SACRAL HARLOTRY. CHILD SACRIFICE
Men's clubhouses.--Consecrated women.--Relation of sacral
harlotry and child sacrifice.--Reproduction and food supply.--
The Gilgamesh epic.--The Adonis myth.--Religious ritual,
religious drama, and harlotry.--The Babylonian custom; its
relation to religion.--Religion and the mores.--Cases of sacral
harlotry.--The same customs in the Old Testament.--The
antagonism of abundance and excess.--Survivals of sacral
harlotry; analogous customs in Hindostan.--Lingam and yoni.--
Conventionalization.--Criticism of the mores of Hindostan.--
Mexican mores; drunkenness.--Japanese mores.--Chinese religion
and mores.--Philosophy of the interest in reproduction;
incest.--The archaic is sacred.--Child sacrifice.--Beast
sacrifice substituted for child sacrifice.--Mexican doctrine of
greater power through death.--Motives of child sacrifice.--
Dedication by vows.--Degeneration of the custom of consecrating
women.--Our traditions come from Israel.--How the Jewish view
of sensuality prevailed.
The topics treated in this chapter are further illustrations of the
power of the mores to make anything right, and to protect anything from
condemnation. See also Chapter XVII.
+585. Men's clubhouses.+ It is a very common custom in barbaric society
that the men have a clubhouse in which they spend much of their time
together and in which the unmarried men sleep. Such houses are centers
of intrigue, enterprise, amusement, and vice. The men work there, carry
on shamanistic rites, hold dances, entertain guests, and listen to
narratives by the elders. Women are excluded altogether or at times. In
the Caroline Islands such houses are institutions of social and
religious importance. While the women of the place may not enter them,
those from a neighboring place live in them for a time in license, but
return home with payment which is used partly for religious purposes and
partly for themselves.[1885]
+586. Consecrated women.+ It may even be said to be the current view of
uncivilized peoples, up to the full development of the father family,
that women have free control of their own persons until they are
married, when they pass under a taboo which they are bound to observe.
Therefore before marriage they may accumulate a dowry. Very many cases
also occur of men-women and women-men, persons of either sex who assume
the functions and mode of life of the other. Cases also occur in
barbarism of women consecrated to the gods. Among the Ewe-speaking
peoples of West Africa[1886] girls of ten or twelve are received and
educated for three years in the chants and dances of worship, serving
the priests. At the end of the time they become public women, but are
under no reproach, because they are regarded as married to the god and
acting under his direction. Properly they should be restricted to the
worshipers at the temple, but they are not. Probably such was the
original taboo which is now relaxed and decayed. Children whom such
women bear belong to the god. The institution "is essentially religious
in its origin and is intimately connected with phallic worship."
+587. Sacral harlotry and child sacrifice.+ These observations may serve
to introduce a study of the phenomena, so incomprehensible to us, of
sacral prostitution and child sacrifice. That study is calculated to
show us that the mores define right and wrong. It would be a great
mistake to regard the above cases as mere aberrations of sex appetite.
The usages had their origin in interests. Sacral harlotry was a
substitute for the child sacrifice of females. The other incidental
interests found advantage in it. It was an attempt to solve problems of
life. It was regarded as conducive to welfare, and was connected with
religion. It was kept up by the conservatism and pertinacity of
religious usage until a later time and another set of conditions, when
it became vicious.
+588. Reproduction and food supply.+ The operations of nature by which
plants and animals reproduce are of great interest and importance to
man, because on them depends the abundance of his food supply. It is
impossible to tell when this interest would "begin," but it would become
intense whenever the number of men was great in proportion to the food
supply. Hence the rainfall, the course of the seasons, the prevalence of
winds, the conjunction of astronomical phenomena with spawning or fruit
seasons, and the habits of plants and animals caught the feeble
attention of savage man and taught him facts of nature, through his
eagerness to get signs of coming plenty or suggestions as to his own
plans and efforts. Attention has been called to a very interesting fact
about the fructification of the domesticated date palm wherever oasis
cultivation prevailed in western Asia.[1887] The fructification must be
artificial. Men carry the pollen to the female plant and adopt devices
to distribute it on the wind or by artificial contact. At the present
time this is done by attaching a bunch of the male seed on a branch to
windward.[1888] Tylor first suggested that certain ancient pictorial
representations are meant to depict the work of artificial
fructification as carried on by mythological persons,--cherubim, who
represent the winds.[1889] The function of the wind distributing the
seed is divine work. The tree is of such supreme value[1890] that the
well living of men depends on this operation. The sex conjunction
therefore was the most important and beneficent operation in nature, and
correct knowledge of it was the prime condition of getting an abundant
food supply. Man followed the operation with all the interest of the
food supply and all the awe of religion. It is certain that his interest
in it was "innocent." He began to mythologize about it on account of the
grand elements of welfare, risk, and skill which were in it. A parallel
case is furnished by the treatment accorded to rice by the Javanese. It
is to them the great article of food supply. They endow it with a soul
and ascribe to it sex passion. They have ceremonies by which to awaken
this passion in the rice as a means of increasing their own food supply.
The ceremonies consist in sympathetic magic by men and women at
night.[1891]
+589. The Gilgamesh epic.+ The Gilgamesh epic which originated in the
Euphrates valley more than 2000 years B.C.[1892] consists of a number of
episodes which were later collected and coördinated into a single work
like other great epics. Jastrow[1893] construes it as a variation of the
story of Adam and Eve. Gilgamesh is a hero admired by all women. The
elders of Uruk beg his mother, the mother-goddess Aruru (a form of
Ishtar), to restrain him. In order to comply she makes of clay Eabani, a
satyr-like, hairy wild man, with a tail and horns, who lives with the
beasts. Jastrow thinks that this means that he consorted with female
beasts, having as yet no female of his own species. No one could capture
him, so the god Shamash assailed him by lust, sending to him a priestess
of Ishtar who won him to herself (woman) away from beasts. She said to
him: "Thou shalt be like a god. Why dost thou lie with beasts?" "She
revealed his soul to Eabani." She was, therefore, a culture heroine, and
the myth means that, with the knowledge of sex, awoke consciousness,
intelligence, and civilization. Eabani followed the priestess to Uruk,
where he and Gilgamesh became comrades,--heroes of war and slayers of
monsters. Ishtar fell in love with Gilgamesh, but he refused her because
all men and beasts whom she loved she reduced to misery. Her vengeance
for this rejection brings woe and death on the two friends. The Mexicans
had a similar myth that the sun god and the maize goddess produced life
in vegetation by their sex activity. The sun god contracted venereal
disease so that they probably connected syphilis with sexual
excess.[1894] In the worship of Ishtar at Uruk there were three grades
of harlot priestesses, and there the temple consecration of women was
practiced in recognition of the connection between the service of Ishtar
and civilization. At first the goddesses of life and of love were the
same. The Venus of reproduction and the Venus of carnal lust were later
distinguished. At some periods the distinction was sharply maintained.
