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(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)
A celebrated passage in the book of Leviticus prescribes the ritual of public atonement for the collective sins of the Israelites, to be performed by Aaron, the high priest, as part of the Yom Kippur purgation. It involves two goats, one to be sacrificed as a sin offering and the other to be led out into the wilderness. The procedure, according to Lev 16:21, is as follows:
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 (...). (NRSV)
The translation "someone designated for the task" reflects the later talmudic tradition that a priest was assigned the task of leading the goat out and ensuring that it did not return (m. Yoma 6:3). Other modern translations follow the LXX, which has ... ("someone at hand, ready, prepared") for ... (cf. Vg.: per hominem paratum). Jacob Milgrom, for example, renders the phrase as a "man in waiting," and the Eberhard Bible as "(durch einen) bereitstehenden Mann."1
The descriptive phrase in all these translations is superfluous, telling us nothing of consequence about the man who is to lead the scapegoat. In this respect, the KJVs "a fit man" is no wit inferior. Like all the versions ancient and modern, it reflects the translator's difficulties with a hapax legomenon of uncertain meaning: .... The apparent root is ... ("time, appointed time"), but translators have not succeeded in deriving a term from it that is appropriate to the context (cf. Tg. Onq.: ...).
We suggest that the description of the man involved was of great significance to the ritual and propose an entirely new interpretation based on parallel Hittite and Greek traditions2 and on a different etymology of the word ....
A number of Hittite rituals have been compared with the biblical scapegoat, but one is of particular interest because it involves both an animal and a human actor to accompany the animal. The Ritual of Ashella prescribes the steps to be taken to rid the army camp...