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Tophet
In the Hebrew Bible, Tophet or Topheth (; ; ) is a location in Jerusalem in the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna), where worshipers engaged in a ritual involving "passing a child through the fire", most likely child sacrifice. Traditionally, the sacrifices have been ascribed to a god named Moloch. The Bible condemns and forbids these sacrifices, and the tophet is eventually destroyed by king Josiah, although mentions by the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah suggest that the practices associated with the tophet may have persisted. Most scholars agree that the ritual performed at the tophet was child sacrifice, and they connect it to similar episodes throughout the Bible and recorded in Phoenicia and Carthage by Hellenistic sources. There is disagreement about whether the sacrifices were offered to a god named "Moloch". Based on Phoenician and Carthaginian inscriptions, a growing number of scholars believe that the word ''moloch'' refers to the type of sacrifice rather than a deity. T ...
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Valley Of Hinnom (Gehenna)
Gehenna ( ; ) or Gehinnom ( or ) is a Biblical toponym that has acquired various theological connotations, including as a place of divine punishment, in Jewish eschatology. The place is first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as part of the border between the tribes of Tribe of Judah, Judah and Tribe of Benjamin, Benjamin (Joshua 15:8). During the late History of ancient Israel and Judah, First Temple period, it was the site of the Tophet, where some of the kings of Kingdom of Judah, Judah had child sacrifice, sacrificed their children by fire (Jeremiah 7:31). Thereafter, it was cursed by the biblical prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 19:2–Jeremiah 19:6, 6). In later rabbinic literature, "Gehinnom" became associated with divine punishment as the destination of the wicked for the atonement of their sins. The term is different from the more neutral term Sheol, the Underworld, abode of the dead. The King James Version of the Bible translates both with the Old English, Anglo-Saxon word ''Hel ...
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Child Sacrifice
Child sacrifice is the ritualistic killing of children in order to please or appease a deity, supernatural beings, or sacred social order, tribal, group or national loyalties in order to achieve a desired result. As such, it is a form of human sacrifice. Child sacrifice is thought to be an extreme extension of the idea that the more important the object of sacrifice, the more devout the person rendering it. The practice of child sacrifice in Europe and the Near East appears to have ended as a part of the religious transformations of late antiquity. Pre-Columbian cultures Archaeologists have found the remains of more than 140 children who were sacrificed in Peru's northern coastal region. Aztec culture The Aztecs are well known for their ritualistic human sacrifice as offerings to gods with the goal of restoring cosmological balance. While the demographic of people chosen to sacrifice remains unclear, there is evidence that victims were mostly warriors captured in battle ...
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Moloch
Moloch, Molech, or Molek is a word which appears in the Hebrew Bible several times, primarily in the Book of Leviticus. The Greek Septuagint translates many of these instances as "their king", but maintains the word or name ''Moloch'' in others, including one additional time in the Book of Amos where the Hebrew text does not attest the name. The Bible strongly condemns practices that are associated with Moloch, which are heavily implied to include child sacrifice. Traditionally, the name ''Moloch'' has been understood as referring to a Canaanite god. However, since 1935, scholars have speculated that Moloch refers to the sacrifice ''itself'', since the Hebrew word ''mlk'' is identical in spelling to a term that means "sacrifice" in the closely related Punic language. This second position has grown increasingly popular, but it remains contested. Among proponents of this second position, controversy continues as to whether the sacrifices were offered to Yahweh or another deity, a ...
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Carthage
Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classical world. It became the capital city of the civilization of Ancient Carthage and later Roman Carthage. The city developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of a Punic people, Punic empire which dominated large parts of the Southwest Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. The legendary Queen Elissa, Alyssa or Dido, originally from Tyre, Lebanon, Tyre, is regarded as the founder of the city, though her historicity has been questioned. In the myth, Dido asked for land from a local tribe, which told her that she could get as much land as an oxhide could cover. She cut the oxhide into strips and laid out the perimeter of the new city. As Carthage prospered at home, the polity sent colonists abroad as well as magistrates to rule t ...
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Baal
Baal (), or Baʻal, was a title and honorific meaning 'owner' or 'lord Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the Peerage o ...' in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during Ancient Near East, antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to gods. Scholars previously associated the theonym with solar god, solar cults and with a variety of unrelated patron deity, patron deities, but inscriptions have shown that the name Ba'al was particularly associated with the storm god, storm and fertility god Hadad and his local manifestations. The Hebrew Bible includes use of the term in reference to various Levantine mythology, Levantine deities, often with application towards Hadad, who was decried as a false god. That use was taken over into Christianity and Isl ...