At other times the former Venus was only an intermediary to lead to the
latter. The Mexicans had two goddesses,--one of chaste, the other of
impure, love. The festivals of the former were celebrated with obscene
rites; those of the latter with the self-immolation of harlots, with
excessive language and acts. The goddess was thought to be rejuvenated
by the death of the harlots. The obscene rites were at war with the
current mores of the people at the time. The demons of license became
the guardians of good morals. They concealed the phallus. Sins of
license were confessed to the gods of license.[1895] Teteoinnan, the
maize-mother, also became a harlot through the work of furthering
growth, but in the service of the state she punished transgressions of
the sex taboo.[1896] This is as if the need of the taboo having been
learned by the consequences of license and excess, the goddess of the
latter became the guardian of the former. In the Semitic religions the
beginning and end of life were attributed to supernatural agencies
dangerous to man.[1897] The usages to be mentioned below show that this
was not an abstract dogma, but was accepted as the direct teaching of
experience.
+590. The Adonis myth.+ There was in the worship of Ishtar wailing for
Tammuz (Adonis). He was either the son or the husband of Ishtar. She
went to Hades to rescue him. His death was a myth for the decay of
vegetation, and his resurrection was a myth for its revival. The former
was celebrated with lamentations; the latter with extravagant rejoicings
and sex license.[1898] This legend, which under local modifications and
much syncretism existed until long after Christianity was introduced in
the Greco-Roman world, coincides with the laws of Hammurabi as to harlot
priestesses.
+591. Sacral harlotry.+ Three things which later reached strong
independent development are here united,--religious ritual, religious
drama (with symbols, pantomime, and mysteries which later came to be
considered indecent), and harlotry. Sacral harlotry was the only
harlotry. It was normal and was not a subject of ethical misgiving. It
was a part of the religious and social system. When, later,
prostitution became an independent social fact and was adjudged bad,
sacral harlotry long continued under the conventionalization and
persistence of religious usage (sec. 74), but then the disapproval of
prostitution in the mores produced an ethical war which resulted in the
abolition of harlotry. Sacral harlotry, while it lasted, was practiced
for one of two purposes,--to collect a dowry for the women or to collect
money for the temple.
+592. The Babylonian custom; its relation to religion.+ Herodotus[1899]
states that the women of the Lydians and of some peoples on the island
of Cyprus collected a dowry by freedom before marriage; that a woman
chosen by the god from the whole nation remained in the little cell on
top of the eight-storied tower at Babylon, and was said by the priests
to share the couch of the god; that the Thebans in Egypt tell a similar
story of their god; that at Patara, in Lycia, the priestess who gave the
oracle consorted with the god; and that at Babylon every woman was
compelled once to sacrifice herself to the first comer in the temple of
Mylitta. The last statement was long considered so monstrous that it was
not believed. That incredulity arose from modern mores, in which
religion and sex license are so strongly antagonized that religion seems
to us an independent force, of "divine origin," which is sent into the
world with an inherent character of antisensuality, or as a revelation
of the harm and wickedness of certain sex acts. That notion, however, is
a part of our Jewish inheritance. The fact stated by Herodotus is no
longer doubted. It is only one in a series of parallel cases, all of
which must have originated in similar ideas and have been regarded as
contributing in the same way to human welfare. Preuss[1900] attempts to
explain it. "It is only to be understood if men earlier, in order to
make natural objects prosper, had practiced sex usages of a kind which
later, according to the mores of daily life, seemed to them to be
prostitution. From this development came the fact that the Germans
called the Corn-mother the 'Great Harlot.'" We know that men have
sacrificed their children and other human beings, the selected being
the bravest or most beautiful; that they have mutilated themselves in
all ways from the slightest to the most serious; that they have
celebrated the most extravagant orgies; and that they have acted against
their own most important interests,--all in the name of religion. There
is nothing in religion itself which antagonizes sensuality, cruelty, and
other base elements in human nature. Religion has its independent origin
in supposed interests, and makes its own demands on men. The demands of
religion are sacrifices and ritual observances. The whole religious
system is evolved within the circle of interests, ideas, and mores which
the society possesses at the time. Religion also finds adjustment and
consistency with all other interests and tastes of the group at the
time. A father of many daughters would use the temple service as a way
to provide for one of them.[1901] Religion is also extremely persistent.
Therefore it holds and carries over to later ages customs which once
were beneficial, but which at the later time are authoritative but
harmful. If parents threw their children into the furnace to Molech, why
should they not devote their daughters to Ishtar? If they once practiced
sympathetic magic to make rice grow, religion might carry the customs
over to a time when they would be shocking and abominable. Although the
survival of these customs became sensual and corrupting, it is certain
that it was not their original purpose to serve sensuality. They were
not devices to cultivate or gratify licentiousness. We know of no case
of a primitive custom with such a purpose. The provisions in the laws of
Hammurabi are as simple and matter-of-fact as possible. They are
provisions for actual interests which, it seemed, ought to be provided
for. Another proof of the innocence of the customs is that in
independent cases the same customs were established. The customs were
responses of men to the great agents who (as they thought they
perceived) wrought things in nature. The methods and means used by the
agents were revered. They could not be despised or disapproved by men.
Therefore reproduction was religious and sex was consecrated. The whole
realm was one of mystery and wonder. Men became as gods by knowledge of
it. From that knowledge they acquired power to make things grow and so
got food and escaped want. The interest in sex, and the customs
connected with it, was revivified in connection with agriculture. The
mode of fructifying the date palm was a very great discovery in natural
science. Primitive men would turn it into a religious fact and rule. The
inference that women should be consecrated to the goddess of life and
that in her service reproduction should be their sacred duty was in the
logic of primitive people. Ishtar was polyandrous, but she turned into
Astarte, the wife of the chief Baal, or else she became androgyne and
then masculine. There is a virgin mother and a mother of the gods. The
idea of the latter continued with invincible persistency. She may be
unmarried, choosing her partners at will, or "queen, head, and first
born of all gods."[1902] In these changes we see the religious notions
and the mores adjusting themselves to each other. As long as the
underlying notions were true and sincere and the logic was honest, the
usages were harmless. When the original notions were lost, or the logic
became an artificial cover for a real ethical inconsistency, and the
customs were kept up, perhaps to give gain to priests, the usages served
licentiousness.
