Sunday, May 03, 2020

Azazel's billy goat

DR. NOGA AYALI-DARSHAN: The Scapegoat Ritual and Its Ancient Near Eastern Parallels (TheTorah.com).
In the scapegoat ritual of Yom Kippur and the bird ritual of the metzora, sin/impurity is transferred onto an animal and it is sent away. These biblical examples have parallels in Eblaite, Hittite, Ugaritic, and Neo-Assyrian apotropaic rituals.
A few PaleoJudaica posts on the possible historical background of Yom Kippur are here, here, and here. For more on the mysterious figure of Azazel, about whom there is a substantial postbiblical tradition, see here.

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