bd-from-kg

davidH:

Your exegetical skills seem to need a bit of sharpening.

1. On 2 Samuel 21:

Here we have the sad story of the seven descendants of Saul.

2 Samuel 21: 1-2:

You characterize this by saying:

Now one would have thought that God would be perfectly capable of “doing justice” without any help from David or anyone else. In fact, the perpetrators of this injustice are already in God’s hands, so they are presumably already receiving His justice. But is this good enough for God? Oh, no. Some innocents have to suffer as well. This is always the manner of God’s justice in the Bible. So first God inflicts a three-year famine on the Israelites, no doubt killing many of the weak, the sick, and the infirm, as well as any number of innocent children.

But this still isn’t enough to satisfy God’s thirst for “justice”. No, seven more people must be killed in an especially grisly manner, and their bodies must be left to rot on a hillside until nothing is left but the bones. (This was considered to be an especially horrible, ignominious fate at the time; in fact, that was the point; it’s why the Gideonites demanded that they must die in this fashion.) And what was the crime of these unfortunate seven? Why, nothing at all. It’s true that they were descendants of Saul, but this makes them guilty of what exactly? And many other descendants of Saul were spared. The plain fact is that they were not being punished but were simply sacrificial victims.

It is simply astonishing that you could describe God’s demand that such gruesome deaths be meted out to seven innocent people as “reminding David that justice had to be done”. Perhaps you have been immersed so long in the Old Testament that you have forgotten completely what “justice” means.

Well, let’s see. Their lives were sacrificed to appease God’s wrath so that he would stop afflicting them with famine. (Precisely the sort of thing that humans have been sacrificed to gods for throughout history.) The Bible says so. But it doesn’t say that these men were sacrificed to the Lord? Perhaps you need to take a remedial reading course.

What it doesn’t say is that they were burnt offerings. So if you count only those who are made burnt offerings as “human sacrifices”, you’re right. Of course, by this criterion the Mayans did not practice “human sacrifice” either.

By the way, the sacrifice worked. Thus, in 2 Sam 21:14 we find:

But not until, in addition to sacrificing the seven descendants of Saul, David had moved the bones of Saul himself and his son Jonathan from where they had lain in peace for years to a new location. The significance of this escapes me, but apparently it was all part of the deal. If the bones had not been moved, it appears that the famine would not have been lifted, and the sacrifice of the seven would have been in vain. Go figure.

2. On Numbers 31:

Here we have the even sadder story of the savage slaughter of the Midianites.

Now the first thing to notice about war against the Midianites is that it was a war of vengeance:

Num 31:1-2 :

It’s not made clear here exactly what the crime was for which vengeance was called for, but it presumably has to do with the events described in Numbers 25, which is alluded to in Num 31:16 [Moses is speaking]:

The plague in question killed 24,000 Israelites, so the Lord must certainly have been mightily displeased. To get an idea just how displeased He must have been, consider that after the Israelites killed every male, including the infants, and every woman who was not a virgin, 32,000 Midianite virgins remained. So the number killed must have exceeded 100,000.

In the context of this genocidal massacre, it seems downright surreal to quibble over such a trivial detail as the fate of the relatively few who were allowed to live. But such is the Christian mindset that this is apparently regarded as a significant question, so let’s consider it.

The crucial datum here is that those who were spared were virgins. Whatever was done to them must be presumed to have been related in some fashion to this fact; otherwise there is no way to account for the fact that all nonvirgins were killed on the spot.

So what does the Bible say on this point? Well, here are the relevant excerpts from Num 31:25-50:

Now let us reason together.

(1) The virgins were part of the “spoils” of war, to be divvied up among the fighting men and the other Israelites. And why were virgins considered “spoils”? What do you suppose the soldiers were likely to do with these “spoils”? You figure it out.

