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scapegoat

 
Dictionary: scape·goat   (skāp'gōt') pronunciation
n.
  1. One that is made to bear the blame of others.
  2. Bible. A live goat over whose head Aaron confessed all the sins of the children of Israel on the Day of Atonement. The goat, symbolically bearing their sins, was then sent into the wilderness.
tr.v., -goat·ed, -goat·ing, -goats.

To make a scapegoat of.

[SCAPE2 + GOAT (translation of Hebrew 'ēz 'ōzēl, goat that escapes , misreading of 'ăzā'zēl, Azazel).]


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Thesaurus: scapegoat
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noun

    One who is made an object of blame: goat, whipping boy. Slang fall guy, patsy. See praise/blame.


In the Old Testament, a goat that was symbolically burdened with the sins of the people and then killed on Yom Kippur to rid Jerusalem of its iniquities. Similar rituals were held elsewhere in the ancient world to transfer guilt or blame. In ancient Greece, human scapegoats were beaten and driven out of cities to mitigate calamities. In early Roman law, an innocent person was allowed to assume the penalty of another; Christianity reflects this notion in its belief that Jesus died to atone for the sins of mankind.

For more information on scapegoat, visit Britannica.com.

The Religion Book: Scapegoat
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The high priest is to take two goats and present them before the Lord at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. He is to cast lots for the goats-one for the Lord and the other for "Azazel" (literally, "the goat of removal," the scapegoat).

These instructions are found in the biblical book of Leviticus, chapter 16. They describe actions that are to be taken by the high priest on the Day of Atonement (See Judaism, Calendar of). Two goats were to be brought before him. He would place his hands on their heads and confess the sins of the people. One would be slaughtered as a sacrifice to God. The other-well, that's where the problem lies.

The Bible says the second goat is to be offered "to Azazel," but no one knows for sure what that means. The most popular explanation is that Azazel means "scapegoat," and that's how most Bibles translate it. The idea behind the scapegoat is that he is to be sent out into the desert, separated from the people "as far as the east is from the west." He escapes death, but he carries the sins of the people with him to his dying day. They sinned, he suffers. They were guilty, he pays the price. That's what "scapegoat" has come to mean: an innocent person who is forced to take the blame.

We use the word all the time in politics. Officials mess something up so they need to find someone who is at fault. Vice President Spiro Agnew became President Richard Nixon's scapegoat. He resigned and was forced out into a political desert. President Jimmy Carter was blamed for not bringing home the prisoners of war from Vietnam, so he took the political rap and became the nation's scapegoat.

But is that what the Bible really says "Azazel" means?

Many scholars today disagree with the traditional interpretation. They believe "Azazel" doesn't refer to the goat at all. Instead it refers to either the place the goat was sent (the desert) or the demonic presence that inhabited the desert-in other words, Satan, the one who first caused humans to sin. That sin, these scholars say, is now returned to him, or put back upon him. This interpretation would mean the guilty party pays for the sin, not an innocent scapegoat.

If this second view proves to be correct, it would really cause a linguistic problem, because even those who have never read the Bible have learned what a scapegoat is. And sometimes a scapegoat is handy to have around. We use the concept whenever we want to shift blame away from ourselves. We place it on someone or something else, a scapegoat. So if proper interpretation someday forces us to throw our whole understanding of scapegoat out the window and we lose the biblical excuse to place fault on someone else when we mess up, remember to blame the theologians.

Sources: Bucke, Emory Stevens et al, eds. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. 4 vols. New York: Abingdon Press, 1962.


Science Dictionary: scapegoat
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A person or group that is made to bear blame for others. According to the Old Testament, on the Day of Atonement, a priest would confess all the sins of the Israelites over the head of a goat and then drive it into the wilderness, symbolically bearing their sins away.

Word Tutor: scapegoat
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pronunciation

IN BRIEF: A person who is blamed for something he or she did not do; a victim.

pronunciation There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence. — Mark Twain (1835-1910), American humorist, writer and lecturer.

Wikipedia: Scapegoat
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The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt, 1854. Hunt had this framed in a picture with the quotations "Surely he hath borne our Griefs and carried our Sorrows; Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of GOD and afflicted." (Isaiah 53:4) and "And the Goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a Land not inhabited." (Leviticus 16:22)

The scapegoat was a goat that was driven off into the wilderness as part of the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement, in Judaism during the times of the Temple in Jerusalem. The rite is described in Leviticus 16.

