Most will agree that civilized behavior, at a minimum, consists of abstaining from ritualistic torture, rape, sexual mutilation, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and related conduct. Yet for most of human history such conduct was normative and often sacralized. Habits of ritual violence and scapegoating to satisfy blood lust and communal anxiety were ubiquitous.
Human sacrifice was a near-universal practice in primitive pagan societies, even among sophisticated pagans. Greeks had elaborate religious rituals for killing their pharmokoi (scapegoats). Romans buried sacrificial victims alive in religious rituals to spare Rome from enemies like the Carthaginians, and though human sacrifice was later banned, crucifixion, mass executions, and murderous entertainment continued until banished in the Christian era. The Carthaginians, like their Phoenician and Canaanite ancestors, sacrificed their own children, as did many Mediterranean peoples. Aztec, Maya, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian civilizations all had rituals for human sacrifice.
Ritualistic violence among low pagans was less well documented but often more horrific. Christians from the medieval to modern eras, travelers like Ahmad ibn Fadlan and Samuel de Champlain, and missionaries all personally witnessed ritualized torture, murder, and cannibalism, from North America to Northern Europe and Asia. Celtic and Baltic, Germanic and Angle, Comanche and Guanche—more peoples partook than can be numbered because most have gone extinct. Ritualistic barbarity was universal.
We probably cling to the myth of the noble savage despite the evidence because the truth—that we all descend from inbred cannibals who made a sacred ritual of torture, rape, sexual mutilation, child sacrifice, and murder—is too unpleasant. We have no desire to confront our history, ourselves, or what the world looks like with different gods. The earth beneath us is a vast crime scene, and those of us walking around descend from something far worse than our simian ancestors. Apes are incapable of the tortures humans inflict on one another.
So what brought most of that savagery to an end? And why do we believe in universal moral norms that restrain violent impulse rather than indulge it? Each inquirer is free to examine cause and effect throughout history. But if by progress we mean the spread of universal concepts of human dignity, equality, and morality—rather than, say, democracy or roads or sound architecture or law—then it all began with the Hebrews. It was the Jews who gave us monotheism, universal moral standards, the notion of the human person, and much else besides. Civilizational progress came from the Abrahamic faiths—unevenly, imperfectly, and undeniably.
Sacrificial violence and scapegoating were cathartic. They satisfy blood lust and the innate sense that there is injustice, that something is wrong, and that someone ought to be held to account, hence the sacrificial victim. The Hebrews shifted the violent cathartic urge from man to creature, and Christians shifted it to bread and water.
There are of course examples of civilized conduct among high pagans, though many of these had a threshold for quotidian violence that we conveniently ignore. And there are Abrahamic peoples who, often in the name of God, inflict unspeakable violence—much of it on each other, and the worst of it on the Jews. However, in general, civilized conduct among high pagans requires a deviation from pagan norms, and uncivilized behavior among Abrahamic communities requires a deviation from their own morality. Sorting through the genealogy and authenticity of moral systems today is nearly impossible for many reasons. Suffice it to say, most of us behave very differently from our pagan ancestors—and why we do so has everything to do with Judaism.