+593. Religion and the mores.+ Religion never has been an independent
force acting from outside creatively to mold the mores or the ideas of
men. Evidently such an idea is the extreme form of the world philosophy
in which another (spiritual) world is conceived of as impinging upon
this one from "above," to give it laws and guidance. The mores grow out
of the life as a whole. They change with the life conditions, density of
population, and life experience. Then they become strange or hostile to
traditional religion. In our own experience our mores have reached views
about ritual practices, polygamy, slavery, celibacy, etc., which are
strange or hostile to those in the Bible. Since the sixteenth century we
have reconstructed our religion to fit our modern ideas and mores. Every
religious reform in history has come about in this way. All religious
doctrines and ritual acts are held immutable by strong interests and
notions of religious duty. Therefore they fall out of consistency with
the mores, which are in constant change, being acted on by all the
observation or experience of life. Sacral harlotry is a case, the
ethical horror of which is very great and very obvious to us, of old
religious ideas and customs preserved by the religion into times of
greatly changed moral (i.e. of the mores) and social codes.
+594. Cases of sacral harlotry.+ Survivals of sacral harlotry are found
in historic Egypt. Even under the Cæsars the most beautiful girl of the
noble families of Thebes was chosen to be consecrated in the temple of
Ammon. She gained honor and profit by the life of a courtesan, and
always found a grand marriage when she retired on account of age. In all
the temples there were women attached to the service of the gods. They
were of different grades and ranks and were supposed to entertain the
god as harem women entertained princes. In the temples of goddesses
women were the functionaries and obtained great honor and power.[1903]
Constantine demolished the temples of impure cult in Phoenicia and
Egypt and caused the priests to be scattered by soldiers. Farnell[1904]
thinks that the Babylonian custom (especially because it was required
that the man should be a stranger) was due to fear of harm from the
nuptial blood. The attendants in the temples are known as "hierodules."
Otto[1905] says that the hierodules were not temple slaves, or harlots,
but he finds evidence that the temples had income from temple harlots.
The Phoenicians who settled Carthage took the religion of western Asia
with them. Perhaps there was an element of sensuality in the antecedent
religion of north Africa which united with that of the imported
religion. This would account for the cultus at Sicca, in Numidia. There
was there a temple of Astarte or Tanith in which women lived who never
went forth except to collect a dowry by harlotry.[1906] At Byblos
(Gebal), in Phoenicia, there was a great temple of the same goddess
at which there were elaborate celebrations of the Adonis myth. There was
sacral harlotry for strangers only, the money going as a sacrifice to
the goddess. Every woman must have her head shaved in mourning for
Adonis, or sacrifice herself under this custom.[1907] Tanith has been
identified with Artemis, and the later cults of Punic Africa give great
prominence to the "celestial virgin," or "virginal _numen_." "The
identification of the mother-of-the-gods with the heavenly virgin, that
is, the unmarried goddess, is confirmed, if not absolutely demanded, by
Augustine.[1908] At Carthage she seems also to be identical with
Dido."[1909] "The Arabian Lat was worshiped by the Nabatæans as
mother-of-the-gods and must be identified with the virgin-mother whose
worship at Petra is described by Epiphanius."[1910] In the worship of
Anaitis in Armenia male and female slaves were dedicated to the goddess,
but men of rank also consecrated their daughters. After long service
they married, no one considering them degraded. They were not mercenary,
being well provided for by their families. Therefore they received only
their social equals.[1911] Baal Peor seems also to have been a case of
sacral harlotry.[1912] The strongest reason for thinking so is Hosea ix.
10. Rosenbaum[1913] interprets the pestilence as venereal. The
_kedeshim_ (male prostitutes) were expelled from Judah by Asa.[1914]
They had been there since Rehoboam.[1915] They are heard of again.[1916]
They were under vows and brought their earnings to Jahveh.[1917]
Farnell[1918] interprets a fragment of Pindar as proof of sacral
harlotry at Corinth. At a temple of the Epizephyrian Locri it was
practiced in fulfillment of a vow made by the people, under some ancient
insult, to consecrate their daughters if the goddess would help
them.[1919] Farnell also[1920] directs attention to a case in Sicily
where the connection is with the Carthaginian Eryx. In the
_Cistellaria_ of Plautus the usage is referred to as Tuscan.[1921]
Augustus rebuilt Carthage and it appears that the old usages had
survived the interval of one hundred and fifty years. The temple of
Tanith was rebuilt and called that of the celestial virgin. The Romans
forbade sacral harlotry, which was in strong antagonism to their sex
mores. Hahn has called attention[1922] to a passage which proves the
existence of sacral harlotry in Scandinavia just before the introduction
of Christianity in the tenth century. The hero remains through the
winter with the woman who was the consecrated attendant of the god Frey
and who traveled about with his wooden image. The people take the hero
to be the god, and rejoice when the priestess becomes a mother by
him.[1923] The Mexicans, with the same interests, under like conditions
evolved the same customs and similar ideas. Mayas of the lowest classes
sent out their daughters to earn their own marriage portions.[1924]
+595. The same customs in the Old Testament.+ In 1 Sam. i Hannah vowed
that if God would give her a son she would devote him to the Lord, in
sign of which no razor should touch him. She gave him to be an
_ædituus_, who lived in the temple awaiting divine instructions and
commissions. In Josh. ix. 23, 27 we have a case of war captives
condemned to menial service in the temple. In Ezek. xliv. 8, 9, the
people are blamed for putting heathen in the temple service instead of
doing it themselves. The _kedeshim_, temple prostitutes of both sexes,
are frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, especially at every
reformation of the religion. They seem to become objects of condemnation
within the period of the history.
+596. Antagonism of abundance and excess.+ The Germans had a
Corn-mother, a goddess of agricultural growth and fertility. The
Mexicans also had a mother-of-the-gods, Teteoinnan. The former became a
harlot. The latter, by her sex activity, brought about growth and
abundant reproduction, and became a goddess of lewdness.[1925] Thus
wherever the agricultural interest controls this set of ideas we see
the struggle between the idea that unrestrained sex indulgence produces
abundance and the idea that it produces excess, lewdness, and harm. We
can still trace to the metaphorical use of "mother," "father," and
"son," and also to the use of the same words to express the possession
of a quality in a high degree, or a tie of destiny, some of the most
important concepts of our own religion.
+597. Survivals of sacral harlotry. Analogous customs in Hindostan.+ The
early Portuguese travelers to the East found sacral harlotry in Cochin
China. All virgins of noble birth were bound by vows from infancy.
