Korban


In Judaism, the '
, also romanized as ' or , is any of a variety of sacrificial offerings described and commanded in the Torah.
The term primarily refers to sacrificial offerings given by humans to God to show homage, win favor, or secure pardon. The object sacrificed was usually an animal that was ritually slaughtered and then transferred from the human to the divine realm by being burned upon an altar. Other sacrifices included grain offerings, which were made from flour and oil instead of meat.
After the destruction of the Second Temple, sacrifices were prohibited because there was no longer a temple in Jerusalem—the only location permitted by Halakha and biblical law for sacrificial offerings. The offering of sacrifices was briefly reinstated during the Jewish–Roman wars of the second century CE.
When sacrifices were offered by the Israelites and, later, early Jews, they were offered as a fulfillment of the mitzvot enumerated in the Torah and Halakha. According to Orthodox Judaism, the coming of the prophesied Messiah will not vacate the requirement for Jews to keep the 613 commandments. When the Temple is rebuilt, sacrificial offerings may resume; Jewish religious movements disagree on whether this will be the case.
While some were offered as part of routine atonement for transgressions, their role was strictly limited. In Judaism, atonement can be achieved through means other than sacrificial offerings, including repentance, , and .

Etymology

The Semitic root means and is found in a number of related languages in addition to Hebrew, e.g. in the Akkadian language noun, meaning. In Hebrew it is found in a number of words, such as,,,, and the verb form,. The noun first occurs in the Bible in and occurs 80 times in the Masoretic Text: 40 times in Leviticus, 38 in Numbers and twice in Ezekiel. The related form appears only in and referring to the 'wood offering'. The etymology of the 'offer' sense is traditionally understood as deriving from the verbal sense of 'bringing near', viz. bringing the offering near to the deity, but some theological explanations see it rather as bringing "man back to God".
The Septuagint generally translates the term in Koine Greek as wikt:δῶρον,, wikt:θυσία,, or wikt: προσφορά,. By the Second Temple period, Hellenistic Jewish texts use korban specifically to mean a vow. The New Testament preserves korban once as a transliterated loan-word for a vow, once also a related noun, κορβανάς, otherwise using δῶρον, θυσία or προσφορά and other terms drawn from the Septuagint. Josephus also generally uses other words for 'offering' but uses for the vow of the Nazirites and cites Theophrastus as having cited a korban vow among the Tyrians.

Purpose

The idea conveyed in most was that of a "gift" to God.
served a variety of purposes. Many were brought purely for the purpose of communing with God and becoming closer to God, or in order to express thanks, gratitude, and love to God.
While some were offered as part of the atonement process for sin, this role was strictly limited. Standard sin-offerings could only be offered for unintentional sins; according to the rabbis, they could not be offered for all sins, but only for unintentional violations of some of the most serious sins. In addition, generally had no expiating effect without sincere repentance and restitution to any person who was harmed by the violation. In the absence of sacrifices, atonement can still be achieved through means such as repentance, prayer, or giving.
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; thus, the slaughter may be performed by any Jew, while the other stages of the sacrifice could only be performed by priests.

Hebrew Bible

Laws and stories

Offerings are mentioned in the Book of Genesis and further detailed in the remaining four books of the Torah, which elaborate on their origins and history. Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, and Jacob offered sacrifices, as did the Israelites at Mount Sinai.
The Torah contains many laws about sacrifices. Different sacrifices are commanded for regular weekdays and Shabbat, and numerous Jewish holidays also feature their own specific offerings. Sacrificial procedures were described in detail. Sacrifices were only to be offered by the , whom the Hebrew Bible describes as male descendants of Aaron who meet certain marital and ritual purity requirements.
The locations at which sacrificial offerings were made changed throughout Jewish history. Before building the Temple in Jerusalem, when the Israelites were in the desert, sacrifices were only to be offered in the Tabernacle. After the invasion of Canaan, sacrifices were also permitted at bamot in any location until the nation's enemies had been defeated and the people lived securely, after which sacrifices were supposed to be centralized again. However, in practice, the bamot were still used even during the secure monarchic period, and the Hebrew Bible's authors sometimes criticize Israelite kings for allowing this. Sacrificial offerings outside the Temple complex are recorded as having occurred at Beit Shemesh, Mizpah, Ramah, Gilgal, and Bethlehem, among other locations.
After the entry to Canaan, the main sacrificial centre was initially at Shiloh. Under Saul, the main center of sacrifice was Nob, though private offerings continued to be made at Shiloh. David created a new sacrificial center in Jerusalem at the threshing floor of Araunah, adjacent to Jerusalem, to which he moved the Ark. According to the Hebrew Bible, after the building of Solomon's Temple, sacrifices were only to be carried out there. After Solomon's Temple was destroyed, sacrifices were resumed when the Second Temple was built, until the Second Temple was also destroyed in 70 CE.

