. Real pigs have brown fur. The pink skin that pigs have is not normal.

[Alexander____]

There are no sacrifices in Judaism because there has been no temple to do it in since the Romans destroyed the last one in 70bce if I remember correctly.

[KiwiNFLFan]

Ancient Judaism used to offer animal sacrifices to God. At first, people would build an altar and offer a sacrifice. Later, God told Moses to have a portable shrine called the Mishkan built (usually translated into English as the Tabernacle). The sacrifices were offered there, and the process is described in the book of Leviticus. The point of the sacrifices were to take away sins. Later, the Temple was built in Jerusalem as a portable version of the Mishkan, and the sacrifices were offered there (and in the Second Temple after the first one was destroyed by the Babylonians). Jewish law apparently didn't allow sacrifices to be offered anywhere else, and so when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, the sacrifices ceased and were replaced by prayer.

Christians believe that the above mentioned sacrifices were foreshadowing the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Jesus (who was later decreed to be God) voluntarily allowed himself to be killed as the perfect sacrifice for mankind, in order to reconcile man back to God. The book of Hebrews describes this.

The night before he died, at the Last Supper, Jesus instituted a ritual called the Eucharist. He took bread and said that it was his body, and took a cup of wine and said that it was his blood. After a certain point, Jesus' words were taken literally, and the Eucharist was believed to actually transform into the body and blood of Jesus (he supposedly passed the power to do this onto the apostles, who passed it on to their successors, the bishops, who passed it onto the priests). The Eucharist then came to be seen as the same as Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Protestants often accuse Catholics of "re-crucifying Jesus" at every Mass, but the official Catholic teaching is that the sacrifice of Christ is made present on the altar during the Mass. When Catholics (and Orthodox) receive the Eucharist, they are supposedly eating the flesh and blood of Jesus (but it still looks and tastes like bread and wine).

[binocular]

Do followers of Abrahamic religion offer sacrifices to God?

Yes:

In the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Lutheran Churches, and the Methodist Churches,[9][10] the Eucharist or Mass, as well as the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Catholic Churches and Eastern Orthodox Church, is seen as a sacrifice. Among the Anglicans the words of the liturgy make explicit that the Eucharist is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and is a material offering to God in union with Christ using such words, as "with these thy holy gifts which we now offer unto Thee" (1789 BCP) or "presenting to you from the gifts you have given us we offer you these gifts" (Prayer D BCP 1976) as clearly evidenced in the revised Books of Common Prayer from 1789 in which the theology of Eucharist was moved closer to the Catholic position. Likewise, the United Methodist Church in its Eucharistic liturgy contains the words "Let us offer ourselves and our gifts to God" (A Service of Word and Table I). The United Methodist Church officially teaches that "Holy Communion is a type of sacrifice" that re-presents, rather than repeats the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross; She further proclaims that:[9]

We also present ourselves as sacrifice in union with Christ (Romans 12:1; 1 Peter 2:5) to be used by God in the work of redemption, reconciliation, and justice. In the Great Thanksgiving, the church prays: “We offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving as a holy and living sacrifice, in union with Christ’s offering for us . . .” (UMH; page 10).[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice#Christianity

If you discuss with Christians or Muslims, they'll probably tell you're supposed to "sacrifice your selfishness", "sacrifice your ego" (google these key phrases for examples) etc. in order to have a relationship with God (at all).

E.g.
To Reach the Divine Presence You Must Sacrifice Your Ego

[SarathW]

What is the meaning of sacrifice?


an act of slaughtering an animal or person or surrendering a possession as an offering to a deity.
Christ's offering of himself in the Crucifixion.

[SarathW]

Is this sacrifice ritual damaging to people?
In Sri Lanka, when Buddhist are converted to Christianity, some churches ask newly converted to eat Muscut (a type of a soft sweet like Turkish delight) pretending that it is the flesh of the Buddha and drink some red drink to say that is the blood of Buddha.

[binocular]

Is this sacrifice ritual damaging to people?
In Sri Lanka, when Buddhist are converted to Christianity, some churches ask newly converted to eat Muscut (a type of a soft sweet like Turkish delight) pretending that it is the flesh of the Buddha and drink some red drink to say that is the blood of Buddha.

Talk about a bottomless pit and eternal damnation ... just when I thought they couldn't get any lower.

The practice you describe is probably done within the framework of the idea that some Christian proselytizers in Asia work with; namely, they say that God sent the Buddha to prepare the people there to accept Jesus. These Christian proselytizers present Buddhism as a preparatory religion for Christianity.

Symbolically drinking the blood of the Buddha and eating his flesh seems to be how these proselytizers are trying to prepare the once Buddhists for Christian communion where they will (symbolically*) partake of Christ's flesh and blood. (*The various Christian denominations have different ideas as to whether that partaking is symbolical or not.)

Whether any of this is damaging to people ...

[binocular]

What is the meaning of sacrifice?

Sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals or humans to a higher purpose, in particular divine beings, as an act of propitiation or worship. While sacrifice often implies the ritual killing of an animal, the term offering (Latin oblatio) can be used for bloodless sacrifices of food or artifacts. For offerings of liquids (beverages) by pouring, the term libation is used.
/.../
The Latin term sacrificium (a sacrifice) derived from Latin sacrificus (performing priestly functions or sacrifices), which combined the concepts sacra (sacred things) and facere (to do or perform).[2] The Latin word sacrificium came to apply to the Christian eucharist in particular, sometimes named a "bloodless sacrifice" to distinguish it from blood sacrifices. In individual non-Christian ethnic religions, terms translated as "sacrifice" include the Indic yajna, the Greek thusia, the Germanic blōtan, the Semitic qorban/qurban, Slavic żertwa, etc.

The term usually implies "doing without something" or "giving something up" (see also self-sacrifice). But the word sacrifice also occurs in metaphorical use to describe doing good for others or taking a short-term loss in return for a greater power gain, such as in a game of chess.[3][4][5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice#Terminology

[Sabbe_Dhamma_Anatta]

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Just very recently, I'm happy to hear that an islam young lady in Myanmar said she decided to donate the money (intended to buy the cattles to be sacrificed for this Eid al-Adha) to the people-in-need from disaster struck areas. A wonderful piece of news. However, many cattles will still be sacrificed during this Eid al-Adha, in Myanmar.

Thanks to this thread, I'm quite shocked to know some Hindus and some Christians still sacrifice animals these days.

How wonderful it is to be a Buddhist! ... (theravadan or whatever, in this issue)


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