Thank you for that interesting post, Malthus.
Cite? And I mean a non-Biblical one, preferably archaeological.
The best surviving evidence is from the Phonecian colony of Carthage. There is plenty of surviving Roman accounts, which are perhaps biased (but note that they agree with the Biblical accounts, presumably without collusion - i.e. independent witnessess).
According to the Wiki article (not the best source, but easy to obtain) the following Roman accounts exist:
Note that the account of Siculus agrees with the Hebrew accounts.
There is naturally a controversy over this:
An article on the cntroversy:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05146/510878.stm
The notion that the Romans invented the account to slander the Phonecians is hard to sustain, as the Romans themselves had no objection to the murder of infants - by “exposure” - or to human sacrifice per se. It strikes me as more likely that the denial of widespread child sacrifice is, essentially, politically motivated by modern concerns.
Some archaeological sources:
Stager, Lawrence; Samuel. R. Wolff (1984). “Child sacrifice in Carthage: religious rite or population control?”. Journal of Biblical Archeological Review January: 31-46.
Brown, Shelby (1991). Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrificial Monuments in their Mediterranean Context. Sheffield Academic Press, 22-23.
Thanks. 
Carthage is not in the ME.
And since the Phoenicians were spread throughout the Med, as were their main rivals, the Greeks (who heavily influenced Roman culture), I can easily see a blood libel spreading.
Also, what you’ve said is like saying just because Russian Orthodox and Italian Catholics were independent entities, anti-semitic blood-libel (e.g. Jews killing Christian babies) must be accurate too, since it pops up all over the show. Me, I tend to doubt the word of a victor against their defeated enemy until I see independent confirmation. And you admit the archaeological record is ambiguous. Plus, those archaeological references are just the references from the Wiki page. Have you actually read them?
This is a logical fallacy. Easy to disprove by showing how a nation (e.g. America) may condemn another nation (e.g. Iran) for practices (e.g. sponsoring terrorism) that it, itself, also engages in (e.g. School of the Americas, People’s Mujaheddin of Iran etc.).
The difference is that presumably those two groups - Orthodox and Italian Catholics - were reading and enlarging on each other’s version of the “blood libel”. They are not independent witnesses.
It seems to me unlikely that Roman historians were reading the (even then very historical) Biblical accounts and adapting them to a present-day enemy.
Naturally, the Cartheginians were not in the ME, but that seems quite irrelevant - they were a Phonecian colony; same culture. It is a highly suspicious co-incidence that their cultural descendants just happened to have practiced exactly the same cultural traits, reported by members of a whole different civilization, as much earlier was reported in the Bible.
The archeological references are to the leading archaeologists in the field. Please note that one of them is also referred to in the online article reporting on the “controversy”. I have, as a matter of fact, reviewed one of them before - Professor Stager’s work - when an Anthropology undergraduate, many years ago. I do not have it handy.
The “controversy” seems to me entirely politically motivated - the scientific consensus opinion appears to be that, as a matter of fact, the Cartheginians certainly practiced child sacrifce (and thus that it is likely that the practice was not uncommon in the culture). Naturally it is difficult to prove definitively, as one cremated remain looks much like another after more than 2,000 years. It is very difficult for archaeology to capture a ceremony.
However, what you are proposing is some sort of version of the anti-semitic “blood libel”. This makes a certain amount of sense in terms of the Hebrews, who evidently had something against human sacrifice; it makes less sense cross-culturally, transplanted to an entirely different culture which itself had many of the same practices. Why would the Roman historians choose this particular “libel” out of an (to them) obscure religious book of a minor nation on the other side of the Med., to slander their great enemy with a practice that, to them, probably wasn’t all that horrible anyway - and which plenty of (then) living Romans could contradict from personal knowledge?
