made claims about child sacrifice in pre-Israelite
Gezer.
Tanakh The
Tanakh mentions human sacrifice in the history of
ancient Near Eastern practice. The king of
Moab gives his firstborn son and heir as a whole burnt offering (
olah, as used of the Temple sacrifice). In the book of the prophet
Micah, the question is asked, 'Shall I give my firstborn for my sin, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?', and responded to in the phrase, 'He has shown all you people what is good. And what does Yahweh require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.' The Tanakh also implies that the
Ammonites offered child sacrifices to
Moloch. representing child sacrifice According to scholars such as
Otto Eissfeldt, Paul G. Mosca, and
Susan Ackerman, Moloch was not a name for a god, but instead is a word for a particular form of child sacrifice practiced in Israel and Judah which was not abandoned until the reforms of
Josiah. In the Tanakh mentions are made in books such as
Kings,
Leviticus, and
Jeremiah of children being given "to the
mōlek". According to
Patrick D. Miller these child sacrifice traditions were not originally part of the Yahwism, but were instead foreign imports.
Francesca Stavrakopoulou contradicts this, asserting that sacrifices were native to Israel and part of the royal line's attempts to perpetuate itself. states "The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me" potentially a demand by Yahweh that the firstborn children of the Israelites must be sacrificed to him. However,
Jacob Milgrom argues that Yahweh forbids human sacrifice and that in Exodus 22:28b-29, as in the Day of Atonement, Yahweh instituted substitutionary animal sacrifices for human sin and the redemption of the firstborn in Israelite families (cf. ). Yahweh also states to the prophet Jeremiah, "They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire—something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind," (Jeremiah 7:31) which some scholars interpret as indicating that it was once viewed as a central part to the law and desire of Yahweh.
Binding of Isaac is interrupted in
sacrificing his son on behalf of Yahweh by an
angel, by
Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, 1860
Genesis 22 relates the
binding of Isaac, by
Abraham to present his son,
Isaac, as a sacrifice on
Mount Moriah. It was a test of faith (Genesis 22:12). Abraham agrees to this command without arguing. The story ends with an
angel stopping Abraham at the last minute and making Isaac's sacrifice unnecessary by providing a ram, caught in some nearby bushes, to be sacrificed instead. Other interpretations of the text have contradicted this version. For example,
Martin S. Bergmann states "The
Aggadah rabbis asserted that “Isaac was bound on the altar and reduced to ashes, and his sacrificial dust was cast on
Mount Moriah."
Margaret Barker notes that "Abraham returned to
Bersheeba without Isaac" according to , a possible sign that he was indeed sacrificed. Barker also stated that wall paintings in the 244 CE
Dura-Europos synagogue explicitly show Isaac being sacrificed, followed by his soul traveling to heaven. Similarly the German theologians and maintain that due to the grammatical
perfect tense used to describe Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, he did, in fact, follow through with the action. According to Irving Greenberg the story of the
binding of Isaac, symbolizes the prohibition to worship God by
human sacrifices, at a time when human sacrifices were the norm worldwide.
Ban in Leviticus In Leviticus 18:21, 20:3 and Deuteronomy 12:30–31, 18:10, the
Torah contains a number of imprecations against and laws forbidding child sacrifice and human sacrifice in general. The
Tanakh denounces human sacrifice as barbaric customs of
Baal worshippers (e.g. Psalms 106:37).
James Kugel argues that the Torah's specifically forbidding child sacrifice indicates that it happened in Israel as well. The biblical scholar
Mark S. Smith argues that the mention of "Tophet" in Isaiah 30:27–33 indicates an acceptance of child sacrifice in the early Jerusalem practices, to which the law in Leviticus 20:2–5 forbidding child sacrifice is a response. Some scholars have stated that at least some
Israelites and Judahites believed child sacrifice was a legitimate religious practice.
Numbers 31 In the aftermath of the War against the Midianites narrated in
Numbers 31, the Israelites appear to be dedicating 32 captive Midianite virgin girls to be sacrificed to Yahweh as his share in the spoils of war.
Gehenna and Tophet The most extensive accounts of child sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible refer to those carried out in
Gehenna by two kings of Judah,
Ahaz and
Manasseh of Judah.
Jephthah's daughter In the
Book of Judges, chapter 11, the figure of
Jephthah makes a vow to God, saying, "If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering" (as worded in the
New International Version). Jephthah succeeds in winning a victory, but when he returns to his home in
Mizpah he sees his daughter, dancing to the sound of
timbrels, outside. After allowing her two months preparation, Judges 11:39 states that Jephthah kept his vow. According to the
commentators of the rabbinic Jewish tradition, Jepthah's daughter was not sacrificed but was forbidden to marry and remained a spinster her entire life, fulfilling the vow that she would be devoted to the Lord. The 1st-century CE Jewish historian
Flavius Josephus, however, interpreted this to mean that Jephthah burned his daughter on Yahweh's altar, whilst
pseudo-Philo, late first century CE, wrote that Jephthah offered his daughter as a burnt offering because he could find no sage in Israel who would cancel his vow. In other words, this story of human sacrifice is not an order or requirement by God, but the punishment for those who vowed to sacrifice humans.
