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Are Mediterraneans prone to child sacrifice?
Tanakh (Hebrew Bible)
References in the Tanakh point to an awareness of human sacrifice in the history of ancient Near Eastern practice. The king of Moab gives his firstborn son and heir as a whole burnt offering (olah, as used of the Temple sacrifice). In the book of the prophet Micah, the question is asked, 'Shall I give my firstborn for my sin, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?',[8] and responded to in the phrase, 'He has shown all you people what is good. And what does Yahweh require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.'[9] The Tanakh also implies that the Ammonites offered child sacrifices to Moloch.[citation needed]
Ban in Leviticus
In Leviticus 18:21, 20:3 and Deuteronomy 12:30-31, 18:10, the Torah contains a number of imprecations against and laws forbidding child sacrifice and human sacrifice in general. The Tanakh denounces human sacrifice as barbaric customs of Baal worshippers (e.g. Psalms 106:37). James Kugel argues that the Torah's specifically forbidding child sacrifice indicates that it happened in Israel as well.[10] Mark S. Smith argues that the mention of "Topeth" in Isaiah 30:27–33 indicates an acceptance of child sacrifice in the early Jerusalem practices, to which the law in Leviticus 20:2–5 forbidding child sacrifice is a response.[11] Some scholars have stated that at least some Israelites and Judahites believed child sacrifice was a legitimate religious practice.[12]
Binding of Isaac
Main article: Binding of Isaac
Genesis relates the binding of Isaac, in which God tests Abraham by asking him to present his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah. No reason is given within the text. Abraham agrees to this command without arguing. The story ends with an angel stopping Abraham at the last minute and making Isaac's sacrifice unnecessary by providing a ram, caught in some nearby bushes, to be sacrificed instead. Francesca Stavrakopoulou has speculated that it is possible that the story "contains traces of a tradition in which Abraham does sacrifice Isaac". Rabbi A.I. Kook, first Chief Rabbi of Israel, stressed that the climax of the story, commanding Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac, is the whole point: to put an end to the ritual of child sacrifice, which contradicts the morality of a perfect and giving (not taking) monotheistic God.[13] According to Irving Greenberg the story of the binding of Isaac, symbolizes the prohibition to worship God by human sacrifices, at a time when human sacrifices were the norm worldwide.[14]
Gehenna and Tophet
Main article: Tophet
The most extensive accounts of child sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible refer to those carried out in Gehenna by two kings of Judah, Ahaz and Manasseh.[15]
Judges
Main article: Book of Judges
In the Book of Judges, the figure of Jephthah makes a vow to God, saying, "If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering" (as worded in the New International Version). Jephthah succeeds in winning a victory, but when he returns to his home in Mizpah he sees his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels, outside. After allowing her two months preparation, Judges 11:39 states that Jephthah kept his vow. According to the commentators of the rabbinic Jewish tradition, Jepthah's daughter was not sacrificed, but was forbidden to marry and remained a spinster her entire life, fulfilling the vow that she would be devoted to the Lord.[16] The 1st-century CE Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, however, understood this to mean that Jephthah burned his daughter on Yahweh's altar,[17] whilst pseudo-Philo, late first century CE, wrote that Jephthah offered his daughter as a burnt offering because he could find no sage in Israel who would cancel his vow. In other words, this story of human sacrifice is not an order or requirement by God, but the punishment for those who vowed to sacrifice humans.[18][19]
Phoenicia and Carthage
See also: Religion in Carthage
Neighbors criticized Carthage for their child sacrifice practices. Plutarch (ca. 46–120 AD), Tertullian, Orosius, and Diodorus Siculus mention this practice; however, Livy and Polybius do not. The ancestors of Carthage, Canaanites, were also mentioned performing child sacrifices in the Hebrew Bible and by some Israelites, at a place called the Tophet ("roasting place").[20]
Some of these sources suggest that babies were roasted to death on a heated bronze statue. According to Diodorus Siculus, "There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire."(Bib. Hist. 20.14.6)
Sites within Carthage and other Phoenician centers revealed the remains of young children in large numbers; some historians[citation needed] interpret this as evidence for frequent and prominent child sacrifice to the god Baal-hamon.
The accuracy of such stories is disputed by some modern historians and archaeologists.[21] At Carthage a large cemetery exists that combines the bodies of both very young children and small animals, and those who assert child sacrifice have argued that if the animals were sacrificed, then so too were the children.[22] However, recent archaeology has produced a detailed breakdown of the ages of the buried children and, based on this and especially on the presence of prenatal individuals – that is, still births – it is also argued that this site is consistent with burials of children who had died of natural causes in a society that had a high infant mortality rate, as Carthage is assumed to have had. That is, the data support the view that Tophets were cemeteries for those who died shortly before or after birth, regardless of the cause of death.[22]
Greek, Roman and Israelite writers refer to Phoenician child sacrifice. However, some historians have disputed this interpretation, suggesting instead that these were resting places for children miscarried or who died in infancy.[citation needed] Skeptics suggest that the bodies of children found in Carthaginian and Phoenician cemeteries were merely the cremated remains of children that died naturally.[23] Sergio Ribichini has argued that the Tophet was "a child necropolis designed to receive the remains of infants who had died prematurely of sickness or other natural causes, and who for this reason were "offered" to specific deities and buried in a place different from the one reserved for the ordinary dead".[24] The few Carthaginian texts which have survived make absolutely no mention of child sacrifice, though most of them pertain to matters entirely unrelated to religion, such as the practice of agriculture.[citation needed]
According to Stager and Wolff, in 1984, there was a consensus among scholars that Carthaginian children were sacrificed by their parents, who would make a vow to kill the next child if the gods would grant them a favor: for instance that their shipment of goods were to arrive safely in a foreign port.[25] They placed their children alive in the arms of a bronze statue of:
“ the lady Tanit ... . The hands of the statue extended over a brazier into which the child fell once the flames had caused the limbs to contract and its mouth to open ... . The child was alive and conscious when burned ... Philo specified that the sacrificed child was best-loved.[26] ”
Later commentators have compared the accounts of child sacrifice in the Old Testament with similar ones from Greek and Latin sources speaking of the offering of children by fire as sacrifices in the Punic city of Carthage, which was a Phoenician colony. Cleitarchus in his "Scholia" of Plato's Republic mentions the practice:
“ There stands in their midst a bronze statue of Kronos, its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulf the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing until the contracted body slips quietly into the brazier. Thus it is that the ‘grin’ is known as ‘sardonic laughter,’ since they die laughing.[27] ”
This reference also seems to clarify that the statue itself was not made to move by the flames, but rather the burnt and shriveled body of the victim was contorted by them.