It would seem that, rather than indulging in elaborate cross-cultural conspiracy theories, one would examine the totality of the evidence - historical and archaeological - and conclude that child sacrifice was a feature of some ancient ME cultures. A cross-cultural comparason indicates that child sacrifice is hardly unknown in plenty of other cultures around the world (for example, the Inca); why is it so hard to accept that it was a feature of the Phonecians and Caananites?
And another alternative is that Abraham does/did indeed have other descendants - Ishmaelites through his illegitimate son, and Edomites through the grandson who sold his birthright for a bowl of lentils. Incidentally Jacob got his butt kicked, or at any rate his hip dislocated, but he got renamed for being a game sort of chap and giving it his best shot.
Well, Jacob seemed to actually holding his own with The Angel (Who may actually have been a manifestation of God, perhaps The Son) until the Angel’s trick hip-dislocating move. L
My personal fav right now is one I stumbled across, Luke 16:31
Which, coming at the end of a parable being told by Jesus, sounds a bit odd.
I think that parable is a bit meek just like most of the parables on bible. The reason being that the father didn’t celebrate the fact that the other son stayed with him all along. It’s like not telling a women “I love you” while you’re with her, but if she leaves you and then comes back you say it.
The son that stayed seems like he stayed hoping to get something in return (love?) because he asked for it when he saw his brother that did everything wrong get it. So imo, that depicts a devoid of love son whose feelings are simply ignored.
Is that something that people actually do?
For Old Testament wrath of god retribution, I like Psalm 18 (excerpted)
What good is an omnipotent god if you cannot depend on him to destroy your enemies in the nick of time?
A new commandment I give unto you: that you love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
–John 13:34
If there were a god, I’d want to hear him say things like this.
Why do you then discount that the Phoenicians’ opponents may similarly not have been independent? Certainly there were Hellenistic influences on both Roman and Levantine culture. So might they not have derived their blood-libel from the same source? And I’d hardly call the Hebrew texts “witness” accounts, as it seems likely they were compiled after the Exile, from sources that in any case date after the events depicted.
You don’t think a colony city founded at the *end *of it’s parent culture’s heyday, that then continues for another 800 years, might develop a slightly different culture from its parent? Certainly the Romans didn’t claim the Carthaginians were sacrificing to the same god as the Canaanites.
You seem to be implying that there was complete isolation between cultures in the Med - well, with the exception of the Phoenicians. :dubious: If Phoenician culture spread throughout the Med, why not the blood-libel against them, too? I’ve already provided adequate reasoning for why this might be so (Hellenistic trade rivalry). I think it mirrors the Medieval/modern Jewish blood-libel quite well.
So you admit you’re unable to provide quotes that back up the textual evidence with archeological ones? I don’t subscribe to JSTOR, but I think a cite should be something everyone involved has an opportunity to read, don’t you?
I think it’s a bit pat to say the consensus opinion says something when youv’e already acknowledged that there is still debate ongoing about this.
That’s my point - so the only other evidence for the sacrifices is admittedly biased sources.
I don’t think they didn’t take it directly from Hebrew textual sources (not that there weren’t Jewish settlements in Roman cities, either), I think they repeated a verbal blood-libel that was common throughout the Med, wherever Phoenicians traders were known. I see it as directly analogous to the Jewish blood-libel.
I do not deny that some child sacrifice was practiced. I just deny that it was at all as widespread in the Israelite’s neighbours as the Bible would have us believe. The Bible is well-known for factual inaccuracies, especially from Exodus times, but also regarding facts about the so-called Davidic “Empire” up to the Exile.
Because we have Inca sacrificial mummies, we have victims dedicated to Tlaloc. We don’t have the same unambiguous evidence for regular Canaanite sacrifice as depicted in the Bible. Just some cremated bones, from a society that apparently cremated all their dead anyway. Or is there some other way unborn babies could be “sacrificed”?
Wait, are you claiming that the ancient Hebrews derived their opinions of their neighbours from the Greeks now? :dubious:
Redacted at a later date, certainly. That does not mean they are to be entirely discounted, as certainly parts derive from much earlier oral sources.
