The manner in which the portions pertaining to God are conveyed to Him varies.  The most primitive is the simple “setting in order” [ (RK, struere] and “pouring out” [#pk, fundere) in the case of the shewbread and drink offerings; to this a simple eating and drinking would correspond.  But the most usual is burning, or, as the Hebrews express it, “making a savour” (HQ+YR), to which corresponds the more delicate form of enjoyment, that of smelling.  Originally, however, it is God Himself who consumes what the flame consumes.  In any case the burning is a means of conveying the offering, not, as one might perhaps be disposed to infer from the “sweet savour” (RYX HNYXX Genesis viii.21), a means of preparing it.  For in ancient times the Hebrews did not roast the flesh, but boiled it; in what is demonstrably the oldest ritual (Judges vi. 19), the sacrifice also is delivered to the altar flame boiled; and, moreover, not the flesh only but also the bread and the meal are burnt.

As regards the distinction between bloodless and bloody offerings, the latter, it is well known, are preferred in the Old Testament, but, strictly speaking, the former also have the same value and the same efficacy.  The incense-offering is represented as a means of propitiation (Leviticus xvi., Numbers xvii. 12 [A.V. xvi. 47] ), so also are the ten thousands of rivers of oil figuring between the thousands of rams and the human sacrifice in Micah vi.  That the cereal offering is never anything but an accompaniment of the animal sacrifice is a rule which does not hold, either in the case of the shewbread or in that of the high priest’s daily minxa (Leviticus vi. 13 [A.V. 20]; Nehemiahx.35).  Only the drink-offering has no independent position, and was not in any way the importance it had among the Greeks.

When a sacrifice is killed, the offering consists not of the blood but of the eatable portions of the flesh.  Only these can be designated as the “bread of Jehovah,” and, moreover, only the eatable domestic animals can be presented.  At the same time, however, it is true that in the case of the bloody offerings a new motive ultimately came to be associated with the original idea of the gift.  The life of which the blood was regarded as the substance (2Samuel xxiii.17) had for the ancient Semites something mysterious and divine about it; they felt a certain religious scruple about destroying it.  With them flesh was an uncommon luxury, and they ate it with quite different feelings from those with which they partook of fruits or of milk.  Thus the act of killing was not so indifferent or merely preparatory a step as for example the cleansing and preparing of corn; on the contrary, the pouring out of blood was ventured upon only in such a way as to give it back to the Deity, the source of life.  In this way, not by any means every meal indeed, but every slaughtering, came to be a sacrifice.  What was primarily aimed at in it was a mere restoration of