Now suppose that a soldier who was given one of these virgins as part of the “spoils of war” got it into his head somehow (Heaven knows how) that he would like to “know her by lying with her” (as the KJV likes to put it), and that the virgin refused. What do you suppose would happen to her? Do you suppose the soldier would say, “Oh, sorry. My mistake. Pretend I never said anything about it, will you?” I don’t think so. Remember, these guys had just slit the throats of tens of thousands of people for the crime of being Midianites. They had just run their swords through thousands of infants still suckling from their mothers’ breasts, and then run their swords through the mothers as well. It seems doubtful that a prim refusal to cooperate on the part of their virgin Midianite captives would have taken in a spirit of tender respect for their human rights. And even if they might have reacted in this way, what Midianite virgin in her right mind, who had just watched her father, mother, brothers, and older sisters being slaughtered by these very people, would have thought of risking her life by refusing her captor?

You might not call the result “rape”, but that’s what any civilized person would call it. To describe this as “marriage” is downright depraved. Have you any remnant of human feeling left in you, or has too much acquaintance with the Old Testament drained you of it entirely?

(2) Now what about the 32 virgins who were delivered up to Eleazar the priest as a “heave-offering” to the Lord (as it’s put more clearly in many translations)?

One hint is given by the fact they were not the only heave-offerings. This category included 675 sheep, 72 cattle, and 61 donkeys. Since all of these were delivered directly to the head priest, we can form a reasonable guess as to what their fate was to be, and there is no reason whatever to suppose that the fate of the 32 virgins also delivered to the head priest as heave offerings was any different. Do you suppose the sheep, cattle and donkeys were employed by Eleazar as “cooks”?

A second hint is provided by the fact that they were delivered, not to the “priests”, but to the head priest. The priests as a whole received far more of the captive virgins: one out of 50 of 16,000, which comes to 320. These were not designated as “heave offerings”. Presumably their fate was somewhat different. Perhaps only virgins were deemed fit to serve as cooks or servants to priests. (Although this seems highly unlikely. If “fitness” or “worthiness” were the criterion, women from a tribe whose women had been “the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD” would hardly have been considered.) But in any case, if the 32 virgins delivered to Eleazar as “heave offerings” were to be employed in the same way, why was any distinction made between them and the other 320? And why were they (unlike the others) delivered to Eleazar himself? Surely he had no need for 32 personal servants in addition to those he already had?

Also, it’s worth noting that anything offered to the Lord as a sacrifice had to be pure and undefiled. Virgins would fill the bill perfectly.

3. On Judges 11

The story here is straightforward enough. Here is Judges 11:30-32

What can we make of this? Well, first off, the implication is obviously that the Lord delivered the Ammonites into his hands because of his vow. Otherwise Jephthah could only be regarded as a tragic figure or a villain. But in fact he is referred to in the New Testament as one of the heroes of Scripture who accomplished great things through faith. Here is Hebrews 11:32-33 :

Second, the Lord must certainly have been aware of “what” would be the first thing to come out of the door of Jephthah’s house when he returned. And by fulfilling His end of the bargain He had to understand that he was obligating Jephthah to keep his end. A deal’s a deal.

Third, Jephthah himself must surely have realized that the first thing to come out the door of his house when he returned was very likely to be a human being. What else would it have been? The Israelites did not keep house pets. It was just bad luck that it was his daughter, but he knew from the get-go that he would probably be sacrificing a fellow human to God in return for victory.

(By the way, there is no indication whatever in the text that Jephthah did not expect to prevail, much less that he “thought he could never win”.)

But alas, his daughter was the first out the door to greet him:

Judges 11:34

So now Jephthah, being an honorable, God-fearing man, felt that he had to make good on his vow.

Now let’s imagine that human sacrifice was not an accepted practice among the Israelites at that time. We are supposed to believe that Jephthah was completely unaware of this. But how could this be? The Israelites set great store by the law. A great deal of verbiage in Leviticus is devoted to the subject of burnt offerings. All practicing Jews were expected to offer appropriate sacrifices on numerous occasions. Who could have been so obtuse as to have never picked up on the existence of a taboo on offering humans as sacrifices? Also, months passed between his making it known that he was going to sacrifice his daughter and his actually doing so. One would expect that some of the neighbors would have gotten wind of his plans and mentioned to him that this was a major no-no, vow or no vow. But apparently not. OK, so finally the appointed day comes. Jephthah presents his daughter at the tabernacle as an offering unto the Lord. Are the priests aghast? Do they say “How can you even think of such a thing?” Did one of them rend his garment upon hearing such blasphemy? No. What did they do? They prepared her, and set her on fire right there in the Lord’s house, knowing that doing so was an abomination unto the Lord!

