"King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities" by Francesca Stavrakopoulou
This forum primarily exists to discuss a secret war between Q and an entity which Q refers to as "them". We are left with the obvious question: who is "them"?
Wild speculation on the identity of "them" (sometimes referred to as "The Cabal") pervade the community of followers of Q. Q's statements about "them" suggest that "them" is a secret and old (how old?) group identifiable by several practices, one of which being various forms of child sacrifice (rape, cannibalism, etc.). Various contradictory speculations about "them", abound, including of the age of "them". We find suggestions that (1) "them" is fairly recent in history, perhaps a banking cabal from the last few centuries, or (2) that "them" is older, perhaps being integrated into the Catholic Church from Roman times, or (3) that "them" is even older still. Q is vague on this point.
On the nature of time and human culture:
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Do ancient organizations live now?: One question I would like the reader to consider: we know that there were terrible societies/organization/religions/practices in ancient times (BCE), but what happened to them? Did they just "die out"? Can we be sure that they all "died out"? If so, how would you be so sure?
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Humans behavior is cultural: I would like to suggest that people who assume that such ancient terrible practices died out are making an unwarranted assumption about the nature of time and human beings. Most animals largely operate on instinct, but humans are different: humans learn. The behavior of humans is largely due to their learned practices, not their inherent biology (which is quite similar across the world, despite superficial appearances). Therefore, to best predict the behavior of humans, we should look at what they have learned; over the scale of large numbers of people, this is called their culture.
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Cultural practices are largely timeless: In other words, when we look at the past and how people behaved, if we want to know if people still behave that way, we should not look at how much calendar time has passed, we should instead look at if they retain the same culture. Culture can change but it often stabilizes and then does not change at all, and then changes suddenly in a cultural discontinuity.
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Therefore cultural time is fundamentally different from calendar time: I therefore suggest that measuring time in boundaries of cultural discontinuities is a much better way to make a map of human behavior than just looking at what year it was then and what year it is now.
An example: in the 1937 the Japanese government conducted a terrible rape of the city of Nanjing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre and around 1960 the Chinese government conducted the "Great Leap Forward" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward . Each action killed many innocent people.
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We may conclude that the Japanese and Chinese governments are therefore bad. Why then would we today be allies of the Japanese and not of the Chinese?
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Well the Japanese government underwent a cultural discontinuity, they lost WWII, whereas the Chinese government did not, they are still the same Chinese Communist Party as they were then. As we can see, even though similar amounts of calendar time has passed, in the government of China cultural time has not passed, whereas in the government of Japan, it has.
Conjecturing that such a terrible organization as the "them" of which Q speaks could arise today may seem implausible, and so many doubt it. But we know for a fact from historical record that many such terrible practices were part of the cultures of the long calendar-time past. Could "them" be an ancient culture for which still lives in ancient cultural-time? For which culture-time has not passed?
I suggest for your consideration the writings of a real researcher, Francesca Stavrakopoulou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Stavrakopoulou : "Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter. The main focus of her research is on the Hebrew Bible, and on Israelite and Judahite history and religion." In particular, I think it is important to note that "Stavrakopoulou was brought up in no particular religion and is a self-described atheist." In other words, her scholarship is not inclined to be distorted by identifying personally with the subject matter.
I think this work of hers is of particular relevance:
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110899641/html
The Hebrew Bible portrays King Manasseh and child sacrifice as the most reprehensible person and the most objectionable practice within the story of 'Israel'. This monograph suggests that historically, neither were as deviant as the Hebrew Bible appears to insist. Through careful historical reconstruction, it is argued that Manasseh was one of Judah's most successful monarchs, and child sacrifice played a central role in ancient Judahite religious practice. The biblical writers, motivated by ideological concerns, have thus deliberately distorted the truth about Manasseh and child sacrifice.
