This article is about "scapegoat" in its religious and ritualistic sense. For the social-psychological sense of a person or group singled out for blame, see Scapegoating. For other uses, see Scapegoat (disambiguation).
Scapegoat ceremony depicted at Lincoln Cathedral in stained glass: "[Aaron] is to take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting. He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat." (NIV, Leviticus 16:7–8)
In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of a pair of kid goats that is released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities, while the other is sacrificed. The concept first appears in the Book of Leviticus, in which a goat is designated to be cast into the desert to carry away the sins of the community.
Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.
— Leviticus 16:21–22, New Revised Standard Version
Practices with some similarities to the scapegoat ritual also appear in Ancient Greece and Ebla.
In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of a pair of kid goats that is released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities, while the other...
Scapegoating is the practice of singling out a person or group for unmerited blame and consequent negative treatment. Scapegoating may be conducted by...
Scapegoat Mountain is a summit in the Scapegoat Wilderness of Lewis and Clark County, Montana, in the United States. With an elevation of 9,202 feet (2...
In computer science, a scapegoat tree is a self-balancing binary search tree, invented by Arne Andersson in 1989 and again by Igal Galperin and Ronald...
Arabic: عزازيل, romanized: ʿAzāzīl) represents a desolate place where a scapegoat bearing the sins of the Jews was sent during Yom Kippur. During the late...
Scapegoat Wax is an American hip hop and breakbeat band from Chico, California that was started by Marty James and Jonny Z (AKA J.DeVille). The band was...
he had fired at an escaping Boer to keep him away, although later in "Scapegoats of the Empire," he admitted that he had shot an escaping Boer prisoner...
- 0:52 "Dirty Fingernails" - 3:20 "Sunspots in the House of the Late Scapegoat" - 2:42 "The Fruit That Ate Itself" - 3:17 "Way Down" - 0:43 "Summer"...
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that she was convicted and condemned because the French Army needed a scapegoat, and that the files used to secure her conviction contained falsifications...
Scapegoat Hill is a small village 5 miles (8 km) west of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England. It is near to the villages of Slaithwaite and Golcar....
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of the Scapegoat. In his analysis, the opposition of the entire city to the one man possessed by demons is the typical template for a scapegoat. Girard...
Ancient Greek religion was the ritualistic sacrifice or exile of a human scapegoat or victim. A slave, a cripple, or a criminal was chosen and expelled from...
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity is a 2007 book by the gender theorist, biologist, and writer Julia Serano...
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