Who knows where the word "scapegoating" came from?

Question

In psychology, scapegoating is where a person (or a group of people) are blamed for something that they most likely have nothing to do with. In many cases, the scapegoatER created his/her own problems, and instead of taking responsibility for their own shortcomings, they blame it all on the scapegoat. Some people blame their parents, others blame some other ethnic or racial group, others blame the government, etc.

Q: Where did this word originate? I think I know where it came from, and I'll add the answer as a detail in a few days.

Answer 1

"Scapegoating" is a natural extension of the noun "scapegoat." The first use of the verb "scapegoating" was in 1943, according to the Oxford English Dictionary: "Scapegoating is a phenomenon wherein some of the aggressive energies of a person or group are focused upon another individual, group, or object."

If you're looking for the origin of the noun form "scapegoat," here's the answer I've given elsewhere in yahoo answers:
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Scapegoat comes from a Bible mistranslation of Leviticus 16.
The Hebrew/Aramiac manuscripts say hat a goat should be sent alive into the wilderness for the demon Azazel. But when St. Jerome produced his Latin translation called the Vulgate (382 to 405), he misread Azazel as ez zel "goat that departs," and rendered it in Latin as ''caper emissarius.'

Later European translators worked from the Vulgate and carried the error forward. Tyndale (1530) rendered "caper emissarius" into English by coining "scapegoat", from scape (antique form of escape) + goat. The same method produced German 'der ledige Bock' (Martin Luther), Greek 'tragos aperkhomenos', and French 'bouc émissaire'.

Answer 2

Under the laws of Moses, the ancient ritual once observed on the Hebrew Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) actually involved two goats. One, known as "the Lord's goat," was sacrificed during the rites. The other goat, over whose head the high priest had confessed the sins of his people, was then taken into the wilderness and allowed to escape, symbolically taking all the sins with him and giving everyone a fresh start, sin-wise. This lucky goat was known as the "escape goat," or "scapegoat."

There's a bit more to this story of the origin of "scapegoat," however. The Hebrew word for the goat set free in the original Biblical text was "Azazel." Translators of the Bible into English interpreted "Azazel" as a variant on the Hebrew phrase for "goat that departs," and thus came up with "escape goat." But it's possible that they were mistaken. "Azazel" was, some authorities believe, the name of a powerful demon who was believed to rule the wilderness. The "escape goat," goes this theory, was designated "Azazel's goat" in the ritual, and the priest was actually loading all the sins onto the demon's goat and then booting it out the door.

In any case, "scapegoat" entered the English language with Tyndale's translation of the Bible in 1530, and by the early 19th century was being used in a secular sense to describe anyone who is blamed for the sins or faults of another. The irony here is that in the original ceremony the "scapegoat" was set free without punishment, while modern "scapegoats" endure all the punishment deserved by others.

Answer 3

The scapegoat was a goat that was driven off into the wilderness as part of the ceremonies of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in Judaism during the times of the Temple in Jerusalem. The rite is described in Leviticus 16.

The word is more widely used as a metaphor, referring to someone who is blamed for misfortunes, generally as a way of distracting attention from the real causes. Also referred to as the fall guy.

Answer 4

I think scapegoat came from the Hebrew practice of sacrifice.
The preist would take two goats. One he would lean on symbolically transferrring the sins of the people to it, then he sent it off into the wilderness to die.(Thus the name scapegoat.) The other would be sacrificed.

Answer 5

It comes from the Bible. There are 2 animals, one is slain and one is released. The goat that is allowed to escape is what was known then as the scapegoat, but since then, the word has been used to refer to the animal that was killed.

Answer 6

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