Moloch


Moloch is the biblical name of a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, through fire or war.
The name Moloch results from a dysphemic vocalisation in the Second Temple period of a theonym based on the root mlk, "king". There are a number of Canaanite gods with names based on this root, which became summarily associated with Moloch, including biblical Malkam "Great King", which appears to refer to a god of the Ammonites, as well as Tyrian Melqart and others.
Rabbinical tradition depicted Moloch as a bronze statue heated with fire into which the victims were thrown. This has been associated with reports by Greco-Roman authors on the child sacrifices in Carthage to Baal Hammon. Archaeological excavations since the 1920s have produced evidence for child sacrifice in Carthage as well as inscriptions including the term MLK, either a theonym or a technical term associated with sacrificial rites.
In interpretatio graeca, the Phoenician god was identified with Cronus, due to the parallel mytheme of Cronus devouring his children.
Otto Eissfeldt in 1935 argued that mlk was not to be taken as a theonym at all but as a term for a type of fire sacrifice, and that *lĕmōlek "as a molk-sacrifice" had been reinterpreted as the name of a Canaanite idol following the Deuteronomic reform under Josiah. According to Eissfeldt, this 7th-century reform abolished the child sacrifice that had been happening.
Moloch has been used figuratively in English literature from John Milton's Paradise Lost to Allen Ginsberg's "Howl", to refer to a person or thing demanding or requiring a very costly sacrifice.

Name

usually stands for מֶלֶךְ :wikt:מלך#Hebrew|melek "king", but when vocalized as מֹלֶךְ mōlek in the Masoretic Text, it has been traditionally understood as a proper name. While the received Masoretic text dates to the Middle Ages, the existence of the form Μολοχ in the Septuagint establishes that the distinction dates to the Second Temple period.
Moloch has been traditionally interpreted as the name of a god, possibly a god surnamed "the king", but pejoratively mispronounced as Molek instead of Melek, using the vocalisation of Hebrew בּשֶׁת bosheth "shame",
distinguishing it from the title of melek "king", written identically in the consonantal text, which is also frequently given to Yahweh.
Thus, in Psalm 5:3, the מלכי mlk-y of the Hebrew text is vocalized מַלְכִּי malk-ī and translated ὁ βασιλεύς μου in the Septuagint; by contrast, in Amos, מלככם mlk-km is vocalized מַלְכְּכֶם malk-chem but translated Μολοχ ὑμῶν in the Septuagint.
The name of the god of the Ammonites is also given as מַלְכָּם malkam, rendered as Milcom in KJV. In 1 Kings 11:7, לְמֹלֶךְ שִׁקֻּץ בְּנֵי עַמֹּֽון , the Septuagint has τῷ βασιλεῖ αὐτῶν εἰδώλῳ υἱῶν Αμμων, while in 1 Kings 11:33 לְמִלְכֹּם אֱלֹהֵי בְנֵֽי־עַמֹּון is translated τῷ βασιλεῖ αὐτῶν προσοχθίσματι υἱῶν Αμμων .

Biblical texts

Masoretic ''Molek''

The vocalization Molek occurs eight times in the Masoretic Text, predominantly in Leviticus:
Two further occurrences connect the practice with Tophet, a place of sacrifice in the Valley of Hinnom :
The practice of "passing through fire" associated with the name Moloch in the citations above also occurs without reference to Moloch in Deuteronomy 18:10–13, 2 Kings 16:3 and 21:6 and Ezekiel 20:26,31 and 23:37.
Isaiah 30:33 has the vocalization melek, but this is widely accepted as an omission of the Masoretic correctors: "For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it."
On the other hand, while 1 Kings 11:7 has the vocalization Molek, in "Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon", this is widely accepted as an error for Malkam, the specifically Ammonite idol.

LXX Μολοχ (Moloch, Molech)

The Septuagint uses Μολοχ three times, rendered by KJV as Moloch or Molech, in 2 Kings 23:10, Jeremiah 32:35, and Amos 5:26. In the other instances of Masoretic molek, LXX has βασιλεύς basileus "king".

''Malkam'' (Milcom)

The variant Malkam, rendered by KJV as Milcom, is found only three times in Kings. Malkam is each time specifically mentioned as a god of the Ammonites, while Molek is generally depicted as a god worshipped by the Israelites in the context of the "passing through fire" of their children.

New Testament Μολοχ

Canonical Christian scriptures refer to the pagan idol, Moloch.

