mazaje:


More of Yahweh's acts of deceit as recorded in the bible. . . .

  JER 4:10 - Then I said, "Ah, Sovereign LORD, how completely you have deceived this people and Jerusalem by saying, 'You will have peace,' when the sword is at our throats."

JER 20:7 - O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me.

Its very clear that Yahweh has a penchant for sending lying spirits to people or deceiving people himself as recorded in the bible(Isaiah 37:7 and 2 Kings 19:7). The problem is if you read down in the book of Jeremiah you will see that Yahweh even acknowledge that he does evil and he apologized for the evil he did. . .

By the way what is it with Yahweh enticing people to send prophecies and then killing them at the same time. . .

EZ 14:9 - "'And if the prophet is enticed to utter a prophecy, I the LORD have enticed that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him from among my people Israel.

jamesid29:
It is well...

DeepSight:


Regrettably it is a familiar pattern among religionists of all colors, save perhaps some of the far eastern spiritual and meditative schools. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the sheer ease with which they are able to dismiss and waltz past even the clearest verses, so long as they do not like them. I mean you can see a verse that reads "This stone is black" and poker faced, they will tell you that it actually means the stone is white - that is if they do not simply ignore the verse altogether even if you cite it a thousand times.

These same will insist that all scripture is inspired by God.

jamesid29:


LoL... I hope you know that Abraham's Modern Yoruba dictionary is available on online libraries, right...

It is well sir

jamesid29:

Part of my job heavily depends on research..

In any case, I borrowed it and it clearly shows that apart from both words not even sharing the same sound, they don't share the same root or etymology.

Added the other one's that share the same sound but not the same root or meanings for further clarity.

Anyway, it's fine.

jamesid29:

Just look at the dictionary. I believe you should know how it's structured since you also own it.

As for the sound, that has to do with the ami.. BỌ́ is a different ami ohun from BỌ

Etymology[edit]
In Yoruba language, Ìyá mi literally means "my mother".[1] In Yoruba cosmology, the mother's roles as the force of creation and the sustainer of life and existence elevates her to the realm of the divine. Consequently, Ìyá mi - with alterations in tones - becomes Ìyààmi or Ìyàmi,[2] which can be translated as "the super-powerful ones"[3] or "My Mysterious Mother."[4][5] Àjẹ́ is a Yoruba word that signifies the biological and spiritual power of African women that has myriad potential, including but not limited to, powers of elemental, biological and artistic creation

jamesid29:

Part of my job heavily depends on research..

In any case, I borrowed it and it clearly shows that apart from both words not even sharing the same sound, they don't share the same root or etymology.

Added the other one's that share the same sound but not the same root or meanings for further clarity.

Anyway, it's fine.

DeepSight:
OK Jamesid29,
[b]Away from all the technicality of language and wayizbahs and Josiahs and Jephtahs and what not.
[/b]What is your own take on the concept of a transcendental omnipotent God requiring any kind of propitiatory sacrifice for sins - be it the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament or the alleged sacrifice of Christ of the New Testament.

jamesid29:

hmm.... it's alright sir
Enjoy the rest of your week

DeepSight:

1. On what basis is it confidently asserted that Jesus was without sin? ? ?
2. So what if he was without sin. How does that answer the question. Oho, so your Yahweh is blood thirsty for pure sacrifices, is that what you are saying?

jamesid29:

Part of my job heavily depends on research..

In any case, I borrowed it and it clearly shows that apart from both words not even sharing the same sound, they don't share the same root or etymology.

Added the other one's that share the same sound but not the same root or meanings for further clarity.

Anyway, it's fine.

jamesid29:


LoL... I hope you know that Abraham's Modern Yoruba dictionary is available on online libraries, right...

It is well sir

jamesid29:



You're making the point we've all been trying to make to you sir. Almost every regular speaker of the Yoruba language, associates Ebo with the meaning Ritual offering. I even did a google search of it and everywhere I looked(even in sites and papers focused on yoruba tradition or spirituality), I didn't see any where ebo meant anything other than ritual sacrifice. You're actually the first person I'm hearing a different meaning from. I am not disputing you're interpretation of ebo because
a) Critical Resources on yoruba spirituality and traditions are not easily accessible, so just because I couldn't find one anywhere that matches what you said after a couple searches doesn't automatically mean I should discard it
b) I do not know enough about the Yoruba conception of certain things in other to authoritatively negate your argument.

