This term for one who is punished for the misdeeds of others is the result of a mistranslation. The term was coined in 1530 by William Tyndale, who misread the Hebrew word azazel, a wild demon from the desert in the Old Testament to whom the scapegoat was driven forth. It is also mentioned as the place to which the scapegoat was sent on the Day of Atonement. Two goats were chosen and after one was sacrificed, the other was let loose in the wilderness, symbolically carrying away the nation’s sins. This ritual is described in the Avodah. Aaron, as atonement, ’shall cast lots’ on two goats ‘one for the Lord, and the other for the scapegoat’.
Tyndale was not the only one to make this error, a Greek translation of the Old Testament, uses tragos apopompaios, or the goat that is sent out. The Vulgate Bible refers to the second goat as a caper emissarius, or the emissary goat. Coverdale’s 1535 Bible refers to it as a free goat. But it was Tyndale who coined the term scapegoat, or scapegoote as he spelled it.It was not until 1824 that the word acquired its current, wider sense. All prior usages have been in terms of the Leviticus passage. The verb form appeared in 1943.
Same day, different year..
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