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From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Human Sacrafice / Why H.L. Mencken thought the ancients were crazy
Message-ID: <445@imsvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 27-Oct-85 11:10:49 EST
Article-I.D.: imsvax.445
Posted: Sun Oct 27 11:10:49 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 08:32:34 EST
Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD
Lines: 282



     The following is from Richard Carnes latest posting:


>In article <7112@ucla-cs.ARPA> reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (Peter Reiher) writes:

>> Only the fact that the net
>>is richer in experts in the physical sciences rather than myth and history
>>has prevented Velikovsky from being raked over those coals, as well.  I would
>>suggest that Mr. Holden keep quiet about this, or a true expert on ancient
>>cultures may get incensed enough to totally destroy this position, as well.

>Some of us who are knowledgeable about ancient cultures have more
>interesting things to do than to respond to Holden's postings, which
>is about as productive as arguing with someone who claims to be
>Jesus......

>There is no reason to respond to his writings about mythology because
>he has not presented one single argument against accepted
>interpretations of mythology, and indeed he appears unaware that
>there are any non-Velikovskian theories of myth.

>Anyone who wishes to learn about mythology might start with something
>by Joseph Campbell.....


     Now,  in  reality,  I  not  only  am  familiar  with all of the yuppie
versions of  mythological interpretation  (Campbell, Eliade  et. al.) which
Carnes believes  in, but  I am also familiar with the reasons for REJECTING
them, which Carnes obviously isn't.  Stick around,  Pete and  Richard;  you
two might actually learn something for a change.

     These yuppie versions of interpretation generally proceed along what I
would call "uniformitarian"  lines.    The  authors  specifically  deny any
possibility  of  catastrophe  myths  being  true  in any literal sense e.g.
Campbell, in "The Masks of God": 

     "It is of course possible that  in each  little city  state itself the
     local flood was interpreted as a cosmic event...."

     These authors  would have  us believe  that Dyaus  Pitar (Jupiter) was
simply the sky itself, even as we see it, and  that, similarly,  other gods
represented common  every-day things  such as  the sun, the wind, the Earth
itself (the Earth Mother, Erda etc.) and, I should point  out particularly,
that none  of the things which these deities represented has ever posed any
colossal or unbelievable threat to this entire planet within the last 10000
years, say.

     The consideration  which makes  these interpretations untenable arises
from the most horrific of ancient practices, human sacrifice.  H.L. Mencken
best stated the utter incredulity with which modern man views these ancient
practices in  a little  essay called  "Graveyard of  the Gods"  which, if I
remember correctly, may be found in "Prejudices".  Speaking particularly of
the Ammonite god Moloch and of  one or  two of  the Aztec  gods, he asserts
that at  the heights  of their  powers, tens of thousands of innocents were
sacrificed to these deities YEARLY and, yet, where are they now?  Hell of a
question, isn't  it?   In particular,  the sacrifice of CHILDREN to made-up
gods of the sort Campbell and Eliade describe would be so great a violation
of the  laws of  nature that  I, for  one, even if I was totally unaware of
Immanuel Velikovsky and of  any other  system of  interpreting myths, would
reject the proposition out of hand.

     Protection of  one's children  is the  most absolute law of nature, in
fact, the only principle  which naturally  and normally  comes before self-
preservation.   Almost all  higher animals  will literally  throw their own
lives away protecting their  offspring.   As a  general rule,  there simply
could be no threat to peoples own lives sufficiently great to cause them to
sacrifice their own children.  For children to  be sacrificed  willingly by
their  own  parents  to  ANYTHING,  that  anything  must be something which
threatens the entire planet, something such  as Velikovsky  claimed Saturn,
Jupiter,  and  Venus  once  were.    Such a practice would only be possible
amongst people who lived in  perpetual  fear  of  the  entire  planet being
annihilated by  forces utterly  beyond their control.  Children would never
be sacrificed by their own parents to the  wind (from  which shelters could
be built),  to a  volcano which could be moved away from, to the sky (which
hardly ever KILLS anybody), or to  any of  the kinds  of gods  described by
Eliade or  Campbell.   A priest calling for such sacrifices to made-up gods
would himself be killed and sooner than he'd expect.