The Romans tended to assume that the gods of whatever other peoples they were in touch with were the same as Roman gods, only with different names - hence, not the best source for exact identification.
But yes, I do imagine a certain amount of cultural continuity - consider the example of the Hebrews themselves.
It would be a quite remarkable co-incidence if a colony just happened to display the exact same odd sacrificial habits as was reported of the parent culture. Why suspect that (a) the original reporter was deliberately lying and (b) the colony just happened to develop the (very remarkable) culture-trait quite independantly at some later date?
The more simple explaination is that there has been some measure of cultural continuity.
I think it mirrors it not at all. For something to be a “libel” it must first be libelous. There is no evidence that anyone other than the Hebrews thought it was - you are projecting modern prejudices onto the past.
Second, cultural continuity within a culture is one thing; an obscure bit of anthropological information about a quite different culture is something else. The difference is that between the Scythians passing down through the generations certain animal-motifs in art among the steppe peoples, and the Hebrews becomming aware of the depiction of Scythians in the works of Heroditous; the first is simply more probable than the second.
When asking about obscure topics of archaeology, not everything is available on-line. In my day we had these things known as “libraries”. We went there to read stuff.
You asked for cites; I’ve provided them, directly on topic. The rest, I’m afraid, is up to you.
Except the “debate” is mostly created by modern-day inhabitants of that part of the world unhappy with the Carthiginians being depicted as infanticides. It is politically motivated.
The actual archaeologists are more or less in consensus - it happened.
You atre of course free to believe what you want. There is not a shred of actual evidence you have advanced for such a theory.
How widespread is that? Please quote me from the Bible where it discusses the frequency of child sacrifices among Israelite’s neighbours.
This should be, I would point out, considerably easier that pulling references to archaeology and historiography, as all of the Bible is available on-line.
Before you move on to “factual inaccuracies” of the Bible, it would be useful to know what it actually says.
I think if you actually read it, you will see quite clearly it was not a “blood libel”, but rather as something that the Hebrews were quite attracted to, as something that was, in fact, part of their common cultural heritage.
You will recall that child sacrifice in Carthage was said to be something done of high-ranking victims in time of disaster and war, to ensure victory (again, recall Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigeneia in the Illiad).
Here’s a version from the Bible, 2 Kings 3:27:
Note that this is very similar to the Cartheginian habit; also note that according to the Bible it was successful.
Then, consider Judges 11.31 and 11.39, where the Hebrew Jephthah sacrifices his own daughter as a “burnt offering” because of a vow he’d undertaken, to secure victory in war. Again, a child sacrifice was successful.
So here you have an quite widespread sacrificial complex - a very similar story being told by the Greeks of themselves (Iphigeneia), the Hebrews of themselves (the daughter of Jephthah), and the Hebrews of their neighbours (the King of Moab’s son). In all cases the sacrifice is depicted as successful. In addition, you have actual archaeological evidence of a sacrificial cult in Carthage, and contemporary Roman accounts of the same.
According to your theory, it was all a sort of multi-centuries-old cross-cultural “blood libel”. That makes no sense, as your supposed originators of the “libel” saw no shame in proclaiming that their own culture-heros practiced it; the Hebrews, main spreaders of the “libel”, also claim that their culture-heros practiced it; and in all these cases, every reporter save the Romans claimed that, as a matter of fact, it worked.
Isn’t it rather more likely that these accounts, mythologized though they are in part, depict a very real, ancient, and above all widespread sacrifical complex in which leaders were expected to sacrifice their children for the public good in times of crisis? And if that was the case … could not the story of the binding of Issac be seen against this background as a story explaining why the Hebrews no longer participate in what would, at the time, be widely understood as an effective ritual?
Heck, I’m nearly as amused by people trying to justify biblical passages as I am by the passages themselves.
“No, God didn’t really order his generals to cut open the bellies of pregnant women and dash babies against the rocks… Besides, they deserved it! Soulless heathens…”
I’m not referring to Malthus of course, just a general observation.