Otherwise no honorable man would marry them.[1926] Modern Egyptian
dancing girls, Ghowazy or Barmeky, had a tradition that they belonged to
a race by themselves. They kept up isolation and peculiar customs. Each
was compelled to surrender to a stranger and then to marry a man of her
own group.[1927] "Probably Heaven and Earth are the most ancient of all
Vedic gods, and from their fancied union, as husband and wife, the other
deities and the whole universe were at first supposed to spring." "The
whole world is embodied in the woman.... Women are gods. Women are
vitality," say the Vedic Scriptures. In Manu[1928] "the self-existent
god is described as dividing his own substance and becoming half male
and half female."[1929] A competent author, who wrote at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, says that the women attached to the temples
in Hindostan sang and danced twice a day, the songs being about
mythological subjects and indecent according to the current mores of
everyday life. Vows play a very important part in the Hindoo system of
sacral harlotry. A woman, with the consent of her husband, vowed her
unborn child, if a girl, to the temple, in order to get an easy
confinement. It was no disgrace to a family to have a daughter living
this life. Barren women visited remote temples, under a vow of
self-devotion, in order to bear children. They were victimized by the
priests. At festivals of Vishnu priests tried to enlist girls in the
attendant multitude. The line between the sacral usage and
licentiousness was broken down at some remote resorts, but in the great
temples the conduct of the women was not at all shameless, although they
were trained to please. They observed perfect decorum. No one could
venture on any impropriety with them. The bystanders would not allow it,
and the proceedings were all controlled by strict rules. The Brahmins
propounded a doctrine that intercourse with the consecrated women would
free from sin.[1930] The vows show us the motive which maintained this
usage, and these statements clearly show the conventionalization which
enveloped the whole. Although the practices in the temples have
undergone some modification, they still exist. There are secret
mysteries, and dramatic representations of mythological incidents, which
seem like survivals of the ancient usages above mentioned.[1931] There
are courtesans at the temples near which pilgrims congregate, and they
pay part of their earnings to the temple.[1932] The holy festival of
Jugganatha, at Puri, which is a spring festival of Vedic origin, is a
kind of Saturnalia, in which the bonds of social order are loosened and
the standards of decency are laid aside. There are rites in which "words
are uttered by persons who, on other occasions, would think themselves
disgraced by the use of them."[1933] The Phalgun festival in northern
India commemorates Krishna's voluptuous amusements. The rites are
indecent.[1934] The mythological stories about the gods have to be
converted by interpretation or special pleas into something which modern
mores can tolerate.[1935] Songs, dances, pantomimes, and mythological
dramas are represented in front of the image of a deity by men, but in
the presence of a general company of men and women.[1936] The Sakta
worshipers are a sect who worship Sakta, the mighty, mysterious,
feminine force recognized in nature, and which they personify as the
Mother of the Universe, like the ancient Mother-goddess. This goddess is
manifested, for Hindoos, in natural appetites, in highly developed
faculties by which one exalts one's self and defeats one's enemies. The
rites of the sect are horrible and obscene, and have for their purpose
to violate and outrage the restrictions in the mores. By those rites men
and women obtain union with the Supreme Being. The members of the sect
call themselves "perfect ones" and all others "beasts." They use mystic
texts and secret orgies, at which they drink strong drinks, eat meat and
fish, and practice sex license. They recognize no caste.[1937] There are
also other sects which have inverted all conceptions of decency,
propriety, and expediency. They practice self-torture, crime, and
uncleanliness, and use loathsome food, etc. In all these matters they
show great ingenuity of invention. They are dying out.[1938] There are
also sects which are cannibal, incestuous, and practicers of secret
license and obscenity.[1939] In some parts of the Madras presidency,
girls are made _basivis_ by a vow of the parents, in order to give them
the privileges of males. This custom may be derived from the institution
of the "appointed daughter," that is, a daughter selected in order that
her son may perform the rites for her father (who had no son) and may
carry on the line. Modern _basivis_ "live in their father's house. They
do not marry, yet they bear children, the father of whom they may choose
at pleasure, and the children inherit their family name." It is a device
to insure male descendants, and is so regulated by religious
consecration and rules that it is recognized in the mores. If a _basivi_
breaks the rules she falls to a status which is very different. Men are
also dedicated and wear female dress, if they are born imperfect or
malformed.[1940]
+598. Lingam and yoni.+ The lingam symbol is to be seen all over India,
alone or with the yoni. In some parts of India the lingam is worn as an
amulet.[1941] The word "lingam" is said to mean "symbol."[1942] To
Europeans the object seems indecent and obscene. If it is of phallic
origin, "the Hindus are no more conscious of the fact than we of the
similar origin of the maypole."[1943] It is no more erotic than an egg
or a seed. It is a symbol of Siva, the eternal reproductive power of
nature, reintegrating after disintegration. One form of Siva is
androgyne. The dualism of the male, spirit, and the female, matter, is
essential to all creation. "To one imbued with these dualistic
conceptions the lingam and the yoni are suggestive of no improper
ideas."[1944]
+599. Conventionalization.+ In all these cases it is evident that the
mores extend their protection over archaic and sacred things, and
preserve them instead of forbidding them. The great means of preserving
them is by conventionalization. They are put under a conventional
understanding, different from the everyday usages with their ethics, and
are judged by an arbitrary standard. In the English translation of the
Bible words and phrases are used which are archaic and now under taboo
in everyday life. Our children have to be taught that "that is in the
Bible," that is, they have to learn the conventionalization by which the
archaic forms are covered. The words in the Bible are not subject to
criticism, and they cannot be cited to justify similar usage in common
life.
+600. Mores of Hindostan.+ The phenomena which are presented in
Hindostan, when studied from our standpoint, show how completely
different may be the estimate of things according to use and wont. The
phenomena are very different in character. Some of them are cases of
degeneracy and aberration of customs, after they have been discarded by
the mores, have become vicious, and have fallen into the hands of
abandoned persons who have given up all position inside the mores.
Others of these customs show how old usages, when brought in question,
lose innocence. Consciousness and reflection produce doubt and then
shame. Sometimes things which are private or secret by convention come
in contact with things which are secret by vice. All the phenomena in
Hindostan show how completely the moral effect depends on the integrity
or decay of conventionalization. The conventionalization is still so
strong that the effects on public morals which we might expect are not
produced. Public manners are marked by decency and propriety and the
society is not vicious.[1945] Things which exist under conventionalization
never furnish grounds for an ethical judgment on the group which
practices them.
+601. Mexican mores. Drunkenness.+ In Mexico also there were goddesses
of erotic passion to whom men and women were consecrated. Courtesans
sometimes immolated themselves in the service of the goddess. The notion
of virtue in resistance to passion existed, but the goddess, like the
Greek Venus, resented any effort to escape her sway and exerted herself
to defeat it.[1946] The Mayas did not maintain a severe form of sex
taboo and they had festivals at which that taboo was entirely
suspended.[1947] Pederasty also existed under the sanction of religion.
