The subject of ritual murder in relation to jews is a long and dark one filled as it with all sorts of claims – some plausible and others rather less so – and as such it needs to be treated carefully. Rather than taking a maximalist interpretation of assuming that every accusation of ritual murder is genuine until we have reviewed the evidence for it: we need to look at each case to ascertain two separate issues basing ourselves on the assumption that while a jew may or may not have killed another person we should not assume ritual murder has taken place without some evidence for doing so (i.e. a minimalist interpretation, but not as it is frequently used an excuse to dismiss the possibility outright and in any circumstances). (1)
Firstly, we need to ascertain whether or not there is a plausible case as to whether a jew killed the individual or individuals involved.
Secondly, if this is true and a jew did indeed kill the individual or individuals concerned. We need to ascertain whether there is a case for the killing being in any way, shape or form linked to a belief on the perpetrator’s part that what they were doing was linked to Judaism.
This having been said however there is to my mind a considerable difference between the later accusations of ritual murder; which began in the 11th Century in England with the cases of William of Norwich and Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (both of which I would argue are genuine cases given what evidence we have), and the first accusation we have, which was made by the Roman polymath Poseidonius was repeated by his equally eminent pupil Apollonius Molon – the tutor of Julius Caesar and Marcus Tullius Cicero – and then used as evidence against the jews by the Greek scholar Apion of Alexandria.
This difference is in the method and purpose of the ritual murder in so far as the first assertion of this type was a burnt offering in terms of a sacrifice, while later rituals described indicate a focus on the blood of the victim with no immolation involved.
However, one aspect does remain constant the wish of the jews to revenge themselves on gentiles and that the ritual murder has been perpetrated to give voice to this need or ritual (a-la Yuval and Toaff’s ‘ritual of curses’).
We know of this first ritual murder assertion and its intellectual genealogy through the mention of it made by the jewish historian Josephus who states:
‘He adds a second story, of Greek origin, which is a malicious slander upon us from beginning to end. On this it will suffice to remark that persons who venture upon religious topics ought to be aware that there is less profanity in violating the precincts of a temple than in calumniating its priests. But these authors are more concerned to uphold a sacrilegious king than to give a fair and veracious description of our rites and temple. In their anxiety to defend Antiochus and to cover up the perfidy and sacrilege practised upon our nation under pressure of an empty exchequer, they have further invented, to discredit us, the fictitious story which follows.
Apion, who is here the spokesman of others, asserts that Antiochus found in the temple a couch, on which a man was reclining, with a table before him laden with a banquet of fish of the sea, beasts of the earth, and birds of the air, at which the poor fellow was gazing in stupefaction. The king’s entry was instantly hailed by him with adoration, as about to procure him profound relief; falling at the king’s knees, he stretched out his right hand and implored him to set him free. The king reassured him and bade him tell him who he was, why he was living there, what was the meaning of his abundant fare. Thereupon, with sighs and tears, the man, in a pitiful tone, told the tale of his distress. He said that he was a Greek and that, while travelling about the province for his livelihood, he was suddenly kidnapped by men of a foreign race and conveyed to the temple; there he was shut up and seen by nobody but was fattened on feasts of the most lavish description. At first these unlooked-for attentions deceived him and caused him pleasure; suspicion followed, then consternation. Finally, on consulting the attendants who waited upon him, he heard of the unutterable law of the Jews, for the sake of which he was being fed. The practice was repeated annually at a fixed season. They would kidnap a Greek foreigner, fatten him up for a year, and then convey him to a wood, where they slew him, sacrificed his body with their customary ritual, partook of his flesh, and, while immolating the Greek, swore an oath of hostility to the Greeks. The remains of their victim were then thrown into a pit. The man (Apion continues) stated that he had now but a few days left to live, and implored the king, out of respect for the gods of Greece, to defeat this Jewish plot upon his lifeblood and to deliver him from his miserable predicament.’ (2)
Now the first instinct of many scholars is to dismiss this tale of Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes’ discovery of a Greek man who was to be sacrificed by the jews in the Temple of Solomon as outright nonsense, but if we read the tale carefully there are several assertions in it which make it not only plausible but likely to be true.
