Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity

By Nancy Jay

Book Overview

Why does sacrifice, more than any other major religious institution, depend on gender dichotomy? Why do so many societies oppose sacrifice to childbirth, and why are childbearing women so commonly excluded from sacrificial practices? In this feminist study of relations between sacrifice, gender, and social organization, Nancy Jay reveals sacrifice as a remedy for having been born of woman, and hence uniquely suited to establishing certain and enduring paternity. Drawing on examples of ancient and modern societies, Jay synthesizes sociology of religion, ethnography, biblical scholarship, church history, and classics to argue that sacrifice legitimates and maintains patriarchal structures that transcend men's dependence on women's reproductive powers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226395731
• ISBN13: 9780226395739
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

This book explains relation between sacrifice and patriarch

The author is very brilliant. She explains how sacrifice have functioned to maintain patrilineal system. I think this book could contribute to reveal contradiction of monolineal genealogy. It is not nature but culture.