Young men in the training house, which was a house of lamentation and
penance, were allowed license which was contrary to the current mores of
the society, but was an old privilege of soldiers. The dances which they
performed daily were obscene. The persons in the dance represented
vegetation demons, and the dances helped to get good crops.[1948] The
notion was not to employ sympathetic magic, but the men, by parallel
operations, were supposed to help in the work of fructification which
the demons were accomplishing in the plant. Hence a great drama of human
coöperation was carried on in the dances. Snakes and frogs were eaten
because they were demons of rain and growth. The obscene dances were
"not consequences of sex desire, but, on account of their antiquity,
they were accepted as a matter of course."[1949] At the time of the
Spanish conquest public opinion about the dances was not fixed, but they
lasted on through the force of ancient religious tradition. We may be
sure that the case of Mexico throws light on the ancient usages of
sacral harlotry. In comparatively recent times there were cases in
Russia of sex license on the eve of great Christian festivals.[1950]
There is a parallel also, amongst the Mexicans, in the case of
drunkenness. Religion controlled and forbade drunkenness, but then again
allowed it on specified occasions. To drink _pulque_ was forbidden,
under penalty of death, except to prescribed persons at certain
festivals, but on the festival of the fire god all intoxicated
themselves by custom and tradition.[1951] Kings in Central America were
expressly allowed to intoxicate themselves at festivals, and
functionaries were appointed to perform their duties while they were
incapacitated. It is nowadays considered not dishonorable to become
intoxicated during festivals, and "it may be observed that Indians now
thank God for the gift of drunkenness."[1952] That is a case of the
persistence of ideas born of old mores long after another religion and
social system have displaced the folkways themselves.
+602. Japanese mores.+ In Japan the government formerly bought girls of
fourteen from their parents and caused them to be educated in feminine
accomplishments. For ten years they lived as courtesans to the profit of
the state. They were then discharged with a sum of money. The number of
them at one time was twenty thousand. They furnished at the tea houses
afternoon entertainments at which families were present, but men alone
remained later.[1953] When a people, through acquaintance with mores
different from its own, is led to philosophize about the latter, or is
made conscious of them and uncertain about them, then the old mores of
that people lose their innocence. The Japanese have had much experience
of this within fifty years.
+603. Chinese religion and mores.+ For contrast it may be worth while to
notice the evidence collected by Schallmeyer[1954] that the specifically
Chinese religions are free from all immoral notions and usages. Indeed
the Chinese religions are said to be hostile to indecency. Meadows is
quoted as saying that any sentence of the canonical writings of China
could be read in any English family without offense, and that there is
nothing in Chinese religious rites resembling the immoral rites which
are met with elsewhere. Chinese lyric poetry is said to be pure.
+604. Philosophy of interest in reproduction. Incest.+ Some reserve in
regard to the interpretation of myths is proper and necessary, but the
absorbing interest of sex production for man, after he begins to depend
upon it and coöperate with it for his food supply, is a product of the
study of myths which may be accepted with confidence. That interest was
no more sensual than interest in the rainfall, and the mythologizing
about it was no more depraved than mythologizing about creation or
language. Men were sure to apply all which they learned about
reproduction in food plants and animals to their own reproduction. If
Chaldean civilization goes back five or six thousand years before
Christ, then the Chaldeans had had ample time, even before Hammurabi, to
experience the evils of overpopulation and of sex vice. In the Chaldean
mythology Ishtar, goddess of all sex attraction and repulsion, destroyed
all the lovers whom she selected. She had the double character, which
appears in all myths and philosophy, of sex license and sex renunciation
together. She was a goddess of the mother family and polyandric.[1955]
The two policies, sex license and sex renunciation, were both advocated
at the same time in the early centuries of the Christian era and in the
Middle Ages. Men found out that the problem of reproduction for them was
far more complicated than the multiplication of dates to the utmost
limit. At this point of knowledge instinctive or intelligent regulations
had to be put on physical appetites. For primitive men the reproductive
function is as simple a function as eating or sleeping. It is not in
itself wicked or base. It is naïve until knowledge comes. Then it is
found that rules must be made to regulate the interest. If there are
rules, there is the sense of wrongdoing in the breach of them. A thing
which is tabooed becomes interesting and more or less awful. The numbers
of the sexes are never exactly equal, and the proportion is further
disturbed by polygamy. Therefore experience of evil and inconvenience
forced some reflection and some judgments as to life policy. Regulations
were devised behind which there was a philosophy of the satisfaction of
interests; that is to say, mores were developed to cover the case. There
seems also to be some connection between sacral harlotry and the
prevention of incest. The poorest who cannot marry or buy slaves have
always practiced incest (sec. 516). Sacral harlotry won another
religious sanction from these cases. In the laws of Hammurabi we find
two classes of women attached to the temple. If the interpretations of
the specialists may be trusted, the arrangement was in one class of
cases in the nature of a life annuity, and those who had no husband had
the god for a husband,--an idea which, with one or another new coloring,
has come down to our own time. That any one should renounce the sex
function was not within the mental horizon of early times. When the
women lived in the temple that fact established conventionalization
about them and gave to their life that regulation which has made decency
and order in all ages. Their case was defined and sanctioned in the
mores. The couples retired outside the temple.[1956] When marriage was
accompanied by very easy divorce and could not be defined except as a
form of property right of the husband, when there were concubines who
were not wives only because they had no property, and slaves who had no
defined relation to the household until they had borne children to the
head of it, the women in the temple might be surrounded by other special
forms of taboo which would give them a status within the mores. They
were "holy" by virtue of their consecration to the goddess.[1957] So far
as we know, their lives were not spent in dissipation. The accounts in
Herodotus and Baruch vi. 43, of the later usage at Babylon show that
there was method and decorum in the institution, and that it was carried
on with conventional dignity. It is our custom to think out the
consistency of all our doctrines and usages. It is certain that ancient
peoples did not do that, just as the masses now do not. They accepted
and lived in unquestioned usage. Therefore we know of cases in classic
society in which maidens and matrons on special occasions shared in
functions which seem totally repugnant to their character. The
explanation lies in conventionalization within the mores for an
occasion or under a conjuncture of circumstances. It is unquestionably
possible that in that way lewdness can be set aside and thus corrupting
effect on character can be prevented.
