Christianity is a grotesque blight!

[Leumas]

Why should atheists, sorry, ATHEISTS, care one way or the other what’s written in any religious book?

For the same reason many keep defending it and trying to stop any effective polemics against it by any possible methods.

However... how did an atheist become a RATIONAL atheist without knowing what is written in at the very least the religious books of their "culture"... if not rationally all the other cultures too???

 

[Oystein]

Great.... wonderful....

Now... that you have done that... can you as an Atheist see the problems with your inputs???

In other words as a fellow atheist, can you anticipate my rebuttal to your inputs???
...

You might, with precisely equal justification and reason, ask me if I can see any "problems" as a person that's exactly 6 feet tall or as a part-time clown or as someone who prefers Darjeeling tea over Assam or as someone whose nickname used to be popular for boys in Western Norway. None of this changes the text that I am explaining to you, nor a straightforward reading of it, nor its internal textual nor external historical and literary context.

 

[junkshop]

Great.... wonderful....

Now... that you have done that... can you as an Atheist see the problems with your inputs???

In other words as a fellow atheist, can you anticipate my rebuttal to your inputs???

Or can any of the numerous atheists here see the glaring problems in the inputs hailed as riving my OP???

I will wait 12 hours to see how many atheists will be able to spot the gaping problems in the above inputs failing to rebut either 2 Samuel 21 or Joshua 7.



.

As an atheist I feel no compunction to rebut any part of the bible, no matter how carefully cherry-picked.

It's just a book. Written by unknown people over centuries, and then edited, compiled, recompiled, re-edited, &c. It has no consistent message. It isn't a reliable history. It has no authority, moral or legal.

There is nothing to rebut. It's just a bunch of stories.

That's my view, anyway.

 

[Leumas]

As an Atheist I feel no compunction to rebut any part of the bible, no matter how carefully cherry-picked.

It's just a_{^{(n analgam of)}} book_^(s). Written by _{^{(an array of)}} people _{^{(over centuries, and then edited, compiled, recompiled, re-edited, &c)}}. It has no consistent message. It isn't a reliable history. It has no authority.

There is nothing to rebut. It's just a bunch of stories.

That's my view, anyway.

Junkshop... I did not ask you to rebut the buybull...

I asked you to rebut Oystein's rebuttals of my OP (here and here)....

Can you as an atheist see the glaring errors in his apologetic for 2 Samuel 21 and Joshua 7 not being a clear case of Human Sacrifice given to YHWH at the behest of YHWH due to YHWH causing harm to the people of whom he expected and demanded expiation as human victims and received it and was appeased by it?

 

[bruto]

For the same reason many keep defending it and trying to stop any effective polemics against it by any possible methods.

However... how did an atheist become a RATIONAL atheist without knowing what is written in at the very least the religious books of their "culture"... if not rationally all the other cultures too???

This is, I think, not very relevant to the issues here, but I would suggest that a rational atheist certainly can be an atheist on the grounds of believing that no god exists. This would be true without any regard for what gods are being discussed, and would be true whether or not the gods described in various scriptures are good or bad or something else.

A rational atheist might well take up argument against theists using the frailties and contradictions and bad behavior of the gods they support, and god knows (just kidding) there's enough of that to go around, but this need not be the reason for not believing in them in the first place.

There are many religions and many gods, and while I'm quite willing to believe a person can become a rational atheist through the gateway of understanding the shortfalls of the Biblical God, if one stopped there, the result would be indistinguishable from a search for a better god.

I believe you are making a mistake similar to that of many mystics who tend to try to define the attributes of nothingness. If there is no god, all stories of gods are fiction. We might just as well be debating the motivation of Captain Hook or whether the little match girl should have worn her mittens.

 

[bruto]

Great... so now back to the OP's topic...as a rational atheist who spotted "my mistake"... can you spot the gaping mistakes in the apologetics of Oystein against 2 Samuel 21 and Joshua 7 being an irrefragable proof of YHWH as a human sacrifice commanding and demanding and accepting deity??