Attitudes

Many of the Biblical prophets criticized those Israelites who brought sacrifices while continuing to violate God's will with immoral behavior. This criticism often took the form of scathing denunciations:
However, while rejecting the value of sacrifices accompanied by unjust behavior, the same prophets promised an eventual reconciliation between God and a more moral people of Israel, and proclaimed that the reestablishment of sacrifices would be a sign of this reconciliation. Thus sacrifices have a place in their visions of eventual redemption:

List of sacrifices

This is an incomplete list of sacrifices mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
Types of sacrifice include:
Sacrifices offered on specific occasions include:
Sacrifices connected to one's personal status or situation include:
  • Offering following childbirth
  • The offering for an accused adulterous wife
  • Thank offering
  • Offerings relevant to fulfillment of, or transgression of, the Nazirite vow.
  • Offerings following cure from certain diseases and unusual bodily discharges.
Other sacrifices include:
Procedures connected to sacrifices include:
  • of sacrificial animals

    Rabbinical interpretation

100 among the 613 commandments

According to Maimonides, in Sefer Hamitzvot, about one hundred of the permanent 613 commandments based on the Torah, by rabbinical enumeration, directly concern sacrifices, excluding those commandments that concern the actual Temple and the priests themselves, of which there are about another fifty.

Instructions in Mishnah and Talmud

The Mishnah and Talmud devote a very large section, known as a, to the study and analysis of, whereby all the detailed varieties of are enumerated and analyzed in great logical depth, such as and . Tractate Pesachim is largely devoted to discussing how to offer the Passover sacrifice. Tractate Yoma contains a detailed discussion of the Yom Kippur sacrifices, and there are sections in Seder Moed for the special offerings and Temple ritual for other major Jewish holidays. Tractate Shekalim discusses the annual half-shekel offering for Temple maintenance and governance, and tractate Nashim discusses the offerings made by Nazirites and suspected adulterers.
The Talmud provides extensive details not only on how to perform sacrifices but also on how to adjudicate difficult cases, such as what to do if a mistake is made and whether improperly performing one of the required ritual elements invalidates it. The Talmud explains how to roast the Passover offering, how to dash blood from different kinds of sacrifices upon the altar, how to prepare the incense, the regulatory code for the system of taxation that financed the priesthood and public sacrifices, and numerous other details.

Rationale and rabbinic commentary

, a medieval rabbi and Jewish scholar, drew on early critiques of the need for sacrifice, holding that God always regarded sacrifice as inferior to prayer and philosophical meditation. However, God understood that the Israelites were used to the animal sacrifices that the surrounding pagan tribes used as the primary way to commune with their gods. As such, in Maimonides' view, it was only natural that Israelites would believe that sacrifice would be necessary in the relationship between God and man. This view is controversial since the Torah also forbids worship of foreign idols and practices of pagan religions as "detestable" before God, including their sacrifices. Maimonides concludes that God's decision to allow sacrifices was a concession to human psychological limitations. It would have been too much to have expected the Israelites to leap from pagan worship to prayer and meditation in one step. In The Guide for the Perplexed, he writes:
In contrast, many others, such as Nahmanides, disagreed. Nahmanides cites the fact that the Torah records the practices of animal and other sacrifices from the times of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and earlier. Indeed, the purpose of recounting the binding of Isaac was to illustrate the sublime significance and need of animal sacrifices as supplanting the abomination of human sacrifices.
Through a non-all-encompassing view of the ritual life of " as it is presented in the book of Genesis, the evolving philosophical theology that seems to underlie the modes of worship that develops over time is reconstruct" Abram's building of a number of altars without mentioning that he sacrificed animals on them, and that for most of these occasions, he "called out in the name of God" is interpreted by Samuel Lebens as theologically stating that God's desires are sated without animal sacrifices. Noting that not all these altar building occasions were accompanied by call-outs, and that call-outs also took place on returns, in Everlasting Dominion, American Christian Old Testament scholar Eugene H. Merrill attributes a multipurpose nature to the altars, in which Abram was participating in only one:
Nonetheless, Abram also entered into the covenant of the pieces, which was based on a divine set of promises accompanied by obligations and an animal sacrifice ritual, to the extent that it physically symbolized irrevocability. Likewise, in Hebrew, the verb meaning "to seal a covenant" translates literally as "to cut." Furthermore, to measure the general importance given to animal sacrifice preceding Abram in Genesis, in the story of Cain and Abel the only differentiator mentioned leading God to " not respect unto Cain and to his offering" was Abel's "firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof" as opposed to Cain's "fruit of the ground" Then, starkly contrasting a diminutive effect resulting from Abram's altar building and call-outs, animal sacrifice was institutionalized in the era of Moses in Numbers 28:1–30:1. The schedule of obligatory sacrifices included two daily lamb burnt-offerings. However, the physical participation of God in the consumption of sacrificial offerings is debatable. The seeming all-time peak occurred with his conclusive victory as Yahweh when Elijah challenged worshippers of the Canaanite deity Baal to pray for fire to light their respective bull animal sacrifices.