+605. The archaic is sacred.+ In the minds of primitive people all which
is archaic is sacred and all which is novel is questionable. Therefore
religion holds and consecrates whatever is archaic and traditional. The
appetites of men were anterior to any mores regulative of them, and the
goddess Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, or Venus is a goddess of erotic
passion and reproduction. The folkways devised to prevent experienced
ills are an invasion of her domain and a rebellion against her sway. The
regulations cannot be made absolute for a long time. There must be a
compromise. Some females must be given to the goddess as devotees, at
least under conditions, or there must be set times and places within
which her sway shall be unhampered by human rules. The conditions
establish conventionalization around an institution. It is by this
process and by changing the conditions that marriage has been made what
it now is. Concubinage, slave women, harlotry, and all other forms but
the prescribed one have been put under taboo. It is very possible that
some future generation will look back in wonder at our self-complacency,
which feels no care or responsibility for the women who are forced, in
our system, to renounce sex. It is safe to say that the Chaldeans of
2500 B.C. would have been as much shocked at the inhumanity of our
arrangement as we can be at the lewdness of theirs.
+606. Child sacrifice.+ The temple consecration of women must be
connected with child sacrifice. The latter is logically anterior. Their
historical relation we do not know. To dedicate a girl to the goddess
would be an alternative to the sacrifice of her. All forms of child
sacrifice and sacral suicide go back to the pangs and terrors of men
under loss and calamity. Something must be found which would wring pity
and concession from the awful superior powers who afflict mankind.
Every one born under this human lot must perish if he is not redeemed.
His first vicarious sacrifice is his firstborn, but if he can get a war
captive from a foreign group this substitute may be accepted. The
Mexican human sacrifices were of this kind. The people stood around
assenting and rejoicing, because the rite meant salvation to themselves
and their children. A man who took a captive in war gave him to the
priest to be sacrificed, and he might not eat of the flesh, "since the
victim was in a sense his son," that is, took the place of his son as a
vicarious sacrifice for himself. They also sacrificed their own
infants.[1958] Child sacrifice expresses the deepest horror and
suffering produced by experience of the human lot. Men must do it. Their
interests demanded it, however much it might pain them. Human sacrifices
may be said to have been universal. They lasted down to the
half-civilized stage of all nations and sporadically even later,[1959]
and they have barely ceased amongst the present half-civilized
peoples.[1960] They are not primarily religious. They are a reaction of
men under the experience of the ills of life, inventing a world
philosophy and putting agents behind it, in order to have something, if
it be only a delusion, to which hope of escape can attach. Human
sacrifices are based on an inference or deduction. There is behind them
an assumption as to the character and logic of the superior powers who
rule the aleatory interest. It is not until skepticism arises as to this
assumption that the usage can be given up.
+607. Beast sacrifice substituted for human sacrifice.+ In the case of
Abraham and Isaac, the former was "tried" by God, apparently meaning
that he underwent some doubt whether he ought not to sacrifice his son
as other west Semites did theirs, and whether a beast would not suffice
(Gen. xxii. 7). For his descendants the legend fixed the usage and
doctrine (verse 13), different from that of the other west Semites, that
a beast was a due substitute. The Chaldees followed the same
reasoning.[1961] According to the mythology of the Egyptians there was a
great destruction of men in the reign of the god Ra, but when he mounted
to the sky he replaced the sacrifice of men by that of beasts.[1962] In
the tragedy of _Iphigenia_, Iphigenia is not slain. Artemis snatches her
away and puts a hind in her place. Robertson Smith[1963] thinks that the
notion of the ancients that the sacrifice of human beings was anterior
to that of beasts, and that the latter were substitutes, was a "false
inference from traditional forms of ritual that had ceased to be
understood." At Hierapolis sacrificed children were called oxen.[1964]
All the Baals demanded human sacrifices.[1965] In every case in which
the mores had overcome the terror which made human sacrifices, the
mythology invented explanations. It was forbidden to the Jews to make
their children "pass through the fire" to Molech.[1966] They often did
it. This shows that their mores had not yet outgrown it, but that
religious teachers were trying to forbid it.[1967] They held the same
doctrine as the neighboring nations, that the firstborn belonged to
God.[1968] The firstborn must be sacrificed or redeemed.[1969] They had
doctrines of ransom by beasts, as above, or by money,[1970] or by
circumcision, if the incoherent text is rightly interpreted.[1971]
Nevertheless, they never were sure enough of their position before the
captivity to _hold to it_ against the faith and usage of neighboring
nations.[1972] The doctrine in Micah vi. 6-8, as early as the end of the
eighth century B.C., raised the real issue about the sense and utility
of all sacrifices in its widest form, but that doctrine was much too far
beyond the mores of the time to have any effect.
+608. Mexican doctrine of greater power through death.+ Preuss says: "In
the ancient Mexican cultus I recognized, to my astonishment, that really
spirits were killed in the sacrificed men, in order that they [the
spirits] might thus be rendered capable of being born again, and
rendering greater services to men."[1973] Death was believed to enhance
the power of the spirits who ruled meteorological phenomena. The notion
was that insects caused meteorological phenomena; then they were gods;
the insects and beasts gave to the gods the magic power which they
(insects and beasts) once had over rainfall, etc. The humming bird which
hibernates and wakes again in spring was thought to cause the heat of
summer. Therefore it was taken to be an envelope of the war god. Free
flow of blood lets loose magic power. Hence the great bloodshedding in
the Mexican cultus. "Human sacrifice is in Mexico the same in sense as
beast sacrifice. In both cases, magic powers, magic beasts and spirits,
are killed." By death new birth with greater magic power becomes
possible.[1974]
+609. Motives of child sacrifice.+ The Semites adopted the world
philosophy which lies back of human sacrifice and incorporated it with
their religion, which thereby became gloomy and ferocious. What a man
must sacrifice was what he loved most, and that was his firstborn child.
It was rationalizing to argue that a beast could be substituted with
equal effect, and we often find that people who had advanced to that
point of philosophy, when face to face with a great calamity showed that
they did not believe that the effect was equal. They went back to child
sacrifice.[1975] The Hebrews in the seventh century thought that they
felt the wrath of God and they tried to avert it in this way.[1976]
Tiele thinks that there is no evidence of child sacrifice or of the
temple consecration of women in the Euphrates valley in historical
times, but in Syria and Arabia child sacrifice lasted on in spite of the
culture of the Aramæans and Phoenicians. In old Arabia fathers burned
their little daughters as sacrifices to the goddess.[1977] Human
sacrifices were used for auguries before any important enterprise, and
as thank offerings for victory or success. Every year a number of
children of the foremost families were sacrificed as an expiation for
the sins of the nation, "while fiendish music drowned their cries and
the lamentations of their mothers."[1978] The Carthaginians kept up the
custom. The leading families were bound to furnish the sacrifice as
representatives of the commonwealth. The children to be sacrificed were
selected by lot from those who were liable. Children were exchanged in
order to be saved. The parents might not lament, for to do so would
deprive the sacrifice of its efficacy.[1979] The custom was an
abomination to the Romans, but it was so firmly fixed in the mores of
the Carthaginians that the conquerors could not stop it. The proconsul
Tiberius put an end to it by hanging the priests of the cult to the
trees of their own temple grove.[1980] As Tertullian says that soldiers
who executed this order were still living when he wrote, the order of
Tiberius must have been issued about the middle of the second century
A.D. or a little later.
