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Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell

By Patricia Smith

The seventh–sixth century prophet Jeremiah famously fulminated against Judahites who sacrificed their children to Moloch in Jerusalem’s Ben Hinnom Valley (Jeremiah 32:35). The author of Leviticus also forbade the practice (Leviticus 18:21), indicating that he too believed that infant sacrifice to foreign gods was indeed occurring. According to 2 Chronicles 28:3, even King Ahaz engaged in the practice; in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, “He [Ahaz] burned his sons in fire, in the abhorrent fashion of the nations the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites.” Nothing has been found in Jerusalem’s Hinnom Valley to suggest that child sacrifice occurred there. […]

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Footnotes

1.

Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?” BAR 10:01.

2.

“An Odyssey Debate: Were Living Children Sacrificed to the Gods?” “No,” M’Hamed Hassine Fantar; “Yes,” Lawrence E. Stager and Joseph A. Greene, Archaeology Odyssey 03:06

Endnotes

1.

P. Xella et al., “Phoenician Bones of Contention,” Antiquity 338 (2013), p. 1199.

2.

P. Smith, G. Avishai, J.A. Greene and L.E. Stager, “Aging Cremated Infants: The Problem of Sacrifice at the Tophet of Carthage,” Antiquity 85 (2011), p. 859. They were excavated by the ASOR Punic project between 1975 and 1980.

3.

J.H. Schwartz et al., “Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants,” PloS ONE 5 (2010), online p. e9177; J.H. Schwartz et al., “Bones, Teeth, and Estimating Age of Perinates: Carthaginian Infant Sacrifice Revisited,” Antiquity 86 (2012), p. 738.

4.

P. Smith, G. Avishai, J.A. Greene and L.E. Stager, “Age Estimations Attest to the Practice of Infant Sacrifice at the Carthage Tophet,” Antiquity 338 (2013) p. 1191 .

5.

F. Fedele and G.V. Foster, “Tharros: Ovicaprini Sacrificali e Ritu ale del Tophet,” Revisti di Studi Fenici 16 (1988), pp. 30–45.

6.

Schwartz et al., “Bones, Teeth, and Estimating Age of Perinates,” pp. 738–745.