Abstract
Traditionally, a scapegoat was a goat that was led away in the wilderness, for the Day of Atonement in Judaism, Yom Kippur. That rite was described in the Bible. Christian theology is a symbolic prefiguration of the sacrifice of Jesus who offered his own life to take the sin of the world on his head, dying on a cross. Today, a scapegoat is a person or a group of people, indicated by a group to endorse a social behaviour that the group wants to get rid of. Thus, the scapegoat is excluded from the group (figurative or literal sense), and may be punished or condemned (jail or death penalties). If you analyse clearly the process of making someone a scapegoat, you can notice the following steps:
-A leader or a majority group defines the good and the evil, what may be socially done and what may not. Population believe in those values.
-When population considers that there is a problem in social order, a process will look for a responsible. The scapegoat will be a person or a group that may behave against "good values".
-The scapegoat will be excluded, or "sacrificed" publicly, for the population to see the evil leaving the social scene.
