/lit/ - Literature

>>11403651
>why was it necessary for Jesus to die in order to spare the world of God's judgement?
It necessarily follows from the efficacy and role of sacrifice generally (as in animal sacrifice, votive sacrifice, libations etc.) practiced by all cultures. If you accept the role of sacrifice in ritual and as a mediation between man and God, then the sacrifice of God to God fulfills the same role in superlative/absolute terms, and also allows us a means to continually participate in that superlative ritual via the eucharist where we can all eat the sacrifice at the conclusion of the perfect ritual slaughter repeated each mass.

In terms of what sacrifice is generally, it's a return of a part of God offered back to God. Sacrifice is a return of a particular form back to the source of that form, the ineffeble One. So a particular animal or thing, usually (and properly) a beautiful and unblemished exempler, is given from the material world (as in killed) back to the noetic world of forms, in direct proximity to God.

Perhaps start with the Cannibal Hymn of the Egyptian Pyramid texts ( http://www.sofiatopia.org/maat/cannibal.htm ) to acquaint yourself with the concept of ritual sacrifice that is alien to Western modernity. Walter Burkert's book "Homo Necans: the Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth" is also a good source on Hellenic sacrifical custom. Note in the Cannibal Hymn how prior ritual has incarnated gods into animals, increasing their value as a sacrifice, which are then eaten by the Pharaoh, in turn increasing the Pharaohs beinghood as an eater of the being of gods because he is now closer in proximity to God (or as he claims the master of gods.)