Diodorus Siculus too references this practice:
“ Himilcar, on seeing how the throng was beset with superstitious fear, first of all put a stop to the destruction of the monuments, and then he supplicated the gods after the custom of his people by sacrificing a young boy to Cronus and a multitude of cattle to Poseidon by drowning them in the sea [...] in former times they had been accustomed to sacrifice to this god the noblest of their sons, but more recently, secretly buying and nurturing children, they had sent these to the sacrifice.[28] ”
Plutarch in De superstitione also mentions the practice in Carthage:
“ they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds.[28] ”
These all mention the burning of children as offerings to Cronus or Saturn, that is to Ba'al Hammon, the chief god of Carthage (see Interpretatio Graeca and Interpretatio Romana for clarification).
Claims concerning Moloch and child sacrifice may have been made for negative-propaganda effect.[citation needed] The Romans and Israelites describe child sacrifice as a practice of their "evil" enemies. Some scholars think that, after the Romans finally defeated Carthage and totally destroyed the city, they engaged in postwar propaganda to make their arch-enemies seem cruel and less civilized.[29] The question of whether Phoenician child sacrifice was real or a myth continues to be discussed in academic circles, including the work of M'hamed Hassine Fantar.[30] [31]
The Minoan civilization, located in ancient Crete, is widely accepted as the first civilization in Europe. An expedition to Knossos by the British School of Athens, led by Peter Warren, excavated a mass grave of sacrifices, particularly children, and unearthed evidence of cannibalism.[32][33]
clear evidence that their flesh was carefully cut away, much in the manner of sacrificed animals. In fact the bones of slaughtered sheep were found with those of the children... Moreover, as far as the bones are concerned, the children appear to have been in good health. Startling as it may seem, the available evidence so far points to an argument that the children were slaughtered and their flesh cooked and possibly eaten in a sacrifice ritual made in the service of a nature deity to assure an annual renewal of fertility.[34][35]
Additionally, Rodney Castleden uncovered a sanctuary near Knossos where the remains of a 17-year-old were found sacrificed.
His ankles had evidently been tied and his legs folded up to make him fit on the table... He had been ritually murdered with the long bronze dagger engraved with a boar's head that lay beside him.[36]
At Woodhenge, a young child was found buried with its skull split by a weapon. This has been interpreted by the excavators as a child sacrifice,[37] as have other human remains.
The Greek minotaur is actually the Greek version of the Moloch:
The minotaur was a metaphor for the child-sacrificing rituals done by the Mediterraneans.The Minotaur has a whole lot of similarities to Moloch, who was an ancient god from the Near East, who was worshiped in particular by the Phoenicians. Like the Minotaur, Moloch was depicted as having the head of a bull and the body of a man. Also, like the Minotaur, Moloch thought it was fun to eat children. It's said his worshipers sacrificed virgin girls and young boys to the bloodthirsty god. Sometimes this was done by constructing a bronze statue filled with fire, which was made in such a way that it raised its arms to feed the human sacrifices into its flaming mouth.
Moloch is talked about in Judeo-Christian mythology, where he is depicted as an evil demon and a rival for God's power. Worshiping Moloch was a big no-no for the ancient Hebrews. The book of Leviticus actually specifically orders that anybody caught making sacrifices to the bull-god must be put to death. Sometimes, Moloch is also equated with another rival god named Ba'al who was hugely popular in the Near East in biblical time. Like Moloch and the Minotaur, Ba'al was associated with bulls and had a taste for human flesh. Evidently, some of the ancient Hebrews did a little Moloch/Ba'al-worshiping every now and then. Check out this quote from the book of Jeremiah:
And they built the high places of the Ba'al, which are in the valley of Ben-hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire Mo'lech - Jeremiah 32.35
All these similarities between the Minotaur and these Near Eastern gods have lead some to believe that at some point the Cretans might have worshiped some version of Moloch or Ba'al. Could it be that the powerful Minoan civilization of Crete once demanded that ancient Athenians send them human sacrifices?
It took Nordic Theseus to slay him and end this barbaric practice. Later, Romans destroyed the child-sacrificing Phoenicians.
Isn't it ironic that it was NORDICS and JEWS that together stopped this practice that seemed to be widespread in the Mediterranean?
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Originally Posted by Denisa
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