The first thing we need to understand is that the jews of this time were not the absolute monotheists of legend, but rather as a reading of the Tanakh will inform the reader: we are here dealing with a group of people who have an official religion (the worship of Yahweh) but who also at every level of society frequently worship other gods especially those of Canaanite origin other than the Canaanite ‘King of Heaven’ Yahweh. (3) One of the most frequently mentioned of these Canaanite deities are the goddesses Astarte and Asherah who we know both had officially sanctioned and very active cults at around the time of Solomon. (4)
Thus we know that jews worshipped Astarte and Asherah in fairly considerable numbers and if we take into account the fact that this worship likely extended into the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Solomon (ergo Mnaseus of Patra’s ‘Golden Ass’) (5) then we begin to understand that we are dealing here not with a monotheist monolith of a religion, but rather a religion that is mainly adhered to by Yahweh purists and not held in such high regard by other more polytheistic members of the jewish nation.
Having understood this we can then begin to look at the Canaanite context of early Judaism (Day goes as far as to call it a Canaanite ‘sun cult’) (6) and recognising that human sacrifice was not an uncommon event in Canaanite religion much as it wasn’t in Carthaginian religion, (7) which is derived directly from the former (as Carthage was a Phoenician colony).
We can see references to this form of human sacrifice in the prophet Jeremiah when we are told that the Israelites ‘have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire – something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind.’ (8)
Now we should bear in mind that ‘Topheth’ is a slightly corruption of the term ‘Tophet’ (lit. ‘roasting place’) which was a place where the Canaanite faithful came to offer human sacrifice through the medium of fire (a-la the ‘burnt offerings’ of later Judaism) to their gods and goddesses: two of which would certainly have been Astarte and Asherah. In this passage from Jeremiah we have a direct reference to the fact that jews were conducting human sacrifice rituals to Canaanite gods in spite of the attempts by Yahweh purists (as with the ‘golden ass’) to stamp out this ‘idolatry’.
We also have further references to the practice of such human sacrifices among the jews in the prophet Ezekiel:
‘I also gave the Israelites over to statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by; I let them become defiled through their gifts – the sacrifice of every first-born – that I might fill with horror so they would know that I am the Lord.’ (9)
And:
‘When you offer your gifts – the sacrifice of your sons in the fire – you continue to defile yourselves with all your idols to this day.’ (10)
This clearly indicates that there was a practice of human sacrifice – specifically child sacrifice – among the jews of this time and it is not unlikely that this practice continued for a long period of time afterwards. Indeed, in the story of the Greek to be sacrificed in the temple we find an interesting addition in Diodorus Siculus when he states that:
‘In former times the Carthaginians had been accustomed to sacrifice to this god [Baal] the noblest of their sons, but more recently, secretly buying and nurturing children, they had sent these to the sacrifice.’ (11)
This then throws a slightly different light on Carthaginian; and thus concomitantly onto Canaanite (as evidenced by the biblical passages from Jeremiah and Ezekiel cited above), religion in that the practice of parents burning their children to death in the temples had begun to understandably evolve away from the highly stressful and emotionally destructive act of killing one’s own child by watching it burn to death before your eyes. The parents of noble families – whose children were first in line for sacrifice – had begun to purchase other children they could pass off as their own so that when they were called to or needed to sacrifice to their gods: they could do so without sacrificing their own offspring.
It is but a very short step from this practice to kidnapping rather than secretly buying children and then nurturing them till to the time of sacrifice came. We note then if as we can reasonably assert: Carthaginian practices either paralleled or influenced those undertaken in Canaan, then it is not unreasonable to see that a man – who professed to be a Greek – could have been kidnapped or bought young and then nurtured until the sacrifice was due to take place.
