3 ms·
I'm aware that it's a biblical idea, but even in the biblical sense, is it explicitly specified that the goat being without sin is relevant to its ability to be
by shawnz 3y ago
I'm aware that it's a biblical idea, but even in the biblical sense, is it explicitly specified that the goat being without sin is relevant to its ability to be a scapegoat, aside from the fact that animals are incapable of sin as far as Christians are concerned?
Regardless, clearly the colloquial definition is what the original poster was referring to anyway, since any Christian must necessarily believe that SBF along with every other human alive today is subject to original sin. So it's a useless term for any practical purpose if you believe that scapegoats must be sinless and are talking in a strictly biblical sense.
- mcpackieh 3y agoThe goat is without sin insofar as the humans are concerned, the sins in question are unambiguously those committed by the people, not the goat. If the goat committed his own goaty sins, that's irrelevant. Those hypothetical goat sins are unknown to the humans and don't factor into the goat's execution. In the figurative or colloquial sense of the expression, a scapegoat is a person being punished for something other people did. They might also be a bad person in other unrelated ways, but what makes them a scapegoat is the part where they're punished for something they didn't do, for something other people did. You cannot be a scapegoat if you actually did the thing you're being punished for. In both cases, the scapegoat is punished for something somebody else did. The biblical meaning and the colloquial meaning align neatly, there is no meaningful distinction here. SBF is to be punished for his own crimes, not for the crimes of other cryptobros, so he is not in any sense a scapegoat. Not in the biblical sense, nor in the colloquial sense.