The sacrificial lamb: from the Jewish Passover to the Agnus Dei
The lamb in biblical tradition: blood on the doorposts in Exodus, Ecce agnus Dei, the Lamb of Revelation, the Ghent Altarpiece and Saint Agnes.
Few animals have a religious meaning as layered as the lamb. In the pastoral societies of the Mediterranean it was among a family's most precious possessions and the most common victim of sacrifice; in the Bible it becomes a sign of liberation and innocence; in Christianity it is the very image of Christ. Following this story shows how an ancient symbol can be taken up and transformed without losing its roots.
The Passover of Exodus
The twelfth chapter of Exodus describes the institution of the Jewish Passover, Pesach. Every family of Israel was to choose a male lamb a year old, without blemish, sacrifice it at sunset and mark the doorposts and lintel of the house with its blood. On the night when Egypt was struck, according to the biblical account, the marked houses were spared, and the people were able to set out towards freedom.
As long as the Temple of Jerusalem stood, Passover lambs were slaughtered there in great numbers; after its destruction in AD 70 the sacrifice ceased, and at the Passover seder a roasted bone placed on the ritual plate recalls it. The prophet Isaiah too, in the so-called fourth Servant Song, compares the suffering righteous one to a lamb led to the slaughter that does not open its mouth.
«Ecce agnus Dei»
The Gospel of John places on the lips of John the Baptist, who sees Jesus approaching, the words that the Vulgate renders «Ecce agnus Dei, qui tollit peccatum mundi», behold the Lamb of God. The same Gospel places the death of Jesus on the day when the Passover lambs were slaughtered in the Temple, and Paul writes to the Corinthians that Christ is our Passover. The ancient sacrificial image was thus reread in the light of the cross.
The Book of Revelation develops the symbol in visionary form: before the heavenly throne appears a Lamb as though slain, with seven horns and seven eyes, the only one worthy to open the sealed book. Many works derive from this vision, among them the polyptych of the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by the van Eyck brothers, completed in 1432 and kept in the cathedral of Saint Bavo in Ghent.
The lamb in liturgy and art
According to the Liber Pontificalis it was Pope Sergius I, at the end of the seventh century, who introduced into the Mass the chant of the Agnus Dei during the breaking of the bread. In early Christian art the lamb appears both as victim and as flock: Christ is depicted as the Good Shepherd with a sheep on his shoulders, a motif that takes up the ancient Greek type of the kriophoros, the ram-bearer.
In Rome a tradition still alive links the lamb to Saint Agnes, whose name was associated with the Latin agnus. Every year, on 21 January, in the basilica of Sant'Agnese fuori le mura two lambs are blessed, whose wool will later be used to weave the pallia, the bands of white wool that the pope confers on metropolitan archbishops. In medieval heraldry the lamb with the cross-bearing banner became the emblem of many cities and confraternities.
The shepherds' lamb, the lamb of the Jewish Passover and the Lamb of Revelation are different figures, but they are joined by a common thread: the idea of an innocence that offers itself and of a liberation that follows from it. This is why the animal, humble and defenceless, could represent in the biblical traditions some of the highest ideas of theology.