Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement

89:7.1Moses at­tempted to end hu­man sac­ri­fices by in­au­gu­rat­ing the ran­som as a sub­sti­tute. He es­tab­lished a sys­tem­atic sched­ule which en­abled his peo­ple to es­cape the worst re­sults of their rash and fool­ish vows. Lands, prop­er­ties, and chil­dren could be re­deemed ac­cord­ing to the es­tab­lished fees, which were payable to the priests. Those groups which ceased to sac­ri­fice their first-born soon pos­sessed great ad­van­tages over less ad­vanced neigh­bors who con­tin­ued these atro­cious acts. Many such back­ward tribes were not only greatly weak­ened by this loss of sons, but even the suc­ces­sion of lead­er­ship was of­ten bro­ken.

89:7.2An out­growth of the pass­ing child sac­ri­fice was the cus­tom of smear­ing blood on the house door­posts for the pro­tec­tion of the first-born. This was of­ten done in con­nec­tion with one of the sa­cred feasts of the year, and this cer­e­mony once ob­tained over most of the world from Mex­ico to Egypt.

89:7.3Even af­ter most groups had ceased the rit­ual killing of chil­dren, it was the cus­tom to put an in­fant away by it­self, off in the wilder­ness or in a lit­tle boat on the wa­ter. If the child sur­vived, it was thought that the gods had in­ter­vened to pre­serve him, as in the tra­di­tions of Sar­gon, Moses, Cyrus, and Ro­mu­lus. Then came the prac­tice of ded­i­cat­ing the first-born sons as sa­cred or sac­ri­fi­cial, al­low­ing them to grow up and then ex­il­ing them in lieu of death; this was the ori­gin of col­o­niza­tion. The Ro­mans ad­hered to this cus­tom in their scheme of col­o­niza­tion.

89:7.4Many of the pe­cu­liar as­so­ci­a­tions of sex lax­ity with prim­i­tive wor­ship had their ori­gin in con­nec­tion with hu­man sac­ri­fice. In olden times, if a woman met head-hunters, she could re­deem her life by sex­ual sur­ren­der. Later, a maiden con­se­crated to the gods as a sac­ri­fice might elect to re­deem her life by ded­i­cat­ing her body for life to the sa­cred sex ser­vice of the tem­ple; in this way she could earn her re­demp­tion money. The an­cients re­garded it as highly el­e­vat­ing to have sex re­la­tions with a woman thus en­gaged in ran­som­ing her life. It was a re­li­gious cer­e­mony to con­sort with these sa­cred maid­ens, and in ad­di­tion, this whole rit­ual af­forded an ac­cept­able ex­cuse for com­mon­place sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. This was a sub­tle species of self-de­cep­tion which both the maid­ens and their con­sorts de­lighted to prac­tice upon them­selves. The mores al­ways drag be­hind in the evo­lu­tion­ary ad­vance of civ­i­liza­tion, thus pro­vid­ing sanc­tion for the ear­lier and more sav­age­like sex prac­tices of the evolv­ing races.

89:7.5Tem­ple har­lotry even­tu­ally spread through­out south­ern Eu­rope and Asia. The money earned by the tem­ple pros­ti­tutes was held sa­cred among all peo­ples—a high gift to pre­sent to the gods. The high­est types of women thronged the tem­ple sex marts and de­voted their earn­ings to all kinds of sa­cred ser­vices and works of pub­lic good. Many of the bet­ter classes of women col­lected their dowries by tem­po­rary sex ser­vice in the tem­ples, and most men pre­ferred to have such women for wives.