ALTAR, an erection made for the offering of sacrifices for memorial pur poses, or for some other object. An altar designed for sacrifice is mentioned in Scripture as early as the time of Noah (Genesis viii: 20).
At Sinai directions were given that altars should be of earth or of stone unhewn, and that the ascent to them should not be by steps (Exod. xx: 24 26). When the tabernacle worship was established, there was an altar of wood covered with brass, designed for sacri fice, and one overlaid with gold, on which incense was burned (Exod. xxvii: 1-8; xxxi: 1-10). Both had projections at the four corners of the upper surface. To those of the brazen altar victims were bound, and a fugitive from death seizing hold of one of these could not legally be dragged away to meet his doom.
In the early Christian centuries altars were generally of wood. During the 6th century stone was employed in the con struction, and this continued to the time of the Reformation.
In the Church of Rome an altar is essential, it being believed that in the mass an actual though bloodless sacri fice is offered for sin. Formerly, also, there was an upper altar (superaltare), which was a small portable one for the consecration of the communion elements.
The stone altars, which were in the churches of the Church of England when the Reformation began, were removed about 1550, and tables substituted for them.
Many of the old ethnic nations built altars for idolatrous worship on the tops of hills or in groves. The Greeks and Romans built high altars to the heavenly gods, and some of lower elevation to the demigods and heroes, while they wor shipped the infernal gods in trenches scooped out of the ground.