I don’t think so. It’s impossible to make any sense of this story unless human sacrifice was an accepted practice among the Israelites at the time.

[ February 06, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Mojaz

What a complete fabrication we see above!

I'm familiar with the passages in Judges, including Judges 11:30-11:40, and nowhere is the above mentioned!

The aforementioned story in the book of Judges clearly indicates that Jephtah was acting *alone* at that point (not according to the will of God or the Israelites). To spew anything to the contrary or to recklessly expand with a series of lies as seen in the post above.

Moreover, the verse which follows states...

And it was a custom in Israel,
11:40 That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

*Lament* is not a word that would be used in the Bible to describe the ultimate outcome of an act that was meant to honor God, so obviously it was not a righteous act, but a horrible and wrongful act.

Humankind has always had this thing called *free will* and at times humankind, even the believers in the one true God, have been wrongfully influenced by pagan rituals and atheistic modes of behavior. Such does not please God.

Furthermore, the verse which concludes the entire book of Judges states...

21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

That about sums it all up.

[ February 06, 2002: Message edited by: Mojaz ]</p>

Jack the Bodiless

Jephtah made a deal with God, and God obliged. According to the Bible, Jephtah wasn't acting alone: GOD was in on the deal.
So what? Again, according to the Old Testament, God is not a nice person. God is awesome, God is terrifying, God is to be feared and obeyed.

And we already know that the Hebrews performed human sacrifices, and also that they regularly killed innocents for the crimes of others (a central doctrine of Christianity also). There is nothing inconsistent about lamenting the death of Jephtah's daughter and worshipping (out of fear) the God responsible. Inconsistencies arise only if you choose to adopt the absurd doctrine that the Biblical God is "just" or "benevolent".

RyanS2

An absurd proposition if I ever heard one. The women in Ezekiel lamented, (actually wept) for Tammuz, the yearly sacrificed God, but they were still offering sacrifices in his name. All of the sacrificial religions lamented for their fallen God, or sacrificial offering that they thought was God. Part of the yearly festival is to lament for the fallen God, offer a sacrifice representing the God, (originally humans, but then they became animals), then when the God comes through, (the winter solstice passes), you rejoice and sing praises to the God. Things like the sacrificial masks, the sacrificial altar's, the manner in which the sacrifice was done, etc. may have shown they had high respect for the person being sacrificed, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Let's look at a more modern example, Dionysus.

(Taken from Walter Burkert, "Ancient Mystery Cults")

In ancient times, tragoidia or tragedy, was explained as a song, for which the prize was a goat, or a goat sacrifice. These need not be two separate explanations, because it was customary for someone who had won an animal prize in a song-contest to sacrifice that animal.

This can be seen in another song contest that took place in the same Dionysian festival in which a tragedy was performed. Choruses sang and danced the dithyramb, a song in honor of Dionysus, and the winning poet was awarded a bull, an animal associated with Dionysus. The poet then sacrificed the bull to the god.

In the rural Dionysian festivals, the he-goats that had passed their prime were sacrificed. Because of the instinctual human respect for life, the sacrifice is viewed as a deed that is both necessary and awful; therefore, sacrificers wear masks to conceal identity (just like an executioner in days gone by). The sacrificers also give voice to their guilt in a song of lamentation for the goat. Thus Burkert accounts for some of the characteristic elements of tragedy: violent bloodshed, guilt, concealed identity (by masks), and song.

Again, the sacrificers may lament and even write poems dedicated to the sacrifice, but saying that automatically equates it with not being for a God is nonsense.

bd-from-kg

Mojaz:

You say:

When the Bible mentions a wedding, it often fails to mention that a priest was present to perform the ceremony. Nevertheless, we may safely infer that a priest was present and performed the ceremony, because this was necessary in order for the event to constitute a wedding. Similarly, the presence of a priest or priests, and their participation in the prescribed way, was necessary in order for an event to constitute a sacrifice to the Lord.

