Animal Sacrifice Began as Feeding God, Not Forgiving Sin (Dan McClellan and Dan Beecher; Data Over Dogma podcast on YouTube)

Why would anyone burn a bull, dung and all, for a god? Dan McClellan traces animal sacrifice back to the way ancient West Asians cared for their dead, from a stele whose owner left instructions for his own meals to Jacob Milgrom's theory that sacrificial blood was a ritual detergent for the temple rather than the sinner.

Then the Dans follow that logic out to the land itself in Leviticus 18 and 20, and to the early Christians who reframed Jesus' execution as a sacrifice.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro
0:48 Thicker Than Water
1:13 Why sacrifice at all?
2:17 Feeding gods and the dead
4:24 The Katumuwa stele
6:44 What ritual is really for
7:13 The food never disappears
10:36 What sacrifice accomplished
11:07 "Only Jesus' blood"?
13:08 Blood as ritual detergent
13:36 Reading Leviticus 4
15:17 Milgrom's temple theory
17:32 The land vomits you out
19:22 Personal impurity
22:42 How rituals pile up
24:41 Exile and the Holiness Code
25:26 Jesus as sacrifice
28:19 Recap and the prophets
29:09 Outro

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/ycpXoR24i3Y?si=VuuNt4FA_IjFf2jP