     What follows  are  excerpts  from  an  article  titled  "THE  RITES OF
MOLOCH", posted  in the  summer 84  issue of  the Kronos Journal, by Dwardu
Cardona, one of the senior editors of Kronos.  

...................................................................
...................................................................
                            THE RITES OF MOLOCH
                             by Dwardu Cardona

                                     I

     Prior to their entry  into Canaan,  the Israelites  were admonished by
Moses not  to fall  prey to  the rites  of the Ammonite god known as Moloch
(also rendered Molech, Milc(h)om,  and/or Malcham).   These  rites involved
the offering of children as burnt sacrifices to the god.  Moses warned:

     "...thou  shalt  not  let  any  of  thy  seed pass through the fire to
     Molech..."(1)

     That Molech was a powerful god to be reckoned with  is evidenced  by a
lengthy passage in the book of Leviticus which has God himself speaking the
following words to Moses:

       "Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of
     the children  of Israel,  or of  the strangers that sojourn in Israel,
     that giveth any of his seed  unto Molech;  he shall  surely be  put to
     death:  the people of the land shall stone him with stones.
       "And I  will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from
     among his people; because he hath  given of  his seed  unto Molech, to
     defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.
       "And if  the people  of the land do anyways hide their eyes from the
     man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not:
       "Then I will set my face against that  man, and  against his family,
     and will  cut him  off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit
     whoredom with Molech, from among their people."(2)

     Again, in the book of Deuteronomy, when god, through Moses, admonishes
the Israelites  not to  "enquire" after  the gods  of the  people they were
about to dispossess, he tells them:

     "...for even their sons  and their  daughters they  have burnt  in the
     fire to their gods."(3)

Later, the admonition is repeated yet one more time:

       "When thou  art come  into the  land which  the Lord  thy God giveth
     thee, thou shalt not learn  to  do  after  the  abominations  of those
     nations.
       "There shall  not be  found among you any one that maketh his son or
     his daughter to pass through the fire..."(4)

     Would such a cruel rite - in which fathers and  mothers were  asked to
watch their very own children roast in a fire before a material idol - have
appeared that seductive to a wandering people striving  for nationhood that
these admonitions  had to  be repeated  time and  again?  Need parents have
been warned against Molech?

                                    II

     The Ammonites, a settled, civilized, and sophisticated people, were no
more monstrous  than the  infiltrating Israelites.   Yet, so it seems, they
had been sacrificing their own beloved children to  Moloch from  ages past.
Moses' fear was therefore a very real one.  Whatever there was in the cruel
cult of Moloch that had held the  Ammonites  bound  to  it  was  capable of
seducing  the  Israelites  and  converting  them  to  its faith.  And so it
happened.  The admonitions of Yahweh, spoken through Moses, proved to be in
vain.   By the  time of  the Judges,  when Israel  was made  to confess its
collective sins,  the tribe  of Ephraim  admitted to  having sacrificed its
children to Moloch.(5)

     Nor did it stop there.  In later years, Solomon himself actually built
a shrine to this god.

     "Then did Solomon build a high place for  Chemosh, the  abomination of
     Moab,  in  the  hill  that  is  before  Jerusalem, and for Molech, the
     abomination of Ammon."(6)

     And so it went on.  Even later, Ahaz, king of Judah in the days of the
divided monarchy,  sacrificed his  own son  - and he did so in keeping with
the custom of the kings of Israel.

     "But he [Ahaz] walked in the way of the kings of Israel,  and made his
     son to  pass through  the fire,  according to  the abominations of the
     heathen..."(7)

     Some authorities believe that this son was Hezekiah, the later king of
Judah, who somehow survived the fire.

     "King Hezekiah  owes his  life to  the salamander.  His wicked father,
     King Ahaz, had delivered him to the fires of Moloch, and he would have
     burnt,  had  his  mother  not  painted  him  with  the  blood  of  the
     salamander, so that the fire could do him no harm."(8)

     The Tosefta Targum, however, is more  theological in  its explanation.
According to this work, Hezekiah was saved from the fire by the will of God
through the merits, whatever they would prove to be, of his descendants.(9)

     How Hezekiah managed to survive Moloch's  fire is  a question  that is
difficult to  answer but  it is  quite possible  that Hezekiah  was not the
sacrificial son and that  later  apologists,  confused  with  the  train of
historical events,  sought to  explain Hezekiah's  continued existence by a
magical, or miraculous, intervention.

