The ritual of sacrifices and burnt offerings played a decisive role in Hebrew religion and in the shaping of Christianity. There is a clear line that can be traced from Genesis to Revelation regarding sacrifices, beginning with Noah, who offered burnt offerings to God. According to the text:
“Noah built an altar to God and took some of every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.”
When we reach the final biblical book, Revelation, we find another reference to sacrifices, but this time in a context of idolatry and corruption:
“But I have this against you: you tolerate that woman—Jezebel—who calls herself a prophetess. She teaches and leads my servants astray into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.”
This shows that from the earliest biblical accounts to the latest, sacrifice has been present in one form or another. The passage about Noah appears to have been written by a scribe influenced by what we call the Priestly source, which emphasizes the idea that sacrifices were a divine command from ancient times. However, this account presents an obvious contradiction: it portrays Noah as someone familiar with ritual rules, including the distinction between clean and unclean animals, at a time when the people of Israel did not yet exist and when the ritual legislation—according to the biblical texts themselves—would only be given much later in the wilderness.
In the Book of the Life of Adam and Eve, we are told that the offering of blood began accidentally with Adam. Some have tried to attribute the institution of sacrifice directly to God, arguing that the Creator killed animals and used their skins to clothe Adam and Eve. However, this same book relates that God told them to take the skins of animals that had already died, which is far more consistent with His character. God is life. Death, in any form, does not belong to the Creator of existence. He did not create death, nor does He create it. Death arises as a consequence of breaking His spiritual law. The idea that He Himself initiated sacrifices contradicts His very essence.
The claim in Leviticus that the ritual of sacrifices and the expiation of sins through blood were established by God in the wilderness stands in direct conflict with the prophetic message. The priestly tradition insists that God instituted these rituals, while the prophetic tradition denies their divine origin and rejects the idea of the expiation of sins through sacrifice.
The Book of the Life of Adam and Eve aligns with the prophets on this point, attributing the invention of blood sacrifice to human beings rather than to God. This leads us to two essential questions: Who created the ritual of sacrifices? And what was the means of expiation of sins among the ancient Hebrew people?
Leviticus answers both questions by asserting that God established sacrifices and that the cleansing of sins could only be achieved through the shedding of blood:
“This is the law of the burnt offering, of the grain offering, of the sin offering, of the guilt offering, of the ordination offering, and of the peace offering, which Yahweh commanded Moses on Mount Sinai on the day that He commanded the Israelites to present their offerings to Yahweh in the wilderness of Sinai.” (Leviticus 7:37–38)
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your lives; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life.” (Leviticus 17:11)
However, the prophetic tradition responds in a radically opposite way. God, through the prophets, denies having given instructions regarding burnt offerings and sacrifices in the wilderness:
“Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. What I commanded them was this: Obey me, and I will be your God, and you will be my people.” (Jeremiah 7:21–23)
Here God is clear: not only did He not institute the ritual, but He also denounces the hypocrisy of those who practice it. The prophet Amos reinforces this message:
“I hate, I despise your festivals; I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them… But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?”
God expresses His rejection of worship based on sacrifices, insisting that what He truly desires is justice and righteousness. Amos confirms Jeremiah’s message: sacrifices were not offered in the wilderness because God never asked for them. So what are we to make of the headings in Leviticus that claim, “Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying”? Did God truly give these commands? If the prophets, who spoke in His name, insist that He never asked for sacrifices, how can these undeniable contradictions be reconciled?
It is evident that the Bible brings together multiple sources and traditions, some of which present contradictory messages. To me, this demonstrates that there was no absolute certainty about what truly constituted the Law of God. While the priestly tradition presents sacrifices as a divine mandate, the prophetic tradition rejects them, affirming that God’s true will lies not in ritual, but in justice and obedience to His Word.
The prophet Ezekiel offers a clear vision of how a person could obtain forgiveness for wrongdoing:
“But if the wicked turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions that he committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness that he has practiced, he shall live.”
This message stands in contrast to the teaching of the priestly source, which claimed that the ritual of sacrifices was instituted by God in the wilderness and that the shedding of blood was the only means of atonement.
These two opposing beliefs coexisted in Israel until the time of Jesus. After His death, however, figures such as Paul and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews adopted the Levitical perspective, maintaining that God had ordered sacrifices and that the cleansing of sins could only be achieved through the shedding of blood. On this basis, they justified the death of Jesus as the definitive sacrifice, assigning it a meaning rooted in the ritual of expiation.
Yet Jesus Himself taught a different message to His contemporaries:
“Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
This contrast raises a profound contradiction: if salvation depends on the sacrifice of Jesus, why is repentance still required? Levitical teaching claimed that atonement was achieved through sacrifice, while the prophetic tradition declared that repentance was sufficient. The author of Hebrews went even further, claiming that the blood of animals was not enough, and that the blood of a human being was required to pay for humanity’s injustice. This interpretation, however, is a theological innovation that appears nowhere in the Old Testament.
In sacrificial practice, the offering varied according to the resources of the person presenting it: it could be a dove, a bull, a goat, or even a measure of flour. If the offering was an animal, the individual laid hands on its head, symbolizing the transfer of sin. If it was flour, the priest took a handful as a “memorial” and burned it on the altar, while the remainder was eaten by the priests in a holy place.
