ABSTRACT
The communion theory as held by Robertson Smith and those who have accepted his interpretations gives us little aid towards understanding the nature of Nuer sacrifices to God, and they do not lend it support. In the etymological sense of the word ‘sacrifice’ it is the life which is made sacer by the consecration, not the flesh which the sacrificers and others eat. Much older than the communion theory of sacrifice is the gift theory, supported among anthropological writers by Sir Edward Tylor and Herbert Spencer. In sacrifice, then, some part of a man dies with the victim. In piacular sacrifices to God the do ut des notion, some sort of exchange or bargain, may never be entirely absent but it appears in a refined and sublimated form. But in initiation and marriage ceremonies the sacrifices are only incidents in a succession of ceremonial acts, and they have a maximum of festal, and a minimum of religious, significance.
