Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site imsvax.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!elsie!imsvax!ted
From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Human Sacrifice II
Message-ID: <451@imsvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 2-Nov-85 11:01:02 EST
Article-I.D.: imsvax.451
Posted: Sat Nov  2 11:01:02 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Nov-85 05:03:11 EST
Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD
Lines: 227




     I wanted to see what Peter Reiher would have to say about the little
piece on human sacrifice before I went on with it.  Fortunately, that didn't
take very long, the net being back together, and messages crossing the
country in two or three days.

>A minor point, I know, but I have never referred to myself as "Pete" in my
>entire life, and invariably wince when someone else does.  Call me sensitive,
>but call me "Peter".  Suggesting that I "might learn something for a change"
>is a cheap shot.  I have never suggested that you are either stupid or
>slow to learn, merely wrong and a bit stubborn.  For the record, I have
>spent the last 11 years in college and will, with luck, receive a PhD in
>about 9 months.  I myself believe that I have spent most of that time
>learning something, and Notre Dame and UCLA seem to agree.  Remember, insults
>are generally taken to be the last refuge of one whose arguments are destroyed.

     No problem.  But you obviously aren't too familiar with the ins and outs
of net.origins;  a very thick skin seems to be required of regular posters,
one way or another.  Forgive me if I've picked up some of the habits of the
group.  I get called all sorts of things on net.origins;  if it bothered me,
you wouldn't be reading this.  The neatest things I've been called lately is
an INVERSE POLYMATH, not a particularly good thing to call anyone, since
anyone to whom it actually applied would not know what it meant and would
probably think he'd been complimented and smile.  If I ever have to start
looking these appellations up, I'll give up on net.origins.

     Before we go any further, I would like to explain one resource which
Velikovsky, Cardona, and I all make use of, which is Louis Ginzberg's seven
volumn "Legends of the Jews", copyright 1909 and available only from the
Jewish Publication Society of America in Philadelphia.  This massive work,
first published in German, is the closest thing there is to any really
large body of Midrashim translated into English.  It picks up where the
Old Testament leaves off, so to speak, and the title is somewhat misleading;
it contains more history than mythology.

Back to the dialogue:

Holden:
>>     The consideration  which makes  these interpretations untenable arises
>>from the most horrific of ancient practices, human sacrifice.

>>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.


Reiher:
>                    Also, consider whose kids wound up being sacrificed.
>do you think that the high priest's son went first, or might it have been
>the child of a slave?  Now, if one slave in a hundred lost a child every
>year, do you think this would have led to a slave rebellion, or any other
>major form of unrest?

    Alas, would that it were so.  What is being described in Cardona's
article, and throughout the OT, as well as in other folks mythology books,
is, unfortunately, nothing less than Mr. Joe Middle-Class Israelite (and
Phoenician, Ammonite etc. etc.) sacraficing one of his OWN 2.7 children
BY FIRE, and then, as often as not, practicing ritualistic cannibalism
upon the remains.  The victim was usually the first-born, whether male or
female.  The OT mentions Kenaz only as the father of Othniel, the first
judge, but Ginzberg's "Legends", Vol IV, page 22 describes a scene in which
Kenaz presides as representatives of the different tribes confessed
the sins of their tribes, in preparation for a war against the Canaanites.
The representatives of Zebulon in particular replied:

   "we desired to eat the flesh of our sons and daughters, to know whether
   the Lord loves them."

and the Ephraimites "owned to having sacraficed their children to Molech".

    Such, indeed, was the nature of the basic religion not only of the Israel-
ites, but of all the peoples of the region;  Moses and the prophets appear,
upon close examination, to have been rebels, voices crying out in the wilderness
against what actually constituted the common practices of the times.  Consider
Jeremiah's condemnation of the entire nation of Israel:

     Jeremiah 19:4-9 "Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this
     place (the valley of Hinnom, or Gehinna), and have burned incense in it
     unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the
     kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents;
     They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with
     fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it,
     neither came it into my mind.
     Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no
     more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley
     of slaughter.....
     And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing;  every one that passeth
     thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof.
     And I shall cause them to eat the flesh of their sons, and of their
     daughters.........

     At a later date, of course, Gehinna became the Jewish word for hell.  There
must have come a time, in fact, about three or four generations after the solar
system settled down (and if you read the abstract to Robert Bass' paper, you
noticed that this settling wouldn't have taken more than a few decades), when
men finally ceased to understand the religion of their grandfathers and their
great-grandfathers.  All this talk about gods (planets) and other dangerous
apparitions in the heavens:  "what the hell are these old geezers talking about?
I don't see anything threatening in the sky."  At this time also, the history of
human sacrafice to those elder gods, which were now nowhere in evidence, other
than as tiny points of light in the heavens, must have become an acute em-
barassment.  Thus you won't find the stories about ritualistic cannibalism
splashed all over the OT;  But as you can see, traces of it are still there.

