Blood Rituals in Judaism and Christianity

By Ashish Dalela - 6.2 2025

Most people at present don’t know that Jews did extensive ritual animal sacrifices and Romans did extensive ritual human sacrifices. The importance assigned to these blood rituals is why the crucifixion of Jesus was elevated to such a high status in Christianity as a sacrifice. This requires us to delve into the meaning of the word “sacrifice”, as it prevailed among Jews and Romans. In this post, I will discuss this meaning, and then Judeo-Christian references that establish how these sacrifices were replaced by the sacrifice of Jesus.

Table of Contents

1 The Meaning of Sacrifice in Judaism
2 Various Types of Jewish Sacrifices
3 The Meaning of Sacrifice in Christianity
4 Two Streams in Judeo-Christianity
5 Sacrifices, Penalties, and Confessions
6 From Animal to Human Sacrifice
7 The Continuation of Blood Rituals
8 Eating the Flesh and Drinking the Blood
9 Sattvic, Rajasic, and Tamasic Offerings
10 False Equivocation of Different Religions

The Meaning of Sacrifice in Judaism

The word “sacrifice” in classical Jewish and Roman times meant cutting and burning an animal at an “altar” in a “temple”, as an offering to their gods. For those who might not understand these words properly, I will contrast them to the Vedic words with which they are incorrectly synonymized at present. This synonymity, like thousands of others, is the fiction created by Europeans during colonial times.

In the Vedic tradition, a yajña means making a grain offering into a fire ignited by mantras. It is currently synonymized with the word “sacrifice”, which for Jews meant burning a slaughtered animal for one’s sin forgiveness.
In the Vedic tradition, a yajña is performed in a vedi, a square area in which a fire is lit to offer grains. It is currently synonymized with the word “altar” which for Jews was a raised structure on which the slaughtered animal was burnt.
In the Vedic tradition, a mandir is the place where a deity resides in the form of an image. It is currently synonymized with the word “temple” which for Jews had images of plants, animals, and humans, never of deities.

Due to these false synonyms, many people presently think that when the Jewish temple was destroyed in 70 CE, it was something like a Hindu temple being destroyed. They might not know that what was destroyed was a structure devoid of any deity images, in which animals were slaughtered and burned. The destruction of this temple put an end to the Jewish practices of animal sacrifice, which is why people don’t associate Jews with animal sacrifice today. However, this history of animal sacrifice is very important to understand Christianity.

Various Types of Jewish Sacrifices

Leviticus 1:1-9 describes the sacrifice of a healthy bull. The blood of the animal is sprinkled around the altar, the animal is cut to pieces, a fire is lit on the altar, and the cut animal is burnt on that altar. The smell of the burning flesh is said to please the Lord. This was the standard type of offering. Then there were specialized types of sacrifices designed for specific purposes. Leviticus 3:1-17 describes the offering of kidneys and liver, extracted from the goat and burned at the altar. The smell of the burning flesh is said to please the Lord. This was an anticipatory sacrifice done requesting one’s well-being. Leviticus 4:1–5:13 describes elaborate blood rituals to expiate one’s sins in which the blood of the sacrificed bull is drained and sprinkled in various ways. The result of these sacrifices is said to be the forgiveness of sins.

The Jews were practicing many kinds of animal sacrifices, meant to please Yahweh, seek boons and benedictions, and ask for sin forgiveness. However, among these animal sacrifices, the most elaborate and complex were explicitly meant for sin atonement. The simpler sacrifices were meant for other purposes. Leviticus 17:11 sums up the importance of these blood rituals as follows: For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.

The Meaning of Sacrifice in Christianity

Hebrews 9:11–18 connects the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ to the previous Jewish animal sacrifices and notes that the sacrifice of Jesus is not just a replacement of the Jewish animal sacrifices but also far superior to them. The purpose of both is the purification of sins.

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once and for all into the holy places, not by the means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.

The first covenant stands for the Jewish Covenant with Moses, under which man had to sacrifice bulls and goats to cleanse himself of his sins. The second covenant is the Christian Covenant in which shedding the blood of Jesus has guaranteed the remission of all sins (including those committed under the first covenant), after which there is no need for the sacrifices of bulls and goats for the remission of sin.

