Kenton Machina
Alison has given credit to Margaret Barker for giving him ideas about how to understand the Jewish temple rites during the time of the First Temple. In the Alison reading, however, part of what Barker has to say about those rites is not mentioned. I believe the omitted ideas are potentially crucial, and so I am summarizing them below. Read the Alison piece first.
On the basis of study of the Jewish sources, Barker says that the Hebrew word that gets translated as "atonement" refers to repairing damage, not about covering over a flaw so that it won't be noticed. She argues that the Day of Atonement rite in the First Temple symbolized a repair of the covenant relationship between God and the whole of creation (where the "covenant" is basically a pact between God and creation to the effect that God will be God and the creation will follow God's intentions). A restoration of the pact means that order is restored to all creation. The repair is needed because something somehow went terribly wrong (as indicated in the Genesis 3 myth) and the covenant was broken. Since the problem is about the relationship between God and the whole creation, only God has sufficient power to fix the problem. So the Day of Atonement is not about people killing things in order to appease God, or to make up for being bad. It's about God's doing something to fix the broken covenant.
Now, it is true that on the Day of Atonement, before the High Priest begins the sacrifices that Alison describes, the people offer their own animal sacrifices in the Temple, in which the blood of the animals is gathered and smeared on an outside altar. The significance of this ritual act is not discussed by Alison or by Barker below, since it is not the ritual sacrifice offered by the people that the New Testament connects with Jesus' sacrifice. In the New Testament sacrifice talk, Jesus is represented as the High Priest, offering Himself up as a sacrifice. So, that is why Alison discusses the part of the rites that the High Priest performs.
After reading Alison, my own question was simple: why are animals being
killed and their blood smeared and sprinkled around the temple in these rites?
What is the symbolism? Barker has an answer to my question: The key is to
recognize the ancient idea that blood means life. See., e.g., Lev. 17:11
for a Biblical recognition of this symbolism. In her essay, Barker gives much
the same account of the steps in the Atonement ritual that Alison gives. So,
when the High Priest, acting as the symbol of God, takes the blood of The Lord
lamb or goat and sprinkles it around, or smears it around, if we accept the
Barker-Alison interpretation, it is God's life being spread about, to
combat the forces of chaos or sin that have crept into the creation. The effect
is to "cleanse" the area. (This is why the smearing and sprinkling of blood can
be referred to as "cleaning", even though today we would think of it as making a
big smelly mess.) So when the High Priest comes out from the Holy of
Holies and sprinkles The Lord's blood, he is saying that God is restoring the
covenant throughout the world by spreading his life-force to repair the damage
done to the whole creation by sin.
Taking her remarks into account, I guess the sprinkling of the blood in the Holy
of Holies means something like making sure that God's life force is fully
present there--perhaps there was a concern that maybe sin had crept into this
symbol of heaven and needed to be washed out. I also guess that an animal is
killed just to get the blood to use as the symbol of God's life force. It's
more practical than draining the blood from the High Priest himself, who at that
point represents God or the angel of God. It seems to me then, that the lamb
really is a substitute for the High Priest who is symbolizing God.
The important thing is that the blood is God's life force that is needed to fix
the problem, and the ritual has nothing to do with killing the lamb in place of
killing the sinful people in punishment or anger. Even if we don't agree with
Barker about the idea that there is a covenant relationship between the whole
creation and God that is in focus here, surely there is at least a covenant
relationship between the Jewish people and God that could be used instead to
understand the ritual in much the same way that Barker represents it.
Here's an additional tidbit: There is a second animal killed after the Temple is
"cleansed" by the Lord's blood. This is the animal that represents Evil,
the "scapegoat". I have no problem with coming up with a way of
understanding why the scapegoat or the lamb that represents Evil is driven out
of the city to its death. Especially as a response on the part of the city to
the cleansing of the Temple by God's blood. It seems pretty obvious just to say
that the scapegoat symbolizes the faithful response of the people who accept
God's renewal of the covenant and who demonstrate their desire that the forces
of Evil that undermine the covenant amongst them be driven from them, never to
return. I don't see any reason to suppose that this symbolism has anything to
do with God's killing the scapegoat instead of killing the people to punish
them. The people who participate in this ritual don't appear to think that God
kills the goat, especially not as punishment for anything. They are the ones
who kill the goat by driving it out into the wilderness and off a cliff. I
don't see any need to suppose the people think that anyone is punishing
the goat, since surely that would make no sense. The goat isn't called "The
People". It's death does not symbolize the punishment of the people by death.
It's called "Evil" or something to that effect. So, evil is being symbolically
driven away by the people, never to return. This all seems fairly
straightforward.
Again, though, there is nothing in this part of the ritual either that fits
the "pagan" idea of sacrifice -- trying to placate an angry God by killing
animals or people.
From
Margaret Barker, "Atonement: the Rite of Healing", a paper read to the Society for Old Testament Study in Edinburgh, July 1994, and published in SJT 49.1.1996. Available online at http://www.mu.edu/maqom/atonement.