Heh, the Bible contains much that is abhorrent by today’s standards - and, on the other hand, much that went into creating today’s standards.
To my mind, the document cannot be usefully considered outside its historical context, and is best understood as the product of a long line of cultural evolution. When reading Judges, for example, one is reading survivals of a very ancient oral tradition that (for example) took child sacrifice in its stride - as the story of Jephthah’s daughter indicates.
Later, the morality of those creating aspects of the Bible changed, and child-sacrifice (for example) became presumptively wrong and bad. This can be seen in Jeremiah 7:31, cursing the Sons of Judah for practicing it:
The “binding of Issac” represents, in mythological form, the exact moment in which the ancient Hebrews decided that their God, unlike other gods, did not require child sacrifice - and it went from presuptively Okay to "evil in my sight " something “I did not command, nor did it come into my mind”.
By your dubiosity, I take it you’re counter-claiming that there had been no cultural contamination of Hebrew myth between the supposed events and the recording of same?
And some date only from the exile itself - at least. per the Documentary Hypothesis.
…but you’re willing to make the leap from Saturn to Moloch anyway…
What - are you claiming Hebrew culture was consistent through both all the times and places Jews found themselves?
I’m not proposing it developed the same trait - I’m proposing the blood-libel followed it.
Things are called “blood-libel” entirely from our modern perspective, so it’s not projecting. We call the Jews-eat-babies thing a blood-libel, not the Medievals.
C’mon - you know that’s not the kind of cite pertinent to an internet discussion.
I wasn’t especially referring to Carthage, but what was (Roman-born Jew) Sabatino Moscati’s political motivation, please?
Other than the circumstantial evidence that other cross-cultural, persistent blood libels do exist. But it’s as hard to prove something didn’t happen as to prove it did. All we have is the ambiguous bones.
“Widespread” in the sense that it gets mentioned in different time periods, from the Exodus right up to Jeremiah. Plus, you were the one who said it was “widespread in the ME” in relation to Isaac
But condemned by the authors of the books.
I am familiar with it - that’s the jump-off point for my whole Hellenistic influence theory - notice the similarity between the stories of Iphigeneia and the daughter of Jephthah you also quoted.
You see a widespread child-killing cult, I see a literary archetype.
“According to the Bible” has no meaning to me as a statement of fact.
“A very similar story” - and not even from the same cultural continuity. Do you see why that makes me raise my eyebrows?
Disputed evidence, first put forward by people who were quite prepared to take the Romans at their word. Similar to people who might take the Bible as a good source for Levantine archeology.
I’ve already addressed thpervasive nature of that sort of doublethink. It proves nothing
But the practice is also condemned in other places. Plus the whole daughter of Jephthah thing is ambiguous.
So what? We know it really, really didn’t work, since there was no Moloch/Saturn/Artemis. Just because it makes a good story that it worked, doesn’t mean much. So did marching around a city and blowing trumpets.
This might make more sense if we didn’t have the counterbalancing example of the Jewish blood-libel, which stands as a stark example that such a story (often involving children) can, and did, last centuries, be worldwide (and the Jewish one has adherents stretching from Asia to the Rockies) and yet still be a lie.
But the binding of Isaac happens long before events in Judges and Kings, so clearly that can’t be the lesson it means to impart, especially since, as you point out, it was still considered to work at these later dates.
Look, just to end the hijack - I don’t disagree that there is some evidence for some incidents of child sacrifice in the ME, both literary and archaeological. What I was asking for was a hard cite for your statement that “child-sacrifice was in fact quite widespread in the Ancient ME where Judaism developed”.
And no, I don’t consider anything to do with the Carthage of 200 BCE, related to us by biased sources ranging from 60BCE to 400 CE, particularly relevant.
I find it dubious to assume that the Hebrews adopted a Greek blood-libel, yes.
I believe that the Bible was redacted from numerous sources at different times, yes.
