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From: bch@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Re: Playing games with God, II
Message-ID: <5660@unc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Aug-83 23:33:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.5660
Posted: Wed Aug  3 23:33:12 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Aug-83 07:42:26 EDT
References: unc.5659
Lines: 47

The story of Jephthah's daughter, in the New English Bible translation,
goes as follows:

"...Jephthah made this vow to the Lord:  'If thou wilt deliver the Ammonites
into my hands, then the first creature that comes out of the door of my
house to meet me when I return from them in peace shall be the Lord's; I
will offer that as a whole-offering.'  So Jephthah crossed over to attack
the Ammonites, and the Lord delivered them into his hands.  He routed them
with great slaughter all the way from Aroer to Minnith, taking twenty towns,
and as far as Abel-keramim.  Thus Israel crushed Ammon.  But when Jephthah
came to his house in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him with tambour-
ines and dances but his daughter, and she his only child; he had no other,
neither son nor daughter.  When he saw her, he rent his clothes and said,
'Alas, my daughter, you have broken my heart, such trouble you have brought
upon me.  I have made a vow to the Lord and I cannot go back.'  She replied,
'Father, you have made a vow to the Lord; do to me what you have solemnly
vowed, since the Lord has avenged you on the Ammonites, your enemies.  But,
father, grant me this one favour.  For two months let me be, that I may
roam [that I may go down country to] the hills with my companions and mourn
that I must die a virgin.'  'Go', he said, and he let her depart for two
months.  She went with her companions and mourned her virginity on the hills.
At the end of two months she came back to her father, and he fulfilled the
vow he had made; she died a virgin.  It became a tradition that the daugh-
ters of Israel should go year by year and commemorate the fate of Jephthah's
daughter, four days in every year."

The term whole-offering is explained by context in Lev. 1:1-9 as follows:

"If his offering is a whole-offering from the cattle, he shall present a
male without blemish; he shall present it at the entrance to the Tent of the
Presence before the Lord so as to secure acceptance for himself.  He shall
lay his hand on the head of the victim and will be accepted on his behalf
to make expiation for him.  He shall slaughter the bull before the Lord, and
the Aaronite priests shall present the blood and fling it against the altar
all round at the entrance of the Tent of the Presence.  He shall then flay
the victim and cut it up. The sons of Aaron the priest shall kindle a fire
on the altar and arrange wood on the fire.  The Aaronite priests shall
arrange the pieces, including the head and the suet, on the wood on the
altar-fire, the entrails and the shins shall be washed in water, and the
priest shall burn it all on the altar as a whole-offering, a food-offering
of soothing odour to the Lord."

Except for the sex of the victim, it seems fairly clear that Jephthah's
daughter was, in fact, a whole-offering human sacrifice.

					Byron Howes
					UNC - Chapel Hill