Scapegoat

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. Practices with some similarities to the scapegoat ritual also appear in Ancient Greece and Ebla. Some scholars have argued that the scapegoat ritual can be traced back to Ebla around 2400 BC, from where it spread throughout the ancient Near East. Azazel The word "scapegoat" is an English translation of the Hebrew (עזאזל), which occurs in Leviticus 16:8: ונתן אהרן על שני השעירם גרלות גורל אחד ליהוה וגורל אחד לעזאזל And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for Azazel. The Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew Lexicon gives (לעזאזל) as a reduplicative intensive of the stem , "remove", hence , "for entire removal". This reading is supported by the Greek Old Testament translation as "the sender away (of sins)". The lexicographer Gesenius takes to mean "averter", which he theorized was the name of a deity, to be appeased with the sacrifice of the goat. Alternatively, broadly contemporary with the Septuagint, the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch may preserve Azazel as the name of a fallen angel. Early English Christian Bible versions follow the translation of the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate, which interpret as "the goat that departs" (Greek , "goat sent out", Latin caper emissarius, "emissary goat"). William Tyndale rendered the Latin as "(e)scape goat" in his 1530 Bible.