Abstract
This book offers an accessible response to ongoing theological debates about the relationship between sacrifice, violence, and the doctrine of atonement. Eberhart argues that contemporary society has incorrectly come to associate sacrifice and atonement with violence. He maintains that Jesus’ entire ministry, including his crucifixion, is rightly understood as a form of sacrifice which served to reconcile humankind to God. This sacrificial understanding of Jesus’ life and death is essential to all Christian notions of salvation, and it provides the necessary hermeneutic framework for interpreting the celebration of the Eucharist. Therefore, he sets out to reaffirm the theological importance of atonement by reassessing the sacrificial rituals of Judaic worship in the Hebrew bible and the language of sacrifice that these rituals gave rise to in the New Testament in order to demonstrate from a biblical perspective that atonement does not necessarily require bloodshed.
In chapter one, Eberhart discusses the key theories of sacrifice that have influenced contemporary scholars. He distances his own approach to sacrifice from such theories by suggesting that most modern theorists place too much emphasis upon the substitutionary function of animal sacrifice. He then moves on to examine the Jewish temple and its sacrificial cult. He outlines five forms of sacrificial rituals which appear in the book of Leviticus. Although four out of the five rituals involve the killing of animals, he maintains that the cereal offering described in Leviticus 2:1-16 demonstrates that sacrifice need not be equated with violence. He concludes that ‘the act of slaughter is not inherently but is, rather, coincidentally connected to sacrifice.’ Provocatively, he suggests that the Hebrew bible does not provide textual support for a belief in atonement accomplished through the vicarious suffering of a sacrificial victim. Instead, the symbolic meaning of the Hebrew bible’s sacrificial rituals, as expressions of reconciliation rather than as acts of violence, is of primary importance for Eberhart. Chapter two briefly examines the ways that early Christians utilized the language of sacrifice inherited from the temple cult in order to describe the redemptive ministry of Jesus. Eberhart maintains that in the New Testament sacrificial metaphors are used to illustrate the righteousness and acceptability of Jesus’ ministry, but they do not necessarily suggest notions of vicarious suffering or death. Finally, chapter three briefly summarizes the book’s major arguments and findings.
Eberhart’s study provides a brief examination of modern theories of sacrifice as well as a concise exploration of the key sacrificial rituals of Judean worship. It contains a helpful glossary of cultic terminology in the Hebrew bible and the New Testament. However, due to its brevity, this book risks oversimplifying the complex issues at stake in debates about atonement. Ultimately, Eberhart’s aim of defending the doctrine of atonement by correcting our modern day misconceptions about the nature of temple sacrifice relies upon a number of tenuous assumptions concerning the textual, historical, and theological relationship between the sacrificial rituals of the Hebrew bible and the theological perspectives conveyed in the New Testament. Nevertheless, the book may serve as a helpful starting point for readers interested in pursuing a more in-depth examination of violence, sacrifice, and atonement.