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Phoenicia
Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian coast. They developed a Maritime history, maritime civilization which expanded and contracted throughout history, with the core of their culture stretching from Arwad in modern Syria to Mount Carmel. The Phoenicians extended their cultural influence through trade and colonization throughout the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula, evidenced by thousands of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, Phoenician inscriptions. The Phoenicians directly succeeded the Bronze Age Canaanites, continuing their cultural traditions after the decline of most major Mediterranean basin cultures in the Late Bronze Age collapse and into the Iron Age without interruption. They called themselves Canaanites and referred to their land as Canaan, but ...
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Valley Of Hinom PA180093
A valley is an elongated low area often running between hills or mountains and typically containing a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers or streams over a very long period. Some valleys are formed through erosion by glacial ice. These glaciers may remain present in valleys in high mountains or polar areas. At lower latitudes and altitudes, these glacially formed valleys may have been created or enlarged during ice ages but now are ice-free and occupied by streams or rivers. In desert areas, valleys may be entirely dry or carry a watercourse only rarely. In areas of limestone bedrock, dry valleys may also result from drainage now taking place underground rather than at the surface. Rift valleys arise principally from earth movements, rather than erosion. Many different types of valleys are described by geographers, using terms that may be global in use or else applied only locally. Forma ...
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Babylonian Exile
The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were forcibly relocated to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The deportations occurred in multiple waves: After the siege of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, around 7,000 individuals were deported to Mesopotamia. Further deportations followed the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple in 587 BCE. Although the dates, numbers of deportations, and numbers of deportees vary in the several biblical accounts, the following is a general outline of what occurred. After the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem, which resulted in tribute being paid by the Judean king Jehoiakim. In 602 BCE, Jehoiakim refused to pay further tribute, which led in 598/597 BCE to another siege of the city by Nebuchadnezzar II and culminated in the death of Jehoiakim and the exile to Babylonia of his ...
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Ahaz
Ahaz (; ''Akhaz''; ) an abbreviation of Jehoahaz II (of Judah), "Yahweh has held" (; ''Ya'úḫazi'' 'ia-ú-ḫa-zi'' Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada, ''The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726-722 BC), Kings of Assyria''. (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 1; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), Tiglath-Pileser III 47 r 11'. was the twelfth king of Judah, and the son and successor of Jotham. Ahaz was 20 when he became king of Judah and reigned for 16 years. Ahaz is portrayed as an evil king in the Second Book of Kings (2 Kings 16:2). In Edwin R. Thiele's opinion, Ahaz was co-regent with Jotham from 736/735 BC, and his sole reign began in 732/731 and ended in 716/715 BC. However, William F. Albright has dated his reign to 744–728 BC. The Gospel of Matthew lists Ahaz of Judah in the genealogy of Jesus. He is also mentioned in Isaiah 7 and . Reign Ahaz's reign commenced at the age of 20, in the 17t ...
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Manasseh Of Judah
Manasseh (; Hebrew: ''Mənaššé'', "Forgetter"; ''Menasî'' 'me-na-si-i'' ''Manasses''; ) was the fourteenth king of the Kingdom of Judah. He was the oldest of the sons of Hezekiah and Hephzibah (). He became king at the age of 12 and reigned for 55 years (; ). Biblical account The Hebrew Bible documents Manasseh in and . He is also mentioned in Jeremiah 15:4, where the prophet Jeremiah predicts "four forms of destruction" for the people of Judah because of the evil done by Manasseh in Judah. Manasseh was the first king of Judah who was not contemporary with the northern kingdom of Israel, which the Assyrians had destroyed 720 BC, deporting much of its population. He re-instituted polytheistic worship and reversed the religious changes made by his father Hezekiah – hence his condemnation in several biblical verses. He married Meshullemeth, daughter of Haruz of Jotbah, and they had a son Amon, who succeeded him as king of Judah upon his death. Hezekiah, Manass ...
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Book Of Jeremiah
The Book of Jeremiah () is the second of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the second of the Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. The superscription at chapter Jeremiah 1#Superscription, Jeremiah 1:1–3 identifies the book as "the words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah". Of all the prophets, Jeremiah comes through most clearly as a person, ruminating to his scribe Baruch ben Neriah, Baruch about his role as a servant of God with little good news for his audience. His book is intended as a message to the Jews in exile in Babylon, explaining the disaster of exile as God's response to Israel's pagan worship: the people, says Jeremiah, are like an unfaithful wife and rebellious children, their infidelity and rebelliousness made judgment inevitable, although restoration and a new covenant are foreshadowed. Authentic oracles of Jeremiah are probably to be found in the poetic sections of Jeremiah 1, chapters 1 through Jeremiah 25, 25, but the book as a whole has been heavily ...
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Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.
; ; or ), also known in Hebrew as (; ), is the canonical collection of scriptures, comprising the Torah (the five Books of Moses), the Nevi'im (the Books of the Prophets), and the
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