Author(s):
Winter, Franz
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Janowski, Bernd
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Frey, Jörg
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Schaede, Stephan
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Pree, Helmuth
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Et al.
[German Version]
I. Religious Studies The term
substitution, originating in the language of law, is used primarily in Christian theology, but it is well suited for use in religious studies as well, even though so far there has been no detailed systematic treatment of it. In the most general sense, we speak of substitution when the true subject affected or acting (God, an individual like the king, or a collective) is represented by another ¶ entity (a person or group, an animal, or an object) as a substitute involved (actively or passively) in the action, acting for the true subject, without altering (diminishing) the latter’s significance. Religions offer many historical examples of a human being acting as a substitute for a god. The substitute can be an “ordinary” person: among the Aztecs (Aztec religion), for example, a prisoner of war was appointed to represent the god Tezcatlipoca in various religious ceremonies for a period of a year, after which he was ritually killed. There is also widespread evidence of a king substituting for a god (as in the Egyptian Old Kingdom, where the king represented the falcon god Horus; Seth and Horus), as well as the substitution of a different person for the king to attract impending disaster to his own person (as among the Hittites, who used prisoners of war to represent the king when an omen threatened disaster). A more complex form of substitution is the scapegoat, familiar primarily from Jewish tradition and the actual basis of …