Reply to Reza Aslan: Sam Harris and "New Atheists" aren't new, aren't even atheists

Forum Index » Religion

Reply to "Reza Aslan: Sam Harris and "New Atheists" aren't new, aren't even atheists"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]According to the Old Testament, the Canaanites and other tribes in the land widely practiced child sacrifice, incest, bestiality, and other behaviors that almost everyone in history, including today, rightly regard as unspeakably, grossly immoral.

The Canaanites worshipped a deity called Molech, to whom, according to the Old Testament, the local pagan peoples sacrificed their children in burnt offerings.

John Day’s study, published by Cambridge University Press, argued convincingly that Molech was the name given in Canaanite religion to the god of the underworld. He showed that the same deity is mentioned in the Ugaritic writings (MLK), the Mari tablets (Muluk), and in Akkadian records.

In 1978 an Egyptologist reported that relief pictures on an Egyptian temple showed Canaanite children being sacrificed while their cities were under attack. That the Phoenicians, who at one time controlled Canaan, sacrificed children to their gods is well documented. “Archaeologists have recovered the gruesome evidence not only at the great Phoenician city of Carthage (in modern Tunisia), but also in Sicily, Sardonia, and Cyprus.”  It is now clear to biblical scholars that the Old Testament really does refer to child sacrifice and that it really did occur.

6Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah,
and bow myself before the high God?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves a year old?
7Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams,
or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8He hath showed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth Jehovah require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with thy God?
          (Micah 6:6-8)

Israelites sometimes did practice human sacrifice, including the sacrifice of their children. At least two kings are reported to have done so (2 Kings 16:3; 21:6). According to the book of Isaiah, the Lord condemned Israel for sacrificing children to their idols (Is. 57:5-9). Jeremiah accused the Jews in Jerusalem of setting up idols in the temple and sacrificing their children in a nearby valley (Jer. 7:30-32; 19:5-6; 32:35). Ezekiel cited the practice as one of the reasons that Judah was plunged into the Babylonian exile (Ezek. 16:20-21; 23:36-39).

The Old Testament does not teach that genocide has any sort of general justification. There is no teaching here along the lines of saying that if a nation is wicked enough then anyone has the moral justification to go wipe them out, including men, women, and children. Rather, the Old Testament claims that it was necessary to completely wipe out certain peoples in order to stop the cycle of perversity from repeating generation after generation, in order to protect Israel from succumbing itself to the madness (an apparently accurate description of Canaanite culture). This drastic measure was necessary to create a nation that retained at least some knowledge and worship of the true God alone and some recognition (however limited) of his moral standards.

Archeology gives some hints about what the Canaanites did. On one High Place, archeologists found several stone pillars and great numbers of jars containing remains of newborn babies. When a new house was built, a child would be sacrificed and its body built into the wall to bring good luck to the rest of the family. Firstborn children were often sacrificed to Molech, a giant hollow bronze image in which a fire was built. Parents placed their children in its red hot hands and the babies would roll down into the fire. The sacrifice was invalid if a parent displayed grief. Mothers were supposed to dance and sing. The Israelites later copied this practice in a valley near Jerusalem called Gehenna. Hundreds of jars containing infant bones have been found there.

There was a great deal of sexual sin among the Canaanites. They believed that cultic prostitution was important to encourage their gods, Baal and Ashtoreth to mate so that the land would be fertile and rain would come. VD may have been rampant. Many young people forced into prostitution were abused to the point of death. Even the surrounding pagan nations were appalled by Canaanite religious practices.

Yet God did not hurry to judge the Canaanites. In Genesis 15:16, God tells Abraham:

In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.

God gave the Canaanites 400 years while Israel was in Egypt. After Israel passed through the Red Sea, He waited 40 more years while Israel wandered in the wilderness. The people of Canaan knew Israel was coming, and that God had given the land to them, according to the Rahab, a Canaanite, in Joshua 2:9:

“I know that the LORD has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you."

Jericho had six additional days to repent while Israel did laps around it. The day judgment finally came to Jericho, Israel marched around the city seven times. God judges swiftly when He finally acts, but He patiently warns and allows time for repentance.

Families who wished could have migrated out of the land and settled in nearby areas. God said repeatedly that he would drive out the inhabitants of the land before Israel. Those who wished to leave had time and opportunity. The point was to destroy the evil Canaanite culture rather than the individual Canaanite people. Only individuals who stubbornly refused to leave were destroyed with military force, along with their children, who could not have survived without parents. God gave no instructions to hunt down and kill Canaanites who left the land peacefully. Later in the Bible, Canaanite individuals like Uriah the Hittite show up as righteous characters. Rahab herself was a Canaanite harlot who repented before Jericho was destroyed. She is an ancestor of Jesus Himself. God’s judgment was not based on racism or favoritism.

Scholars have called the Canaanite cult religion the most sexually depraved of any in the ancient world. They had given themselves over to every kind of sexual depravity, including incest and even bestiality. At their worst, their orgiastic worship of idols even included human sacrifice—both of children and adults. There’s imagery of their cult sexual practices of bathing themselves in blood.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics