Rituals
Korban (The Israelite Offering)
Also Known As Qorban (Biblical Hebrew) · Korbanot (Biblical Hebrew) · Temple Offering (English)
Sacrificial Rituals
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Origin from 957 BCE
Korban is the general Hebrew term for an offering brought to the sanctuary. It is built on a root meaning to draw near, so the word names the act of presentation rather than the act of killing. The Priestly legislation of Leviticus sets out its classes: the burnt offering consumed whole on the altar, the purification and reparation offerings that repair breaches of holiness, the offering of well being whose meat is shared with the household that brought it, and the grain offering of flour, oil and frankincense. Two further distinctions cut across those classes. An offering is public, brought for the whole people and funded from a communal levy, or private; and it is obligatory, falling due at a fixed time or on a specified occasion, or freely given. Priests of the line of Aaron officiated and the offerer laid hands on the animal. The system ended with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and rabbinic Judaism placed prayer, the study of the sacrificial law and acts of loving kindness in its room.
Facts
Disputed
Standing as a Comparative CategoryUsed, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 7 Jacob Neusner argued that the Mishnah's order of holy things is a post-destruction systematisation whose interest is coherence rather than record, and that little of its fine procedure can be taken as description of practice before the Temple fell. Against that, historians who read it alongside Josephus, Philo and the Qumran material hold that its institutional picture is broadly continuous with pre-70 practice even where individual details diverge. The dispute concerns one body of ancient rabbinic legal writing, the order of the Mishnah called Kodashim, and it is worked by comparing that text against independent witnesses from the same centuries rather than against any excavated remains, since the Temple itself no longer stands to be examined. Neusner reads the Mishnah's own systematic shape as evidence it was composed for coherence after the practice it describes had already ended; the opposing reading sets its procedural detail beside Josephus's priestly testimony, Philo's account of temple practice and procedural material from Qumran, and finds enough agreement to argue the Mishnah preserves genuine memory rather than pure construction. Shaye Cohen's From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, cited here, and the article on the offerings' internal logic set out both readings without resolving them, which is why korban's standing as a comparative category remains debated. Scholarly Standing DetailShaye J. D. Cohen's From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006) notes that while the Priestly legislation of Leviticus sets out korban's basic legal classes, the burnt, purification, reparation, well being and grain offerings, most of the procedural detail describing how Second Temple sacrifice was actually performed comes from the Mishnah, redacted around 200 CE, more than a century after the Temple's destruction in 70 CE ended the practice entirely. 7 Origins
Origin Period-957 is the traditional date for the dedication of Solomon's Temple, the point at which Israelite sacrificial worship became centred at Jerusalem specifically rather than at earlier sanctuaries; the Priestly legislation itself (Leviticus, Numbers) is dated later by most critical scholarship, a separate question from where the cult this ritual describes was practised. Origin Period Origin PeriodLegislated in the Priestly material of Leviticus and Numbers; practised at the Jerusalem Temple until 70 CE 1 Place of Origin Historical OriginKorban denotes the sacrificial offerings prescribed in the Hebrew Bible and offered at the Jerusalem Temple, a practice that ceased in Jewish life with the Temple's destruction in 70 CE and has not been resumed. 3 Form
What Is OfferedCattle, sheep and goats, turtledoves and young pigeons, fine flour, olive oil, wine, frankincense and salt 1Tradition: Judaism What Becomes of ItDivided by class: burned whole, or shared between altar, priests and offerer, or burned outside the camp 4Tradition: Judaism Status
Current StatusNot performed since 70 CE. The prescriptions remain a live subject of halakhic study and the daily prayers are patterned on them. 6Tradition: Judaism Attributions
PurposeMaimonides, writing in the Guide for the Perplexed, offered an influential account of the system's purpose that treats it as a concession rather than an end in itself: he read the sacrificial cult as God meeting Israel where the ambient religious culture of the ancient Near East already stood, redirecting a practice people already knew toward God rather than abolishing it outright and risking a return to idolatry. Later scholars have both built on and disputed that reading, but it remains the most influential purpose-argument the tradition has produced. 2 Meaning
Literal MeaningThat which is brought near, from a root meaning to draw near 4Tradition: Judaism Practice
Who Performs ItClergy or ordained officiants 1Tradition: Judaism Practitioner DetailPriests of the line of Aaron, with the offerer presenting the animal and leaning hands on it 1Tradition: Judaism FrequencyAs the occasion requires 4 As the general category, korban has no single interval: it spans obligatory offerings falling due at a fixed time, such as the daily and Sabbath offerings the atlas records in their own right, and freely given offerings brought whenever an individual chose to bring one, so the class as a whole recurs as the occasion requires rather than on one uniform schedule. Text
Source TextLeviticus 1 to 7 and Numbers 28 to 29; Mishnah, Order Kodashim, especially tractates Zevachim and Menachot 5 Learn More
A System of Approach, Not of Killing
The Hebrew word korban is built on the root that means to draw near, and in its causative sense to bring near. What the noun names is therefore the act of presentation, not the act of slaughter, and the classes set out in the opening chapters of Leviticus are distinguished by what is brought, who eats it and what the bringing is for. The manner of killing is nearly identical across them and carries almost none of the weight.