Now let's assume you are correct: Imagine you are faced with a text that say, Iya re fun l'ebo

On the passages he raised, I believe you can engage his aurguments with the paper you provided a link to. The author already did well in providing arguments from both sides of the conversation . It's a good place to start following the rabbit trail from. Just my opinion though

jamesid29:


That's really what you're doing sir.
Without attempting to understand how each language works on its own terms, you're making authoritative statements on one of them.. This usually leads to a lot of misunderstanding and sometimes serious errors when people make translations in this manner. E.g John 1:1 and the identity of the word.

Like in this case, you're basing your argument on the word wayyizbah and looking it up on a concordance. Two out of those concordance entries don't match your own understanding of the word so your conclusion was, the translators were being malicious in 2kings and as for 2chronicles, the answer is still up in the air.

As I stated in my last post sir, the first misunderstanding stems from your understanding of what the form wayyizibah really means.
The thing is wayyizibah is not really a word on its own. It's a combination of a narrative sequence tool called a waw/vav consecutive ( 'WA' + the doubling of the first letter of the verb it's attached to) and a conjunction of a verb in it's 3rd person masculine singular.

Unlike English, Hebrew verbs & nouns are built from a 3 consonant root word in combination with one of 7 stems(constructor/binyan) namely: "Pa'al/Qal, Niphal,Hiphil and so on".
So for example: שׁ-מ-ר (sh-m-r), in the Qal stem/constructor, we get שָׁמַר (shamar) - meaning Guard. This concept will coming handy latter

Also hebrew verbs also change forms to denote Person,Gender,Number and Tense.
For example using our verb above ( Shamar):
He will guard in hebrew would be just one word Yishmor (יִשְׁמֹר)
She will guard in hebrew would be just one word Tishmor (תִּשְׁמֹר)
As you can see, the three word sentence in English is smushed together into just one Hebrew verb. In that one word denotes the Person ( in this case, the subject in the 3rd person: he/she), Number(singular/plural), Gender(male/ female) and Tense(present, past or future tense in English: in Hebrew its Perfect or Imperfect tense).

This type of smushing of word happens across the board for 1st person, 2nd person, plural, present tense,past tense and so on. This makes a single verb be spelt differently depending on where it's used.
For an English speaker, the verbs Yishmor, Tishmor, Shamar and it's many other forms might look like they are different words, but in reality they are all the same word( in this case Shamar).
So if want to know what the word Yishmor means, you have to go look up what the word Shamar(it's root verb) means. And if you want to look up a concordance on the word Yishmor, you’ll only get the word where it’s used as a 3rd person mascular singular.

Consequently for our verb in question Way Yisbah,technically the "h" here had the ch sound but anyway the second part of the word Yisbah is actually a 3rd person singular of the verb Zabach in the imperfect tense.
Now for the first part of the word(the waw-prefix/ the WAY part), As stated above this is called a Waw consecutive or Preterite (= “past”) or a Wayyiqtol.
This concept is a narrative style used in the Hebrew bible to show a sequence of events. In other words, its used to express the main line of action in a past tense narrative.
English uses the simple past tense to achieve the same result. For example:

George walked toward the cliff, wondering what had happened to his friends. Standing on the edge,he gazed down its face, looking for some sign of them, but no one was there. He sighed, put his hands to his mouth, and shouted yet again. There was still no answer, but then something far below him moved on the face of the cliff.
The main storyline consists of five events: George walked, gazed, sighed, put, shouted, and something moved. The other verbal forms (“wondering”, “had happened”, “standing”, “looking”, and “was”), also identify events (or non-events), but do not describe the next event on the storyline. Both “wondering” and “standing” tell us that George was doing two things at the same time : wondering as he walked and standing as he gazed.
“Looking for” modifies “gazed”, narrowing its focus to tell us that George was not merely admiring the scenery. Only the highlighted sequential verbs identify a sequence of actions.