Phoenicia and Carthage The practice of child sacrifice among Canaanite groups is attested by numerous sources spanning over a millennium. One example is in the writings of
Diodorus Siculus: "They also alleged that Kronos had turned against them inasmuch as in former times they had been accustomed to sacrifice to this god the noblest of their sons, but more recently, secretly buying and nurturing children, they had sent these to the sacrifice; and when an investigation was made, some of those who had been sacrificed were discovered to have been substituted by stealth... In their zeal to make amends for the omission, they selected two hundred of the noblest children and sacrificed them publicly; and others who were under suspicion sacrificed themselves voluntarily, in number not less than three hundred. There was in the city a bronze image of Kronos, extending its hands, palms up and sloping towards the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire. It is probable that it was from this that Euripides has drawn the mythical story found in his works about the sacrifice in Tauris, in which he presents Iphigeneia being asked by Orestes: "But what tomb shall receive me when I die? A sacred fire within, and earth's broad rift." Also the story passed down among the Greeks from ancient myth that Cronus did away with his own children appears to have been kept in mind among the Carthaginians through this observance." Library 20.14
Plutarch: "Again, would it not have been far better for the Carthaginians to have taken Critias or Diagoras to draw up their law-code at the very beginning, and so not to believe in any divine power or god, rather than to offer such sacrifices as they used to offer to Cronos? These were not in the manner that Empedocles describes in his attack on those who sacrifice living creatures: "Changed in form is the son beloved of his father so pious, Who on the altar lays him and slays him. What folly!" No, but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people." Moralia 2, De Superstitione 3
Plato: "With us, for instance, human sacrifice is not legal, but unholy, whereas the Carthaginians perform it as a thing they account holy and legal, and that too when some of them sacrifice even their own sons to Cronos, as I daresay you yourself have heard." Minos 315c
Theophrastus: "And from then on to the present day they perform human sacrifices with the participation of all, not only in Arcadia during the Lykaia and in Carthage to Kronos, but also periodically, in remembrance of the customary usage, they spill the blood of their own kin on the altars, even though the divine law among them bars from the rites, by means of perirrhanteria and the herald's proclamation, anyone responsible for the shedding of blood in peacetime."
Sophocles: ". . . was chosen as a . . . sacrifice for the city. For from ancient times the barbarians have had a custom of sacrificing human beings to Kronos."
Quintus Curtius Rufus: "Some even proposed renewing a sacrifice which had been discontinued for many years, and which I for my part should believe to be by no means pleasing to the gods, of offering a freeborn boy to Saturn —this sacrilege rather than sacrifice, handed down from their founders, the Carthaginians are said to have performed until the destruction of their city—and unless the elders, in accordance with whose counsel everything was done, had opposed it, the awful superstition would have prevailed over mercy. But necessity, more inventive than any art, introduced not only the usual means of defence, but also some novel ones." History of Alexander IV.III.23
Tertullian: "In Africa infants used to be sacrificed to Saturn, and quite openly, down to the proconsulate of Tiberius, who took the priests themselves and on the very trees of their temple, under whose shadow their crimes had been committed, hung them alive like votive offerings on crosses; and the soldiers of my own country are witnesses to it, who served that proconsul in that very task. Yes, and to this day that holy crime persists in secret." Apology 9.2-3
Philo of Byblos: "Among ancient peoples in critically dangerous situations it was customary for the rulers of a city or nation, rather than lose everyone, to provide the dearest of their children as a propitiatory sacrifice to the avenging deities. The children thus given up were slaughtered according to a secret ritual. Now Kronos, whom the Phoenicians call El, who was in their land and who was later divinized after his death as the star of Kronos, had an only son by a local bride named Anobret, and therefore they called him Ieoud. Even now among the Phoenicians the only son is given this name. When war's gravest dangers gripped the land, Kronos dressed his son in royal attire, prepared an altar and sacrificed him."
Lucian: "There is another form of sacrifice here. After putting a garland on the sacrificial animals they hurl them down alive from the gateway and the animals die from the fall. Some even throw their children off the place, but not in the same manner as the animals. Instead, having laid them in a pallet, they drop them down by hand. At the same time they mock them and say that they are oxen, not children."
Cleitarchus: "And Kleitarchos says the Phoenicians, and above all the Carthaginians, venerating Kronos, whenever they were eager for a great thing to succeed, made a vow by one of their children. If they would receive the desired things, they would sacrifice it to the god. A bronze Kronos, having been erected by them, stretched out upturned hands over a bronze oven to burn the child. The flame of the burning child reached its body until, the limbs having shriveled up and the smiling mouth appearing to be almost laughing, it would slip into the oven. Therefore the grin is called "sardonic laughter," since they die laughing."
Porphyry: "The Phoenicians too, in great disasters whether of wars or droughts, or plagues, used to sacrifice one of their dearest, dedicating him to Kronos. And the 'Phoenician History,' which Sanchuniathon wrote in Phoenician and which Philo of Byblos translated into Greek in eight books, is full of such sacrifices." At Carthage, a large cemetery exists that combines the bodies of both very young children and small animals, and those who assert child sacrifice have argued that if the animals were sacrificed, then so too were the children. Recent archaeology, however, has produced a detailed breakdown of the ages of the buried children and, based on this and especially on the presence of prenatal individuals – that is,
still births – it is also argued that this site is consistent with burials of children who had died of natural causes in a society that had a high
infant mortality rate, as Carthage is assumed to have had. That is, the data support the view that Tophets were cemeteries for those who died shortly before or after birth. Greek, Roman and Israelite writers refer to Phoenician child sacrifice. Skeptics suggest that the bodies of children found in Carthaginian and Phoenician cemeteries were merely the cremated remains of children that died naturally. Sergio Ribichini has argued that the Tophet was "a child necropolis designed to receive the remains of infants who had died prematurely of sickness or other natural causes, and who for this reason were "offered" to specific deities and buried in a place different from the one reserved for the ordinary dead". According to Stager and Wolff, in 1984, there was a consensus among scholars that Carthaginian children were sacrificed by their parents, who would make a vow to kill the next child if the gods would grant them a favor: for instance that their shipment of goods was to arrive safely in a foreign port.{{cite journal ==Europe==