+610. Dedication by vows.+ The connection between child sacrifice and
the temple consecration of girls is in the substitution of the latter
for the former, as a ransom. The girl devoted to death belonged to the
goddess in one way, if not in the other. Vows made in illness sometimes
included such substitution. In the historic period, after child
sacrifice had ceased in the Euphrates valley, many variations occurred.
Barren women made vows. Children were vowed to the goddess for life or
for a time. They were redeemed by money which they earned in the temple
life. The accumulation of a dowry was only a variation.[1981] In later
times (second century A.D.) we find the sacrifice of a woman's hair as a
substitute for herself.[1982] Men were also dedicated in sex perversion.
+611. Degeneration of the customs of consecrating women.+ Evidently
vicarious sacrifice and expiatory sacrifice are very ancient heathen
ideas. They contain deductions and assumptions about the nature of the
deity which are of the first theological importance. The cases of custom
which have been described also show the power and persistency of
theological dogma to override for centuries the strongest interests and
sentiments. Evidently the variations in the custom marked the breaking
down of the boundaries which held it firm in the religious mores. The
Babylonian custom described by Herodotus seems to be a variation by
which every woman was held bound to the goddess. Then sensuality,
priestcraft, greed, and frivolity easily used such a custom until it
became a root of corruption. This is what happened, and forms of the
custom which had no sense but the gratification of licentiousness spread
around the Mediterranean. The old female sex mores were very simple and
austere, but they were corrupted after the middle of the second century
B.C. Those of Roman Carthage, if we can trust Salvianus, became more
corrupt than those of Punic Carthage ever had been. They were less
ferocious and more frankly voluptuous. Salvianus's description of
southern Gaul makes it as bad as Africa. According to him the Vandals
were pure-minded, and their mores were so pure and firm that they
successfully resisted the Roman corruption and put the sex relation back
again on the basis of the "law of God."[1983]
+612. Our traditions from Israel.+ If now we turn back to the Israelites
we can see the stream by which our own mores have come down to us. There
arose amongst the Israelites, in the tenth century B.C., an opposition
to the religion which was common to the west Semites. It was like the
reform of the Iranian religion by the magi, who produced a religion
which was too severe and exacting for any but priests to live by it.
There have also been many attempts to reform Islam from within. They
have taken the form of throwing off later additions and returning to
primitive purity, that is, to the mode of life of Arabs in Mohammed's
time. In some cases (e.g. the Wahabees of the nineteenth century) the
reforms have originated with people who were on a lower grade of life
than the mass of Moslems. Present-day scholars find the origin of the
resistance of Israelitish prophets to the prevailing religion of western
Asia in the hostility of a rustic population, with a primitive mode of
life and archaic mores, to the luxury of Tyre and Sidon, wealthy cities
of commerce and industry.[1984] The conflict was between two sets of
mores. The biblical scholars now tell us that Jahveh was a Baal amongst
other Palestinian Baals until this antagonism arose. Then he was made
the god in whose name the ancient mores of Israel were defended against
the introduction of luxury and licentiousness. The antagonism was
between simple, rustic, largely pastoral modes of life and the ways of
cities with wealth, culture, and luxury. This is a permanent social
antagonism, but it carried with it the antagonism of simplicity to
sensuality, materialism, formal manners, and luxury. For four or five
centuries a succession of "prophets" developed the antagonism between
the Jahveh religion and heathenism. They maintained that Jahveh was not
only the single god of the Hebrews but the sole God of all the earth.
Other gods were nullities. The prophets condemned idolatry, and all
sensuality, licentiousness, and bestiality, with which they connected
all sorcery and divination. They insisted on a broad and firm sex taboo
and denounced sacral harlotry and child sacrifice together. It must be
remembered that the peoples of that age generally regarded sex usages
which seem to us the most abominable as trivial, unworthy of notice,
matters of personal liberty and choice. Brahmins, a century ago, held
that view of pederasty.[1985] The prophets also set in opposition to
their own traditional ritual religion a doctrine of righteousness, by
which religion was made ethical. It was a marvelous product for an
insignificant hill people. It is, however, to be noticed that in the
_Zend-Avesta_ there was also a great revolt against sex vice.[1986]
+613. How the Jewish view of sensuality came to prevail.+ The religious
system of the Jewish prophets never has become the actual popular
religion of any people. The Old Testament contains the story of the
protests and failures of the prophets. Their work did not issue from the
mores of the Jewish nation, and did not influence the mores before the
captivity. The prophets were trying to introduce a new world philosophy
by virtue of its ethical value and by interpretations of current
political history. In Jer. xliv we see the latter argument turned
against the prophet. The people cite their own experience. When they
served the Queen of Heaven they fared well. In the rabbinical period
the Jews emphasized everything which could differentiate them from
heathen, and in the New Testament we find that idolatry and sensuality
are presented as the two great heathen characteristics which Christians
are to avoid. It is impossible for us to know to what extent the mores
of the masses, in the western Roman empire, were marked by the ancient
Roman austerity in the sex mores. It is, however, reasonable to believe
that the ancient mores prevailed most in the class amongst whom
Christian converts were found. Salvianus also gives to the German
nations very remarkable testimony as to their freedom from sensuality
and sex vice. The experience of societies also went to prove that such
vice can corrupt the finest brain and the most cultivated character;
also that, if it becomes current in a society, as pederasty and
prostitution did in the Greco-Roman world, it will eat out all manly
virtues, all coöperative devotion, the love of children, the energy of
invention and production, of an entire population. Thus by the
syncretism of the mores of the nations, and by experience, the
conviction was produced that the view of sensuality and sex vice which
the Jewish prophets taught was true, and that that view was the most
important part of the mores and of religion for the welfare of mankind.
[1885] Snouck-Hurgronje, _De Atjehers_, I, 64-66; _Bur. Eth._,
XVIII, 285; _Amer. Anthrop._, XI, 56; Codrington, _Melanesians_,
102, 299; Serpa Pinto, _Como eu Atravassei Africa_, I, 82;
Kubary, _Karolinenarchipel._, 47, 226, 244; Powers, _Calif.
Indians_, 24.
[1886] Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 141.
[1887] Barton, _Semitic Origins_, 78.
[1888] Wellsted, _Arabia_, II, 12.
[1889] _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archeol._, 1890, XII, 383.
[1890] Herodotus, I, 193.