If we follow the interpretation of the author of Hebrews, humanity’s sins were transferred to Jesus, and thus forgiven. This leads to a basic inconsistency: if forgiveness is obtained through the sacrifice of a substitute, why is repentance still necessary? Would not the sacrifice eliminate the need for personal change?
And how can this idea be reconciled with the prophetic message, which declares that God never asked for sacrifices?
“Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the meat. For I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices on the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt…”
Amos reinforces this denunciation:
“I hate, I despise your feasts… If you offer me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them… Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?”
The message is unmistakable: ritual worship was never God’s will; what He truly requires is justice and righteousness. The true Covenant between God and Israel was not based on ritual laws, but on moral principles. The only law related to worship was the prohibition of idolatry. There were never divine prescriptions to establish a sacrificial system in the wilderness.
Worship is an external form created by human beings, but God is not concerned with external forms; He is concerned with the integrity of the human being. What truly matters in relationship with God is justice and humility: to act justly and walk humbly with Him.
God never changed this fundamental requirement of the Covenant. What did change over time were worship customs, and the reason is clear: these practices did not come from God, but from human beings, and like all human things, they changed, adapted, and evolved.
The moral foundation of the Covenant in the wilderness remains valid because its principles are eternal. These are the only laws that truly are perpetual. Ritual laws, however, were interwoven with the true covenant that God established with Israel during their forty years in the wilderness, long after the events at Sinai. The Levitical laws were written with the intention of being practiced “forever,” as stated in Leviticus. But the human mind that declared them perpetual could not see beyond its own time.
Centuries later, the author of Hebrews argued for the necessity of annulling a law when it becomes ineffective, referring to sacrificial laws. Here a contradiction arises: does not Leviticus state that these laws were perpetual and commanded by God Himself? The author of Hebrews recognizes that animal blood cannot cleanse the human heart, yet seems to accept that these laws came from God. Or does he?
To resolve this paradox, he attempts to justify the elimination of the ritual by claiming it was no longer effective, while basing his argument on the very law that declared it eternal. His reasoning is striking: God would have given an ineffective law, and he now corrects it, as though protecting God from contradiction. Or perhaps he simply did not want to acknowledge that the laws of sacrifices and burnt offerings did not come from the Creator. Who, then, was the “god” who gave these laws to ancient Israel?
The sacrificial ritual was presented as a divine command, yet its structure and purpose resemble the rituals of surrounding polytheistic nations and those of Israel’s own ancestors. For the legislators of sacrificial worship, this system served as a means of reconciling Hebrew tradition with the religious culture of neighboring peoples. The same occurred with the establishment of monarchy and the construction of the temple. In each case, Israel wanted to be “like the other nations.”
Jeremiah captures this resistance to divine rule:
“Long ago you broke your yoke and tore off your bonds; you said, ‘I will not serve.’”
The great obstacle in Israel’s relationship with God was not only moral, but cultural and religious. The attraction to the customs of neighboring nations—including their religious practices—was undeniable:
“I love foreigners, and after them I will go.”
Israel found the covenant of Abraham and the laws given in the wilderness unattractive because they set them apart too sharply from surrounding peoples. Resistance to that separation was constant. The influence of pagan religions is evident throughout Israel’s history, especially during the monarchical period, and particularly in the practice of sacrifice, which became a fiercely protected element of worship under the priesthood. Although this system became obsolete with the destruction of the temple, its theological justification did not disappear.
A new explanation emerged among some followers of Jesus: His death replaced the sacrificial animal, because animal blood had never been sufficient in God’s justice to erase sin. But if forgiveness had truly been believed to come through repentance alone, why would sacrifices—or their supposed replacement by a man—have been necessary at all?
Most New Testament theology set aside the prophetic message of repentance and inner transformation. Only Jesus, John the Baptist, the disciples, and the author of James preserved this teaching. In contrast, Paul and the author of Hebrews promoted the doctrine of atonement through blood, laying the foundation for Christian theology and religion.
The reality is that repentance—turning away and changing direction—was and remains the only means God established for the forgiveness of sins and the salvation of the soul. Yet Christian doctrine adopted the idea of sacrifice as payment for sin, following priestly tradition rather than prophetic truth.
This ritual was not unique to Israel. It appears in countless ancient cultures, dating back to Babylonian times. The Phoenicians claimed that blood sacrifices existed since prehistoric times, and nearly all ancient civilizations practiced them. This makes it clear that sacrifices in Israel were not a new divine revelation, but a shared custom of the ancient world.
At some point after Jesus’ death, the idea of a “new covenant” based on sacrificial atonement emerged, modeled on Hebrew ritual. But Jesus never taught this.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
When Jesus said He did not come to abolish the Law, was He referring to the sacrificial system? When He spoke of fulfilling the Law, did He mean that He Himself would replace the sacrifice?
After His death, a fundamental part of what was considered God’s Law—the Levitical laws of sacrifice and burnt offerings—was eliminated and reinterpreted. If God’s Law is immutable, how could one of its central aspects be abolished and redefined? Was this truly His will, or a human construction?