ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) (11/09/85)
Wayne Throop writes: >I have two questions about the proposition that human sacrifice in >ancient times implies "cosmic catastrophe". >1) Why is "human sacrifice" (in several forms, but primarily > infanticide as a simple form of retroactive birth control) still > common today? I will give you several reasons for not regarding sacrifice in ancient Palestine as a form of birth control; pick the one you like: a. Birth control was unnecessary in those days and times; constant warfare and the constant threat of cosmic violence sufficed to keep human populations well within check. Consider Isaiah 1:9: "Except that the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant (of people), we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gommorrah." Now, to me at least, that just doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd expect to hear from someone who lived in a country where over- population was a problem. b. The child sacraficed in ancient Palestine was invariably the first- born, not the sixth or seventh kid. This would never be taken lightly, because either 1. the parents had no other children, or 2. they were sacraficing an older child who presumably would put up more of a fuss about the preceedings than an infant. c. Kings can afford lots of children. Yet, in the OT, you continuously see things like II Kings 16:3: "But he (Ahaz) walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen....." Want to know a SURE-FIRE way to get your wife or your girl friend pissed- off, folks? I mean REALLY pissed-off; not the kind of thing she'd forgive you for three days or a week later? Try sacrificing her first child to some essentially made-up god of the sort described by Mircea Eliade. In particular, given all the intrigue which goes on in harems under ordinary circumstances, kings didn't need THAT kind of trouble. Better yet, try sacrificing her first child to a tiny point of light in the heavens which most people could not even find. Louis Ginzberg's "Legends of the Jews", Vol V p 135 gives the Hebrew word for the planet Saturn as "Kewan": "...Saturn represents the star of evil, which brings misfortune to Israel" The New International Bible correctly gives the equation of Moloch with "Kaiwan", Amos 5:26-27. And so, in apparent disregard of all worldly dangers closer at hand, forrest fires, floods, volcanos, plagues, human enemies etc., the Hebrews were sacrificing their children to the planet Saturn as if that tiny point of light were the single thing most to be feared in all of existence. I repeat, Mircea Eliade has no explanation for such a thing, and anyone who thinks he does is dreaming. >The first question is the obvious outcome of the observation that Ted's >"universal law" of parental love is broken daily, in many animal >species, and in the among humans as well. Was this "universal law" >more universal in the past than we observe it now, and if so, why? A good point, Wayne. I guess I am trying to make the point that the law was BROKEN universally and generally during the thousand year period between Exodus and the time of the prophets, and that this requires some better explanation than Eliade, Campbell, or any of our so-called experts on mythology have ever tried to provide. I believe you will find only one instance in history books of WIDE-SPREAD and general human sacrifice within the last 1000 years or so, and that one bears a special explanation; the Aztecs maintained a permanent state of war with several tribes, any of which they (the Aztecs) could have exterminated at any time they so desired. There appears to have been a total lack of sources of protein in the region, other than beans and human flesh; the Aztecs essentially used those other tribes as a continuous source of captives, hence also of sacrificial victims and food. That is, however, a very far cry from what was going on in Palestine from 1500 BC to 700 BC or so. In the later case, the sacrifice of one's own children seems to have been wide-spread and general. >2) Why was human sacrifice the response to cosmic catastrophe? >The second question is the obvious outcome of the assumption that these >human sacrifices would have had *no* *effect* *whatever* on the cosmic >events they were purported to influence. What maintained the >co-religionist's sacrificial fervor when the sacrifices proved >fruitless? Similarly, what process selected for these practices in the >first place? >Note that I'm *not* claiming that humans don't do things that are >fairly thoroughly demonstrated to have no benefit... most papers have >horiscopes after all. I'm just wondering what is the connection between >cosmic catastrophe and human sacrifice such that the former leads to the >latter, rather than, say, fervent prayer (which, come to think of it, >might even be more effective than sacrifice). >It seems to me, in light of these problems, that the proposition just >doesn't make much sense. At the time of the Jewish prophets, Saturn was indeed only a tiny point of light in the night sky; the religion of Moloch (Saturn) with it's constant demand for human sacrifice was in the last stages of dying out, and the solar system itself was in the last stages of stabilizing and becoming orderly. The history of these times may be read in Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision"; I have nothing to add to that story here. Nonetheless, we ourselves have good accounts of events 2000 years prior to our own times i.e. the times of Ceasar, and the Hebrews who lived between the times of Exodus and of the prophets had good accounts of a time 2000 years prior to their own, during which Saturn had been very far from a tiny point of light in the heavens. The ancients had seen Saturn up close, with no need for telescopes; very ancient writings, which were mostly picture writing, are filled with literal pictures of Saturn, with its ring system, as voluminously described in David Talbott's "The Saturn Myth", Doubleday 1980. In fact, regardless of which antique nation's mythology you study, if you study diligently and dig hard, you will find that all trails inevitably lead back to the planet Saturn. You will also find that the oldest myths invariably describe pageants witnessed by early man in the heavens, and that ancient religious rites were closely related to these pageants and spectacles, most often by imitation. Dwardu Cardona and a number of other authors have described some of these rituals in great detail in numerous articles in the Kronos Journal. The ancients believed that Kronos had killed and/or eaten his own children, and Cardona and others interpret this as meaning that the planet Saturn had absorbed a number of smaller planetary bodies blasted off of one of the other large planets, all of this having been visible to our ancestors. There are many sources for this in mythology; Cardona cites the following: 1. Hesiod (in "Theogeny"): "As each child issued from his consort's holy womb.... each one was seized by mighty Kronos and gulped down... he never dropped his gaurd, but lay in wait, and swallowed down his children. 2. Philo Byblius (Eusebius Pamphili, Evangelicae Praeparitionis): ".... Kronos, having a son Sadidus, dispatched him with his own sword, because he regarded him with suspicion, and deprived him of life, thus becoming the murderer of his son. In like manner, he cut off the head of a daughter of his own, so that all the gods (planets) were dismayed at the disposition of Kronos." 3. F.W. Albright ("Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan", N.Y. 1968): "Among classical authors who have transmitted details about the burning of children as sacrifices to Kronos (Saturnus) are especially Diodorus Siculus, and Tertullian...." Ever wonder about the ancient custom of circumcision? Cardona claims the ancients saw this one in the sky too: Eusebius Pamphili again: "...on the occurrence of a pestilence and mortality Kronos offers his ownly begotton son as a whole burnt-offering to his father Uranus, and circumcises himself, compelling his allies also to do the same." Seeing this once, I wouldn't believe it myself. However, I have seen this one once before, in a source which even Cardona seems unaware of: E.A. Wallis Budge "The Egyptian Book of the Dead", Dover Publications 1967, pages 35 - 36: ".... What then is it? The drops of blood it is which come forth from the phallus of Ra (Saturn) after he set out to perform the mutilation upon himself......" Thus, reading these tales as well as a great many others, it appears that inhabitants of the ARCHAIC world (the world prior to and shortly after the flood) observed a radically different sky than the one we observe, and that the religions and customs which arose due to these circumstances lingered long after the conditions which engendered them had vanished. Human sacrifice was such a tradition.