Why Did Ancient Pagans Practice Blood Sacrifices?

Blood sacrifices have a divine origin. Although Scripture offers few details, it makes it clear that blood sacrifices were first instituted and approved by God. God gave the skins of animals to Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness (Genesis 3:21). Abel’s sacrifice of fat from the firstborn of his flock was accepted by God, while his brother Cain’s fruit offering was not accepted (Genesis 4:2-7).

¹ Later, after God destroyed an overwhelmingly corrupt human race with a flood, Noah built an altar and offered blood sacrifices to God, an action that also received divine approval (Genesis 8:20-21).

The Bible doesn’t indicate that these early biblical characters had a clear understanding of the significance of sacrifice, but God’s approval of their blood sacrifices pointed towards the coming of a divine sacrifice that would be given for the salvation of the world.

Soon after the flood our ancestors again abandoned their worship of the true God, and in its place created depraved gods in their own image (see Romans 1:21-23). The degree to which our ancestors distorted God’s image was reflected in the forms of their religions and the nature of their sacrifices.

Pagan sacrifices didn’t involve clear symbolic expression of human sinfulness and the need for restoration into relationship with a holy God. Pagan religion was primarily motivated by fear, and sought magical ways to appease the gods and avert their anger. The early pagans had many reasons to fear the gods of their fallen imaginations.First, they undoubtedly feared their own dark inner passions that were capable of transforming them into mere beasts. Although not fully aware of the extent of their own inner corruption and depravity, ² they sensed that their inner beast had to be held at bay. Further, they projected their own capacity for destructiveness and savage aggression upon their imagined gods. Naturally, they assumed that the gods were arbitrary, cruel, dangerous, and needed to be appeased.

It isn’t surprising that this perspective led to the assumption that the more precious the sacrifice, the stronger would be its magical power. This is why pagans often offered human sacrifices to the gods. ³

Ironically, even though these human sacrifices were offered to false gods for mistaken reasons, they unintentionally expressed the truths later expressed in the Bible—the seriousness of human sin and the high price that would be needed to ransom a fallen world.

(See the ATQ article What Was the Purpose of Animal Sacrifices?)

1. Cain reacted in resentful anger, killing Abel, and falling under a curse (Genesis 4:8-15). Back To Article
2. The Bible refers frequently to the fact of ingrained human corruption. Its teaching on this matter has been summarized by the doctrine of depravity. Back To Article
3. If one goes back far enough, human sacrifice seems to have been part of the history of ancient peoples in every part of the world. Historical records, pictographs, and other physical evidences make it clear that the practice of human sacrifice was ubiquitous, practiced by Celts, Germans, Slavs, Scythians, Greeks, Africans, Asians,Polynesians, and Amerindians. The Canaanites were practicing human sacrifice when Israel conquered the Holy Land. The Phoenicians were still practicing it when their greatest city, Carthage, was finally destroyed by the Romans in the middle of the second century BC. Back To Article