     As you might have guessed, for ritualistic cannibalism to have been part
of these rituals, a little bit more than fear must have been involved.  Consider
Hesiods's "Theogeny" and the story about Kronos (Saturn) eating his own
and Rhea's offspring as they were born.  Another fairy-tale?  We Velikovskians
don't think so.  You've read the story of Venus fissioning off from Jupiter in
Worlds in Collision (the myth of Aphrodite, Venus, being born from the head of
Zeus).  There appears to have been more than one instance of this happening.
The story in Theogeny appears to indicate that several smaller bodies, at one
time, were blasted off of Jupiter or one of the other large planets, and
absorbed by Saturn.  Thus, the story in Theogeny represents an interpretation
of events actually witnessed by men, and the ritualistic cannibalism in the
rites of Moloch appears to be immitative.


Holden:
>>     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.

Reiher:
>The interesting thing about mankind, of course, is that we are substantially
>less compelled to follow our instincts than many other animals.  Lots of
>things other animals instinctively avoid we choose to do.  Why not also
>sacrificing children?

    Get serious.  I can believe some of these other posters on net.origins
challenging me on obvious points (e.g. Stanley Friesen or Michael McNeil:
"Why, I smear bullshit all over myself and go out after elephants with my
spear every weekend"), but you're too intelligent for this.

>Here's a real goody.  I'm surprised that Mr. Holden left it in, it's so
>stupid.
>
>>     "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.
>
>How many of you really believe this?  How about the alternate explanation
>that the god supposedly "ate" the sacrifices by consuming the smoke that
>resulted from burning them?  Since we have explicit evidence that the
>ancient Greeks believed precisely that, and no more clear evidence that
>the ancient peoples of Palestine actually ate the human sacrifices, I
>again remain unconvinced.  (Considering how eager the Israelites were to
>libel their neighbors, I'm sure that they would have gone on for verses
>about the perversity of eating one's children if it actually happened.)

     I think I've just covered this one.  But if you want any more evidence,
just say so.  I've got it.

>>     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.
>
>Says who?  Prove it.  Lots of gods have names similar to "king".  Usually,
>it means that they were regarded as the head of their pantheon.  Sounds
>logical to me.  Why isn't it, Mr. Holden?  And, other than the fact that
>Velikovsky and his disciples say so, where is your evidence that
>
>        Moloch = Saturn ?

    Of course, the two ancients gods referred to as "king of heaven" in Greek
and Roman mythology were Saturn and Jupiter (Kronos and Zeus).  This was assumed
as common knowledge by the authors of the OT, who were laconic in their writings
normally, and is rarely explicitely stated.  However, if you dig hard enough,
and Cardona and a few of the regular posters in Kronos (the journal) have, you
can find one or two such explicit statements regarding Saturn = Molech in the
OT.  Consider Amos 6:26-27

     "But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Molech and Chiun your images,
     the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.  Therefore, I will
     cause you to go into captivity....."

     Chiun, Kaiun, Kewan,  these are Roman alphabet renderings for a name which
was essentially the same in Assyrian, Babylonian, and Hebrew: the name of the
planet Saturn.  Cardona cites Martin Seiff's paper "Planets in the Bible: I -
The Chronology of Job", SISR I:4 Spring 1977 as a primary reference, and I
would think that other references to this could be found without too much
digging.  Some sources will spell the name "Khivan", but that's about as much
variation as you'll find.

>>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.
>
>Got any proof for this one, either?  I do not know any Hebrew, but I'm sure
>that there are those out there who do.  What, if anything, is the Hebrew
>word for the planet Saturn?

"Chiun", or "Khivan", as I've stated.  For a non-Velikovskian (and hence,
"untainted") version of the equation El = Kronos, see Samuel Noah Kramer's
"Mythologies of the Ancient World", page 160.  Velikovsky rendered "Isra-el"
as "may El preserve", literally, and I am assuming this would translate
common-usage-wise into something like "long live El", although I, too, would
appreciate hearing from some Hebrew language scholar on the net regarding
this one.  One thing, however; whatever else anyone may challenge Velikovsky
on, don't try to challenge him on knowledge of Hebrew, the reasons being
obvious.

>>Readers  interested in
>>learning more about what the archaic world was actually like ...
>>are advised  to send a check for $15 to:

>Unless you have a tremendous interest in supporting pseudo-science, I'd
>advise against it.  The National Enquirer is probably about on a par for
>veracity.

   It turns out, this was the only part of my article which was slightly
in error;  subscriptions have lately gone up to $20.  Nonetheless,
I still regard it as a bargain.  The address again:

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