This is particularly so when we realise that when Poseidonius talks of a ‘man’ he means something different to what we today understand in terms of the time that a child comes of age. We work on the assumption – based in our modern Western culture – that this is either 16, 18 or 21 dependent on an individual’s views and their cultural/religious context. Compare this to the ancient Greek view that a child has come of age by the time they are 12-15 dependent on the city-state and the social context. (12)
If we also look to what Josephus says we can see he clearly states that what Antiochus Epiphanes found was the Greek man ‘reclining, with a table before him laden with a banquet of fish of the sea, beasts of the earth, and birds of the air, at which the poor fellow was gazing in stupefaction.’ (13)
It is thus clear that the man was very well nourished; far more than would have normally been the case and thus would have in the time that he had been in captivity to grow to the full capacity that his genetic inheritance allowed. We should remember at this juncture that the man told Antiochus Epiphanes that he had but a few days to live (14) suggesting to us that he had been in captivity for some time given the sacrificial timeline of a year offered by Poseidonius (15), three years offered by Suidas (16) and seven years offered by Damocritus. (17)
This would have significantly meant that the Greek man may well have been a lot taller and better built than Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes and his men: indicating why they would have thought him a man grown, but when in fact he may well have been a lot younger than they would have thought based on his physical appearance.
So, if we understand this then the ‘man’ we see referred to could very easily be a ‘boy’ barely into his teens in our own culturally loaded perceptions. This then indicates that the reference to a Greek ‘man’ being found in the Temple of Solomon as a future human sacrifice is not only not implausible but quite likely if the priests in the Temple were making a burnt sacrifice to Astarte or Asherah at various points in time.
This leads us nicely on to the different timelines given, which are alternatively: one year, three years and seven years. At first glance this might be used to point out at a discrepancy in story of the ritual murder, but this is not actually the case given that all three of these actually turn out to be plausible candidates for a human sacrifice to Astarte or Asherah.
Firstly, an annual sacrifice is perhaps the most obvious of all the proposed sacrificial cycles and corresponds nicely to a once-a-year event that was held on a specific day, which would account for the man’s assertion that he had but a few days to live before he was sacrificed as a burnt offering by the jews.
Secondly, a sacrifice every three years corresponds with the cycle of the blue moon phenomenon, which is where an additional full moon occurs in the lunar cycle. This phenomenon occurs roughly every two-three years (well two and a half to be precise) and can be linked to Astarte by her most frequent representation in Phoenician art of the time as a goddess with ‘horns’ on her head. (18) The ‘horns’ are in fact the symbol of the moon (i.e. the crescent moon) and link the worship of Astarte to the phases of the moon with such a predictable event as a blue moon being either a time of great fear or a time of great joy. Regardless of its perceived positive or negative meaning, which is open to interpretation, we can see that there is a simple link between the three-year timeline and Canaanite religious practices.
Thirdly a sacrifice every seven years also corresponds with an astrological event, but in this case, it is the transit of Venus between the earth and the sun, which happens every six to eight years. The importance of this is easily demonstrated by pointing out that Venus had a very important role in ancient Canaanite religion as understood by the Israelites. (19) In addition, in the Tanakh Astarte is actually called the ‘evening star’ and we know that the worship of her was intimately associated with the planet Venus. (20) The unusual movement of which would have certainly caused some great consternation and require a special propitiatory sacrifice to the goddess to make sure she came back to her perceived normal course across the heavens.
Clearly then we have three quite arguable possibilities, but the one with the clearest link to the cult of Astarte or Asherah is Damocrites’ seven years, which would allow for two problems to resolve themselves in this reconstruction.
Firstly, the growth of a kidnapped or bought child would have taken quite some time even if well fed and using the longer timeline allows for the child to have grown substantially while having been brought into the temple as a sacrifice when he was very young. It also explains why the man did not attempt to run away as he had more or less grown up knowing he would be used as a human sacrifice to the Canaanite gods and would have thus been more able to accept that fate (as opposed to having had it forced upon him later one).
