ABSTRACT
Blood is essential to the sacrificial system in ancient Judaism. This is not always true for sacrificial systems. For example, the ancient Vedic goat sacrifice, the Pa´ subandh, requires the bloodless death of the animal.1 But in biblical ritual, the shedding of blood is the means of killing in animal sacrifices. At the same time, the eating of blood is prohibited on the grounds that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). More than this, blood is used as a purification agent, especially when sprinkled on the altar.2 Nowhere is this more evident than the sacrifice of expiation and atonement at Yom Kippur as described in Leviticus chapter 16. When the Temple was destroyed in 70 ce, the memory of the sacrificial system was kept alive in the literature of early Rabbinic Judaism. Fully one third of the Mishnah, the earliest rabbinic law code, is devoted to the description of the laws and procedures of the lost sacrificial system – this despite the fact that it was compiled in the beginning of the third century ce. This remarkable fact deserves to be accounted for: What precisely is the function of such a detailed exposition of the laws and procedures of the vanished cult? A step toward answering this question can be taken by examining how sacrificial blood forms an essential part of the discourse of the Mishnah tractate Yoma. This tractate describes, in a detailed narrative, the sacrifice of expiation at Yom Kippur prescribed in Leviticus 16, as practiced in the Second Temple.
