HUMAN SACRIFICE

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HUMAN SACRIFICE

• By Dawn M. Roark

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Human Sacrifices were frequent among early
Ecclesiastical Religions.
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Ecclesiastical?Of or relating to a church
institution.
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Offerings were intended to win the sympathy of
the gods through extravagant self-infliction.
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• From the Old Testament
• God commanded that Abraham put his son Isaac to
  death.
• Jeremiah 731 they built places of Tophet to
  burn their sons and daughters.
• II Kings 1716-17 and they caused their sons
  and daughters to pass through the fire

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Seldom was human flesh considered food for the
gods
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The Jerusalem tradition of human sacrifice was
dismantled by King Josiah during the seventh
century B.C.HOWEVER
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In the Mediterranean and Middle EastThe
Phoenicians practiced human sacrifice in Sicily,
Sardinia, Tunis, and Carthage.
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In Carthage

• sacrificed children for at least 600 years.
• interred the charred remains in special urns.
• between 400 B.C. and 200 B.C. over 20,000 urns
  were interred.

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Prisoners of War were another common source of
sacrificial victims.
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According to Homers account of the battle of
Troy, the Greek hero Achilles put TWELVE
captured Trojans on the funeral pyre of his
comrade-in-arms, Patroclus.
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The most wide spread form of human sacrifice
occurred at the death and burial of kings and
other royal personages.
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The gods accepted human sacrifice in areas around
the world for several different reasonsbut not
as a source of food.Why is this?
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Harris claims that the gods liked to eat what
people liked to eat.They rejected human flesh
because humans have a distaste for eating their
own kind.
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I dont buy itDid the gods eat?Or more
likelydid humans get sacrificed to an imaginary
god that COULDNT eat.