Secondly it explains the lack of mention of this practice in other sources as a practice that occurs every seven years and only involves a foreigner as a human sacrifice is not likely to be noticed unless – as it in fact was – stumbled upon quite by accident. If the practice occurred every year or every three years then it would leave a considerably larger historical footprint in terms of missing individuals and of ritual activity which could be uncovered and likely would have been.
This then gives us our probable for timeline for the ritual event as well as linking it to the worship of Astarte or Asherah. We may further state that we can gauge the authenticity of the claim to the ritual sacrifice of a Greek by noting some of the small but highly significant details regarding the practice. To repeat the key part of the passage from Josephus:
‘And then convey him to a wood, where they slew him, sacrificed his body with their customary ritual, partook of his flesh, and, while immolating the Greek’ (21)
Now at first glance the passage looks relatively banal in that it is the details of sacrifice, but there are two aspects of it that tell us we are likely dealing with a real event. Firstly, the mention of the immolation of the sacrifice and the implication that the immolation is done while the Greek is still alive is a practice almost unique to the Carthaginian and Canaanite religious systems. Many religions use and continue to use immolation however not on a living sacrifice but rather either as part of non-sacrificial ritual or a previously killed sacrifice.
This however pales in comparison to the reference of the ritual murder taking place in ‘a wood’ which is the proverbial Rosetta stone of the passage in that we have a lot of references in the Tanakh to what are called ‘Asherah poles’ or simply shrines to the Canaanite goddess Asherah which were carved out of living wood and whose sanctuaries – which operated as ritual sacrificial centres for her cult – were always found in woodland. (22)
This clearly demonstrates that Poseidonius’ account of the Greek man in the Temple of Solomon has the ring of truth about it, because it gets small but significant details correct, which had it been simply invented out of thin air – as jews are quick to assert – would not tally with what we know about Canaanite religion at this time.
The only difficulty here is that Astarte and Asherah are different goddesses, but as I speculated in my recent article on the issue of the ‘Golden Ass’ in the Temple of Solomon: it can be resolved by locating the cult as one being followed removed from much of the original inspiration for it. So those jews participating in the ritual were continuing to do so, because it had always been done and they saw no reason for stopping such a practice (hence their answer to Antiochus Epiphanes). In essence they had confused and begun to combine two different Canaanite religious practices together (given that both goddesses have similar names this is not possible but likely) as was quite common in the ancient and classical worlds.
Further to this Moshe Benovitz has suggested a plausible alternative rationale within Judaism of the period for just such a sacrifice in the concept of herem (lit. ‘Ban’ but often styled ‘God’s Portion’) within Judaism of the period, which includes the ritual sacrifice of non-jews to Yahweh – (23) specifically citing the story of the jewish ritual murder of King Agag in 1 Samuel – (24) as an ritualistic offering to him.
As Benovitz explains:
‘The herem contagion, like other pre-deuteronomic legal concepts, is also developed in this manner in Deuteronomy. What was originally a cultic contagion rooted in the sanctity of the foreign cult becomes a social contagion, a safeguard against the possibility that the idolaters will influence the worshippers of the Lord. The war herem is not a mere communal vow to please the Lord.; it is an extension of the herem against idolaters, which has been reinterpreted as a safeguard against idolatrous influence. The Deuteronomic source has thus far created a single herem from the pre-deuteronomic wartime herem and the pre-deuteronomic idolatry herem: both are designed to prevent the spread of idol worship. There is thus no longer any reason to distinguish between certain Canaanite cities and others: all Canaanites are idolaters, hence they all must be put under herem.’ (25)
He further qualifies this by stating that:
‘It is the people and the idols that are bad influences.’ (26)
As well as that:
‘The juxtaposition of Leviticus 27:28 with Leviticus 27:29 creates an ethical crux: the implication is that a man can devote his slave as herem, whereupon the slave is immolated as an offering to God. Commentators and scholars from the Rabbis have interpreted verse 29 in various other ways, but all of these ignore the context of the previous verse. If, however, we consider Leviticus 27:28a a later addition, Leviticus 27:28b-29 can be seen as a recapitulation of the law of the pre-deuteronomic war herem: the spoils of war devoted as herem are contagious, and therefore human beings who are dedicated as herem, or those who come into contact with haramim, must be put to death.’ (27)
Put another way in working through the concept of votive offerings to Yahweh; Benovitz has come to the conclusion that the Biblical concept of herem was developed from an early form of offering – largely of animals and gold/silver – to Yahweh (‘God’s Portion’) into an institution of human sacrifice – both of non-jewish (‘idolaters’) individuals and entire cities – among the jews, which was achieved by immolating them on an altar – or before the altar of Yahweh, which would also fit the facts of the story that Josephus tells of Antiochus Epiphanes discovering a Greek man who was to be ritually sacrificed in the Temple of Solomon.
