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Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

ox.ac.uk

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Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#61

Post by rsynnott »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #53
rsynnott wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple of issues there; you’d have to question the independence (at the remove of time it’s impossible to know if there was a single source), and if you’re going to take attestation by multiple ancient writers as strong evidence of a thing, well, you’re going to end up believing some odd, and often contradictory, things. That sort of evidence isn’t nothing, but _in itself_ you probably need to be very careful with it…

> you’d have to question the independence The Greeks had no issue describing the bizarre Etruscan custom of no exposing “excess” female infants and treating the more or less equally to boys. Killing infants or even young children was really not a big deal in the ancient word. Viewing it as some act of extreme evil is mainly a Christian thing…

Oh, sure; I'm strictly talking sourcing independence (none of these are primary sources, and what _their_ source was is generally unclear). To be clear, I'm not saying Carthaginians didn't sacrifice kids, I'm saying that claims from Plato and Plutarch, _in themselves_, are not great evidence for this.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#62

Post by webnrrd2k »

oofnik wrote: post #7

Child sacrifice hooks into some very deep and dark aspects of human psychology that we have yet to unpack. There is a reason that this practice crops up in various civilizations seemingly independently, and it is not a pretty one - at least not by contemporary moral sensibilities. It is impossible to understand the biblical narrative of the binding of Isaac, for example, without addressing the context in which such a…

Maybe it started by people sacrificing what they considered most valuable to them -- their children.

Or maybe it started in a time of famine or other stress, where the young children were likely to die anyways. The reasoning of it seem to be 1.) Sacrifice your child and maybe make a god bring rain or otherwise change the situation. Or 2.) Do nothing and the kid dies anyway, and the famine (or whatever) continues.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#63

Post by ffgjgf1 »

scns wrote: post #19
oofnik wrote: post #7

Child sacrifice hooks into some very deep and dark aspects of human psychology that we have yet to unpack. There is a reason that this practice crops up in various civilizations seemingly independently, and it is not a pretty one - at least not by contemporary moral sensibilities. It is impossible to understand the biblical narrative of the binding of Isaac, for example, without addressing the context in which such a…

> It is impossible to understand the biblical narrative of the binding of Isaac Huh? It is quite easy to understand for me. Abraham and Sarah were childless and Sarah was infertile/too old DRC. Abraham prayed for an heir and miraculously Sarah gives life to Isaac. Yahwe demands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the most precious "thing" he has, to test his belief. Since Abraham does as he is told, a angel stops him from ki…

> Dawkins said that the god from the old testament is one of the most vile characters humans ever made up.

That’s just pure demagoguery. There are plenty of examples of much crueler cults we just don’t have as many surviving texts describing their practices.

Compared to someone like Huitzilopochtli Yahweh was pretty chill…

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#64

Post by George83728 »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #4
LatteLazy wrote: post #3

I am surprised this is a big deal, I thought it was well accepted. (Other) Phoenicians did it, Romans practised human (not sure about child) sacrifice and I thought the Carthaginians themselves recorded doing it? Humans are pretty crazy and we shouldn't pretend otherwise...

Not much of anything the Carthaginians recorded survived. Their civilisation was destroyed as thoroughly as possible, and the only proper accounts of it are Roman and Greek. So nearly everything about Carthaginian history is naturally controversial for that reason.

> Their civilisation was destroyed as thoroughly as possible

Ehh, we still remember they exist. How many other civilizations have been so thoroughly eradicated that we don't even remember them at all?

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#65

Post by ffgjgf1 »

lynx23 wrote: post #41
boomboomsubban wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Huh? It is quite easy to understand for me. Imagine if someone came up to you tomorrow and said "God talked to me and told me I also need to sacrifice my child." You'd assume they were crazy, hopefully to the point of calling the authorities. It's impossible to look at that story from a modern context and think Abraham's actions are remotely right or rational. Why would anyone trust a god who does that? But if child…

[flagged]

> is effectively crazy and bound for an asylum.

It took several thousands of years for us to come to this conclusion.

In the ancient word god/gods/divine spirit/etc. offered a perfectly reasonable explanation of how and why the world works. There were simply no better alternatives..

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#66

Post by ffgjgf1 »

c00lio wrote: post #17
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abandoning/exposing infants (especially girls) was very widespread in the ancient word. It’s possible that ‘sacrifice’ was just a way to justify it through some ritual. This didn’t really change untill the chirch started equating it with murder.

Disgust against child sacrifice and most human sacrifice was a Roman sensibility, long before there was any church or christianity.

Yeah, I’m talking about infanticide specifically in that case.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#67

Post by ffgjgf1 »

gordian-not wrote: post #37
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abandoning/exposing infants (especially girls) was very widespread in the ancient word. It’s possible that ‘sacrifice’ was just a way to justify it through some ritual. This didn’t really change untill the chirch started equating it with murder.

In ancient religions, and especially Canaanite there was a great emphasis on bringing your best offerings to god, best fruits, most expensive wine and top meat. It will be unusual that for children the unwanted ones suddenly are considered a good offering

> It will be unusual that for children the unwanted ones suddenly are considered a good offering

Seems like a win-win for me. The child is suddenly no longer unwanted but your ‘most prized possession’.

To be serious I’m not necessarily claiming that sacrifice was a direct alternative to infanticide just that there might have been some links and generally the fact that infanticide was quite widespread made sacrifice a bit more palatable.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#68

Post by miroljub »

mihaic wrote: post #20
miroljub wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Very strange to see US-style political discourse applied to the ancients. It really is true that as we do one thing we do all things.

The destruction of Cartagena is the first known example of purposeful destruction of the whole civilization.

The USA and the annihilation of native american civilizations came many centuries later.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#69

Post by ffgjgf1 »

miroljub wrote: post #14
AllegedAlec wrote: post #2

Turns out that Cato the Censor was right.

[flagged]

> Eradicating the whole civilization because of some obscure practice that most of the civilizations at the time practised to some extent?

That wasn’t even close to the to being the reason or even one of the reasons why they did that.

> He was a racist, war criminal and very corrupt politician.

Weren’t they all? You couldn’t be a military leader without being a war criminal or a politician without being corrupt by modern standards. That wasn’t really possible in the ancient world..

Feigning shock or disgust at ancient practices might be fun but it’s pretty futile..

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#70

Post by ffgjgf1 »

miroljub wrote: post #68
mihaic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very strange to see US-style political discourse applied to the ancients. It really is true that as we do one thing we do all things.

The destruction of Cartagena is the first known example of purposeful destruction of the whole civilization. The USA and the annihilation of native american civilizations came many centuries later.

No it’s not. It’s a bit more documented than some previous examples but we have written evidence for this occurring in the middle east and archeological evidence that would suggest it in many other places..
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