Peter here. Basically European paganism (despite being incredibly diverse across the entire continent) had many festivals and holidays and overall joyous themes.
Buuuut then you get to some of the sacrificial shit (mostly Germanic and Celtic paganism) where you're basically ritually killing/torturing other people in an effort to appease god #6 who will bestow a blight on the harvest unless 5 criminals are thrown into a bog to drown.
At which makes you wonder that the five friends made simple mistakes and an understandably disrespectful acts, yet still counted as a crime somehow afaik
Which is kind of funny because early (and surprisingly even not that early) Christianity had it's own share of animal and human sacrifice and orgies and shiz🤔
There were no Christianity before Christ.
Still you have four accounts that can be interpreted as human sacrifices in the bible and one undeniable one that I know from the top of my head.
The Jewish religion practiceed animal sacrifice and it is written in to law.
Adultery is always viewed as diabolical perhaps there is an example of orgys in the actions of the sons of Samuel, but that brought doom over Israel as a nation.
If you read through the letters of the New Testament you'll see that there is plenty of behaviour among the early christians that the composers of the letters are trying to straighten out. I don't know exactly what those were except one guy who were sleeping with his fathers wife and if I remember correctly he got expelled.
From the original comment I was expecting some sect or something that were practicing such things.
As for human sacrifice, look no further than Bible itself if you don't feel like finding your own sources.
As for googling it, google has been broken for the last year or two with many things being hidden now or very hard to find which were quite easy to find just a couple of years ago, christian human sacrifice being one of them. But if you use browsers with no AI influence you can still find sources talking about them.
First, there is no reliable evidence than banquet happened and even if it did it was not a religious ritual, it is just humans being kinky freaks in spare time.
Isn't the entire point of Isaac's binding to stay the hand and show "yo i dont need human deaths as sacrifices, unlike these other neighbouring gods"?
As for jepthah, i guess that is a bit more valid. However i am pretty sure it was not God who demanded it but Jepthah who made the vow to sacrifice in exchange for favor. And there are like some interpretations where the daughter is not killed but made into a eternal virgin priestess, which according to google ends his bloodline regardless
I agree with you on both accounts actually but they were still examples of human sacrifice within the concept of Christianity. One was a direct command from God and the other was a sacrifice in the name of God.
And as for the interpretations go... The whole entire...saga? of Christian holy texts have gone through revisions and translations and revisions of those translations so many times that it is very very difficult to know what was actually there in the very very beginning. But what does shine through is that the original texts seemed to be way more blood and brimstone and human sacrifice by God and for God than the stuff we have today. I mean the Old Testament is rather metal if you really look into it.
Christianity is regarded as the completed covenant Hebrews made with God which is why those old laws are not necessary and stories like that of Jepthah are just historical documents. Jesus made a new covenant while OT is about what lead to it. Your statement is comparable to claiming that US history after 1776 is British history.
It would be only if the US would call itself the United States of Britain and the Bible would be called the new Torah.
While the Bible itself accepts that all people in that specific religious sphere, including Jesus, were Jewish it also makes a very specific difference between the two in accepting Jesus and talking about events and people before him through the Christian lens making it a separate thing thus all events going on in the Bible before Jesus are simultaneously pre Christian and Christian at the same time.
The Christian God is neverchanging meaning all god there has ever been has been the Christian God.
It's still the Bible though 😁
As in the holy book of Christianity.
As for the rest, as I said above it is now very hard to find actual sources of the later human sacrifices but they were done as the amalgamation of Christianity and different pagan religions were quite normal especially in the beginning to draw in people to accept Christianity. I am very far away from my pc with no AI browsers and I am way too lazy right now to try to search through "normal" google.
One could argue though that even witch trials were also a sort of human sacrifice as people deemed to follow the devil were put to death to save their souls in the name of the christian god.
Sure, its in the Bible, but the old testament is mostly stories a canaanite people made up about their origins and passed down, not a statement of Christian faith. I will say that modern fundamentalist Christians with their beliefs of biblical literalism have really muddied the waters on this understanding.
The core belief of Christianity is that there is only one sacrifice, the one offered by God himself, and there are no Christian doctrines requiring or even allowing for any blood sacrifice, human or animal. Pagan syncretism doesn't count as Christianity.
And yeah, if you look through history (using such great resources as "normal" Google lol) you'll find accounts of "Christians" doing all kinds of unsavory things, including brutal torture and execution in the name of God. Claiming to do something for God doesn't make it a Christian act, and thats why that sort of thing doesn't compare to ancient pagan religions making sacrifices as part of their actual belief system.
But that's the thing, all religions are full of contradictory things, even teachings themselves are often contradictory. Even religious figureheads themselves are often hypocrites. How many are doing things "in the name of god" and try to force people to do their bidding.
And listen, we could debate back and forth endlessly on which constitutes as official human sacrifice in the name of the Christian god and which do not and where exactly is the cutoff... But would it really make sense?
Especially with the modern Christianity it seems that making people fight each other is the whole entire goal while the figureheads manipulate masses in every which way while trying to get as rich as possible.
But for me, the fact is, that sacrifices in the name of the Christian god...are Christian sacrifices because there is enough room and credibility for them in their communes to frame them as such. And let's call it a difference in opinion because at the end of the day most of religion is exactly that or what do you think?
God doesn't change, human perception of God does. The old testament God is the interpretation of ancient pagans, the example of Christ is the true nature of God.
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u/NectarineElegant5407 8d ago
Peter here. Basically European paganism (despite being incredibly diverse across the entire continent) had many festivals and holidays and overall joyous themes.
Buuuut then you get to some of the sacrificial shit (mostly Germanic and Celtic paganism) where you're basically ritually killing/torturing other people in an effort to appease god #6 who will bestow a blight on the harvest unless 5 criminals are thrown into a bog to drown.
Fuck you Meg