An animal offering moved through a fixed sequence. The offerer brought the beast to the entrance of the sanctuary court, leaned both hands on its head, and it was slaughtered, on the north side of the altar for the graver classes and beside it for the rest. From that point the priests took over. They caught the blood in a vessel and applied it to the altar in the manner the class required, flayed and jointed the carcass, washed the entrails and the legs, and arranged the parts on the altar fire in an order the later sources record in detail.
Not every korban was an animal. Flour, oil, frankincense and wine were brought in their own right and also as the standing accompaniment of the public animal offerings, and at the spring and summer festivals sheaves and loaves were presented. A person who could not afford a beast discharged the same obligation with a pair of turtledoves or young pigeons, or in the poorest case with a measure of flour, and the text says so in the same breath as the more expensive options rather than as a concession appended afterwards. A single festival day could therefore see public and private, obligatory and voluntary, animal and vegetable offerings on the same fire.
What Happened When the Altar Stopped
The system had a single legitimate address. Deuteronomy restricts offering to the place the deity chooses, and by the later Second Temple period that meant Jerusalem, with the Judaean garrison temple at Elephantine and the Oniad temple at Leontopolis standing as the exceptions that show how contested the rule had been. When Roman forces destroyed the Temple in 70 CE the daily service stopped, and it has not resumed.
What replaced it was not another altar but a set of substitutions in a different register. The fixed daily prayers were built on the pattern and the hours of the offerings they stood in for, which is why the morning and afternoon services of the synagogue still carry the names of the morning and afternoon offerings. Study of the sacrificial law was itself held to count in place of its performance, and that principle is the reason the order of the Mishnah dealing with holy things was compiled and transmitted with the same care as the orders governing practices anybody could still carry out. Acts of loving kindness were named as a third substitution.
None of this made the system a closed historical subject. The laws of the offerings are studied as live halakhah, the liturgy keeps their shape and their vocabulary, and what a restoration would involve is argued in the present tense rather than the past. The atlas records the system as its sources describe it, and it does not take a position on that argument. What it can say is that a reference work which files the offerings under antiquity has already made a judgement, and that the judgement is not the only one available.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The doctrine of atonement argues from the offerings of this system.
The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE ended the sacrificial system.
Attested In
Leviticus 1 to 7 sets out the classes.
Numbers 28 and 29 set out the public calendar of offerings.
The order of holy things is devoted to the offerings.
Belongs to Tradition
Conducted By
Contrasts With
Slaughtered and burned outside the camp with nothing placed on the altar, so it is a purification rite rather than an offering.
Both are animal offerings in Abrahamic traditions, but the festival sacrifice has no sanctuary, no priesthood and no altar.
Both repair a breach, but the Roman fault is procedural and the Israelite classes are matched to what a person has done.
The goat sent away is not brought near, not slaughtered and not burned, so it falls outside the category the word korban names.
Two fully documented sacrificial systems that divide the animal on opposite principles: the Greek rite gives the god bones and smoke and the people the meat, the Israelite system reserves the fat and the blood and grades who eats what by class of offering.
Instances
One of the classes of offering set out in Leviticus.
One of the classes of offering set out in Leviticus.
One of the classes of offering set out in Leviticus.
One of the classes of offering set out in Leviticus.
One of the classes of offering set out in Leviticus.
The public offering of the daily service.
Originated In
The sanctuaries of Israel and Judah, and from the monarchic period the Jerusalem Temple.
Ritual Implements
The altar of burnt offering is the fixture the whole class of rites is performed on.
Sources
1. The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)
Anonymous (multiple authors)cited for the facts recorded on this riteView the Source 2. Maimonides: Life and Thought
3. Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition
Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Macmillan Reference USA, 2007Book descriptionQuote, Book description
Provides an exhaustive and organized overview of Jewish life and knowledge from the Second Temple period to the contemporary State of Israel, from Rabbinic to modern Yiddish literature, from Kabbalah to "Americana" and from Zionism to the contribution of Jews to world cultures.
4. Leviticus 1-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
Jacob Milgrom, Doubleday, 1991cited for the facts recorded on this riteView the Source 5. The Mishnah
Anonymous (rabbinic compilers)Text page introductionQuote, Text page introduction
The Mishnah is the first major work of rabbinic literature, consisting of teachings transmitted over hundreds of years and compiled by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi around 200 CE.
6. Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History
Ismar Elbogen, translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin, Jewish Publication Society and Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993cited for the facts recorded on this riteView the Source 7. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
Shaye J. D. Cohen, Westminster John Knox Press, 2006Book descriptionQuote, Book description
In this new edition of a best-selling classic, Shaye Cohen offers a thorough analysis of Judaism's development from the early years of the Roman Empire to the formative period of rabbinic Judaism.
Antiquities of the Jews
Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism
Jonathan Klawans, Oxford University Press, 2006
Open Questions (1 open question)
How much of the Mishnah's account of the Temple offerings records remembered procedure rather than reconstructing an idealised one?
The Mishnah was redacted around 200 CE, more than a century after the Temple was destroyed, and it is the only detailed source for most of the procedure. Josephus, Philo and the Qumran texts corroborate the institutions but very little of the fine detail, and the two bodies of evidence were produced for different purposes.
What would resolve this A systematic detail-by-detail comparison of Mishnaic procedure against the pre-70 evidence, distinguishing points corroborated by Josephus, Philo, Qumran and the surviving epigraphy from points attested only in the Mishnah, would show where the account is anchored and where it is not. Fresh documentary or epigraphic material from the Temple period would move individual points.
Rabbinics, Second Temple history, epigraphyShaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
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