We can thus state that we have demonstrated the plausibility of the jews committing this event as a ritual killing based upon their religious beliefs and also shown that the details of the statement tally with what we know about the jews and Canaanite religion at this time.
Therefore, we can propose that Antiochus Epiphanes did indeed uncover a Greek man who had been kidnapped/bought by jews and brought to the Temple of Solomon. Where he had been kept and nurtured for nearly seven years and then was to be burnt alive in a wood before an image of either Astarte or Asherah while the jews heaped abuse on the gentiles in a potential forerunner to the ritual of Purim, which celebrates revenge and whose pastries (which Dever links to Asherah worship originally) are symbolically tied to the eating of human flesh in this case representing Haman rather than gentiles (which the Greeks would have naturally assumed was purely them deriving such a belief from their Greece-centred world view) or that the Greek man discovered by Antiochus Epiphanes was to be sacrificed as part of an burnt offering to Yahweh by the jews as suggested by Benovitz’s research.
We thus have the clear anatomy of the first jewish ritual murder.
References
(1) The possibility of ritual murder having a partial basis in fact has been argued – sometimes by implication – by three separate jewish scholars: Ariel Toaff, Elliot Horowitz and Israel Jacob Yuval.
(2) Joseph. Cont. Ap. 2:89-96
(3) See Mark Smith, 2001, ‘The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York.
(4) John Day, 2002, ‘Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan’, 2nd Edition, Sheffield Academic Press: New York, Ibid, pp. 129
(5) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-golden-ass-of-the-jews-in-the
(6) Day, Op. Cit., pp. 151-152
(7) Shelby Brown, 1991, ‘Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrificial Monuments in their Mediterranean Context’, 1st Edition, Sheffield Academic Press: New York, pp. 22-23
(8) Jer. 7:31
(9) Eke. 20:25-26
(10) Ek. 20:31
(11) Diod. 20
(12) See Jenifer Neils, John Oakley (Eds.), 2003, ‘Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past’, 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven
(13) Joseph. Cont. Ap. 2:91
(14) Ibid, 2:96
(15) Ibid, 2:95
(16) http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2027-ass-worship
(17) Ibid.
(18) Jeffrey Burton Russell, 1977, ‘The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity’, 1st Edition, Cornell University Press: New York, p. 94
(19) Day, Op. Cit., pp. 167-171
(20) Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst, Karel van der Toorn, 1999, ‘Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible’, 2nd Edition, E. J. Brill: Leiden, pp. 109-110
(21) Joseph. Cont. Ap. 2:95
(22) Tilde Binger, 1997, ‘Asherah: Goddess in Ugarit, Israel, and the Old Testament’, 1st Edition, Sheffield Academic Press: New York, pp. 140-142
(23) Moshe Benovitz, 1998, ‘Kol Nidre: Studies in the Development of Rabbinic Votive Institutions’, 1st Edition, Scholars Press: Atlanta, pp. 71-87
(24) Ibid., p. 75, n. 28; on the specific example of 1 Samuel’s murder of King Agag being a case of jewish ritual murder please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-ritual-murder-the-case-of
(25) Benovitz, Op. Cit., p. 79
(26) Ibid., p. 80
(27) Ibid., p. 83
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