Animal sacrifice was practiced in the ancient Hebrew faith, but not in today's Jewish and Christian faiths?  Why?  The answer is found in the Priestly text, which Jews and Christians have unfortunately and unwittingly inherited in their Bible.  The Priestly text commands that sacrifices should only be performed in the place where God resides, at the altar of his tabernacle, which is assumed to be the temple of Jerusalem, since that is where the tabernacle has resided since the days of Solomon.[1]  The Priestly command to sacrifice at only one central location is as follows:

 

Any Israelite who kills a cow, lamb, or goat in the camp or outside the camp, and fails to bring it to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer it to Yahweh, in the tabernacle of Yahweh, blood will be upon that person.  They have shed blood, and they shall be cut off from their people.[2]  

 

Deuteronomy is even more poignant:

 

Take care not to burn your sacrifices in every location you see, but in the place Yahweh chooses within one of your tribes, there you must bring all your sacrifices.[3]

 

Today, an Islamic shrine sits on the spot where the ancient tabernacle of Jerusalem used to sit.  Consequently, no sacrifices are performed. 

 

Sacrifice Outside Jerusalem

     Yet virtually every "righteous" individual who performed animal sacrifices in the Old Testament directly violated this regulation.  Abraham sacrificed everywhere but in Jerusalem.  He built altars at Shechem, Bethel, and Hebron, and these altars were used for animal sacrifice.[4]  As Abraham journeyed south, he passed right over Jerusalem, not even stopping there.  His son Isaac was no different.  Isaac built an altar at Beer-Sheba, but not at Jerusalem.[5]  Before them, Noah built an altar and sacrificed animals somewhere in Mesopotamia.[6]  Moses asked Pharaoh to "let my people go" so that they could sacrifice animals out in the middle of the Egyptian desert.[7]  None of these altars were even close to the so-called "holy city" of Jerusalem.  Clearly, the idea that animal sacrifice can only occur in Jerusalem is a false doctrine of the priests, and is easily disproved by the earlier texts of the Bible. 

     What’s more, the Priestly text never mentions any of these sacrifices.  It omits the story of how Noah sacrificed after the Flood, of how Abraham and Isaac sacrificed at random locations in Canaan, and of how Moses attempted to sacrifice in the sands of Egypt.  These omissions were not accidental.  The Priestly text intentionally omitted these for the purpose of deceiving people into believing they had to sacrifice only in Jerusalem.  They did this because they depended upon the revenue generated when all tithes and sacrifices came to Jerusalem, where they were located.  To allow the people to sacrifice elsewhere was simply bad business.  The almighty dollar is the reason why Jerusalem became the city of the Almighty.  Follow the money.  Just like modern corporations which violate anti-trust laws, the Jerusalem temple priests wanted to monopolize the market for religion by destroying all competition.  To do this, they invented forgeries and distorted Israel's true history, telling everyone they must pay tithes and sacrifices to their Jerusalem temple.

     In the early times, for the first six centuries after the Hebrews entered the Promised Land, the Hebrews continued to sacrifice anywhere they wanted, and the God of Israel was perfectly satisfied with this arrangement.  The Hebrews set up altars on the mountain tops, which they called high places.  Jerusalem had no special status.  Jerusalem was just one of many high places.  For example, David sacrificed in his hometown of Bethlehem, a rather insignificant town.[8]  Solomon sacrificed animals to Yahweh on high places outside Jerusalem, and Yahweh rewarded him for it.  Solomon also sacrificed animals in Jerusalem, but Solomon is not said to have received any reward for sacrificing in Jerusalem.[9]  The Prophet Samuel also sacrificed on the high places, and so did Saul.  God rewarded their sacrifices with the gift of prophecy.[10]  Such was the disposition of the God of Israel, that he rewarded people for sacrificing outside the so-called "holy city" of Jerusalem.   If people got a sudden urge to eat meat or make a sacrifice, makeshift altars were created on the spot.[11]  No special location or temple was required. 

     Even after the temple at Jerusalem was well established, God’s Prophets continued to sacrifice outside of Jerusalem.  For example, Elijah, who prophesied a century after the Jerusalem temple was up and running, sacrificed on Mount Carmel, and God confirmed that Elijah was justified in doing so by consuming the sacrifice with fire.[12]  Likewise Samson’s parents.  Moreover, a large number of Yahweh-worshipping kings throughout Judah’s history had a favorable policy toward the high places outside of Jerusalem, including Azariah, Amaziah, Jehoash, Jehoshaphat, and Asa.[13]  All of these kings lived after the Jerusalem temple was already established, and all of them recognized that sacrificial altars outside of Jerusalem had a right to exist.  They did not destroy the high places.  These kings were more ancient and thus closer in time to Moses than the Priestly text, and so their opinions hold preeminence. 

 

The Corruption of the Elohist Torah

     As long as the Hebrews sacrificed to Yahweh on the high places, Yahweh continued to bless them with freedom and prosperity in the Promised Land.  Evidently, God was quite happy with the high places. 

