Towards Freedom

: Reconceiving the Wilderness, Re-releasing the Scapegoat

Abstract

Leviticus 16 in the Hebrew Bible contains a ritual which heals the disruption that the Israelites' sins have caused to their relationship with their deity, YHWH. At the culmination of the proceedings, the sins are symbolically placed upon a domesticated goat (Capra hircus) which is led away to the wilderness. Its departure renders the community sin-free, reconciles the Israelites with YHWH, and inaugurates a new beginning in human-divine relations. When the goat arrives in the wilderness, it is released, alive and unharmed. It became known as the scapegoat because it escapes the ritual with its life intact. Despite the goat's benign treatment, it is commonly understood as a substitutive victim who is blamed and punished for the Israelites' sins and dies in the wilderness, routinely conceptualised as a chaotic place of danger and desolation. In this thesis I offer a reinterpretation of the animal and its destination via a threefold approach. First, by considering the scapegoat within the context of the cultural traditions of the Israelites and their neighbours in which goats were positively valued and healing had ancient caprine connections, I allow it to shake off its victim status, rehabilitate its reputation, retrieve its original therapeutic role, and re-emerge as an agent of human healing. Secondly, by offering a contextualised and situational assessment of wilderness as it functions in Leviticus 16, I reconceptualise the scapegoat's destination as a place that enables beneficent outcomes for the Israelites and serves not as a motif for chaos but as a means of restoring divine order. Thirdly, by treating the scapegoat as an enlivened, animate being, both during the ritual and afterwards, I reassess it as the Israelites' essential ritual partner and a creature capable of adapting to and surviving in its post-ritual environment. Overall, I offer a means of retrieving the healing scapegoat of Leviticus 16 and re-releasing it into a reconceived wilderness in which a new and viable life beckons for the animal.

Date of Award	16 Apr 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Winchester
Supervisor	Tina Welch (Supervisor) & Katy Soar (Supervisor)