One can get a pretty clear idea of what constituted a sacrifice to the Lord for the ancient Hebrews by reading Leviticus, Chapters 1 through 7. (I recommend doing so when one has not eaten recently and does not intend to eat soon. God’s laws can be pretty nauseating.) It becomes very clear that all such sacrifices must be performed by bringing the offering to the Tent of the Meeting, where the priests prepare it in the prescribed manner (for example, by smearing blood all over the altar) and then burn it (or at least the prescribed parts of it).
Here are a couple of mercifully short excerpts that relate pretty directly to the Jephthah incident:

[Note in passing: I never ceases to amaze me that even the most robust faith can survive even a moderately intimate acquaintance with the Bible. According to Christianity, God produced a single book to elevate, uplift, and inspire us through the knowledge of His love, wisdom, and understanding; to tell us everything needful about His nature and about how we should live: and this is that book! Even a casual perusal of Leviticus 1-7 (or any number of other passages from the OT) should be enough to allow anyone who is not quite as primitive and barbaric as the ancient Hebrews to see just how idiotic, and indeed laughable, this notion is. But I digress.]

The most telling part of all this is that the Bible clearly specifies that the priests are to perform the actual ritual, and are allotted a portion of each offering. Thus: no priests, no sacrifice. Jephthah might have killed his daughter, spread her blood around in the prescribed manner, and set her body on fire, producing a sweet savour pleasing to the Lord, but if it wasn’t done at the holy place, by priests, and if they didn’t get their fair share, it was not a sacrifice to the Lord according to the Laws that He laid down to Moses at Sinai. And Jephthah had to know this, since (as Lev. 1-7 make quite clear) as a practicing Jew he would have been offering sacrifices to the Lord on numerous occasions every year.

Jack the Bodiless

Yes, the priesthood had an absolute monopoly on religious rituals. Even the king could not "do his own thing":

NOGO

It was suggested that God tested Abraham's faith by asking him to sacrifice his son.

Does God need to test? A test is something we humans do in order to verify something that we are ignorant about. Can God test?

And what a test. If God hates human sacrifices so much why even pretend to ask for such a horrible thing?

And if God hates human sacrifices so much then why is the centre piece of God's plan for humanity a sacrificed human ie Jesus? Hebrew 9 states that without blood there can be no forgiveness of sin. So in order to get God's forgiveness a human sacrifice was in order. Animal sacrifice as in the OT would not do.

About the daughter which was sacrificed so as not to break a promised made to Yahweh. If this sacrifice is considered an abomination (and murder) by Yahweh and his priests then why was her father not punished for it and the Bible does not speak out against the act. Lament, by the way, does not imply in any way that the act was inapropriate.

Not quite alone. He told his daughter of what awaited her. She was quite easy going about it.
She did not say "but dad this is an abomination to Yahweh". On the contrary she understood that a promise to Yahweh could not be broken and this did not offset the "abomination". Worse than that she did not even mention that this may displease Yahweh. This clearly shows that neither his daughter's life nor Yahweh's displeasure at human sacrifices stood very high compared to the man's given word. But then again it was only a woman.

[ February 18, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]</p>

RyanS2

There's something even worse than that. You see, the Bible talks about "Molech", the Canaanite God. Only problem is, there is no God known as "Molech" in Canaanite mythology. Here's a full commentary on it:

We know that YHVH had humans sacrificed to him, but who's this Molech fellow? There's mounting evidence that Molech was not a God or a demon, simply put, Molech was simply the name for child sacrifices dedicated to Yahweh. How do we know this? We know this from Phoenician settlements in current day Sicily and Northern Africa. There, we find Tophets, the same ones found outside of Jerusalem. The Phoenicians were a close relative of the Hebrews, as their language and culture evolved from them. We know them as the Canaanites. The fire sacrifices of the Jerusalem Tophet, like their language, pottery, and history, comes from the Canaanites.

If we follow the line of these Tophets, we eventually make our way to Carthage, near the city of Tunis, in North Africa. We find here the relic of the Carthaginian Tophet, which was one of the most monstrous places of child sacrifice ever. The Greeks and Romans both outgrew human sacrifice, and even when they performed it, it was done judiciously. Here, we find stick-figure representations of Baal Hammon and Tanit-Ashtarte. Queen Dido of Tyre brought these familiar gods from the Phoenician homeland, much of which is now a part of Israel, when she founded Carthage about 800 BCE.