     Then, one day, an eight-year old boy named Josiah ascended to the throne, and his priests convinced him to tear down all the high places and leave only Jerusalem.[14]  It appears the boy king was easily manipulated by the priesthood, for these priests supposedly "found" a holy book that had been missing from the Bible for hundreds years,[15] yet scholars believe they largely invented it.  The book was Deuteronomy, which, like the Priestly text, commands the Israelites to sacrifice at only one central location.[16]  This explains why Josiah tore down the high places.  The name "Deuteronomy" means "second giving of the Law," and it is likely that it was the second edition of the Elohist Torah.  The original Elohist Torah was not compatible with the Priestly text; therefore, it was reworked into Deuteronomy.  This can be deduced from who "found" Deuteronomy in the temple – namely Hilkiah, who was related both to Abiathar's priesthood at Anathoth and also to Zadok's priesthood at Jerusalem.[17]  Insofar as Hilkiah was the child of both traditions, he sought a merger of the two, and thus we have the book of Deuteronomy, which merges Elohist and Priestly doctrines.  This is further substantiated by a tradition that Ezra omitted part of the Elohist Torah, and justified this omission by referencing Deuteronomy in its place.[18]

     The priests loved Josiah, so they formulated a false prophecy that the young king would live long and die peacefully.  Yet, in actual fact, Josiah would later die in battle at a young age.[19]  Obviously, God wasn’t filling the mouths of the Jerusalem priests with prophecy!  Rather, these were the false prophets Jeremiah so frequently mentions.  Josiah’s religious reformation lasted exactly thirteen years.[20]  By the end of those thirteen years, Josiah lay slain, Judah’s armies were defeated, and the Hebrew nation had lost its ability to sustain itself.  The once lofty kingdom of David was reduced to a puppet state.  Over the next twenty years, the Hebrew kings played political stunts with their Babylonian overlords, until finally, Babylon utterly destroyed them in the siege of Jerusalem.  The temple was destroyed and Jerusalem was burned to the ground.  The lucky survivors were exiled to Babylon, where they remained for 70 years. 

     Thus, within a generation of Josiah’s religious reforms, the Hebrew nation went from freedom to slavery.  If one chooses to view history theologically, then one should revise the book of Kings in this light.

     Why did Yahweh abandon his chosen people in the middle of the greatest religious reformation of they had ever accomplished?  Why did God punish Israel at a time when they were obeying Torah Law better than they ever had in the past?  The answer, I believe, resides in the fact that the theology of Kings is wrong.  That is to say, Josiah was not a great reformer, but was rather a heretic, and Yahweh punished Israel with the Babylonian exile because of his heresy.  To the king of Assyria, this was obvious, as he says,

 

You tell me that you trust in your God Yahweh.  But isn't this the same God whose altars Hezekiah has dismantled, telling you to worship only at the altar in Jerusalem?[21]

 

The logic of the king of Assyria was simple:  Hezekiah tore down Yahweh's altars on the high places.  Therefore, Yahweh punished Hezekiah – as the Bible tells us and archaeology confirms.  Hezekiah was besieged in Jerusalem and kept locked up like a caged bird, and he was forced to loot the temple and give its treasure to Assyria.  The Assyrians even claimed Yahweh had commanded them to invade.[22]  The next king to remove the high places was Josiah, and he was slaughtered at Megiddo, whereupon Israel effectively lost its sovereignty.[23] 

     This theological interpretation, which reduces Jerusalem and its temple to heresy, is perfectly compatible with Jesus and the New Testament, as Jesus says, "Believe me, the hour is coming when you won’t worship the Father on this mountain nor in Jerusalem."[24]  Likewise Saint Paul, "The Lord of heaven and earth doesn’t live in temples made by hands."[25]  Also, the gospels frequently state that Jesus worshipped on mountain tops, an action analogous to early Hebrew worship on the high places.  Moreover, Josephus informs us that the Essenes refused to sacrifice at the Jerusalem temple.[26]  Apparently, components of the original Hebrew faith had survived in the Essene sect, but had been forgotten by other Jewish sects.  Jesus resurrected the true Hebrew religion from corruption.

Return to this section's landing page:  Genesis 1 is a forgery.

The creationist narrative in Genesis 1 is contradicted by many ancient Christian texts.  Instead of an Almighty Creator God, ancient Christian texts espouse that the universe is born from blind arrogance and stupidity.  The angels caused evolution to occur from species to species.  There are many gods, (or aliens?), and the Christian God is just one among them.  Satan the Devil writes scripture, and thus the Bible was polluted with Genesis 1.  Archaeology and modern scholarship demonstrate that Genesis is indeed corrupted.  Cavemen walk with Adam and Eve.  Esoteric prophecies reveal the coming of Christ, and also reveal the dark forces that govern the cosmos.  Such are the ancient Christian writings.

Science vindicates the truth of these ideas.  Evolution often happens too fast for Darwin’s theory.  Gaps in the fossil record indicate that some kind of unnatural force acts together with natural selection.  Astrobiology reveals that intelligent life probably evolved long before us.  The fossil record reveals strange clues that aliens abducted species and transported them across oceans, and that DNA from diverse lineages was combined to spawn hybrid species.  Evidently, aliens influence evolution, and they are the gods of the world’s religions. 

This is not fiction.  All these facts are thoroughly documented in the links above.

---