No, because I don't consider them "gaping mistakes," nor irrefragable (a word that's quite right but looks wrong, well done!). Besides, what I am considering a mistake is a large, general issue of whether one regards any biblical account of a deity's attributes to be very useful to anyone who does not believe such a deity exists. Arguing about them can be an interesting exercise, but little more, and I think it a mistake to take it all too seriously. It's not much more useful than deciding what unicorns like to eat.

Briefly stipulating, for the sake of argument, that the Bible is a scripture worthy of study for its theological content rather than its cultural.....I do not think the executions in Samuel were sacrifices in the usual sense that the word "sacrifice" is used elsewhere. It's said they pleased God, no surprise since the people who did it wrote the account. Joshua 7 is a little more ambiguous because the victims were burned, but so were their chattels, and there is no mention there of ceremony, the use of an altar, or of God being pleased by anything but the doing of it. In other sacrifices, it is presumed that God is actually interested in the actual stuff of the sacrifice, the meat and the smoke of the thing sacrificed. He wants to snack on your lamb, not the bodies of your foes.

I do not consider this an apologetic for the bad behavior of the Israelites or for the nasty character of their god. Nobody here is saying they did right or did well, nor that God was good and merciful and appropriate. Only that a large part of the mayhem attributed to him is separate from the ritual of sacrifice which went on alongside it.

You seem to consider any disagreement with the detail of your observation to be an apologetic for something or other, but it's not. If someone has been apologizing for the old stinker in the sky, it's not me, and not anyone I've noticed.

The god of the Old Testament is said to like sacrifices, a ceremony of worship in which his followers actually presented their deity with something they valued. Sacrifices were of different sorts with different rules, including what the priests and others could save out and eat, but all were done on an altar according to a set of rules. I don't think the word "sacrifice" is ever used in the case of human killing, except for the near miss of Abraham and Isaac.

The whole argument makes little sense unless one presumes that the writers of the Bible were recounting facts about a god that actually exists, and that thus they missed some hidden truths about their god.

If the original post is that of an atheist aimed at theists, perhaps it makes sense, as a way to say "your god is worse than you thought." And if it's that of a theist, perhaps it makes sense as revealing an unfortunate truth about a god that actually exists. But if it's an atheist addressing other atheists, it makes no sense at all that I can see. It's an argument about the quality of a thing that isn't there.

 

[erwinl]

As an atheist(*), who has never read the bible, or any other religious text, for that matter, I think the OP might be of interest if seen in a historic perspective and a comparison of religious habits over the periods during which the bible was written. Seeing the bible as a window into the culture of that time.

In that case I would even be inclined to read the respective text, which the OP does indeed handedly have given pointers, in where to look in the bible.

But then infantile writings of Buybull (or later Bullybull), do mar the potential merits of the OP and convince me the OP is searching for an elusive person to react, that simply is not present here.

Oh well. Opportunity for some learning lost, I'd say.

(*) I of course do know something about the story of Jesus Christ, but the details I know of that story are coming from the Rock opera 'Jesus Christ Superstar'.

 

[Leumas]

As an atheist(*), who has never read the bible, or any other religious text, for that matter, I think the OP might be of interest if seen in a historic perspective and a comparison of religious habits over the periods during which the bible was written. Seeing the bible as a window into the culture of that time.

In that case I would even be inclined to read the respective text, which the OP does indeed handedly have given pointers, in where to look in the bible.

But then infantile writings of Buybull (or later Bullybull), do mar the potential merits of the OP and convince me the OP is searching for an elusive person to react, that simply is not present here.

Oh well. Opportunity for some learning lost, I'd say.

(*) I of course do know something about the story of Jesus Christ, but the details I know of that story are coming from the Rock opera 'Jesus Christ Superstar'.

So as an atheist you dismiss all that knowledge you gained from the OP just because it said Buybull???

Well... the bible is a book of bull ... which people literally buy as in purchase and buy as in swallow its bull.

So I think the word Buybull is a very extremely apt and perfectly descriptive of what the fairy tales are.... and it is not infantile to call something what it really is.

Do you also take offense if I call the buybull fairy tales too??

