What is the purpose of hell in Christian or Muslim theology?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
^^^Child sacrifice was normal, acceptable, and actually widely practiced throughout the world in the time of Abraham. God wanted it stopped.

Why didn't he just make it a commandment, then? Why the head game?

He didn't do that. He didn't make slavery against a commandment either.

[Anonymous]

^^^Child sacrifice was normal, acceptable, and actually widely practiced throughout the world in the time of Abraham. God wanted it stopped.

Is this true? Where did you get that information? The was no writing, so I suppose it's from archeology? Where?
BTW, that would have been about 2050 B.C. Earlier, God himself had wiped out everybody on earth but a select few in the great flood, so I guess he wanted it stopped unless he did it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^Child sacrifice was normal, acceptable, and actually widely practiced throughout the world in the time of Abraham. God wanted it stopped.

Is this true? Where did you get that information? The was no writing, so I suppose it's from archeology? Where?
BTW, that would have been about 2050 B.C. Earlier, God himself had wiped out everybody on earth but a select few in the great flood, so I guess he wanted it stopped unless he did it.

https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-57506-494-9.html

Among the many religious acts condemned in the Hebrew Bible, child sacrifice stands out as particularly horrifying. The idea that any group of people would willingly sacrifice their own children to their god(s) is so contrary to modern moral sensibilities that it is difficult to imagine that such a practice could have ever existed. Nonetheless, the existence of biblical condemnation of these rites attests to the fact that some ancient Israelites in fact did sacrifice their children. Indeed, a close reading of the evidence—biblical, archaeological, epigraphic, etc.—indicates that there are at least three different types of Israelite child sacrifice, each with its own history, purpose, and function.
In addition to examining the historical reality of Israelite child sacrifice, Dewrell’s study also explores the biblical rhetoric condemning the practice. While nearly every tradition preserved in the Hebrew Bible rejects child sacrifice as abominable to Yahweh, the rhetorical strategies employed by the biblical writers vary to a surprising degree. Thus, even in arguing against the practice of child sacrifice, the biblical writers themselves often disagreed concerning why Yahweh condemned the rites and why they came to exist in the first place.


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As with many details in ancient history, the exact origin of Moloch/Molech/Molek worship is unclear. The term Moloch is believed to have originated with the Phoenician mlk, which referred to a type of sacrifice made to confirm or acquit a vow. Melekh is the Hebrew word for “king.” It was common for the Israelites to combine the name of pagan gods with the vowels in the Hebrew word for shame: bosheth. This is how the goddess of fertility and war, Astarte, became Ashtoreth. The combination of mlk, melekh, and bosheth results in “Moloch,” which could be interpreted as “the personified ruler of shameful sacrifice.” It has also been spelled Milcom, Milkim, and Malik. Ashtoreth was his consort, and ritual prostitution was considered an important form of worship.

The Phoenicians were a loosely gathered group of people who inhabited Canaan (modern-day Lebanon, Syria, and Israel) between 1550 BC and 300 BC. In addition to sexual rituals, Moloch worship included child sacrifice, or “passing children through the fire.” It is believed that idols of Moloch were giant metal statues of a man with a bull’s head. Each image had a hole in the abdomen and possibly outstretched forearms that made a kind of ramp to the hole. A fire was lit in or around the statue. Babies were placed in the statue’s arms or in the hole. When a couple sacrificed their firstborn, they believed that Moloch would ensure financial prosperity for the family and future children.

Moloch/Molech worship wasn’t limited to Canaan. Monoliths in North Africa bear the engraving “mlk”—often written “mlk’mr” and “mlk’dm,” which may mean “sacrifice of lamb” and “sacrifice of man.” In North Africa, Moloch was renamed “Kronos.” Kronos migrated to Carthage in Greece, and his mythology grew to include his becoming a Titan and the father of Zeus. Moloch is affiliated with and sometimes equated to Ba’al, although the word ba’al was also used to designate any god or ruler.

In Genesis 12 Abraham followed God’s call to move to Canaan. Although human sacrifice was not common in Abraham’s native Ur, it was well-established in his new land. God later asked Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice (Genesis 22:2). But then God distinguished Himself from gods like Moloch. Unlike the native Canaanite gods, Abraham’s God abhorred human sacrifice. God commanded Isaac to be spared, and He provided a ram to take Isaac’s place (Genesis 22:13). God used this event as an illustration of how He would later provide His own Son to take our place.

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That the Hebrew God is the best known of all gods worshiped in the world today needs no explanation. The Jews, the Christians and the Muslims, among others, all accord the ancient Hebrew God their devotion. Whatever else those three faiths might say, they would agree with Psalm 95:3, that “The Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods.”

But God is not and has not been without his rivals, even in antiquity. Even in the pages of the Hebrew Bible, there were many alternatives to the Lord God of Israel, and in this article we will consider three of the now largely forgotten deities who once opposed Him, who alone is most great.

Perhaps the best known ancient rival to the Hebrew God was the pagan Baal, a term which means “master” or Rlord”, and is probably originally a general term for a variety of local deities in the area in and near the holy land. An example of a local baal cult is called “Baal-peor” mentioned in Numbers 25:3, where the Israelites disgraced themselves in some sexual rites with the Moabites and worshiped the local god, incurring the wrath and punishment of their own God.

