In Judaism, the (), also spelled or , is any of a variety of sacrificial offerings described and commanded in the Torah. The plural form is , , or . The term primarily refers to sacrificial offerings given from humans to God for the purpose of doing homage, winning favor, or securing pardon. The object sacrificed was usually an animal that was ritually slaughtered and then transferred from the human to the divine realm by being burned on an altar. After the destruction of the Second Temple, sacrifices were prohibited because there was no longer a Temple, the only place allowed by halakha for sacrifices. Offering of sacrifices was briefly reinstated during the Jewish–Roman wars of the second century AD and was continued in certain communities thereafter. When sacrifices were offered in ancient times, they were offered as a fulfillment of Biblical commandments. Since there is no longer a Temple, modern religious Jews instead pray or give to atone for their sins as the would have accomplished. According to Orthodox Judaism, the coming of the messiah will not remove the requirement to keep the 613 commandments, and when the Temple is rebuilt, sacrifices will be offered again. Etymology and The Semitic root () means and is found in a number of related languages in addition to Hebrew, e.g. in the Akkadian language noun , meaning . In Hebrew it is found in a number of words, such as , , , , and the verb form , . The feminine noun (plural , ) first occurs in the Bible in Leviticus 1:2 and occurs 80 times in the Masoretic Text; 40 times in Leviticus, 38 in Numbers and twice in Ezekiel. The related form appears only in the Book of Nehemiah 10:35 and Nehemiah 13:31, meaning . The etymology of the 'offer' sense is traditionally understood as deriving from the verbal sense of 'bringing near', viz. bringing the offering near to the deity, but some theological explanations see it rather as bringing "man back to God". The Septuagint generally translates the term in Koine Greek as , , , , or , . By the Second Temple period, Hellenistic Jewish texts use korban specifically to mean a vow. The New Testament preserves korban once as a transliterated loan-word for a vow, once also a related noun, (), otherwise using , or and other terms drawn from the Septuagint. Josephus also