Also it is an ad hominem fallacy to reject a text because you do not like what it calls the buybull despite it ... as you say... being correct about the analysis of its bull.... and an opportunity to learn from.

...
But then infantile writings of Buybull (or later Bullybull),

And where did I later use the word "Bullybull"... citation please... I know you will never come up with one.


ETA: You still have 1 hour to attempt ... as an atheist... a rebuttal of Oystein's apologetic for why the OP is not correct about YHWH being a demander and commander and accepter of human sacrifice?

 

[erwinl]

So as an atheist you dismiss all that knowledge you gained from the OP just because it said Buybull???

Well... the bible is a book of bull ... which people literally buy as in purchase and buy as in swallow its bull.

So I think the word Buybull is a very extremely apt and perfectly descriptive of what the fairy tales are.... and it is not infantile to call something what it really is.

Do you also take offense if I call the buybull fairy tales too??

Also it is an ad hominem fallacy to reject a text because you do not like what it calls the buybull despite it ... as you say... being correct about the analysis of its bull.... and an opportunity to learn from.




And where did I later use the word "Bullybull"... citation please... I know you will never come up with one.

ETA: You still have 1 hour to attempt ... as an atheist... to attempt a rebuttal of Oystein's apologetic for why the OP is not correct about YHWH being a demander and commander and accepter of human sacrifice?

You're right. I just checked and it seems I misremembered.
Apologies for that one.

 

[erwinl]

So as an atheist you dismiss all that knowledge you gained from the OP just because it said Buybull???

Well... the bible is a book of bull ... which people literally buy as in purchase and buy as in swallow its bull.

So I think the word Buybull is a very extremely apt and perfectly descriptive of what the fairy tales are.... and it is not infantile to call something what it really is.

Do you also take offense if I call the buybull fairy tales too??

Also it is an ad hominem fallacy to reject a text because you do not like what it calls the buybull despite it ... as you say... being correct about the analysis of its bull.... and an opportunity to learn from.




And where did I later use the word "Bullybull"... citation please... I know you will never come up with one.


ETA: You still have 1 hour to attempt ... as an atheist... a rebuttal of Oystein's apologetic for why the OP is not correct about YHWH being a demander and commander and accepter of human sacrifice?

My misremebrering the Bulleybull aside.

I always want to learn. Learning is fun and healthy for the mind.

Listening to a polemic, which does not invite learning, but seems to simply want to hear a preconceived answer, is not the way to go.

Or as we can say, and I'm paraphrasing Terry Pratchett here, less frothing at the mouth (or brain), and more discourse please.

 

[Leumas]

Exposition of the errors in post #102

There are a few important verses that you are leaving out here, and never mention anywhere else in this present thread

Do you know what the reference "2 Samuel 21" means?

It means the whole chapter of 2 Samuel 21...

Also notice that the OP specifically cites 2 Samuel 21:1-14...

do the verses 3,4,5 & 6 lie within the range 1 to 14???

So your above statement is definitively a gaping error... QED!!!

...

1. In these verses... YHWH COMMANDED and received human sacrifice in order to abate a famine he caused. In the story, David sacrificed 7 grandsons of Saul to YHWH... and then YHWH was pleased and ended the famine he caused.
   
   • 2 Samuel 21:1-14... ...

1. • 
     
     
     

     https://www.bibleserver.com/NIV/2 Samuel21
     
     So, there it is, staring you into the face:
     
     It was NOT the deity that demanded the men to be killed, but mere humans - the leaders of the Gibeonites. The purpose was simple, old-fashioned revenge, to satisfy the Gibeonites.

     
     
     And here is your other error staring you in the face... The "deity" called YHWH in verse 2 Samuel 21:1 caused a famine for three years and when asked why and if he could stop it... YHWH told David that it is because Saul... the GRANDFATHER of the 7 boys who were made a human sacrifice of... apparently did something to some people called the Gibeonites some of whom Saul allegedly killed, despite YHWH having commanded the entire slaughter of all the people in Canaan (Deuteronomy 20:16-18 and Joshua 3:10) at the time and even punishing Saul for leaving some cows alive when it was his time to commit genocide too (1 Samuel 15:1-11) .
     