Two Streams in Judeo-Christianity

There are two parallel streams in both Judaism and Christianity. The first pertains to the moral teachings of the messiah (Moses or Jesus). The second pertains to what happens if these moral teachings are not followed, leading to sin. In the Jewish Covenant, if one violates the moral teachings, he can get out of sin by animal sacrifice. In the Christian Covenant, the sacrifice of Jesus has purged the sins of mankind forever. Thus, sin had a penalty in Judaism, namely, that one had to sacrifice an animal from their herd and burn it, which meant they would lose the animal. However, sin has no penalty in Christianity because animal sacrifice is not needed, as Jesus was already sacrificed.

The Catholic Church was still charging sin penalties, i.e., Christians had to pay monetary penalties for their sins to be forgiven. The Protestant Reformation called this a contradiction to the Christian Covenant, which harked back to the Jewish Covenant in which animals had to be sacrificed for sin forgiveness. Protestants made a distinction between a Covenant of Works and a Covenant of Faith: (a) the “works” pertain to moral behaviors, and (b) the “faith” pertains to the belief that Jesus was sacrificed for the sins of everyone else. They articulated the doctrine of Sola Fide which means “by faith alone”, fully purging the Covenant of Works or moral behaviors from Christianity.

This means that even as Jesus had given moral teachings, they were irrelevant to salvation. We cannot get salvation by following the moral teachings alone if we don’t accept the Covenant of Faith. Conversely, if we accept the Covenant of Faith, obedience to the moral teachings is irrelevant. Protestants nullified all moral teachings of Jesus in principle. Catholics kept the moral teachings in principle but excused their violation by confession in practice. For Protestants, morality is de jure unnecessary; for Catholics, morality is de facto unnecessary.

Sacrifices, Penalties, and Confessions

Judaism and Christianity are both stilted upon blood rituals, whether they be the animal sacrifices of Judaism or the human sacrifice of Jesus. The moral teachings are there too, but they became optional for Jews who could make animal sacrifices. They became more optional for Catholics who paid monetary penalties or went to confession. They became irrelevant to Protestants when they articulated Sola Fide, i.e., salvation by faith in the sacrifice, rather than in moral conduct. After removing the moral teachings, what remained were sacrifices.

If this wasn’t enough, Catholics worked out a mechanism of the Pope issuing edicts, called Papal Bulls. These included edicts that authorized the conquest of colonies, under which heinous crimes could be committed without even requiring confession or paying a monetary penalty. Thus, if an ordinary man stole a goat, he had to pay a monetary penalty. But if the Pope authorized the theft of a continent, no such penalty was required. Thus, in Catholicism, different rules applied to the common men and the religious leaders. The crimes of common men were sins but those of the Church leaders were not sins if they could write down those crimes and self-authorize them to be done by others.

All these actions have made the moral teachings of their prophets completely irrelevant. They only have academic significance now. The moral teachings are read by people, but they are not obligated to follow any of them because of confession and forgiveness. If something truly immoral has to be done, it is justified by writing down a self-authorized edict, to justify its status as a God-given command. In practice, it means that the common man is expected to be moral, while the leaders of the religion can be immoral. Ideally, in a great society, leaders are far more moral than ordinary people; as ordinary people emulate their leaders, they too become moral. But in Christianity, the leaders are allowed to be far more immoral, while the common man is expected (although not obligated) to be moral. This academic morality, which is certainly not followed by the leaders, and the common man is not obligated to follow, serves to deceive others about morality.

From Animal to Human Sacrifice

How did Christianity go from the animal sacrifices of the Jews to the human sacrifice of Jesus? The answer is the Romans, who made human sacrifices to their gods. Blood rituals were common in Roman times as slaves and animals were sacrificed to the gods and the blood falling on the ground was said to be the method that made the soil fertile. Civilization had to be maintained through animal and human sacrifice. In Roman culture, life meant blood, and when you shed your blood, you were giving life. If that blood was shed on the ground, the ground would get life, and through that, it would produce resources, such as food, water, and minerals, that would rejuvenate humanity. If this blood wasn’t shed, then the ground wouldn’t receive life, and then natural resources such as food, water, and minerals would be absent.