The god or gods called Baal normally required the sacrifice of children, often the first-born male child, by sacrifice by fire. It has been suggested that the famous story of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac, when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son and then forbade the sacrifice at the last moment, was told to the ancients as a dramatic and instructive narrative which commanded the Hebrews not to follow the pagan cults of the land. It was as if to say that even the great patriarch himself did not sacrifice his son, but it was only a test of his faith, and so too good Hebrews must not follow the practice of the people of the land however tempted they were.

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Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament. John Day.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2307/3210240?journalCode=biblarch

[Anonymous]

^ re the post how God hated child sacrifice, I was just reading in Exodus 12:29-39 that God struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, including Pharaoh’s firstborn son and the firstborn of all livestock as well. I guess he doesn't like it unless he does it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ re the post how God hated child sacrifice, I was just reading in Exodus 12:29-39 that God struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, including Pharaoh’s firstborn son and the firstborn of all livestock as well. I guess he doesn't like it unless he does it.

The tenth and last plague, the death of the firstborn males, was a judgment on Isis, the protector of children, one of the most widely worshiped Egyptian deities at the time. Rulers in Egypt and its neighbor to the south, Nubia, built temples dedicated primarily to Isis, and her temple at Philae was a religious center for Egyptians and Nubians alike. Her reputed magical power was greater than that of all other gods, and she was said to protect the kingdom from its enemies, govern the skies and the natural world, and have power over fate itself.

The purpose of the ten plagues in the Book of Exodus is to make known that Israel’s God is the True God and reigns over all people. The ten plagues are a direct attack against the Egyptian gods

Pharaoh the King of Egypt was considered to be the greatest Egyptian god of all. Formal religious practice centered on the pharaoh, the king of Egypt.

Although he was a human, the pharaoh was believed to be descended from the gods. He acted as the intermediary between his people and the gods, and was obligated to sustain the gods through rituals and offerings so that they could maintain order in the universe

The Ten Plagues of Egypt—also known as the Ten Plagues, the Plagues of Egypt, or the Biblical Plagues—are described in Exodus 7—12. The plagues were ten disasters sent upon Egypt by God to convince Pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves from the bondage and oppression they had endured in Egypt for 400 years. When God sent Moses to deliver the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt, He promised to show His wonders as confirmation of Moses’ authority (Exodus 3:20). This confirmation was to serve at least two purposes: to show the Israelites that the God of their fathers was alive and worthy of their worship and to show the Egyptians that their gods were nothing.

The Israelites had been enslaved in Egypt for about 400 years and in that time had lost faith in the God of their fathers. They believed He existed and worshiped Him, but they doubted that He could, or would, break the yoke of their bondage. The Egyptians, like many pagan cultures, worshiped a wide variety of nature-gods and attributed to their powers the natural phenomena they saw in the world around them. There was a god of the sun, of the river, of childbirth, of crops, etc. Events like the annual flooding of the Nile, which fertilized their croplands, were evidences of their gods’ powers and good will. When Moses approached Pharaoh, demanding that he let the people go, Pharaoh responded by saying, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go” (Exodus 5:2). Thus began the challenge to show whose God was more powerful.

Before God sent the last three plagues, Pharaoh was given a special message from God. These plagues would be more severe than the others, and they were designed to convince Pharaoh and all the people “that there is none like me in all the earth” (Exodus 9:14). Pharaoh was even told that he was placed in his position by God, so that God could show His power and declare His name through all the earth (Exodus 9:16). As an example of His grace, God warned Pharaoh to gather whatever cattle and crops remained from the previous plagues and shelter them from the coming storm. Some of Pharaoh’s servants heeded the warning (Exodus 9:20), while others did not. The seventh plague, hail, attacked Nut, the sky goddess; Osiris, the crop fertility god; and Set, the storm god. This hail was unlike any that had been seen before. It was accompanied by a fire which ran along the ground, and everything left out in the open was devastated by the hail and fire. Again, the children of Israel were miraculously protected, and no hail damaged anything in their lands.

Before God brought the next plague, He told Moses that the Israelites would be able to tell their children of the things they had seen God do in Egypt and how it showed them God’s power. The eighth plague, locusts, again focused on Nut, Osiris, and Set. The later crops, wheat and rye, which had survived the hail, were now devoured by the swarms of locusts. There would be no harvest in Egypt that year.

The ninth plague, darkness, was aimed at the sun god, Re, who was symbolized by Pharaoh himself. For three days, the land of Egypt was smothered with an unearthly darkness, but the homes of the Israelites had light.

The tenth and last plague, the death of the firstborn males, was a judgment on Isis, the protector of children. In this plague, God was teaching the Israelites a deep spiritual lesson that pointed to Christ. Unlike the other plagues, which the Israelites survived by virtue of their identity as God’s people, this plague required an act of faith by them. God commanded each family to take an unblemished male lamb and kill it. The blood of the lamb was to be smeared on the top and sides of their doorways, and the lamb was to be roasted and eaten that night. Any family that did not follow God’s instructions would suffer in the last plague. God described how He would send the destroyer through the land of Egypt, with orders to slay the firstborn male in every household, whether human or animal. The only protection was the blood of the lamb on the door. When the destroyer saw the blood, he would pass over that house and leave it untouched (Exodus 12:23). This is where the term Passover comes from. Passover is a memorial of that night in ancient Egypt when God delivered His people from bondage. First Corinthians 5:7 teaches that Jesus became our Passover when He died to deliver us from the bondage of sin. While the Israelites found God’s protection in their homes, every other home in the land of Egypt experienced God’s wrath as their loved ones died. This grievous event caused Pharaoh to finally release the Israelites.