this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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From my understanding there is debate among even biblical (religious or otherwise) scholars on the level of ceremonial human sacrifice that the stories of Moses and Joshua's time partook in. There are laws against human sacrifice in the old testament. But there are also laws against most of what god commanded be done to non Hebrews. Most agree that the laws of the old testament primarily applied to the Hebrews only.
You can definitely read the early bible as "oh it was just war". But you can't really when there are specific stipulations on which women to kill or to "save for yourself"
They specifically are told to kill women that have "known men by lying with them". How they determined this is not clear. Likely through rape.
Numbers 31 is basically explaining a lot of the after battle events. "Cleansing themselves" etc. It definitely seems to be an organized part of handling the spoils of war.
I'd say finding a women after the war, raping her, and then killing her if she doesn't bleed sufficiently enough (likely how they determined this 'known a man') and doing this because it was commanded by your god is not necessarily "human sacrifice" in the ritualistic sense. But, I'd say it's not something I'd care to distinguish if we're talking about dehumanizing other people and killing them.
Which was my point to begin with. The bible is filled with these absolutely awful things being normalized to out groups. Whether they played drums and slit someone's throat at an alter like a movie scene is not really the requirement for "human sacrifice" that I'd require.
Human sacrifice can just be killing innocents in the name of your god. Which the bible is absolutely filled with. Ceremonial or not is not really important to me. The ritualistic part of it can absolutely be the aftermath of a battle. Which is when this slaughter of innocents primarily took place.