This idea originally came from the understanding that a soldier who died in a war went to heaven. This is accepted in the Vedic tradition too: A soldier who dies protecting dharma goes to heaven. However, there are conditions: (a) war must be for the protection of dharma, and (b) the heaven is temporary. Soldiers dying in empire-building wars are not going to heaven, and those going there are not going eternally.

However, Romans included empire-building wars in the ascent to heaven. The soldiers dying in Roman empire-building wars were further said to have made a blood sacrifice to the gods. Those soldiers who deserted the battlefield were captured and forcibly sacrificed because the Roman gods supposedly demanded blood. Thus, a soldier had very few choices: (a) die on the battlefield, (b) be captured by the enemy and sold as a slave, or (c) be captured by your own army after desertion and sacrificed in a blood ritual. With Romans waging expansionist wars, soldiers could only choose between slavery and death. Roman soldiers joined the Roman army not due to patriotism but due to poverty. Their lands were being gobbled up by Roman elites, so they had no choice but to join the Roman army. Thus, the properties of peasants were captured by the Roman elites, forcing them to become soldiers, after which they were either enslaved or killed. The blood ritual narrative was the Roman elites incentivizing the poor peasants to die for them, by telling them that they would go to heaven by giving their blood.

Christianity coopted this human blood ritual narrative as the route to heaven because it was widespread in the Roman Empire, especially among the peasants and the soldiers. Of course, they had to say that Jesus wasn’t an ordinary peasant being sacrificed to the gods. They had to prove that Jesus was the Son of God, by attributing the miracles of Greco-Roman deities to Jesus. Jesus became a man who converted water into wine, calmed the storms, walked on water, raised the dead, cured illnesses, and fed bread and fish to hungry people. Now the blood ritual didn’t involve a peasant. The Son of God was sacrificed, so the sin remission effects also were significantly greater.

The Continuation of Blood Rituals

Many Christians say that after the advent of Christianity, the Roman blood rituals stopped. That’s most likely true. Christians argued that Jesus had already made the blood sacrifice for humans, so more blood rituals were not required. Giving up these blood rituals was a part of affirming faith in Christianity; after all, if you continued other blood rituals, you did not believe that Jesus had died for your sins. Hence, stopping other kinds of blood rituals was part of making people accept Christianity, not an act of making people compassionate.

This is established by the fact that while stopping blood rituals within the Roman empire, Christians continued or invented other exotic forms of torture and death. These included: (a) impaling (passing a spear behind a person’s backside), (b) burning (tying a person to a wooden post and igniting him), and (c) Poena Cullei (throwing people into a water body after tying their hands and legs and putting them in a sack full of snakes). These far more painful forms of torture and death were reserved for people who questioned Christianity. Many of these were deployed against the pagan religions and their followers. Pagan women, for instance, were called Witches and hunted, tortured, and killed, for doing nothing more than following their practices and beliefs. In some European countries, such as England, Witchcraft was a crime against the state because it did not fall into any other normal crime categories like stealing, murder, debauchery, and so on.

All these crimes continued through the Middle Ages and gradually reduced only with the advent of democracy where the rule of law was passed into the hands of the people. However, while giving freedom to people within European countries, they pursued war and plunder on five continents. Since this war and plunder were immoral by any human standard, an exception to morality was invoked to justify them. That exception said that crimes were done to spread the message of salvation, that natives were being civilized by Europeans, that they benefitted from this violence and plunder, etc. This propaganda is in essence the Romans saying that spilling blood made the land fertile. Of course, it wasn’t the Roman elites spilling their blood to fertilize the land. They just spilled the blood of peasants, soldiers, and slaves. Likewise, it wasn’t Christians who were spilling their blood to benefit the natives. They were spilling the native blood to benefit themselves.

Eating the Flesh and Drinking the Blood

Pagan religions made offerings of food grains, fruits, flowers, and vegetables to their deities. After these offerings, the pagan religions ate what they had offered. These same practices are incorporated in Christianity as eating the blood and flesh of Jesus as a remnant.

