[net.origins] Human Sacrifice III

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.