Sanhedrin 097
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BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI
of the Rabbinical Assembly in Israel
RABIN MISHNAH STUDY GROUP
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הַנּוֹתֵן מִזַּרְעוֹ לַמֹּלֶךְ אֵינוֹ חַיָּב עַד שֶׁיִּמְסוֹר לַמֹּלֶךְ וְיַעֲבִיר בָּאֵשׁ. מָסַר לַמֹּלֶךְ וְלֹא הֶעֱבִיר בָּאֵשׁ, הֶעֱבִיר בָּאֵשׁ וְלֹא מָסַר לַמֹּלֶךְ, אֵינוֹ חַיָּב עַד שֶׁיִּמְסוֹר לַמֹּלֶךְ וְיַעֲבִיר בָּאֵשׁ. בַּעַל אוֹב זֶה פִיתוֹם הַמְדַבֵּר מִשֶּׁחְיוֹ, וְיִדְּעוֹנִי זֶה הַמְדַבֵּר בְּפִיו: הֲרֵי אֵלּוּ בִסְקִילָה, וְהַנִּשְׁאָל בָּהֶם בְּאַזְהָרָה:
The crime of giving one's child to the Molekh is only incurred by handing [the child] over to the Molekh and passing it through the fire: merely handing it over to the Molekh while not passing it through the fire, or vice versa, does not constitute the sin; only both handing it over and passing it through the fire. A medium is a sorcerer who speaks from his armpit; a necromancer is one who speaks with his mouth. They themselves are to be stoned, but those who consult them are only warned.
EXPLANATIONS:
1:
This mishnah, too, is based on Mishnah Four of our present chapter, which, you will recall, gave a list of all the eighteen offences for which the punishment was death by stoning. That mishnah includes the three items that are the subject of this present Mishnah: worship of Molekh, being a medium and being a necromancer. 2:
And to the Israelites you shall say: Any person of Israelite stock or of those who [elect to] live with Israel who gives of his offspring to the Molekh shall die the death: the people of the land shall stone him [Leviticus 20:2].
The exact nature of this deity has yet to be clarified. We should note, however, that our sources do not refer to "Molekh" as a proper noun (the name of a deity) but always preface it with the definite article, "the Molekh". On a few occasions the Bible refers to the Molekh (or the worship of the Molekh) as "the abomination of the Ammonites" – a people living to the east of Israel in Transjordan and whose name is memorialized to this day in the name of the capital of the Kingdom of Jordan, Amman. This could, perhaps, suggest that the term "Molekh" is a dialectic variant of the Hebrew "Melekh", king. Very little is known about the worship of this deity. This leaves, of course, a flat field for modern scholars to play on. There are two main avenues of approach. One is to see the worship of the Molekh involving the immolation of living children; the other sees the connection with fire as involving some kind of initiation ceremony. (The view of the sages, as developed in the Gemara [Sanhedrin 64a-b] is supported by the second view of modern scholars.) Robert Kaiser was kind enough to send me a short account of these views, which I presented when we studied Mishnah Four. So much time has passed since then that, for everyone's convenience, I present that account here again:
The primary evidence comes not from the Middle East itself, but from Carthage, which was a Phoenician colony. Excavations at Carthage itself and at other Carthaginian cities have revealed a number of sacred precincts known as tophets; and here in total about 20,000 urns have been discovered (covering a period of something like 600 years). These urns contain animal remains, infant remains, or a mixture of the two: the animal remains preclude it from being a cemetery, and point to them instead being the remains of sacrifices. Added to this are iconographic representations actually depicting the sacrifice of infants, and a number of inscriptions (some admittedly relatively late) that appear to refer obliquely to a cultic child sacrifice called a m-l-k (like other Semitic languages, Punic script does not provide vowels). Putting this together, there is little doubt that child sacrifice was a common phenomenon in Carthaginian cities.