Luke 22:19–20 states: And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

Christians have continued this practice to date and is called Eucharist. Wine and bread are placed on an altar and “consecrated” to transform them into the blood and flesh of Jesus, and then eaten and drank. The “consecration” is defined as transubstantiation: “the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of the Blood of Christ”. As the wine and bread are consumed, the followers of Jesus are eating his flesh and drinking his blood. This is the counterpart of the pagan religious practice of eating the remnants of offerings of food grains, fruits, flowers, and vegetables offered to their deities.

Therefore, even as human and animal sacrifices are no longer part of Christianity, they continue symbolically, in which bread and wine are consumed as the flesh and blood of Jesus at present. This symbolic consumption of flesh and blood is called a Sacramental Union. In the Vedic tradition, offering food to God, and eating its remnants as prasāda is called association with God. In Christianity, the offering is the body and blood of Christ. Hence, eating that body and blood is just like the pagan, and Vedic, traditions of eating prasāda.

Sattvic, Rajasic, and Tamasic Offerings

In the Vedic tradition, offerings are classified into Sattvic, Rajasic, and Tamasic. All Devas and Bhagavān are made Sattvic offerings. Humans can eat Rajasic food, occasionally. Tamasic offerings are made to demons. However, in one exceptional case, when Durga killed the demon Mahiśāsura, she also took the form of Bhadrakāli and began killing the demons, eating their flesh, and drinking their blood. This practice has been misunderstood by some (not all) as Kāli eating flesh. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa describes that when some misguided people tried to offer Jada Bharata to Kāli in a human sacrifice, She appeared from the deity and killed all those who were trying to sacrifice Jada Bharata.

Nevertheless, a person is allowed to cut off his body parts and offer his blood in some Tamasic practices. Rāvana, for instance, cut off his heads and offered them to Lord Śiva. Of course, Lord Śiva did not eat these heads nor did He drink the blood. In fact, He restored all the cut-off heads. Animal sacrifices were extremely rare in the Vedic tradition, such as in the case of Aṣwamedha Yajña, in which a horse was suffocated to death by covering it with a blanket soaked in butter. There was simply no tradition of animal flesh and blood being offered to a deity. All these flesh and blood rituals are done for demons. A Rākśasa is specifically defined as a person who eats human flesh.

False Equivocation of Different Religions

Therefore, those from the Vedic tradition can understand that religions that do blood and flesh rituals are worshipping demons. Rituals and sacrifices in the Vedic tradition are not limited to Bhagavān or Deva. They can also be performed for Asuras. Those who worship Asuras go to the place of the Asuras, those who worship Devas to their place, and those who worship Bhagavān go to Him. In the Vedic tradition, there are systems of worshipping ancestors and ghosts too. But their destination is different. Due to this understanding of different kinds of worship, the Vedic tradition did not equalize them. But Montheisms removed these distinctions, forced their ideas on others, and called themselves superior to others. Highly ignorant people at present try to equalize Monotheism to the Vedic tradition and demand “respect” for all religions. They have no clue that the Vedic tradition doesn’t equalize the worship of Bhagavān, Devas, Asuras, ghosts, and ancestors. If there is so much discrimination within the Vedic tradition, then why should that discrimination not be extended to every other religion?

The Vedic tradition is a very long ladder. Those who rise on this ladder can see what is superior and inferior. The person in Rajas can see that Tamas is different. The person in Sattva can see that Rajas and Tamas are different. The person beyond these three qualities can see that Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas are different. It is only a person in Tamas who cannot see any difference. Hence, those who can’t see the difference or demand equivalence are in Tamas. They can’t see the difference between the blood sacrifice cult and the cult of loving God. Even as the former is at the bottom of the ladder and the latter is at the top of the ladder, a person in Tamas cannot see the difference. Their demand for equality is a symptom of their own degraded condition but calling it degraded offends degraded people who prefer to stay degraded.

If we understand how Judaism was a cult of blood sacrifices, we can understand why Jesus wanted to change it. Christianity marginalized what Jesus was teaching to the point of making it completely irrelevant in practice while elevating the blood sacrifice cult in vogue with the Jews. That elevation of blood rituals involved going upwards from animal sacrifice to human sacrifice by coopting Roman practices. These have continued symbolically as eating God’s flesh and drinking His blood, as they are called communion with God. The understanding of the history of blood sacrifice cults makes the story of Jesus, and the contrast between Jesus and Christianity, abundantly clear.