THE SCAPEGOAT IN JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

For about 2000 years, since Abraham, or at least since Moses, Israel has practised the scapegoat ceremony. Each year, its people gathered on the temple esplanade in Jerusalem, including a high priest and a chosen goat. The doctor of the law then placed his hands on the head of this animal and transferred to it the sins of the people. This “scapegoat” was then chased away into the desert and hurled down a ravine, where it died. A messenger returned, waving a white flag and exclaiming: “God has extinguished the sins of his people, hallelujah! Hallelujah!” And, as was generally believed, all of Israel's sins were forgiven. And a great joy came over everyone because they felt as if they were free to sin and could carry the garbage truck of these new sins for the following year.

Israel no longer celebrates the scapegoat ritual. With the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the year 70, and the dispersion of the Jews throughout all parts of the Roman Empire, the scapegoat ceremony also ended.

The new State of Israel, created in 1948, no longer practised this symbolism.

Unfortunately, the idea of the scapegoat, who died for Jewish ideology, is still alive in Christianity, with the difference that the scapegoat is no longer an innocent animal that died and extinguished human sins, but the only sinless man who, according to clerical theology, pays for the sins of humanity with his death.

However, this ideology is based on several misconceptions. Suppose that God can be offended by its creatures - when even spiritually advanced men like Mahatma Gandhi have reached a degree where they never feel offended. Those who are not offended need not take revenge or forgive, but whoever feels offended can avenge itself for the offence, or else forgive it. But God, the God of clerical theology, offended by men, neither avenge nor forgives, but demands satisfaction for the offence. But since man is sinful and insolvent, unable to settle his debt, God requires that a non-sinful man pay the debtors' debt. Since the only sinless man is Jesus, he is considered the only payer capable of paying off the debts of sinful humanity. And payment can only be made with blood, with the innocent blood of the one sinless man. The scapegoat Jesus must die, shedding his blood and satisfying the offended God. So much so that Thomas Aquinas, considered the most significant Christian theologian, says, in one of his spiritual poems, that a single drop of Jesus' blood would be enough to pay all the debts of humanity; however, Jesus, out of excessive kindness, wanted to shed even the last drop of his blood to pay for the sins of humankind.

After this payment, it was expected that the man would be even with divine justice; but the theologians teach that every man is born again in a state of sin, lives and dies full of sins... But under what logic we do not know!

Another misconception of these theologians is that a non-sinner can pay for the sins of another sinner. In reality, each sinner has to pay for their sins. What someone sowed, it will reap. No one can charge another person as a proxy and act in the guilty party's place, for there is no such policy in the Kingdom of God. Nobody can save anybody; each must save himself.

But how can a sinner absolve itself of its sins? Isn't this a vicious circle?

So, it would be if the man were only his sinful, insolvent ego, but every man is also his redeeming Self; though he is sinful at his human periphery, he remains sinless at his divine centre; the image and likeness of God was not erased with sin. Who sins is the peripheral ego - who redeems is the central Self, the “Father in us”, the “Christ within”.

As long as the sinful ego does not realize and experience its Christlike Self, it remains a sinner. Still, if awakens in itself the consciousness of its Divinity and lives following this principle, it redeems itself from its sins. That is, its many sins will be forgiven for this integration and love to Divinity represents the awakening of the redeeming Self.

No scapegoat can deliver sins. It is the divine Self in man that delivers the sins of his human ego. Only the awareness and experience of the divine essence can free the evils of human existence. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”, that is, knowing the truth, and this truth, conscious and lived, will set man free from sin. Man is his divine Self, but he carries his human ego.

All redemption is self-redemption, but not ego-redemption. Man's Self is his inner Christ, and self-knowledge overflowing into self-realization is self-redemption.

When theological Christianity culminates in divine Christlike virtue, the misunderstanding of redemption by external factors will disappear, and the truth of self-redemption, redemption by the Christ within, without any scapegoats, will be born.