The rituals ordained in scripture fall into several broad classes practiced in the world's religions. Some texts mandate the worship and remembrance of the transcendent God through symbols and images. Other rituals center on sacred space and time. Pilgrimage, the journey to the sacred place, is a religious duty in many religious tradi- tions, especially in Islam where the hajj, the pilgimage to Mecca, was ordained by Abraham as a central rite.
Many rituals are concerned with purity and purification.
The Vedas teach the merit of bathing in the Ganges, and the Bible prescribes the Christian rite of baptism. Dietary laws, prohibiting one from eating certain unclean foods or requiring foods to be prepared in a prescribed manner, such as the Jewish laws of kashrut and Hindu teachings on vegetarianism, are helpful for purifying body and spirit. The concluding passages deal with worship through offering animal sacrifices. Since only the rituals of living religions are relevant for modern man, we must distinguish these from the ritual practice of the ancients as preserved in scripture. Offerings of animals are still made in contemporary Chinese religion, in Islam as one rite of the hajj, in some primal religions, and rarely in Hinduism.