Product Code Database
A scapegoat is one of a pair of used in the Yom Kippur Temple service during the era of the Temple in Jerusalem. The scapegoat had a band of red wool placed on it, and was then released into the wilderness, taking with it all the sins and impurities of the people as an act of symbolic atonement. The other goat was sacrificed. The ritual is described in the Book of Leviticus of the Torah, and was performed by the High Priest of Israel (of the lineage of Aaron):
Practices with some similarities to the scapegoat ritual also appear in Ancient Greece and Ebla. The scapegoat ritual was performed throughout the Second Temple period, with historians such as Josephus mentioning it. With the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, the scapegoat ritual became impossible to perform according to its original procedure, as there was no more Temple or High Priest.
There are four major ways to take the word. The Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew Lexiconp. 736. gives (לעזאזל) as a reduplicative intensive of the stem , "remove", hence , "for entire removal", the purpose of the goat. This reading is supported by the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) translation as "the sender away (of sins)".
The second way is to take it as a combination of "goat" and "go away", leading to "scapegoat." Early English Christian Bible versions follow the translation of the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate, which interpret as "the goat that departs" (Greek , "goat sent out", Latin caper emissarius, "emissary goat"). William Tyndale rendered the Latin as "(e)scape goat" in his Tyndale Bible. This translation was followed by subsequent versions up through the King James Version of the Bible in 1611: "And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat."
The third way to take it is as a name for the place that the goat is sent to. Jewish sources in the Talmud (Yoma 6:4,67b) give the etymology of as a compound of , strong or rough, and , mighty, that the goat was sent to the most rugged or strongest of mountains.The JPS guide to Jewish traditions. Page 224. Ronald L. Eisenberg, Jewish Publication Society – 2004. "(Leviticus 16:8–10). In talmudic times, a popular rabbinic interpretation was that Azazel referred to the place to which the goat was sent, the eretz g'zera (inaccessible region) of Leviticus (16:22). Later, Azazel became associated with another..."The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus Nahum M. Sarna, Chaim Potok, Jewish Publication Society – 1989. "According to the first, Azazel is the name of the place in the wilderness to which the scapegoat was dispatched; ... According to the second line of interpretation, Azazel describes the goat. The word 'aza'zel is a contraction.
A fourth line of thought is that Azazel is the name of a fallen angel, an angelic force, or a pagan deity. This can be seen in the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch, which was broadly contemporary with the Septuagint and the Targums.Archie T. Wright The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6.1–4 Page 111. 2005. "However, the corresponding Aramaic fragment of / Enoch 10.4 does not use the name Azazel; instead, the name has been reconstructed by Milik to read Asa'el. Stuckenbruck suggests the presence of the biblical form Azazel in the Ethiopic.Wright, David P. "Azazel". Pages 1:536–537 in Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman et al. New York: Doubleday, 1992. The Symbolism of the Azazel Goat. Ralph D. Levy. 1998. "This is still fairly straightforward, and is translated by the majority of the versions as "for Azazel" (Targums Onkelos and Pseudo-Jonathan follow this understanding, as do the RSV, NRSV, REB, and Tanakh). KJV and NKJV have "to be the scapegoat".
Once a year, on Yom Kippur, the High Priest of Israel sacrificed a bull as a sin offering to atone for sins he may have committed unintentionally throughout the year. Subsequently he took two goats and presented them at the door of the tabernacle. Two goats were chosen by cleromancy: one to be "for YHWH", which was offered as a blood sacrifice, and the other to be the scapegoat to be sent away into the wilderness. The blood of the slain goat was taken into the Holy of Holies behind the sacred veil and sprinkled on the mercy seat, the lid of the ark of the covenant. Later in the ceremonies of the day, the High Priest confessed the sins of the Israelites to God placing them figuratively on the head of the other goat, the scapegoat, who would symbolically "take them away". A band of red wool was placed on the scapegoat's head. While any Jew could lead the scapegoat into the wilderness, in practice, a priest was generally picked for the task. The tractate Yoma of the Mishnah goes into detail about the procedure and its meaning., s.v. Yoma 6:6
At some point in the Second Temple period (538 BC – 70 AD), the procedure changed to explicitly throw the scapegoat off a cliff upon taking it to the wilderness, most likely to prevent the sins from "returning" as an unlucky omen. This doesn't seem to have actually been mandatory, and the High Priest could continue the service as soon as the goat was banished, rather than having to wait for a report of the scapegoat dying.
There is a dichotomy, however, in the individuals used as scapegoats in mythical tales and the ones used in the actual rituals. In mythical tales, it was stressed that someone of high importance had to be sacrificed if the whole society were to benefit from the aversion of catastrophe (usually a king or the king's children). However, since no king or person of importance would be willing to sacrifice himself or his children, the scapegoat in actual rituals would be someone of lower society who would be given value through special treatment such as fine clothes and dining before the sacrificial ceremony.
Sacrificial ceremonies varied across Greece depending on the festival and type of catastrophe. In Abdera, for example, a poor man was feasted and led around the walls of the city once before being chased out with stones. In Massalia, a poor man was feasted for a year and then cast out of the city in order to stop a plague. The scholia refer to the being killed, but many scholars reject this and argue that the earliest evidence (the fragments of the Iambic poetry Hipponax) show the being only stoned, beaten, and driven from the community.
|
|