     And if you read Joshua 9 you might notice that the Gibeonites deceived Joshua and Joshua made them slaves to Israel. And there is no other mention anywhere else of Saul doing anything to them.
     
     • Joshua 9:23-27 Now therefore ye are cursed, and there shall none of you be freed from being slaves, and hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God. And Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation, and for the altar of YHWH, even unto this day, in the place which he should choose.
     So the point now is YHWH caused the famine for three years WAY AFTER Saul has long been dead and gone... and when asked to abate it he refused and told David to go make amends to the Gibeonites who are slaves in Israel (allegedly).
     
     And the slave-Gibeonites want revenge on the Grandchildren of Saul by making a human sacrifice of them to YHWH... and David agrees and gives them 7 out of the 8 and keeps one because he "loved" his father...
     
     So YHWH caused a famine and told David to agree to making a human sacrifice of 7 boys TO YHWH via the slave-Gibeonites.
     
     • 2 Samuel 21:6-7 let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto YHWH in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of YHWH. And the king said: 'I will deliver them. But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of YHWH's oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul.
     
     Notice the "hang them up unto YHWH" little tidbit there.
     
     But notice that David gave them the boys to be slaughtered UNTO YHWH as an expiation to YHWH the one causing the famine because the suffering people and David their king wanted the famine ended.
     
     And the Gibeonites did not just kill them... they made a human sacrifice of them UNTO YHWH atop a holy hill.
     
     And YHWH the one who wreaked the misery and suffering unto the people for 3 years because he was angry that Saul... whom he commanded to do genocide... did obey YHWH's commands for genocide... but evidently did not do it well since some were still left alive...
     
     And all those years later YHWH is indignant on their behalf and causes a famine that starves people and causes suffering and mayhem.... and when asked to stop it... he awaits that the Gibeonites be appeased by giving them 7 boys to be made a human sacrifice to him... and YHWH accepts this human sacrifice by David via the Gibeonites and is appeased and stops the famine.
     
     
     

     The deity merely stood by.

     
     
     Which deity... you mean YHWH... the one who caused the famine... then told David why it is caused and how to appease him to stop it... and David gave the 7 boys to the Gibeonites to make a human sacrifice out of to YHWH... and then YHWH was appeased and stopped the famine.
     
     So YHWH was hardly "standing by" in all of this sordid tale of insanity.
     
     
     

     It appears, from verse 2, that the Israelites had "sworn", i.e. made a promise to the deity, to not kill the Gibeonites, then Saul broke the promise and killed them anyway, which presumably pissed the deity off somewhat, for she seemingly had taken a liking to the Gibeonites.

     
     
     So now this deity is a SHE and you cannot even say its name... HE IS YHWH... ok... the Buybull says his name in all those verses of 2 Samuel 21 numerous times.
     
     Also as I said before ... read Joshua 9 (about the enslaving of Gibeonites)... and then try to show me where else in the Buybull is mentioned this action by Saul alleged by YHWH???
     
     Also do you know that it was YHWH who commanded Saul to extirpate and murder and was angry at him for sparing a few cows from the genocide (1 Samuel 15:11)???
     
     
     

     Obviously, the deity was satisfied with the revenge when and because the Gibeonites were satisfied.

     
     
     Thanks... so YHWH was pleased with the human sacrifice... QED!!!
     
     
     

     It seems to me that the Gibeonites could ave asked for 100 shekels and an annual party with all the beer they could drink in their honor for seven years and be satisfied with that, and then the deity would have been satisfied as well.

     
     
     So why did YHWH not tell David to do that and instead YHWH told David to do whatever the Gibeonites demanded... or why not tell David that the human sacrifice the Gibeonites wanted to do will not be acceptable.
     
     Or even better why didn't YHWH just stop the famine or not start it in the first place???
     
     
     

     Nothing in the story suggests that the deity made the Gibeonites demand revenge killings.

     
     
     Yes YHWH did by causing the famine and the Gibeonites who are slaves living amongst the Israelites were also suffering from the famine too.
     
