Huon

The sacrifice of the first-born child is well attested in the religion of Carthage, a (now tunisian) Phoenician colony of Tyre, founded in ~814 BCE.

This sacrifice can be compared to the offering of the first fruits of a harvest, or a lamb. This sacrifice was offered to Ba’al Ammon, or to the goddess Tanit. However, some persons argue that all we know about Carthage is of roman origin, and should be taken cautiously ( in french, we say "with tweezers").

Yigael Yadin, an israelian archaeologist, thinks that a cult was given to Ba'al Hammon and Tanit during the bronze age, in Hazor. Some persons have compared Ba'al Hammon and the god Moloch, quoted in the OT. The name Moloch could be similar to the word molk, meaning sacrifice. (I am unable to verify this assertion).

semiopen

The OP gave what looks like an excellent reference. Huon above discusses how this was a common practice in Canaan. There is no reason to think that the Israelites didn't do this. In addition, this was common practice in the Mediteranean region (Carthage, Crete).

I consider the evidence for Israelites following this practice to be quite strong.

Mark S. Smith in The Early History of God discusses the mlk sacrifice.

The theological basis is given in Ezekiel 20:25-26.

He gives Isaiah 30:27-33 as the best evidence for the early practice of child sacrifice in Israel.

I think your opinion on this issue may be academically acceptable, but personally, I think this took place.

IamJoseph

I surely did. Contemporary events described, archeologically respected authentic names, historical locations, kings, wars, cultures, dates, cross-nation evidences, archeological relics alligned with a continous thread of books written 100 ye3ars apart. What more do you want - it does not get any better!?

Your question is a losing one. This is a book described in its texts as written by its nominated author. You have to show disputing proof, preferably of a contemporary nature.

The millions of descriptive factors embedded in the alphabets, words and verses of the five mosaic books. Mount Nebo, Mount Ararat's first mention, the name of the cities Goshen, Pethom and Ramasey, for example, are historical stats - so are the original names of ancient people, distancers between towns, and 100s of nations which were once contemporary with the writings and writer, and not around today. And no - these cannot be made up retrospectively - these are the first recordings of these stats.

IamJoseph

Better, your request for such links is non-credible! It shows you don't know the issues you are discussing. The Mernapath stele is one of the most famous finds in archeology, and Ruth is the figure which all conversions of Judaism are based upon. Its like asking for proof water is watery.

IamJoseph

Total insanity here. The total reverse is the historical and conclusive factors.

ph2ter

I think that the references which I gave are strong enough and that without a reasonable doubt we can safely say that ancient Israelites performed the sacrifices of the firstborns to Yhwh. The Hebrew Bible tries to hide that fact, but with no success.
In the books which I gave links and even with a limited preview anybody is capable to see all the arguments. There in those books is possible to find discussion about 'mlk' offerings with 'mlk' not being some god never and nowhere attested, but rather a term which has a cognate in Phoenician and which has a meaning of sacrifice directly related to a cult in which children were burned as sacrifices to Baal Hammon and Tanit.

The content of the Hebrew Bible at the end of Iron Age certainly was influenced by the events happening in the political arena:
The Israelite elite, represented at the end of the Iron Age by Josiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, P and H(Dtr) did not arrive at a doctrine of monotheism by rejecting the gods of other peoples. Rather, it arrived at this pass by rejecting the gods that traditional culture, and earlier elite culture, had inherited from the fathers from the remotest bounds of the collective memory. The Deuteronomistic History as much as admits that such gods, and the cultic appurtenances characteristic of their cults, stemmed from the earliest moments of Israel's life in Canaan. And the attribution of Deuteronomy to Moses represents an attempt to manufacture a tradition, of alienation from all gods other than Yhwh, that is older than memory itself - older than the memories of "other gods" who were Israelite gods, who were, in the traditional understanding, a part of Yhwh's heavenly court.
Revolutionaries, like Jeremiah and H(Dtr), lack historical perspective. Whether pretending to be reactionaries, restoring humankind to a primitive Garden of Eden, or whether posing as social engineers, murdering, by the guillotine or by some less violent form of attrition the resistant membership of some former governing class, such world-makers theoretically demonize their opponents' customs, without placing them in a context. This sort of adolescent idealism, unnuanced by an interest in actual observation, invariably breaks down when its adherents achieve power: the result is a terror concentrated on consolidating the power of the Party. Josiah supplied such a terror, an extended attack on the institutions and regalia of traditional culture in Judah and Samaria. Monotheistic purists, in love with the theory of a unified, rather than multifarious, reality, ultimately had to slay the demons of other divinities than Yhwh. Not ironically, to slay those demons, they had to demonize their own history.

Huon

It could also happen that a "first born child" would be replaced by the newborn child of a slave, who was swiftly adopted, and offered in sacrifice by the master of the slave woman (who could also be the father, why not ?).
Eight days are enough for the trick.

spamandham

A 1921 excavation (Otto Eissfeldt) unearthed a cemetary containing thousands of burned bodies of animals and infants. So, I suppose there's more to it than just hearsay.

(according to the wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch)

ph2ter

In the beginning of this thread I speculated that Joseph, the firstborn of Rachel and son of Jacob, impersonates Israel in the imagery in which the whole Israel is the firstborn son of Yhwh. Joseph ended in Egypt, in the land which symbolizes the underworld, the mythical land beyond the sea. His brothers wanted to kill him, but they rather sold him for twenty shekels of silver. This story is probably the source for the betraying of Jesus by Judas, one of the twelve.
Matthew has:
Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me."
The potter's field or Aceldama as Acts has is actually located in Hinnom valley in Jerusalem where Jews sacrificed their children.

Genesis 37.26-28
Judah said to his brothers, "What profit is it for us to kill our brother and cover up his blood? "Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh. And his brothers listened to him. Then some Midianite traders passed by, so they pulled him up and lifted Joseph out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. Thus they brought Joseph into Egypt...So they took Joseph's tunic, and slaughtered a male goat and dipped the tunic in the blood; and they sent the varicolored tunic and brought it to their father and said, "We found this; please examine it to see whether it is your son's tunic or not. Then he examined it and said, "It is my son's tunic. A wild beast has devoured him; Joseph has surely been torn to pieces! So Jacob tore his clothes, and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days.

Joseph is sold for twenty shekels of silver by Judah, one of 12 sons of Jacob-Israel. Afterward they say to Jacob that Joseph's body has been torn to pieces. This is clear allusion to the ritual of sacrificing. The picture has close connections with the ritual sacrifice because the tearing of the body is essential part of it. The replacement in form of a male goat strengthen that.

Matthew references prophet Jeremiah, but Jeremiah nowhere said something like that. But looking at the Jeremiah scriptures, it could be seen that Jeremiah describes an eventual field of slaughter, at the valley of Hinnom, where Israelites have been offering sacrifices to 'false gods'. God then told Jeremiah to break a pot at the field there, to show them what God would do to them for rejecting him (Jer 19.10).

Joseph is there in role of Jesus, and Judas is in role of Judah.

semiopen

I have to read your posts more carefully, they seem very good.

Smith gives Jeremiah credit for being the first prophet to reject human sacrifice to YHWH. He is cryptic on this subject (he's quite conservative) but gives another reference which I think is discussed in the link below.

This link has what looks like a good discussion of child sacrifice (I wanted to look at this more carefully also):

http://www.freethought-forum.com/for...ad.php?t=19915

In you first post you mentioned a relationship of circumcission to child sacrifice. Personally, I think this is questionable, but it was only made in passing.