Further, from the book:
Indeed, a closer examination of the Hebrew Bible suggests that the offering of the firstborn to YHWH may well have included the sacrifice of human babies along with the offering of animals and crops. In spite of these text, the debate appears to have come full circle within modern scholarship with the relatively recent defence of the biblical concept of "Molek" as a foreign god of child sacrifice. However, contrary to this view, this study will argue that the identification of child sacrifice as a foreign element within Judahite religious practice is based on the distortion of the historical reality of child sacrifice within the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore, it will be argued that the academic acceptance of this biblical distortion as a historical probability reflects a persistent and unself-critical ideological bias within modern scholarship. Unlike most other areas of academic enquiry, the subject of child sacrifice is particularly susceptible to misrepresentation within modern scholarship because of its sensitive nature. The historical reality of child sacrifice in ancient (and indeed modern) civilizations is an unpleasant reality, particularly, as van der Horst comments, if such a practice is attested within a culture that has played some role in the formation of one's personal world-view. This may well account in part of the apparent reluctance within biblical scholarship to apply the perspectives of ideological criticism to the examination of the subject of child sacrifice and the Hebrew Bible. As Bergmann suggests:
"We have a particular difficultly in understanding this phenomenon because the Judeo-Christian tradition has accustomed us to regard God as an ego-ideal. Therefore how could God tolerate human sacrifices?"
As observed above, ideological criticism suggest that ideology generally exists within a dynamic context of opposition. In seeking to distinguish between the biblical portrayal of child sacrifice and the historical reality of this practice, this discussion will argue that the biblical material concerning child sacrifice is generally opposed o the historical reality that children were sacrificed to Yhwh, and that an "ideology of separateness" governs the biblical insistence that child sacrifice was a Canaanite practice. Moreover, it will be argued that child sacrifice played an important role within the royal Judahite cult, and that "Molek" is best understood as a biblical character making the historical reality of the sacrifice of children to Yhwh.
The idea that the Lord demanded child sacrifice and this was covered up after the fact is insanity. How the hell did this get stickied?
The idea that "Yahweh" (the Lord) was one of many Gods and was only worshiped solely after the Babylonian Captivity is nonsensical and has no historical basis. The Biblical truth is that the Israelites worshiped pagan gods on the side in defiance of the Lord's commands.
Jesus Christ IS the God of the Old Testament. This is in made abundantly clear in John. Jesus would not demand human sacrifice.
Insisting that one particular book is an infallible source of truth is not scholarship. There is no reason to believe that your favorite book is infallible and it is rather uncivil and disrespectful of the intelligence of others of you to do so.
Stavrakopoulou is an actual historical researcher. The same methods she uses are used to study the history of all other civilizations. The same research standards apply to any civilization, not just the one with which you identify.
Are you saying only posts which agree with your point of view are allowed to be stickied? Even those that have empirical evidence? Reality is the source of truth, not your favorite book.
The current Left insists that their point of view is the only one that is tolerable and that others should not even have the right to be spoken. Are you doing the same? It sounds like it to me. I request that you withdraw your remark.
We've been sternly warned around here that Q is not a Christian movement and to limit the posts as such. Then we get a post that says "don't believe the bible" stickied. Quite the contradiction.
That’s a stupid rule from the mods then, since the very name “great awakening” refers to the spread of Christian beliefs. WTF do they think it means. In fact, without God and moral belief, what does it matter that people sacrifice children? That may sound harsh, but if you consider what godlessness means, then it is not so far fetched a question.
The constitution was written for a moral and upright people. There needs to be defining of what a moral/upright person means. Being generally “religious” means nothing, it has no weight. There needs to be real and tangible structure underneath it, lest we become crazed by senseless thought.
This is why a church fundamentally exists, and why God himself commands it. He knows the evil of man’s heart.
We are in agreement...
It most certainly does not mean that. It means waking up to the truth. Just because you believe you know what the truth is doesn't mean you do. The truth that we need to wake up to is the manipulation of beliefs, and the actions that they do hiding behind our false beliefs.
This questions how far back that manipulation goes. How is that bad?
This post doesn't say anything about what you should or should not believe. It presents an argument. Should debate not be encouraged?
How is that relevant? I am not making a post insisting in some particular religion, including Christianity.
First, there is no one single object called "the bible". It is a collection of the writings of many people over many centuries and was also edited and changed by many people in history. What books it includes really depends on who you ask.
Second, my post is not directly about any particular bible at all. It is a reference to scholarly research on the context of the Eastern Mediterranean / South-West Asian culture in ancient times, and the written and archaeological evidence we have for that culture. This culture pre-dates the Hebrew bible as well as the Christian bible, and was one of the cultures from which they came. We do the same kind of historical research regarding Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Chinese, etc. and other cultures as well. This kind of work helps inform us of how we got to where we are today.