     And if he did not want the human sacrifice of the 7 boys he could have told David to give them anything else or
     
     wait for it...
     
     Give them their freedom... YHWH forbid.... literally (Leviticus 25:44-46).
     
     
     

     Nothing in the story suggests that the deity enjoyed the revenge killings (it was the Gibeonites idea to expose them to the deity, not hers. Perhaps she found this slightly nauseating, but was too polite to cause a ruckus over it?)

     
     
     Read this post...
     
     But may I remind you again of your own words....
     
     

     Obviously, the deity was satisfied with the revenge when and because the Gibeonites were satisfied.

     
     
     So thanks again... and QED!!!

 

[Leumas]

Exposition of the errors in post #108

This is straightforward: The killings were the penalty for a transgression against a law put down by the deity.
https://www.bibleserver.com/NIV/Joshua7

Punishments by death in the Mitzvot are strictly for the criminal not his daughters or sons or entire family or animals and possessions.

Bibleserver puts a note on the first occurrence of "devoted things" (which Achan had stolen out of pure, selfish greed) in verse 1 that says: "The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them; also in verses 11, 12, 13 and 15."

So, Achan had stolen something from the deity, and that apparently is something that pissed her off royally.

So you are saying YHWH was angry... uhuh... ok then...

Since the deity is the sovereign giver of all laws, and since the Israelites at this point had not yet esteblished a constituted state, and instead were still on a long path towards constitutional institutions, with the deity interfering ad hoc in day-to-day affairs of governance and military command, it is not unreasonable to assume that she would also make up new punishments for specific new infringements on the spot.

Hahaha.... nice... but... unfortunately... NOPE!!!

The Laws were already given to Moses signed and sealed and done.

And YHWH... in Joshua 7... he did not make up any laws at all... he just said that the war criminals he was commanding on their wars of extirpation and ethnic cleansing are not allowed to take booty because it is for YHWH alone.

Achan furtively took some of the loot and YHWH... he was very annoyed as you said.

So he refrained from helping in the conduct of war crimes thus causing the deaths of many a war criminal.

Joshua asked him why and YHWH said he was sulking because someone took some of his booty and demanded ATONEMENT.

And YHWH ... he told Joshua that there is a CURSE on the people

• Joshua 7:13 Up, sanctify the people, and say: Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow; for thus saith YHWH, the God of Israel: There is a curse in the midst of thee, O Israel; thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you.

Then YHWH... (Joshua 7:14-18) told Joshua to bring the tribes one by one and then HE YHWH will personally select the tribe which has the curse.... and then from that tribe family by family and YHWH will pick the family and then man by man from that family and YHWH will indicate the guilty man.

Couldn't YHWH just have told Joshua the name of the guy without all that ostentation and display?

And so it was, and Achan confessed taking a mantle and some silver and gold... which apparently YHWH coveted and was very angry that Achan took them.

And then to appease YHWH Joshua and all Israel took Achan to some valley along with his entire family and even the stuff he stole and every thing he had and his women and children and Israel stoned them to death and burned them to cinders and erected a monument over their remains. (Joshua 7:18-26)

And YHWH was very pleased and stopped sulking and resumed aiding and abetting and commanding more war crimes.

YHWH could have just told Joshua to kill Achan and give YHWH back his booty... but no YHWH COMMANDED the entire family... men women and children killed and burned.

• Joshua 7:15 And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath: because he hath transgressed the covenant of YHWH, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel.

Culturally, it was not unheard of for particularly nasty cases of mortal sins to be avenged by punshing not only the perpetrator but also his kin. "Sippenhaft".

So, punishment it is, not sacrifice.

Achan stole some stuff... no mortal sin...

• Joshua 7:25-26 And Joshua said: 'Why hast thou troubled us? YHWH shall trouble thee this day.' And all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire, and stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones, unto this day; and YHWH turned from the fierceness of His anger. Wherefore the name of that place was called the valley of Achor, unto this day.