Since this goat, carrying the sins of the people placed on it, is sent away to perish [1], the word "scapegoat" has come to mean a person, often innocent, who is blamed and punished for the sins, crimes, or sufferings of others, generally as a way of distracting attention from the real causes.

Contents

Biblical scapegoat

Origins

A concept superficially similar to the biblical scapegoat is attested in two ritual texts in archives at Ebla of the 24th century BC.[2] They were connected with ritual purifications on the occasion of the king's wedding. In them, a she-goat with a silver bracelet hung from her neck was driven forth into the wasteland of 'Alini'; "we" in the report of the ritual involves the whole community. Such 'elimination rites', in which an animal, without confession of sins, is the vehicle of evils (not sins) that are chased from the community are widely attested in the Ancient Near East.[3]

Etymology

The word "Scapegoat" is a mistranslation of the word Azazel (In Hebrew: עזאזל) originated by William Tyndale in his 1530 Bible, and appropriated in the King James Version of the Bible (Leviticus chapter 16) in 1611. Confounded by the word, Tyndale had interpreted Azazel as ez ozel - literally, "the goat that departs"; hence "(e)scape goat." According to the Talmud, Yoma 67b, Azazel is a contraction of az (harsh) and eil (strong) and refers to the most rugged of mountains. This identification is supported by Rashi, the great Medieval grammarian, who interpreted Azazel to be the name of a specific mountain or cliff over which the goat was driven[4]. According to R.H. Charles, it was called so for its reputation as the holding place of the fallen angel of the same name. Modern scholars generally reject Tyndale's interpretation and favor one related to a fallen angel/evil demon interpretation. Today in modern Hebrew Azazel is used derogatorily, as in lekh la-Azazel ("go to Azazel"), as in "go to hell" or ma la-Azazel? ("what to Azazel?"), as in "what the hell?".

Christianity

In Christian theology, the story of the scapegoat in Leviticus is interpreted as a symbolic prefiguration of the self-sacrifice of Jesus, who takes the sins of humanity on his own head, having been driven into the 'wilderness' outside the city by order of the high priests. Also see John 1:29 and Hebrews Chps. 9-10

Girard's socio-religious theory

The Christian anthropologist René Girard has provided a reconstruction of the scapegoat theory. In Girard's view, it is humankind, not God, who has the problem with violence. Humans are driven by desire for that which another has or wants (mimetic desire). This causes a triangulation of desire and results in conflict between the desiring parties. This mimetic contagion increases to a point where society is at risk; it is at this point that the scapegoat mechanism[5] is triggered. This is the point where one person is singled out as the cause of the trouble and is expelled or killed by the group. This person is the scapegoat. Social order is restored as people are contented that they have solved the cause of their problems by removing the scapegoated individual, and the cycle begins again. Girard contends that this is what happened in the case of Jesus. The difference in this case, Girard believes, is that he was resurrected from the dead and shown to be innocent; humanity is thus made aware of its violent tendencies and the cycle is broken. Satan, who is seen to be manifested in the contagion, is cast out. Thus Girard's work is significant as a re-construction of the Christus Victor atonement theory.

Metaphor

When used as a metaphor, a scapegoat is someone selected to bear blame for a calamity. Scapegoating is the act of holding a person, group of people, or thing responsible for a multitude of problems. Related concepts include frameup, patsy, whipping boy and fall guy.

Political/sociological scapegoating

Scapegoating is an important tool of propaganda; the most famous example in modern history is the singling out in Nazi propaganda of the Jews as the source of Germany's post-World War I economic woes and political collapse.

A tactic often employed is to characterize an entire group of individuals according to the unethical or immoral conduct of a small number of individuals belonging to that group, also known as guilt by association.

"Scapegoated" groups throughout history have included almost every imaginable group of people: adherents of different religions, people of different races or nations, people with different political beliefs, or people differing in behaviour from the majority. However, scapegoating may also be applied to organizations, such as governments, corporations, or various political groups.

In industrialised societies, scapegoating of traditional minority groups is increasingly frowned upon.

Mobbing is a form of sociological scapegoating which occurs in the workplace.[6] A summary of research on workplace mobbing by Kenneth Westhues, Prof. of Sociology University of Waterloo, published in OHS Canada, Canada's Occupational Health & Safety Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 8, December 2002, pp. 30–36.

