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While most Roman animal sacrifice consisted of common meat sources (sheep/goat, cattle, and pig), evidence from the early sixth century BCE Archaic temple from the Area Sacra di Sant’Omobono in Rome demonstrates that dogs were sacrificed at the site along with other domesticates. Domestic dog remains recovered from this site consist of primarily juvenile cranial elements, suggesting that there was a deliberate selection of young animals and cranial skeletal elements interred at the sanctuary. These findings from the zooarchaeological analysis provide evidence for early Romans sacrificing subadult dogs for rites of purification during the Archaic period and these practices may have been the precursors for rituals that continued into later periods.

This chapter shows that the rabbis redefined the biblical sacrificial process by centering it almost exclusively on one substance: blood. The activities that follow the ritual manipulation of blood, namely, the consumption of the offering either by fire or by human beings, are bracketed as an addendum to the ritual rather than as a critical component of it. The implications of this reframing of the sacrificial process are far-reaching: in determining that nothing actually has to be burnt on the altar for the sacrifice to be valid, the rabbis altogether reject the notion that the deity has to “receive” anything when sacrifice is performed. They thus put forth a new understanding of sacrifice as a religious activity, defined not by interaction but by correct procedure. By developing this non-interactive model the rabbis both make a claim on what sacrifice is not (a channel of communication between individual and deity) and make a claim on what sacrifice is: the ultimate example of a perfect religious action, which serves to construct, bolster, and express communal piety.

The chapter discusses how the Christian perception of sacrifice has affected Afro-American religions, in particular the Cuban Orisha religion in the USA (formerly called Santerìa) and Candomblé in Brazil. Many Afro-American religions require from their devotees offerings for the deities (ebó) as part of their regular rituals but also to ensure special requests for protection or support. The most controversial form of offering is the blood sacrifice, the ritual slaughter of animals, which became, as the chapter argues, the symbol of the paradigmatic other. The chapter shows how the misconceptions about animal sacrifice, in particular when transferred in a different cultural context and imposed by visual impressions, are used to enforce boundaries between religions.

The first chapter aims to reconstruct the rabbinic paradigm of sacrifice as a religious practice, and to examine how the rabbis understand the workings and value of the sacrificial process. Its point of departure is the biblical model of sacrifice, which is an interactive model in essence. In contrast, the chapter argues, the rabbis reconfigure the sacrificial process in a distinctly and emphatically non-interactive model by underplaying both the giver and receiver in the process. This chapter focuses on the role of the offerer (or “owner”) in rabbinic sacrificial legislation, arguing that the rabbis significantly restrict the function and agency of individual offerers within the sacrificial process, both in terms of physical participation and in terms of mental impact, and thereby create a model of sacrifice that is explicitly non-personal and non-communicative.