Publisher's Synopsis
Sacrifice - ranging from the sacrifice of virgins to circumcision to giving up what is most valued - is essential to all religions. Could there be a natural, even biological, reason for these practices? Something that might explain why religions of so many different cultures share so many rituals and concepts? This book explores the possibility of natural religion - a religious sense and practice naturally proceeding from biological imperatives.;Because they lack later refinements, the earliest religions from the Near East, Israel, Greece and Rome may tell us a great deal about the basic properties and dynamics of religion, and it is to these cultures that Walter Burkert looks for answers. His book begins some 5,000 years ago and enters into a world of divine signs and omens, offerings and sacrifices, rituals and beliefs unmitigated by modern science and sophistication. Tracing parallels between animal behaviour and human religious activity, Burkert suggests natural foundations for sacrifices and rituals of escape, for the concept of guilt and punishment, for the practice of gift exchange and the notion of a cosmic hierarchy, and for the development of a system of signs for negotiating with an uncertain environment. Again and again, he returns to the present to remind us that, for all our worldliness, we are not so far removed from the first "Homo religiosus".