"Scapegoating is an effective if temporary means of achieving group solidarity, when it cannot be achieved in a more constructive way. It is a turning inward, a diversion of energy away from serving nebulous external purposes toward the deliciously clear, specific goal of ruining a disliked co-worker's life. ... Mobbing can be understood as the stressor to beat all stressors. It is an impassioned, collective campaign by co-workers to exclude, punish, and humiliate a targeted worker. Initiated most often by a person in a position of power or influence, mobbing is a desperate urge to crush and eliminate the target. The urge travels through the workplace like a virus, infecting one person after another. The target comes to be viewed as absolutely abhorrent, with no redeeming qualities, outside the circle of acceptance and respectability, deserving only of contempt. As the campaign proceeds, a steadily larger range of hostile ploys and communications comes to be seen as legitimate."

Scapegoating in psychoanalytic theory

Psychoanalytic theory holds that unwanted thoughts and feelings can be unconsciously projected onto another who becomes a scapegoat for one's own problems. This concept can be extended to projection by groups. In this case the chosen individual, or group, becomes the scapegoat for the group's problems. In psychopathology, projection is an especially commonly used defense mechanism in people with certain personality disorders.

Scapegoating in ancient Greece

The Ancient Greeks practiced a scapegoating rite in which a cripple or beggar or criminal (the pharmakos) was cast out of the community, either in response to a natural disaster (such as a plague, famine or an invasion) or in response to a calendrical crisis (such as the end of the year). The scholia refer to the pharmakos being killed, but many scholars reject this, and argue that the earliest evidence (the fragments of the iambic satirist Hipponax) only show the pharmakos being stoned, beaten and driven from the community.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ The Golden Bough pp569 Sir James Frazer, Worsworth Reference ISBN 1 85326-310-9
  2. ^ Ida Zatelli, "The Origin of the Biblical Scapegoat Ritual: The Evidence of Two Eblaite Text", Vetus Testamentum 48.2 (April 1998:254-263).
  3. ^ David P. Wright, The Disposal of the Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (Atlanta: Scholars Press) 1987:15-74.
  4. ^ Chumash with Rashi, [1]
  5. ^ The Scapegoat Model, Jean-Baptiste Dumont
  6. ^ At The Mercy Of The Mob
  7. ^ Frazer, Sir James, The Golden Bough. Worsworth Reference. pp 578. ISBN 1 85326-310-9

Further reading

  • Berlet, C & Lyons, M. N: Scapegoating.
  • Carter, C. A: Kenneth Burke and the Scapegoat Process. Norman, USA, 1996.
  • Colman, A.D: Up from Scapegoating. Illinois, USA, 1995.
  • Douglas, T: Scapegoats: Transferring Blame. London, 1995.
  • Dworkin, A: Scapegoat: The Jews Israel, and Women's Liberation. London, 2000.
  • Engle, P: Mimesis and the Scapegoat.
  • Frazer, J.G: The Golden Bough [vol. 5]. London, 1993.
  • Girard, R: The Scapegoat. USA, 1986.
  • Perera, S.B: The Scapegoat Complex. Toronto, 1986.

External links


Translations: Scapegoat
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - syndebuk
v. tr. - gøre til syndebuk

Nederlands (Dutch)
zondebok

Français (French)
n. - bouc émissaire
v. tr. - faire de qn un bouc émissaire

Deutsch (German)
n. - Sündenbock
v. - einen Sündenbock finden, zum Sündenbock machen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - αποδιοπομπαίος τράγος, εξιλαστήριο θύμα

Italiano (Italian)
capro espiatorio

Português (Portuguese)
n. - bode expiatório (m)

Русский (Russian)
козел отпущения

Español (Spanish)
n. - cabeza de turco, chivo expiatorio
v. tr. - pagar el pato por

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - syndabock

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
代罪羔羊, 使成为代罪羔羊

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 代罪羔羊
v. tr. - 使成為代罪羔羊

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 속죄양
v. tr. - 대신 희생이 되다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 身代わり, 贖罪のやぎ
v. - 身代わりにする

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) كبش ألفداء‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮שעיר לעזאזל‬
v. tr. - ‮עשה (את) לשעיר לעזאזל‬


 
 
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fall guy
Azazel (in the Old Testament)
whipping boy

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