Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

necessities. Someone must bear the cost of the burnt offerings that so please the
     Lord.
    With the new currency in hand, you are now free to peruse the pens lining the periphery
     walls to purchase your sacrifice: a pigeon, a sheep—it depends on the depth of your
     purse, or the depth of your sins. If the latter transcends the former, do not despair.
     The money changers are happy to offer the credit you need to enhance your sacrifice.
     There is a strict legal code regulating the animals that can be purchased for the
     blessed occasion. They must be free of blemish. Domesticated, not wild. They cannot
     be beasts of burden. Whether ox or bull or ram or sheep, they must have been reared
     for this purpose alone. They are not cheap. Why should they be? The sacrifice is the
     Temple’s primary purpose. It is the very reason for the Temple’s being. The songs,
     the prayers, the readings—every ritual that takes place here arose in service of thissingular and most vital ritual. The blood libation not only wipes away your sins,
     it cleanses the earth. It feeds the earth, renewing and sustaining it, protecting
     us all from drought or famine or worse. The cycle of life and death that the Lord
     in his omnificence has decreed is wholly dependent upon your sacrifice. This is not
     the time for thrift.
    So purchase your offering, and make it a good one. Pass it on to any of the white-robed
     priests roaming the Temple plaza. They are the descendants of Aaron, the brother of
     Moses, responsible for maintaining the Temple’s daily rites: the burning of incense,
     the lighting of lamps, the sounding of trumpets, and, of course, the sacrificial offerings.
     The priesthood is a hereditary position, but there is no shortage of them, certainly
     not during festival season, when they arrive in droves from distant lands to assist
     in the festivities. They cram the Temple in twenty-four-hour shifts to ensure that
     the fires of sacrifice are kept aflame day and night.
    The Temple is constructed as a series of tiered courtyards, each smaller, more elevated,
     and more restrictive than the last. The outermost courtyard, the Court of Gentiles,
     where you purchased your sacrifice, is a broad piazza open to everyone, regardless
     of race or religion. If you are a Jew—one free of any physical affliction (no lepers,
     no paralytics) and properly purified by a ritual bath—you may follow the priest with
     your offering through a stone-lattice fence and proceed into the next courtyard, the
     Court of Women (a plaque on the fence warns all others to proceed no farther than
     the outer court on pain of death). Here is where the wood and oil for the sacrifices
     are stored. It is also the farthest into the Temple that any Jewish woman may proceed;
     Jewish men may continue up a small semicircular flight of stairs through the Nicanor
     Gate and into the Court of Israelites.
    This is as close as you will ever be to the presence of God. The stink of carnage
     is impossible to ignore. It clings to the skin, the hair, becoming a noisome burden
     you will not soon shake off. The priests burn incense to ward off the fetor and disease,
     but the mixtureof myrrh and cinnamon, saffron and frankincense cannot mask the insufferable stench
     of slaughter. Still, it is important to stay where you are and witness your sacrifice
     take place in the next courtyard, the Court of Priests. Entry into this court is permitted
     solely to the priests and Temple officials, for this is where the Temple’s altar stands:
     a four-horned pedestal made of bronze and wood—five cubits long, five cubits wide—belching
     thick black clouds of smoke into the air.
    The priest takes your sacrifice to a corner and cleanses himself in a nearby basin.
     Then, with a simple prayer, he slits the animal’s throat. An assistant collects the
     blood in a bowl to sprinkle on the four horned corners of the altar, while the priest
     carefully disembowels and dismembers the carcass. The animal’s hide is his to keep;
     it will fetch a handsome price in the marketplace. The entrails and the fatty tissue
     are torn out of the corpse, carried up a ramp to the altar, and placed directly atop
     the eternal fire. The meat of the beast is carved away carefully and put to the side
     for the priests to feast upon after the ceremony.
    The entire liturgy is performed in front of the Temple’s innermost court, the Holy
     of Holies—a gold-plated, columnar sanctuary at the very heart