Of Scapegoat!

Did you ever wonder where that word came from?

Personally, I think it is an odd-sounding word, but then the same can be said of the French equivalent: bouc-emissaire.

According to the Cambridge dictionary, a scapegoat is a person who is blamed for something that someone else has done.

Alright, straightforward, but why a goat?

Well, as many other things in our modern society, we can thank (or blame!) the Bible, and the Old Testament to be precise. To give some historical context, the Old Testament is said to have been written between 1500 BC and 400 BC. The word is an English translation of the Hebrew 'ăzāzêl, found in Leviticus 16:8 and is understood to mean "for entire removal". The text was then translated to the Greek Old Testament as "the sender away (of sins)" and William Tyndale, a translator of the Bible into English, rendered the Latin as "(e)scape goat" in his 1530 Bible, which was then carried over in the King James Version of the Bible in 1611.

That little word sure had quite a journey!

Because it is always good to get back to the facts, here is an extract from the King James Bible:

Leviticus 16:8 “And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat.”
Leviticus 16:9 “And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the LORD'S lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering.”
Leviticus 16:10 “But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.”

So, if I get this straight, originally, a scapegoat was a goat sent out to the wilderness to carry away the sin of the community, as a purification ritual. Interesting how the meaning of the word has evolved! Nowadays, a scapegoat doesn’t atone for the community, but instead ensures that the real culprits get off scot-free, irrelevant of the benefit to society. I guess the 21st century is the age of individualism, after all.

Last interesting facts, a similar ritual was found in two texts dating from the 24th century BC, archived at Ebla, in what was the earliest Kingdom of Syria and was usually performed for a king’s wedding. Ancient Greeks, who didn’t like to be left out, also had such a practice, during exceptional circumstances (famine, drought or plague for example), but instead of animals they would cast away individuals.

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