(The term "Baal" {Beel, Bel} is not a proper name, but a title. It simply means "Lord". To know the proper name of a god was to possess great power, and so the proper name was often kept secret from anyone who was not a member of the priesthood. Many local and regional gods were therefore referred to as "Baal", as a means of bridging the dialectual gap. The god of the Semitic nomad tribe of Zebulon was the "Fly" or beel-Zebul, Lord of Zebulon, often mistakenly called Beelzebub.)

A UNESCO archaeological team uncovered hundreds of urns filled with the cremated bones of children and sacrificed animals, often mixed with beads and good-luck amulets. Many of these jars were buried under the pointed limestone stelae, with their dedications to Tanit and Baal-Hammon. One stela records a priest in long, flowing robes, holding a child in the act of sacrifice.

The Carthaginian Tophet has many layers, and the bottom one dates back to 750 BCE. At the earliest period, animal sacrifice was more frequent, though it never made up for more than 1/3 of the ritualistic killings. The most primitive burial urns and stelae show wider variety in color and design. What happened here was simliar to what happened with feudal samurai weaponry. As the battles started increasing in Japan, swords went from being beautifully crafted and well-made, to being very nondescript and uniform in appearance. In Carthage, once human sacrifices went up, along with the population, the burial urns became a uniform orange color, and the stelae were also standardized. The grand total is twenty thousand plus urns.

Archaeologists Lawrence Stager and Samuel Wolff concluded that the Carthaginian Tophet is "the largest cemetery of sacrificed humans ever discovered."

Despite all the child sacrifices attested to at Carthage, in conclusion with physical evidence, there are some scholars who simply will not admited to child sacrifice ever having occured here. The question would then arise, "Why would scholars shun this find?" Duncan Scott Craig makes the following remarks:

When I was in Yucatan last year, I visited many Cenotes, or wells of sacrifice. Despite evidence to the contrary, every Mayan guide insisted that child sacrifice wasn't practiced. There are necropolis' from Pheonician and Canaanite settlements with ritually sacrificed infants, stored in large urns. Some cemeteries reflect use for as long as twenty two generations. Entombments of live human victims was practiced in China until the Ming, I suppose every culture has 'skeletons in their closet' that members of the society deny.

That is exactly the case here. The strong connection between the Jerusalem Tophet and the Carthaginian Tophet is what makes these scholars balk here. The epigraphic evidence from Carthage sacrifices are called "Mulk offerings". We can't find a single God named Molech at any place in Carthage or any other Phoenician settlement!! What this implies is what we normally dialectually supply to the Hebrew consonants mlk, for a human sacrifice, isn't a deity named Moloch, it means "human sacrifice", or "mulk offerings". This is important also because Hebrew language not only requires one to supply vowels, based upon sentence, but also renders words on context.

Rev. Robert Palmer states that:

One of the last items faced concerning the Scriptures is of more recent origin and may account for the vast majority of the linguistic problems that occur. I refer to the reworking of the Hebrew language by the Masorites and Tiberians, between the 6th to 12th centuries C.E. The Masorites were responsible for many of the alterations in the vowels and definitions of the Hebrew words. In that the language had not been a spoken one for at least a hundred years before their endeavor, and not until 1948 was it brought back to life again after not being spoken for nearly 1600 years. This is one reason why meanings of a number of words are unknown thus making it difficult for the modern scholar to rely solely on the Hebrew version as the last authority. This is why the tablets from Ebla are still important as the language is akin to the Hebrew and can give us a clearer understanding of 'uncertain' words.

Understanding this translation, it means similar rituals of child sacrifice took place as part of orthodox Yahwism, perhaps on a large scale.