How many criminals have a great monument of stones set to commemorate UNTO THIS DAY their burning along with their children and women and animals as directly commanded by YHWH himself in order for him to be appeased and the fierceness of his anger abated in order for him to resume assisting and participating in the conduct of war crimes of extirpation and ethnic cleansing of autochthonous populations???

You see, a true sacrifice that pleases the deity typically would involve something rather perfect - a first-born, a virgin, a particularly innocent victim (think Jesus himself!) - not a vile sinner.

Do you think amongst the daughters and babies of Achan there were no virgins or "particularly innocent" sucklings or babies or toddlers or in the womb???

• Joshua 7:24 And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the mantle, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had; and they brought them up unto the valley of Achor.

You argue elsewhere that burning people was forbidden in Israel, but again, with the most sovereign legislative power present, any rule can be suspended, changed, amended any time. I don't see the problem.

The problem is that this is a text book definition (even by Bubull standards) of a sacrificial atonement and expiation... but instead of a burned offering of animals... it is of the entire family women and children and animals and objects.... and is commanded directly by YHWH in order for him to stop being angry and causing deaths of many people other than the criminal or even his kin and kith only.

YHWH commanded (Joshua 7:13) the people to sanctify themselves of the curse... and YHWH also commanded (Joshua 7:15) to make a burned offering of the human sacrifice instead of animals to achieve sanctification and purification by carrying out a BURNT OFFERING but of humans and animals and objects instead of just animals as normal... and to burn the curse itself that YHWH personally pointed out (Joshua 7:18).

Human Sacrifice,.. the offering of the life of a human being to a deity.

The occurrence of human sacrifice can usually be related to the recognition of human blood as the sacred life force. Bloodless forms of killing, however, such as strangulation and drowning, have been used in some cultures. The killing of a human being, or the substitution of an animal for a person, has often been part of an attempt to commune with a god and to participate in divine life. Human life, as the most valuable material for sacrifice, has also been offered in an attempt at expiation.

Again, I cannot see anywhere in this chapter that the deity "enjoyed" the killing.

It is right here

• Joshua 7:26 And they raised over him a great heap of stones, unto this day; and YHWH turned from the fierceness of His anger.

You claim that the deity abates some negative sanction (such as bad luck in a military campaign) as a result of having enjoyed a human sacrifice,

Read the verse below... it is exactly that... a human sacrifice to remove the CURSE from the people YHWH put it upon... and also as an expiation... and YHWH said he won't stop until they do so.

• Joshua 7:12 Therefore the children of Israel cannot stand before their enemies, they turn their backs before their enemies, because they are become accursed; I will not be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from among you.

but I read the story quite differently; That the point is to eliminate people who are not 100% committed to obedience to the deity. She is satisfied when disobedience has disappeared, not when dead flesh has appeared, or the smoke of burning dead flesh.

So YHWH IS satisfied when the entire family of Achan who stole some silver and a mantle is stoned and burned and a monument of stone UNTIL TODAY is erected to commemorate the human sacrifice... QED!!!

Much the same way that American conservatives like to see murderers executed, not to enjoy the dead body, but to know as a certain fact that a murderer no longer dwells amongst their society.

Do American conservatives also execute the daughters and sons and wives and entire household of a thief for stealing things?

And do they then burn their bodies and then make a monument out of it?

 

[MRC_Hans]

So you have... in your culture... discussed 2 Samuel 21 and Joshua 7 with all sectssssssssssss and cultsssssssssssssssss of christianity and all sectssssssssss of Judaism and all sectssss of Mormonism and and and???

Better check your keyboard, there seems to be a bounce problem with your key.

You use the same strawman as before: I said I have a good idea of something and you act as if I need to have discussed the subject with every sort of believer. In my culture, the majority are wishy-washy Protestants who take the OT as a bunch of tall stories. They would have no idea of what is even in the verses you talk about.

As for your basic OP question; how do I, as an atheist, rebut those specific passages in the Bible? Answer: I don't. I reject the Bible in general as an authority on any matter relevant to modern people.

Hans

 

[jimbob]

When are we talking? When the stories were first told? when they were first added into something approaching written scriptures? As they are in the most widely-accepted Jewish bible?

