On the Altar
A History of Sacrifice from the Sacred to the Secular
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Princeton University Press
Published:24th Mar '26
Should be back in stock very soon
How Christianity both abolished and absorbed sacrifice
From the beginning, sacrifice lived a double life in Christianity, both abandoned and essential. Christ’s death on the cross was the sacrifice to end all sacrifice, eclipsing the temple sacrifices of Judaism and paganism. And yet at the center of the lived faith was the repetition of sacrifice: the offering of Christ’s body, the sacrifices of ancient patriarchs, and the sacrifices of martyrs woven through liturgy, theology, and popular devotion.
But this double life collapsed in the Reformation. Quarreling heirs to Christian truth discovered that the sacrifices they once called Christian might be nothing of the sort. To build their new faiths—to discover the truth of Christian sacrifice—they turned to the past, learning from Christianity as it was how Christianity ought to be.
In On the Altar, Jonathan Sheehan offers a new account of sacrifice both sacred and secular. His story is in part a history of the Christian imagination across the centuries of the Reformation, when new martyrs and holy warriors fought for the truth of their sacrifices, when the empire of New World sacrifice was recruited to settle Christian conflicts, and when the sacrifices of the ancient Hebrews were weaponized for orthodoxy. But it is a history of the secular imagination as well, as the vast archive of Christian sacrifice was dispersed and applied to things that humans make, their religions, politics, and societies. With On the Altar, Sheehan reveals a new history of both Christianity and the secular world in which we still live.
"A magnificent work of scholarship. . . . The author’s breadth of learning and command of sources is a wonder. . . . Mr. Sheehan accomplishes here what might otherwise take hundreds of scholars to produce in a standard reference work. This is a major scholarly achievement."---D.G. Hart, Wall Street Journal
"On The Altar is a brilliant and fresh exposition of how sacrifice has influenced everything from theology to politics to the shape of modern thought. Grand transhistorical histories often fail, this inspiring book restores confidence in the worthiness of these projects."---Candida Moss, History Extra
"Extraordinary. . . . In its capriciousness, lucidity, and sheer erudition, [On the Altar] is a marvel of scholarship that pushes Sheehan into the very first rank of contemporary historians."---Robert G. Ingram, New Criterion
"[On the Altar is] not just a book of history but a book about history: a methodologically sophisticated study of how what was said and believed about sacrifice in the past was remembered, understood, and reappropriated in the present. It is thus an ambitious and creative exercise in reception history. . . . [an] engaging read for anyone who wants to think hard about the origin and purposes of sacrifice.”"---Michael Hollerich, Commonweal
"Sheehan’s immense scholarship shows that just about everyone in the ancient world offered sacrifices. . . . On the Altar is a secular book, but Sheehan fairly reports what Christians believe." * Marvin Olasky *
"An exhilarating journey. Over the course of 450 pages, Sheehan traverses literal and metaphorical continents of space and time with dazzling erudition. He is consistently informative and thought-provoking, and writes engagingly and accessibly. . . . A major scholarly achievement."---Peter Marshall, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"On the Altar provides a rich and expansive history of the phenomenon of human sacrifice, exploring variant forms of sacrifice in a host of religions and secular movements."---Jesse Russell, The Bookman
"Fascinating. . . .[Sheehan] usefully revives the study of what the Church historian Owen Chadwick called the ‘secularization of the European mind’."---Michael Ledger-Lomas, History Today
"This is undoubtedly a magnum opus on the history of sacrifice and what the author calls the sacrificial imagination, especially in relation to the history of Christian churches."---David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer
ISBN: 9780691190884
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 980g
608 pages