Isaiah 30:29

"Such shall be your song, as on a night a feast is celebrated with gladness of heart, as when one marches in procession with the flute, to enter the mountain of Yahweh, to the Rock of Israel. Yahweh has made heard the crash of His voice, the down -- sweep of His arm he has displayed, with hot wrath and flame of consuming fire, cloudburst and flood and hailstones. Yes! At the voice of Yahweh Assyria will cower -- with His staff He will beat him. Every passage of the rod of His punishment which Yahweh will lay upon him will be to the sound of timbrels and lyres; with battles of offerings He will fight against him. For his Topheth has long been prepared, He himself is installed as a victim [molek]. Yahweh has made its fire -- pit deep and wide, with fire and wood in abundance. The breath of Yahweh, like aorrent of sulphur, sets it ablaze!"

(This version of Isaiah is from Dr. Paul Mosca's translation, from "Child Sacrifice in Israelite and Canaanite Religion: From Molk to Moloch").

We find here something interesting, in that Isaiah's song is exactly corresponding with the ritualistic content of a human sacrifice, and not only this, but YHVH was exalted in the torture and immolation of the Assyrian victim. This victim was probably the Assyrian king, Sennacherib. Mosca posits that Isaiah here was creating a deliberate pun, using the same word to mean two things, the victim (molek) is the Assyrian king (melek). The Jews had some interesting ideas on word play. According to "The Code Book", by Simon Singh, p.26, he refers to Atbash, a traditional form of Hebrew substitution cipher, which replaces each letter with the letter equidistant from the end of the alphabet. The example given is 'Sheshach' in Jeremiah, which is code for 'Babel'.

Even if this interesting perspective on terminology is rejected, Isaiah's poem still clearly relates to a ritual killing. According to Mosca's analysis of Isaiah's poem, "we begin with the fire -- the lightning -- of Yahweh's storm theophany and end with the fire of ritual sacrifice." All of the mountain god's weather powers -- over lightning, thunder, hail, rain, and wind -- become weapons by which Yahweh conquers Sennacherib and then sacrifices him. Thus, the roles of storm god, warrior, and sacrificer converge in this frightening portrait of Yahweh, just as they do in the mythologies of the Andean mountain gods. (A relationship to YHVH and Baal).

The argument can then be made that this passage is entirely allegorical, that this is just a war song. This would make a good argument, but there's flaws. This sacrifice details exactly the ones which are performed by the Canaanites, it is an allegory the Assyrians would have taken literally. Isaiah's Tophet sacrifice takes place at night, around a deep fire, a pit, to the sound of music, just as the Phoenician rites did. The main difference between the Tophet ritual extolled by Isaiah and the human sacrifices practiced by the Phoenicians is that Isaiah's victim is offered to Yahweh, whereas the Phoenician victims are given to Tanit and Baal. Could this be proof of a Baal/YHVH connection? More on that in the next chapter.

What is more significant here is that Isaiah has nothing critical to say to Kings Ahaz or Manasseh, both of whom sacrificed their children at the Jerusalem Tophet. Paul Mosca concludes from his study of Isaiah 30:27 - 33 that

"the rite of the Jerusalem Tophet -- though in hindsight viewed first as unorthodox (Deuteronomist) and finally as idolatrous (Jeremiah and Ezekiel) -- was, in fact, part of the official Yahwistic cultus. Isaiah himself seems to have had no particular objection to Yahwistic 'passing into the fire.'"

We find here that Isaiah's view of the Tophet, and the sacrifices, were in complete contrast to later authors. We find in Chronicles and Kings that Ahaz was following "the abominable practice of the nations." The difference between Isaiah and Jeremiah is even greater. In Isaiah, he praises the Tophet as Yahweh's liberating weapon against the Assyrians. Jeremiah, however, blames the Tophet for the fall of Jerusalem, which he ascribes to Yahweh's anger at idolatrous human sacrifice. Between the time of Isaiah's ministry in the early seventh century BCE, and Jeremiah's preaching in the early sixth century BCE, Jewish thinkers radically redefined Yahwism and suppressed human sacrifice.