Riffing on Myriad's post #31 http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14017124#post14017124

It is clear that the early stories were retconned on a lot of subjects, but sometimes not very well - see also the relict polytheism in some of the stories.


This is also an interesting article discussing the practice in the time.

https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2017/12/child-sacrifice-ancient-israel/

Turning to the rhetoric of the Hebrew Bible itself, it is interesting to note that, even among the groups that practiced no form of child sacrifice, there was a diversity of opinion on the topic. For instance, some biblical writers seem to assume that firstborn children were indeed owed to Yahweh, but that this obligation could be carried out via a substitute offering of some sort. Others, however, reject out of hand the idea that Yahweh’s claim to firstlings ever applied to children at all. Some texts, like the one from Deuteronomy quoted above, accuse reprobate Israelites of sacrificing their children to Yahweh as if he were one of the foreign gods of the Canaanites. Others, however, equate child sacrifice with the worship of Baal or idols and deny that Yahweh was ever linked with such offerings, even by “bad” Yahwists.

One striking example of such rhetorical disagreements among biblical authors opposing child sacrifice is the question of whether Yahweh ever commanded that children be sacrificed. In the Jeremiah passage quoted above, Yahweh flatly declares that child sacrifice is a thing that “I did not command, nor did it arise in my mind” (Jer 7:31). Ezekiel, on the other hand, suggests that Yahweh did command that children be sacrificed, but only as a punishment for the Israelites’ repeated faithlessness. There Yahweh declares that, because the Israelites did not follow Yahweh’s good laws by which they could live, “I gave them statutes that are not good and precepts by which they could not live. I defiled them by their gifts, in causing to pass over every firstborn, so that I might desolate them” (Ezek 20:25–26). In this case, there seems to be a disagreement about whether the version of the law of the firstborn that lacks any sort of redemption clause constitutes a legitimate Yahwistic law at all. Thus, examining the rhetoric surrounding child sacrifice reveals differences in opinion concerning which biblical law codes were authoritative, as well as how they ought to be interpreted.

We now are pretty sure that the Isralite culture was an offshoot of the surrounding Cannanite culture, possibly influenced by the population decline of the end of the Bronze age, and the move away from the cities. And that this society inherited that pantheon at the start, and only later moved to a monotheistic religion with whatever gods ended up accreating to Yahweh.


As such, a lot of the stories are far older than any identifiable "Isralite" culture.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Do American conservatives also execute the daughters and sons and wives and entire household of a thief for stealing things?

And do they then burn their bodies and then make a monument out of it?

The barbarity of ancient punishments doesn't change the fact that they were punishments handed down for violating rules, however draconian we may find them. It wasn't just, "God is angry/is bored/needs a snack, so let's sacrifice - ohhhh - them, I guess". YHWH is much less ambiguously "guilty" of other atrocities - misogyny, slavery, genocide, etcetera without having to try to shoehorn in your "thesis".

And keep in mind that much of the Tanakh was written long after the times the texts refer to, by a priesthood living under foreign rule and wanting to glorify their past with stories of how they used to be total badasses, and everyone submitted to the authority of the priesthood. I'm not saying that the ancient Hebrews were actually egalitarian. I'm sure we'd be appalled by much of their actual "justice", particularly where it related to women, slaves or anyone not in a position of wealth and power within their society. But just as the stories of the conquest of Canaan by the Hebrews are complete fiction, we have to consider many of the cited exemplary stories from the Tanakh may be just as fanciful, written by fundamentalists with rods up their butts who were angry about the "immorality" of many of their fellow Hebrews.

 

[Foster Zygote]

As such, a lot of the stories are far older than any identifiable "Isralite" culture.

I was thinking about that last night. Long ago I read about how the story of Abraham and Isaac was probably a very ancient story that went back to a time when pre or proto Hebrews were actually reminding people not to sacrifice their children to the gods (of which YHWH was only but one). It seems that there was human sacrifice in the distant past of the people of the region, but it was abandoned long before anything we know of as Judaism was established.