Carthaginian Cronus

Later commentators have compared these accounts with similar ones from Greek and Latin sources speaking of the offering of children by fire as sacrifices in the Punic city of Carthage, a Phoenician colony. Cleitarchus, Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch all mention burning of children as an offering to Cronus or Saturn, that is to Baal Hammon, the chief god of Carthage. It has been suggested that the practice of child sacrifice may have been exaggerated in Roman post-war propaganda in order to make their arch-enemies seem cruel and less civilized.
Cleitarchus' paraphrase of a scholium to Plato's Republic has a description of the practice which predates the fall of Carthage in 146 BC:
There stands in their midst a bronze statue of Kronos, its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulf the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing until the contracted body slips quietly into the brazier. Thus it is that the 'grin' is known as 'sardonic laughter', since they die laughing.

Diodorus Siculus :
There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire.

Diodorus also relates that relatives were forbidden to weep and that when Agathocles defeated Carthage, the Carthaginian nobles believed they had displeased the gods by substituting low-born children for their own children. They attempted to make amends by sacrificing 200 children of the best families at once, and in their enthusiasm actually sacrificed 300 children.
Freeman in The History of Sicily from the Earliest Times states that the Carthaginian nobles had acquired and raised children not of their own for the express purpose of sacrificing them to the god. The author states that during the siege, the 200 high-born children were sacrificed in addition to another 300 children who were initially saved from the fire by the sacrifice of these acquired substitutes.
Plutarch wrote in De Superstitione 171:
... but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people.

Rabbinical commentary

The 12th-century Rashi, commenting on the Book of Jeremiah stated:
Tophet is Moloch, which was made of brass; and they heated him from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.

A rabbinical tradition attributed to the Yalkut Shimoni says that the idol was hollow and was divided into seven compartments, in one of which they put flour, in the second turtle-doves, in the third a ewe, in the fourth a ram, in the fifth a calf, in the sixth an ox, and in the seventh a child, which were all burned together by heating the statue inside.