With this in mind, we can go back to our second major source of evidence, which is the Bible itself. There are numerous references in the Bible to child sacrifice as a Canaanite practice [e.g. Deuteronomy 12:31, 18:10, 2Kings 3:27, 16:3, 17:17, 17:31, 21:6, Isaiah 57:5, Jeremiah 7:31-2, 19:5-6, Ezekiel 16:20-21, 20:30-31, Psalm 106:36-8]. And several of these specifically refer to "molek" (Leviticus 18:21, 20:2-5, 2 Kings 23:10, Jeremiah 32:35). One might, of course, feel that this is hardly an impartial source, and that such references are part of an exaggerated Biblical polemic against Canaanite religion; but there are nevertheless excellent reasons for regarding them as reliable in this matter. One is the fact that these passages are not merely polemics against the Canaanites, but describe Israelites engaging in these practices, and contain very specific injunctions against them. But more important is the overlap with the Carthaginian evidence: the fact that we can independently know that a widespread group of people of Levantine origin engaged in child sacrifices called "m-l-k" enables us to corroborate the information in the Bible when it tells us about a similar cult with the same name. Apart from these main sources, there are other confirmations. For example, there are New Kingdom Egyptian temple reliefs showing Egyptian attacks on Canaanite cities: the inhabitants are depicted as sacrificing their children in response to the crisis. So much is essentially unproblematic. More difficult is knowing exactly how widespread such sacrifices were, and to which god they took place. A god with the name M-L-K was widely worshipped in the Middle East, and it seems most natural on the face of things to associate the practice of child sacrifice with his cult. However, there are certain problems with this. One is that in a large number of societies where we know that M-L-K was worshipped, there is absolutely no evidence to indicate that any child sacrifice took place. Another is that the Bible specifically refers to the m-l-k sacrifice being offered to other gods [Jeremiah 32:35; cf. also 2 Kings 17:31], though the gods here do have a m-l-k root as part of their names. It is true that the Bible does sometimes explicitly describe child sacrifices as being "l-m-l-k" [Leviticus 18:21, 20:2-4, 2 Kings 23:10], which could mean "to M-L-K" (which is how it was traditionally understood …) However, a good case can be made that this term refers only to the sacrifice, and not to the god at all – that "la-m-l-k" in such cases means "as a m-l-k sacrifice" (Leviticus 20:5, which refers to "ha-m-l-k" is especially relevant, as the "ha-" [="the"] would seem to imply a practice, not a name). Scholars are divided between these possibilities.
3:
The most succinct summary of the view of the sages as to what constituted the worship of the Molekh is to be found in Rambam's commentary to our present mishnah:
The immolation referred to is not burning as has been assumed by a very great number of people; rather it consisted essentially of stoking up a fire to a great heat in honour of the aforementioned idol who was thus worshipped. The father would take one of his sons and hand him over to one of the officiants, who would then wave the child from side to side over the fire…
However, one sage in the Gemara [Sanhedrin 64b] sees the father walking his child between two fires, one on either side. This would definitely suggest some kind of initiation ceremony or making some solemn undertaking. Something very similar is described by the prophet [Jeremiah 34] when the people make a solemn undertaking to release their Hebrew slaves every seventh year – an undertaking which they made by solemnly walking between two rows of dismembered calves (an undertaking which, also, they immediately broke.) In Genesis 15 it is God who makes a solemn undertaking by passing, personified as a burning torch, between two rows of dismembered creatures.
4: To be continued. DISCUSSION:
Mark Lautman writes: I believe this is MISHNAH SIX, not MISHNAH SEVEN.
I respond: There is some discrepancy between the division of mishnayot in the various manuscripts, and often great discrepancy between the division of the mishnayot and their presentation on the Talmud. However, in our present case, when we started studying this present chapter I wrote in Sanhedrin 091 that "There are discrepancies between the way the material is divided into mishnayot in the Talmud and the way it is presented in the Mishnah codices. Both methods have logic to commend them and lack of logic to suggest otherwise. I have chosen to ignore both methods and to present the mishnaic material according to what seems a convenient division." In our last shiur I mentioned that the late Professor Yeĥezkel Kaufman … opines that Israel's prophets … didn't understand idolatry at all, and mistook fetishism for idolatry. That is to say that they looked upon the statue of the god as the actual god (idol), which no true pagan would ever have done.) Mark Lautman continues to question: What is fetishism? What is paganism? What is idolatry? What is the difference between them? Is the mosaic floor at Beit Alpha an idol? I remember walking into a factory owned by Chinese Bhuddists. In their office was a statue of the Bhudda, and right in front of it was a plate with fine fresh fruit. Is this idol worship? Could I eat the fruit, assuming I would have the courage to take it? Many people believe that having a kosher mezuza on the doorpost ensures good luck in business and family matters. Is this idolatry? I respond: Idolatry involves the worship of an object because it is believed to be a god. By that I mean that the physical object itself is deemed to be the deity. This is best illustrated by quoting from the derision of the prophet:
He cuts down a cedar tree or selects plane or oak … which God planted and the rain nourished. This can serve man for fuel. He can take some of it for warmth or for baking bread. But he also turns it into a god, worshipping it, prostrating himself before it! Half of it he burned as fuel and cooked on it his meat, enjoyed his roast … and the rest he makes into a god, making obeisance before it and praying to it and saying "Save me for you are my god"… They don't have enough sense to reason: half I burned and even baked on its embers my bread and ate my meat; the rest I turned into an abomination: I am worshipping a lump of wood… [Isaiah 44:14-20]
Fetishism, on the other hand, would recognize that the physical object (statue) is simply a plastic representation, but would believe that it indicates for the worshipper some supernal power.
Judaism does not have a term that corresponds to heathen or pagan, which I believe were originally terms of opprobrium used by Christians to describe non-Christians, regardless of whether they were idolaters or not. According to my dictionary (Concise Oxford) the term heathen now describes "one who is neither Christian, Jewish, nor Mohammedan" (sic). The same dictionary defines pagan as "heathen, unenlightened". It follows that whether or not the floor at Bet Alpha is an idol depends on whether you view it as your god, as representing your god, as a work of art or as a flat surface for walking on… More of your comments next time. Shabbat Shalom to everybody. |