At this point and time, YHVH was mainly worshipped by shaman, prophets who were on "ever high hill". King Josaih of Judah destroyed all of the hill, and the shrines on top of it. He brought in all the priests from the cities and completely demolished all of the shrines, from Geba to Beersheba. He desecrated Topheth so that no one might make his son or daughter pass through the fire in honor of molech. (From 2 Kings 23: 8-10). Josaih razed the hill, the shrine at Bethel erected by Abraham, and went throughout the land of Samaria to slaughter, "on all the altars all the priests of the hill shrines." (2 Kings 23:20)

This caused a problem, as this was an age old custom. An earlier king named Hezekiah had attempted to suppress some of the hill-shrines, but he was accused of destroying YHVH's legitimate places of worship. (The ironic thing here is that the Assyrian King Sennacherib had told this same thing to Hezekiah, {Isaiah 36:7}). Hezekiah's grandson, King Josaih, cleverly rewrote history to make Moses the author of his sweeping reforms, whose effects were to fill the temple's coffers with contributions from all over Judah at the expense of the once independent local shamans. Obviously, the High Priest was one of the principal beneficiaries of this centralization, (thus the reason the above examples were given of similar instances taking place). It was the High Priest Hilkiah (father of the prophet Jeremiah) himself who, while collecting tribute from all over Judah and Israel," discovered the book of the law of the Lord which had been given through Moses" (2 Chronicles 34:14). This discovery was to revolutionize the rules of Hebrew worship.

This new book of Moses was completely unheard of prior to this. Thus, Josaih had to consult a prophetess about its authenticity. She wisely confirmed the divine origin of the newly discovered book. Not surprisingly, the High Priest's book of Mosaic law (perhaps Deuteronomy) supported Josiah's reforms to the letter. One of the most obvious anachronisms of the new rules was that all of the hill-shrines were to be destroyed outside of Jerusalem. Moses built these altars, and had given instructions ot Joshua to build more of them. We further find that in these new teachings of Moses, he repeatedly attacks human sacrifice, though we find in the story of Moses, he originally had a form of sacrifice done to his son.

Exodus: 4:24 - 26:

And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him.
Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.

So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.
As mentioned above, one form of human sacrifice was mutilation of the sexual organs. The origin of this is because the "prepuce", (foreskin), is one of the most sensitive areas of the male penis. The sacrifice was for a God who didn't want males having lots of sex. It's no wonder that YHVH was so mad at Moses for not circumcizing his son.

One of the most transparent anachronisms of the new rules was the requirement that all hill-shrines be destroyed outside of Jerusalem. Moses built such altars himself, and gave instructions to Joshua to build more of them. Another anomaly in these new teachings is Moses' repeated attacks on human sacrifice, although, as we've seen, Moses attempted to sacrifice his own son, sacrificed a group of leaders to avert an epidemic,

NU 25:4 "... take all the chiefs of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the Sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel."

sacrificed 32 virgins in a heave offering given to the high priest, (read what the significance of the high priest was above), in Numbers 31:40-41, and once offered to sacrifice himself, (Exodus 32:30-32). By the new " book of Moses," the old Moses was a heretic!

Commenting on the origins of the druidistic ritual, Barbara Walker states on Abraham that:

"This name meaning 'Father Brahm' seems to have been a Semitic version of India's patriarchal god Brahma; he was also the Islamic Abrama, founder of Mecca. But Islamic legends say Abraham was a late intruder into the shrine of the Kaaba. He bought it from priestesses of its original Goddess. Sarah, 'the Queen' was one of the Goddess's titles, which became a name of Abraham's biblical 'wife.' Old Testament writers pretended Sarah's alliances with Egyptian princes were only love-affairs arranged by Abraham for his own profit - which unfortunately presented him as a pimp (Genesis 12:16) as well as a would-be murderer of his son (Genesis 22:10).

In the tale of Isaac's near-killing, Abraham assumed the role of sacrificial priest in the druidic style, to wash Jehovah's sacred trees with the Blood of the Son: an ancient custom, of which the sacrifice of Jesus was only a late variant. Jehovah first appeared to Abraham at the sacred oak of Shechem, where Abraham built his altar. Later Abraham build an altar to the oak god of Mamre at Hebron. Even in the 4th century A.D., Constantine said Abraham's home at the Oak of Mamre was still a shrine: 'It is reported that most damnable idols are set up beside it, and that an altar stands hard by, and that unclean sacrifices are constantly offered.'"