 

[Myriad]

The 7 boys hung on a mountain top before YHWH did not commit any crime... and neither did the wives and children and animals and objects of Achan.

They did, though: the crime of being members of the lineages or households of covenant breaking criminals. These are not things we consider crimes, let alone capital crimes, but they were for the ancient authors of the texts.

Post 31 covered this adequately, had you read it with the degree of care you appear to demand others give your own deposits in this thread.

 

[jimbob]

I'm no Bible scholar, but to me both of these passages strongly suggest that they were written during a time of transition in which older simpler stories of a god rewarding human sacrifice during times of extraordinary stress (such as famine or war) with divine favors (such as rainfall or military success), were being reinterpreted as representing acts of redress of injustices, such redress being demanded by the deity but carried out by the authorities.

Why do I think a reinterpretation was going on then? Because, for one thing, times of reinterpretation tend to be when things were most likely to get written down. With ancient texts in particular, we tend to think of whatever's written down as representing ideas and beliefs that must have been long-standing and well-established at the time they were written, but there's no good reason to think that as any sort of general rule. Quite the contrary. Just repeating the stories and lessons everyone already knows doesn't require that, but presenting a new version or interpretation to a population does.

In this specific case, that would explain why passages that are about crimes and punishments (unsanctioned killings in one case, theft in the other) also include elements of human sacrifice narratives (the lost favor of the deity being restored by the executions). A more primitive blood god was being recast as a god of covenants and justice. Of course, everyone's idea of justice at that time (and for millennia afterward) was itself crude, with inherited familial guilt a common idea and death a common penalty, and the passages reflect that as well.

What is completely clear in the context of the Old Testament is that the executions described in these passages were not sacrifices. I suppose you could call them that, in the same hyperbolic way you could call the tens of thousands of annual traffic accident victims in the present day sacrifices to our worship of petroleum, but that characterization would be meaningless to the writers and the original audiences of the passages. Contrast with the story of Abraham and Isaac, which is suppose to represent a would-be sacrifice. There, there's an altar and a sacred ritual, not the ignominious means (hanging and stoning, in the passages) used for judicial executions. It requires another reinterpretation, perhaps one from millennia later in another set of new texts, to shed doubt on the clear distinction between the two.

Also the OP seems to be ignoring the fact that the bible is not internally consistent and indeed that there is are conflicting versions
For example,
Jeremiah Vs Ezekiel as discussed in this link seemingly contradicting each other as to whether child sacrifice was ever required

https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2017/12/child-sacrifice-ancient-israel/

That I referred to in this post.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14025359#post14025359

 

[Myriad]

Also the OP seems to be ignoring the fact that the bible is not internally consistent and indeed that there is are conflicting versions
For example,
Jeremiah Vs Ezekiel as discussed in this link seemingly contradicting each other as to whether child sacrifice was ever required

https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2017/12/child-sacrifice-ancient-israel/

That I referred to in this post.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14025359#post14025359

Right. I mentioned Ezekiel too (but missed Jeremiah, so thanks for that).

Another aspect to consider is whether in pre-Biblical times any Canaanite tribe could sustain a practice of sacrificing "all" first-borns for very long, given the mortality rates of infancy, warfare, disease, famines, and childbirth at the time. If such a practice ever existed, it was probably an affectation of the ruling, wealthy, and/or priestly classes who could afford multiple wives, concubines, and/or slaves. Note that the phrasing (that I pointed out earlier) that specifies the first-born of a man, not of a woman, makes an enormous difference in such a situation.

The sacrifice of surplus offspring made possible by the oligarchs' favored positions giving them the ability to produce surplus offspring would be seen as ensuring the continuation of that favor through the approval and patronage of the deity.

That makes the story of Abraham, the concubine-enabled would-be patriarch ever seeking YHWH's good graces, and Issac, an even better contrary lesson of "let's not do this any more." Abraham would be exactly the kind of individual who might have carried out such a sacrifice under the hypothesized earlier regimen.

 

[Cheetah]

I found this absolutely fascinating.

What a great quote:
“When we allow our faith to dictate history we betray both.”