Perhaps you're right, and the ancients saw blood more as a representation of death(I realized after I posted that that I was actually just speculating). I was thinking more of the Mayans and the Aztecs than the Jews actually, both of which were big into human sacrifice. The blood may be more of a representation of the sacrifice(the blood shows death has occurred), rather than the actual sacrifice itself.
I haven't been able to find corroboration on the net yet, but when I was younger, we had a presentation at school about the Mayans in which the different ways of sacrifice were discussed. A couple of them did not draw blood, including weighing yourself down with rocks and jumping into a deep pool of water. I took a cursory look to try and find what the purpose of the different methods were and how the spilling of the blood played a part, but found nothing.
Most of that is probably irrelevant, however, as I'm sure the OP was looking for the Abrahamic perspective on blood sacrifice and why the ritual was necessary. (I can only speculate, but I'm guessing that from the viewpoint of Christians such as fr0d0, Jesus' crucifixion was necessary as a representation for god's sacrifice that was easy for humans to digest. The impact would not have been as great if god had just willed the situation away.)
I haven't been able to find corroboration on the net yet, but when I was younger, we had a presentation at school about the Mayans in which the different ways of sacrifice were discussed. A couple of them did not draw blood, including weighing yourself down with rocks and jumping into a deep pool of water. I took a cursory look to try and find what the purpose of the different methods were and how the spilling of the blood played a part, but found nothing.
Most of that is probably irrelevant, however, as I'm sure the OP was looking for the Abrahamic perspective on blood sacrifice and why the ritual was necessary. (I can only speculate, but I'm guessing that from the viewpoint of Christians such as fr0d0, Jesus' crucifixion was necessary as a representation for god's sacrifice that was easy for humans to digest. The impact would not have been as great if god had just willed the situation away.)