     Manasseh, king of Jerusalem, also  sacrificed  his  son.    No miracle
intervened to save him.

       "And he  [Manasseh] built  alters for all the hosts of heaven in the
     two courts of the house of the Lord [i.e., the Yahwist temple].
       "And he made his son to pass through the fire..."(10)

     Thus we  know  that  Philo  Byblius  was  telling  the  truth  when he
attributed such customs to the rulers of Canaan.(11)

                                    III

     This  state  of  affairs  continued  throughout  the ministries of the
prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.

     "Against whom  do  ye  sport  yourselves?  [asked  Isaiah].. Inflaming
     yourselves with  idols under every green tree, slaying the children in
     the valleys under the clefts of the rocks?"(12)

So, similarly, Jeremiah:

     "And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley
     of the  son of  Hinnom, to  burn their sons and their daughters in the
     fire.."(13)

     At this point, we may note that similar rites were also connected with
Baal:

     "They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with
     fire for burnt offerings unto Baal..."(14)

     In fact, it seems that Baal  and Moloch  were different  names for the
same god.  This is attested to by Jeremiah's following words:

     "And they  built the  high places  of Baal, which are in the valley of
     the son of Hinnom,  to cause  their sons  and their  daughters to pass
     through the fire unto Molech."(15)

     Thus,  the  abominations  carried  on  in  the  name  of Moloch can be
extended by the inclusion of those carried on in homage to Baal.

                                    IV

     These instances - and  there are  many others  recorded throughout the
Old  Testament  -  do  not  reflect  the  odd lapse of some individuals who
strayed from the Yahwist path.  What is being reviewed here is, in essence,
the passion of an entire nation, together with its kings, for a ritualistic
faith that  asked  of  its  adherents  nothing  less  than  the sacrificial
slaughter of  their own children.  Time and again, through the mouth of his
prophets, the national god of  Israel  was  led  to  rail  against  his own
people.

     "Moreover, thou  hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast
     borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed  unto them  [the foreign
     gods] to be devoured."(16)

     We notice  here the  introduction of  a new  element.  If the children
were sacrificed "to be  devoured", it  could only  mean that  the Molochian
sacrifices included  ritualistic cannibalism.  What power on earth, we must
ask  again,  could  have   induced  the   parents  of   such  an  otherwise
sophisticated people to slaughter, burn, and devour their own children?

Cardona's References up to this point were:

1.   Leviticus 18:21
2.   Ibid 20:2 - 5
3.   Deuteronomy 12:31
4.   Ibid 18:9 - 10
5.   L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews(Phil.,5728/1968),Vol IV pg 23
6.   I Kings 11:7
7.   II Kings 16:3
8.   L. Ginzberg, op. cit. Vol. I, P. 33; Vol IV p. 266
9.   Ibid p. 361
10.  II Kings 21:5 - 6
11.  Eusebius Pamphili, Evangelicae Praeparationis, 1:10:29.
12.  Isaiah 57:4-5
13.  Jeremiah 7:31
14.  Ibid 19:5
15.  Ezekial 16:20
........................................................................
........................................................................

     What about  it, Carnes  and Reiher?  You two have all the neat answers
for questions concerning mythology.  Let's hear your  neat answer  for this
one.   Want a few hints?  "Moloch" wasn't really a name so much as a title,
signifying  "king",  or  "ruler".    In  this  context,  it  meant  Saturn.
Likewise,  all  variations  of  the  name  El or Elus were appellations for
Saturn.  Isra-EL meant literally, "long live Saturn", and all  other Hebrew
names ending in EL had similar meanings.

     Cardona's article was a long one,  about 30 pages;  I couldn't  repro-
duce it entirely in one article traveling via UUCP.  Readers  interested in
learning more about what the archaic world was actually like (and this kind
of knowledge WON'T be found in books by Campbell or Eliade) are advised  to
send a check for $15 to:

                        Kronos, Subscription Dept.
                        P.O. Box 343
                        Wynnewood, Pa. 19096