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Originally Posted by Maklelan
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Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar
When you reject the TORAH accounts of mass murder, all claims of human sacrifice from the same source also go down the chute.
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Completely untrue. There are material remains from the ancient Near East that show human sacrifice going back well beyond the Pentateuch. Also, we have to weigh the historical value of each event from the Bible.
I'm not just unilaterally rejecting all accounts, just the accounts that don't really track with the evidence or make much sense. |
In other words you can not provide any positive evidence that the religiously motivated mass murders that you are rejecting did not take place. They just don't conform to your views.
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Originally Posted by Maklelan
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Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar
And if any religiously motivated murder did take place before 600 BCE, even if you were find the actual human remains, how would you be able to establish what the actual motivations for their deaths were 2500-3000 years latter? You get human bones, not access to their long lost thoughts or motives.
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Grave good and burial practices tell an awful lot, as does knowledge of the manner of death and the material context of the burial. If remains do not contain evidence of religious mass murder, though, it happens to fall into the category of "no evidence." |
Certainly a lot of people died in fighting that did not receive the luxury of a religious burial or fancy grave goods. "no evidence" does not at all translate as no possibility of religiously motivated mass murders.
And these 'hostile witness' accounts would suggest that there is distinct possibility that they were based upon some actual incidents.
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Originally Posted by Maklelan
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Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar
The lines between religiously motivated mass murder and religiously motivated human sacrifice are not all that distinct.
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Actually, they are. Human sacrifice is usually accompanied by ceremony, symbolic burial goods, and specific and consistent treatment of the body. Religiously motivated mass murder is not. |
Again, you were not present. Find a pile of bones that have been hacked, maybe they were sacrificed, maybe they were murdered. Unless you can locate definite clues to sacrifice you won't know.
And even then, sans any documentary evidence, you will not know
what the motivations were. Were these remains sacrificed
to a god, or were these remains 'sacrificed' murdered
for a god?
To reject either possibility, you are simply guessing and flying a kite.
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Originally Posted by Maklelan
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Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar
When a Theocracy or a people dominated by 'righteous' religious passion enter a war (particularly a 'civil' war) the opposing sides invariably paint their motivations in the terms of their religious beliefs.
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As far as we know from much more recent religious conflict, anyway. |
The observations of Anthropology suggest that mans primitive human nature and conduct have been quite consistent throughout history.
I have no reason to accept your unprovenanced view that religiously motivated mass murder did not exist until it was first invented by the Deuteronomic writers of the 6th century BCE.
I have every reason to believe that religiously motivated mass murders took place from the dawn of religious beliefs, and that mass extermination of dissenters was one of the earliest and most effective ways of consolidating and establishing the power of the priesthoods of many ancient cultures.
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Originally Posted by Maklelan
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Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar
Getting away from these contentious Biblical examples for a bit,
When the Aztecs sacrificed a thousand victims a day for twenty days in the inauguration of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan in 1487, was it religiously motivated mass murder or religiously motivated human sacrifice?
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First, that's quite a different culture, but the prisoners used in those sacrifices were often slaves from the Aztec culture, children of nobles, or other who are otherwise religiously indistinguishable from the sacrificers. That is a pretty good indication that they were not being murdered for their religious beliefs. |
Religiously motivated mass fratricide. Performed either
to the god(s) or
for the god(s). Just as bloody and just as dead either way.
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Originally Posted by Maklelan
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Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar
(I doubt the fine points of such a distinction made much difference to the victims. Whom of course, had it been in their power, would likely done exactly the same against these their countrymen.  )
When Pedro de Alvarado and his men cornered and massacred an estimated 8,000–10,000 Aztec nobles inside of their Temple's Sacred Precincts was it not as likely motivated by their own religious views and revulsion against the Aztec religious practices? |
The Spanish account says the primary motivations were to preemptively stop a mutiny and to take their treasure. It says some were also concerned that the Aztecs had given themselves over to the devil, which sounds an awful lot like Christian religiously motivated mass murder, but that's a different culture and time period from eighth century BCE Syria-Palestine, isn't it? |
Certainly. and it just indicates that human nature has not changed all that much....shall we discuss recent religious mass murders in Africa?
01-02-2012, 05:27 PM