My primary point in making the post is to point out that Q makes a reference to "Them", which we have also come to call "The Cabal". Whatever this group is, like all groups it has a specific purpose and specific practices. Those come from somewhere and have likely been around for a long time. Did they come out of nowhere? History does not seem to work that way. Where do they come from then?
Well, we can look at the historical record for similar cultures. Further, my point about cultures being timeless until the encounter a cultural discontinuity is that it makes sense to consider ancient cultures that have possibly persisted for a long time as possibly being the source of "The Cabal".
I then offer one scholarly work by a professional who actually knows the history and languages of ancient South-West Asia better than likely nearly all of you. Unless you can read your favorite ancient book in the original language that it was written in and know the history of how it was written and put together over time, you might want to at least listen to those who do, such as Stavrakopoulou. You might learn something.
Okay, thanks
What is the contradiction? The bible exists, whether people believe it or not, and it has an influence on people. This book can be studied using the same methods as historians use to study anything else. Here I point to a professional who has done that and whose work seems relevant to the discussion. That's all that is going on here.
"Stavrakopoulou is an actual historical researcher"
Are you saying your belief in your favorite historical researcher is above all? I demand you withdraw your diatribe.
I'm a professional researcher, though in a different field. Professional researchers have to write publications that make it past peer review. In contrast, you posting your thoughts on this site, do not. Peer review is not everything, but it is also not nothing. If you have never published anything that made it past professional peer review, then you do not know the difference between being a professional researcher and just having an opinion.
The fact that you are excluding truth tells me all I need to know about your argument. If you believe you are the arbiter of truth, then you are God, but seeing as you have limited perspective, that in itself proves you are not God, thereby making it so you cannot be the arbiter of truth. The same goes for any one person on this board or on planet earth.
What you can do is observe truths. There is (in the final measure) ONE truth. Think of any news event, you get told a story from one side, then through alternate means you hear another side. If you were a fly on the wall, you would know the truth to either side. As it is, we must make an effort to understand what we can and make the call based on what we believe to be true. If something was proven over and over to be correct, wouldn’t that give it reason to be believed unless otherwise found out? This is called faith. It can be found in people for more than just belief in the Bible, as some people believe scientist about evolution and the age of the earth (which by the way, no good data on an old earth, it’s “proven” by taking assumptions and assigning them as reality, but they never openly admit that, they just claim to know.)
Additionally, how is it that you think we got here, life on the most unlikely of circumstances where if unintentionally put in place was beyond possibility of happenstance to occur. But saying it did, at every corner for life to end, we also happen to always take the right route by shear luck upon luck? If designed by God, is he distant, if so, why create people at all? For what reason do we exist? We are terrible creatures to our surroundings, certainly not to benefit them. Why are humans different? Why do we have larger than life principles that drive us and make us what we are?
Does good and evil exist, if so, who makes that call? If there is no good nor evil, all is relative, then how can you judge what your fellow man does, based on what foundation? If none, doesn’t that provide as much ammo for your wicked enemy against you?
In the end, God is a logic-al being, he created a system that works, and generally he abides by the system, not performing many supernatural works, as that violates his created order. He shows that he is beyond the system for specific reasons, but doesn’t make it known clearly. He owes us nothing in that regard. So this is why evil can prosper while the righteous fail, if you follow the systems designed by God, you can become a booming success yourself, this is why many atheist billionaires and millionaires read the proverbs in the Bible daily, repeating each month.
I could go on, but I think there’s already so much to chew on here if you truly want to consider Christianity, that this is more than enough of a kickoff. If you want to seriously discuss it. I’d be happy to continue, but this is already very long winded.
I do not know what you are smoking, but what I said is that Stavrakopoulou, a professional researcher, has something worth reading. I did not say anything about believing anyone to be "the arbiter of truth" so stop pretending otherwise.
You are choosing to trust this person over God, and by the way, it’s not “mUh FaVoRiTe BoOk”
The Bible is the most accurate and trustworthy historical document, and what grinds my gears, is that people will find one copy of a historical document and use that as a sure document though not confirmed by anything else, but when thousands of the same document are found saying the same thing verbatim, but it contains the word God, its viewed as a myth, that is why people of the Christian faith don’t trust historians and geologists, because they come with a preconceived notion they believe to be true, and it’s usually anti-God.
No one is objective minded, no matter how hard they try.