Of course. Just because the Romans were inclined to identify the Scythian war-god as “Mars” doesn’t mean the Sythians had no war-god and the Romans just invented the whole thing.
No, just that it isn’t incredible to presume some cultural continuity.
Again, this seems more incredible than that cultural continuity is the explaination.
The point is whether or not it is a “libel”, not what it is called; the “projection” lies in the assumption that the behaviour was considered not only abhorrent, but so very and uniquely abhorrent that wholly different cultures happily adopted it as a libel.
If the subject is sufficently obscure, that’s the only “cite” in existance. It is silly to pretend there is no scholarly work on a subject just because it isn’t readily available in text online.
Yet you weren’t happy with proof from other cultures that child-sacrifice exists.
… which is why one refers to a number of sources, such as the literary, in an attempt to obtain the best evidence available.
Only you have rejected it all.
… only it is just as frequently stated that the Hebrews did it, as that their neighbours did; sometimes with disapproval, and sometimes not. There is no overall condemnation of non-Hebrews as child-sacrificers at all!
This evidence doesn’t fit at all with the notion of a “blood libel”; it fits much better with the notion of a widespread belief that human sacrifice was effective, and its practice among the various cultures (including the Hebrew). Until of course at some point the Hebrew ceased to do it.
And indeed it was. Not frequent, but widespread - in Greece too, and maybe even further afield.
Indeed, the notion of sacrificing a son being of particular potency isn’t exactly unknown in Christianity … 
Not always; in fact, more often not.
… neither story would make any sense if child-sacrifice was totally alien in the cultures involved.
Consider: ‘King Louis of France was closely besieged in his castle. Fearing the worst, he bound his son, his only son and heir, to a rock and made of him a burnt offering. Christ accepted this offering, and King Louis sallied out and scattered his enemies’. Likely?
It seems to me that such stories indicate a widespread acceptance of sacrifice in the cultures in which they appear.
That’s just the problem: as a literary archetype, it makes no sense unless people hearing it were likely to accept that their gods do indeed demand (and accept) such sacrifices.
When teasing out the meaning of another literary archetype - the story of Issac - the same applies, of course.
Fortunately, you don’t get to choose whether something is a “fact” or not.
Obviously, just because a legend is told in the Bible doesn’t mean it literally happend. But that doesn’t mean it is wholly meaningless, either. It can tell us a lot about what people believed in.
In this case, it tells us that whoever first told this story believed that child sacrifice worked.
No, not really. Are you saying that the Hebrews adopted it from the Iliad, or vice versa? Isn’t it more likely that they developed from consideration of the same background?
Well, I guess if you are willing to hand-wave away all literary and historical evidence, and archaeology can’t tell you about ceremonies - then ceremonies didn’t happen? :dubious:
You have to choose - is it the same as the Iliad, or is it ambiguous? It can’t be both.
You can’t seriously be thinking I actually believe it works, can you? 
Of course I don’t. What I believe is that ancient peoples believed it works. That means a lot, in this debate, as it is the issue under debate.
Yet no evidence has been advanced that the ancients, other than some Hebrews, saw it as inherently horrible (as opposed to tragic).
Heh, that isn’t how mythology works. You are mistaking the Bible for a work of history. It is quite possible, indeed probable, that the Binding of Issac is a story that dates from a later time than the Book of Judges, which (although later in the chronology of the Bible) may reflect stories from an earlier time.
I think the evidence is as solid as it can be, given the distance in time and the difficulties inherent in recording a ceremony.
By “widespread” I did not mean “happens all the time”, but that many cultures embraced it as an effective techique of worship, particularly in times of war and stress.
Indeed, I’d go further - not only was child sacrifice a widespread meme in the ME, it was in Greece as well, and probably lots of other places.
OK, I can see this whole thing is a miscommunication then. I’ll buy that theory. I read your “widespread” as “pervasive”. That’s not what you meant. End Hijack.