SkepticBoyLee

It has been claimed that the story of Abraham introduced the idea that sacrificing babies was immoral. Is there any source one can show me where the idea that baby sacrifice is immoral is layed out that predates the story of Abraham?

moonwatcher

I dont know anything about the history of infant sacrifice but, in my opinion the idea that the story of Abraham being an instance of condemnation of infant sacrifice is implausible.

After all, God praises Abraham precisely for his WILLINGNESS to sacrifice his son. The fact that he doesnt make it carry it out doesnt change that fact.

Besides, in the story, Abraham's son, Isaac, was not an infant.

Magdlyn

Where is the evidence that child sacrifice was even practiced in the Middle East? All those refs to "passing them through fire" sounds like they could've been passed between 2 fires or over a fire and not killed. Merely purified by a fire worshiping culture.

Jack be nimble
Jack be quick
Jack jump over the candlestick

is a description of a Beltane ritual. Bel=Baal.

There is massive evidence in Genesis that the Hebrewa believed Yahweh lived in fire, ei: a volcano, or the fire that led them in the wilderness. No evidence that children were actually ritually killed in a fire.

SkepticBoyLee

Thanks. All I need is an ancient criticism that is critical of infant/baby/child/or even human sacrifice as the claim here is that the Abrahamic religions introduced this new, groundbreaking "morality".

Mesa Mike

From Duet. 12:31This, though, doesn't "introduce ... new, groundbreaking morality." It seems to imply that the morality in question is already well understood.

The Bible does condemn the shedding of innocent blood in many places. Infants are certainly among the innocent. No specific rule regarding infants need be given.

moonwatcher

According to the wikipedia article on human sacrifice:

douglas

I had always taken it as a given that child sacrifice was practiced by the phoenicians, but this article seems to show there's some disagreement about this...

http://phoenicia.org/childsacrifice.html

Regardless, it doesn't seem like the practice was nearly as wide spread as I had believed it to be. I agree that we're giving the early Hebrews too much credit to say the Abraham sacrifice story is a "morality" lesson. There is NO WAY that they could have been the first culture to say that killing your children to appease the God's is a bad thing. To me, it's more of a "lets make fun of those other religions" kind of cliff-hanger story.

lpetrich

Or it's a way of justifying avoiding such a sacrifice.

There is something similar in the story of Prometheus and Zeus on animal sacrifice, in which Prometheus got Zeus to accept offerings of the icky parts instead of the tasty parts.

triffidfood

What about all the infants amongst the various cities "devoted to destruction" by the Israelites? They weren't "innocent" because they belonged to neighbouring, conmpeting tribes I guess?

"Devoted to destruction" apparently means sacrificed (the original Hebrew word that gets translated to this phrase is the same that's used elsewhere in the OT in other, sacrificial contexts, such as animals burnt or otherwise sacrificed in the Temple).

The deal was, God delivered the Israelites victory in their various show downs with other (inferior presumably) Canaanite tribes, in return for the sacrifice (devoting to destruction) of the inhabitants of the cities they defeated. Men, women, children, the elderly, the unborn, livestock, whatever, they all got slaughtered (in front of each other, presumably) as a bloody pay-off for divinely assisted military conquest.

Lovely example to set..

Mesa Mike

The Canaanites and Amorites were just a lovely, innocent bunch of people minding their own business, eh?

This issue has been much discussed. Google is your friend. OK, that sounds like a cop-out, but I haven't the time to make any case here.