[1891] Wilken, _Volkenkunde_, 550.
[1892] Maspero, _Peuples de l'Orient_, I, 576, 589.
[1893] _Amer. Jo. Semit. Lang. and Lit._, XV, 201.
[1894] _Archiv f. Anthrop._, XXIX, 156.
[1895] _Archiv f. Anthrop._, XXIX, 150.
[1896] _Ibid._, 183.
[1897] W. R. Smith, _Relig. of the Semites_, 447.
[1898] Lucian, _De Syria Dea_, 6.
[1899] Herodotus, I, 93, 181, 199.
[1900] _Globus_, LXXXVI, 360.
[1901] Maurer, _Völkerkunde, Bibel, und Christenthum_, 95.
[1902] W. R. Smith, _Relig. of the Semites_, 56-59.
[1903] Maspero, _Peuples de l'Orient_, I, 50, 126.
[1904] _Archiv f. Religionsgesch._, VII, 88.
[1905] _Priester und Tempel im Hellen. Aeg._, I, 316.
[1906] Valer., Max., II, 6, 15.
[1907] Lucian, _De Syria Dea_, 6; Pietschmann, _Phoenizier_, 229.
[1908] _De Civit. Dei_, II, 4.
[1909] W. R. Smith, _Relig. of the Semites_, 56.
[1910] _Ibid._
[1911] Strabo, XI, 14, 16.
[1912] Num. xxiii. 28; xxv. 1; Josh. xxii. 17.
[1913] _Die Lustseuche im Alterthum_, 77.
[1914] 1 Kings xv. 12.
[1915] 1 Kings xiv. 24.
[1916] 1 Kings xxii. 46; 2 Kings xxiii. 7.
[1917] Deut. xxiii. 18.
[1918] _Cults of the Greek States_, 635.
[1919] Athenæus; XII, 11.
[1920] _Cults of the Greek States_, 641.
[1921] II, 3, 20.
[1922] _Globus_, LXXV, 286.
[1923] _Scripta Hist. Islandorum_, II, 67.
[1924] Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific Coast_, I, 123; II,
676.
[1925] _Archiv f. Anthrop._, XXIX, 138, 150.
[1926] Oliveira Martins, _As Racas Humanas_, II, 181.
[1927] Burckhardt, _Arabic Proverbs_, 145.
[1928] _Laws_, I, 5.
[1929] Monier-Williams, _Brahmanism and Hinduism_, 181-183.
[1930] Dubois, _Moeurs de l'Inde_, I, 434-439; 478-480; II,
353, 366, 370, 377.
[1931] Wilkins, _Modern Hinduism_, 94, 216, 290; Monier-Williams,
_Brahmanism and Hinduism_, 451.
[1932] Wilkins, 242.
[1933] _Jo. Roy. As. Soc._, 1841, 239; Wilkins, 286.
[1934] Wilkins, 235.
[1935] _Ibid._, 317.
[1936] _Ibid._, 216.
[1937] Monier-Williams, 185, 190.
[1938] JASB, I, 477; III, 200; JAI, XXVI, 341; Monier-Williams,
87; Hopkins, _Relig. of India_, 491.
[1939] Hopkins, _Relig. of India_, 456; JASB, I, 477, 492; III,
201.
[1940] JASB, II, 322, 349; cf. JASB, I, 502.
[1941] Monier-Williams, 254.
[1942] Nivedita, _Web of Indian Life_, 212.
[1943] Nivedita, 212.
[1944] Monier-Williams, 78, 183, 224.
[1945] Dubois, I, 439.
[1946] Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific Coast_, II, 336;
III, 377.
[1947] _Ibid._, II, 676.
[1948] _Archiv f. Anthrop._, XXIX, 153, 158, 164.
[1949] _Ibid._, 173.
[1950] Petri, _Anthropology_ (_russ._), 435.
[1951] _Archiv f. Anthrop._, XXIX, 169.
[1952] _Globus_, LXXXVII, 130.
[1953] Oliphant, _China and Japan_, II, 494.
[1954] _Vererbung und Auslese_, 200.
[1955] Tiele-Gehrich, _Relig. in Alterthume_, I, 169.
[1956] Herod., I, 199; Hosea iv. 14; W. R. Smith, _Relig. of the
Semites_, 454.
[1957] W. R. Smith, _Relig. of the Semites_, 141.
[1958] Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific Coast_, II, 305,
308-309.
[1959] Schrader, _Prehist. Antiq. of the Aryans_, 422.
[1960] Hopkins, _Relig. of India_, 363, 450.
[1961] Maspero, _Peuples de l'Orient_, I, 680.
[1962] Maspero, _Peuples de l'Orient_, I, 123.
[1963] _Relig. of the Semites_, 365.
[1964] _Ibid._, 366, 375.
[1965] Cf. Deut. xviii. 10; 2 Kings xvi. 3; xxi. 6.
[1966] Levit. xviii. 21; Deut. xviii. 10. Molech is a false word.
It has the consonants of the word for "king" and the vowels of
the word for "shameful thing" (W. R. Smith, _Relig. of the
Semites_, 67).
[1967] 2 Kings xvi. 3; xvii. 7; xxi. 6; xxiii. 10.
[1968] Ex. xxii. 29.
[1969] Ex. xxxiv. 20.
[1970] Num. xviii. 15.
[1971] Ex. iv. 24.
[1972] Jer. xxxii. 35; Ezek. xx. 26, 31. According to 2 Chron.
xxviii. 3, Ahaz offered his son in the stress of war (Hastings,
Dict. of the Bible, _Relig. of Israel_).
[1973] _Globus_, LXXXVI, 321.
[1974] _Globus_, LXXXVI, 117-119.
[1975] Possibly 2 Kings iii. 27; 2 Chron. xxviii. 3; Pietschmann,
_Phoenizier_, 167.
[1976] W. R. Smith, _Relig. of the Semites_, 465.
[1977] _Ibid._, 370.
[1978] Tiele-Gehrich, _Relig. im Alterthum_, I, 212, 240;
Maspero, _Peuples de l'Orient_, I, 680; Sanchuniathon apud
Euseb., _Prep. Evang._, I, 10.
[1979] Pietschmann, _Phoenizier_, 229.
[1980] Tertullian, _Apol._, 9.
[1981] Pietschmann, _Phoenizier_, 222.
[1982] Lucian, _De Syria Dea_, 6.
[1983] _De Gubernat. Dei_, VII, 72-77; cf. VII, 15-16, 27, 86,
97-100.
[1984] Barton, _Semitic Origins_, 300.
[1985] Dubois, _Moeurs de l'Inde_, 439.
[1986] Darmstetter, _Zend-Avesta_, I, 100, 102.