Ba’al was also used as the stand-in name for a number of different deities in the polytheistic early Hebraic faith.
Molech (מלך) was a ritual of child sacrifice. The root of the word is from “to promise” or “to sacrifice”, and most likely is a nominalized causative so it probably refers to the action and item being presented. The usage in the biblical text also is most consistent with this theory, so it seems Molech was both the term for the child sacrificed and for the action of sacrificing the child.
Maybe if the early hebraic polytheists wanted me to take their opinion on the matter seriously they would have written that shit down on a nice stone monolith LIKE THE GODS INTENDED
spoiler
E) Jokes aside, yeah I’ve been really into the bronze age cultic practices recently and am looking for more stuff to read
I don’t really have a lot of good sources, this is mostly all stuff I half-remember from asking my rabbi weird questions as a kid in yeshiva.
Here’s another fun one, the name of Mot (מות), the Ugaritic/Canaanite personification of death and god of the underworld, goes back to the Proto-Indo-European M-w-t, the word for death and the root of the modern English word Murder.
Sorry for late response, but how do you get from M-w-t to murder? I understand that the vowels are implied, and maybe see the route to “mort” but I don’t know any old hebrew to understand the relation between consonants.
Ba’al, and it’s not even a question.
You can never go wrong going with the storm gods*, and many scholars argue Molech wasn’t even a recognized god rather a type of sacrificial ritual.
*
Citation Needed
Ba’al was also used as the stand-in name for a number of different deities in the polytheistic early Hebraic faith.
Molech (מלך) was a ritual of child sacrifice. The root of the word is from “to promise” or “to sacrifice”, and most likely is a nominalized causative so it probably refers to the action and item being presented. The usage in the biblical text also is most consistent with this theory, so it seems Molech was both the term for the child sacrificed and for the action of sacrificing the child.
Maybe if the early hebraic polytheists wanted me to take their opinion on the matter seriously they would have written that shit down on a nice stone monolith LIKE THE GODS INTENDED
spoiler
E) Jokes aside, yeah I’ve been really into the bronze age cultic practices recently and am looking for more stuff to read
I don’t really have a lot of good sources, this is mostly all stuff I half-remember from asking my rabbi weird questions as a kid in yeshiva.
Here’s another fun one, the name of Mot (מות), the Ugaritic/Canaanite personification of death and god of the underworld, goes back to the Proto-Indo-European M-w-t, the word for death and the root of the modern English word Murder.
Sorry for late response, but how do you get from M-w-t to murder? I understand that the vowels are implied, and maybe see the route to “mort” but I don’t know any old hebrew to understand the relation between consonants.
English gets the connection through Latin in this case.