Modern interpretations

Scholars of the 17th century received from medieval rabbinical tradition the notion that the various gods named mlk "king" in the Hebrew Bible are closely related, if not identical.
Early modern scholarship tended to accept the biblical and Greco-Roman accounts of child sacrifice at face value, although there were early suggestions that the biblical account might refer to a symbolic practice, among them an essay by John Selden of 1617 with the suggestion that the phrase h'byr b'sh lmlk "making to pass over the fire to Molek" might have entailed a februation rather than human sacrifice.
In his 1962 survey The Phoenicians, D.B. Harden referred to the discovery, by excavation, of urns containing charred young human or animal bones and ashes, alongside stelae depicting Carthaginian burial rites. He proposed that these were sacrificial remains from Carthaginian religious rituals, and were evidence for the reality of institutionalized child sacrifice. Archaeologist Claude Schaeffer disputed this claim, concluding that the children buried in the Tophet had not been the victims of ritual sacrifice but had died of natural causes, while Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff argued that the "scarified" children found at these locations primarily perished due to natural circumstances, and the burned animals were intended as substitute sacrificial offerings for children. This is confirmed by evidence from Phoenician Tophets at other sites. Punic inscriptions on monuments from Malta, Carthage, and Constantine refer to a mlk ‘mr referring to a live sacrifice of a child or animal. The second word, ’mr, means lamb and indicates that the sacrifice was an animal rather than a human.
Valentin Greissing in 1678 suggested that the vocalisation Molek was modelled after חֹלֵם ḥōlem "dreamer; prophet" to distinguish it from melek "king", presaging the much more influential suggestion by Abraham Geiger that the vocalisation is a dysphemism modelled after בּשֶׁת bōshet "shame". John Spenser wrote a seminal study on Molek, Lex transitum per ignem, in honorem Molechi prohibens in 1686, initiating the influential interpretation of Molek as a solar deity.
Greco-Roman authors describe the Carthaginian practice of child sacrifice as dedicated to Baal Hammon or, in interpretatio graeca, to Cronus. The explicit identification of this Punic deity with the biblical Moloch is modern, suggesting a continuity of the practice of child sacrifice from Iron Age, or possibly Late Bronze Age Canaan to 2nd-century BC Carthage. Carthaginian child sacrifice in the context of biblical Moloch is studied, still based on the authority of ancient authors rather than archaeology, by Friedrich Münter in Die Religion der Karthager and by Franz Karl Movers in Die Phönizier. Both Münter and Movers concluded that Molek was identical with Baal and to be categorized as a fire god.
In 1841, both Georg Friedrich Daumer and Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany published influential works on the topic. These authors came to the conclusion that the biblical text reflects an original identity of Molek and Yahweh, and that the cult of Yahweh grew out of that of Molek, by the abolishing of human sacrifice. The authors find numerous instances of vestigial references to human sacrifice, most notably the law that all firstborns must be "consecrated" or "given" to Yahweh.
Abraham Geiger argued that the vocalisation molek was a secondary "dysphemic" correction due to the redactors of the Masoretic text, and argued that there were a further 25 or so instances that should be taken to refer to molek which had been missed by the correctors. Of these proposed instances, Isaiah 30:33 has become commonly accepted, while the others have at best found partial support.
The hypothesis of Daumer and Ghillany of the original identity of Yahweh and Molek was controversially discussed and then widely accepted in mid-19th century scholarship. It was influentially rejected by Wolf Wilhelm Friedrich von Baudissin in his dissertation Jahve et Moloch: sive de ratione inter deum Israelitarum et Molochum intercedente.
Baudissin argued that the theonym Mlk was of genuinely Phoenician origin, reflected in Melqart of Tyre and the later reports of child sacrifice in the Tyrian colony of Carthage, and that it was only the import of the cult of the Tyrian Baal under king Ahab that gave rise to his worship among the Israelites.
In the early 20th century, scholarly opinion on the topic begins to be informed by the results of archaeological excavations in the Near East, notably those by R. A. S. Macalister at Gezer during 1902-1909. Macalister reported evidence of child sacrifice in Late Bronze Age Canaan.
Consensus shifted towards the assumption of widespread child sacrifice in Canaan, although there were dissenting opinions.
French-led excavations at Carthage began in 1921, and from 1923 reported finds of a large quantity of urns containing a mixture of animal and children's bones.
René Dussaud identified a 4th-century BC stela found in Carthage as depicting a child sacrifice.
A temple at Amman excavated and reported upon by J.B. Hennessy in 1966, shows the possibility of bestial and human sacrifice by fire.
While evidence of child sacrifice in Canaan was the object of academic disagreement, with some scholars arguing that merely children's cemeteries had been unearthed, in Carthage, the mixture of children's with animal bones as well as associated epigraphic evidence involving mention of mlk led to a consensus that, at least in Carthage, child sacrifice was indeed common practice.
The term mlk in Punic epigraphy was given a re-interpretation by Otto Eissfeldt in 1935. Eissfeldt's suggestion was that molk was not to be taken as a theonym at all but as a term for a type of fire sacrifice. For the Hebrew Bible, he argued that seven out of the eight instances of Masoretic Molek should also be regarded as the technical term for child sacrifice rather than as the name of a god, and that *lĕmōlek "as a molk-sacrifice" had been reinterpreted as the name of a Canaanite idol following the Deuteronomic reform under Josiah. According to Eissfeldt, this 7th-century reform abolished the child sacrifice that had hitherto been an acceptable part of the cult of Yahweh.
Paul G. Mosca's Child Sacrifice in Canaanite and Israelite Religion: A Study in Mulk and Molech similarly argued in support of the theory that child sacrifice to Yahweh was practiced until the Deuteronomic reform of the 7th century BC.
Moshe Weinfield once again revived the "februarist" position, suggesting that the practice of "passing through fire" prohibited for the Israelites in Leviticus did not refer to actual child sacrifice but to a symbolic rite in which infants were passed across a flame. Smith responded to this proposal by arguing that the Hebrew phrase implies a translation of "to burn" rather than "to pass between flame".
John Day argued for the existence of a god named Molek based on Ugaritic evidence.

Moloch in art and culture

Depictions of Canaanite Moloch

Milton's ''Paradise Lost''

In John Milton's Paradise Lost, Moloch is one of the greatest warriors of the fallen angels,
He is listed among the chief of Satan's angels in Book I, and is given a speech at the parliament of Hell in Book 2:43–105, where he argues for immediate warfare against God. He later becomes revered as a pagan god on Earth.

Flaubert's ''Salammbô''

's Salammbô, a semi-historical novel about Carthage published in 1862, included a version of the Carthaginian religion, including the god Moloch, whom he characterized as a god to whom the Carthaginians offered children. Flaubert described this Moloch mostly according to the Rabbinic descriptions, but with a few of his own additions. From chapter 7:
Chapter 13 describes how, in desperate attempt to call down rain, the image of Moloch was brought to the center of Carthage, how the arms of the image were moved by the pulling of chains by the priests, and then describes the sacrifices made to Moloch. First grain and animals of various kinds were placed in compartments within the statue. Then the children were offered, at first a few, and then more and more.
Italian director Giovanni Pastrone's silent film Cabiria was largely based on Salammbô and included an enormous image of Moloch modeled on Flaubert's description. American antisemite and anti-communist agitator Elizabeth Dilling, and her husband Jeremiah Stokes, wrote an antisemitic work, The Plot Against Christianity. Re-released under the title The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today – with Talmudic writings annotated by Dilling – it quoted Flaubert's description as if it were historically accurate. Information from the novel and film still finds its way into serious writing about Moloch, Melqart, Carthage, and Baal Hammon..

As social or political allegory