Also in biblical Hebrew The waw/vav consecutive/ Preterite (= “past”)/ Wayyiqtol is also a thread—a narrative tool used to tell readers that the event that it describes is the next event in the sequence of events in the story.
For example: In Gen 24:17-18:
And ran the servant to meet her, and said, let me drink please a little water from your jar and so she said, .......
The main storyline consists of five events: The servant ran, then he said something, so she said something, and she quickly let down her jar and then gave him water.
Hebrew uses waw-consecutive to show that this actions are a sequence of events. This is done basically by adding waw(W/V) followed by a patach vowel(an "ah" vowel like f[b]a[/b]ther) and lastly a strong dagesh to the first letter of the verb(it's just a sign that generally means double the letter it's pointed on in English: Eg hamock, becomes hammock, if the dagesh is on the m letter).

So the word:
Yō·mer( 3rd person masculine singular of the verb ruts/רוּץ) becomes Way·yō·mer(וַיֹּ֕אמֶר) - And (he) said

Tō·mer( 3rd person feminine singular of the same verb ruts/רוּץ) becomes
Wat·tō·mer(וַתֹּ֖אמֶר) - And she said:

So this is the same way, Yiz·baḥ(3rd person mascular singular of the verb Zabach) becomes "Way yizbah".

If you use an interlinear and check closely under the an highlighted "Way·yiz·bah", you would see a
Conj‑w | V‑Qal‑ConsecImperf‑3ms underneath. This is there to tell you that this word is a "conjunction waw", a verb of the "Qal(stem)", Its a Consecutive imperfect( meaning it's showing a sequence of events in a story: something happened,then another thing happened and so on), and finally it's in a 3rd person masculine singular form of it's verb.

So if you're using a concordance to look up the word Wayyizbah and making a translational judgement of that without understanding what the verb is doing there, you would be looking up wrong thing.
Ofcourse because of time, there's been a lot of simplification and things are generally more complex than this, but I hope you got the general idea.
In other to do an accurate word study of the word and an interpretation of the text itself, one has to

1) Strip the word of it's conjugation and other stuff to get to the root word & stem. This is called parsing. Most good software tools like logos, olive tree etc automatically do this part.
2)Look up the parsed word in a good lexicon to see it's current semantic range. Semantic range can change depending on more discoveries & understanding of the language
3) You can use a concordance to find every instance of the word in it's root word & stem. Languages are very tricky. A word can be used one way a thousand times and used in another way with a different naunce and meaning in a few other place. That's a feature of every language, even English. E.g 9 out of 10 times, the word "to dust" connotes cleaning but in a few cases it can also be used as "to sprinkle"
4)Learn enough about the background, culture, worldview and so on of the text in question. The goal is to try and get into the world of the author and original audience. In other words to think the way they would have thought.. This is arguably harder and slower than it sounds but Cultural river plays a huge role in how we understand any text( or any piece of information/ communication actually). The way I think is different from the way someone brought up in Germany thinks even though we share the same century and there's always a lot of miscommunications when both parties do not understand their cultural differences.
5) It's always a good idea to look up good critical commentaries and other resources on the text, regardless of the level one is( even expert scholars do this). Knowledge doesn't happen in a vacuum and seeing how others who have expertise in the field parse the text can help one see blindspots or gain perspective.

Of course doing all this is not a guarantee that one will not make mistakes( we all have blindspots) but it's a whole lot better than not doing them.


You're making the point we've all been trying to make to you sir. Almost every regular speaker of the Yoruba language, associates Ebo with the meaning Ritual offering. I even did a google search of it and everywhere I looked(even in sites and papers focused on yoruba tradition or spirituality), I didn't see any where ebo meant anything other than ritual sacrifice. You're actually the first person I'm hearing a different meaning from. I am not disputing you're interpretation of ebo because
a) Critical Resources on yoruba spirituality and traditions are not easily accessible, so just because I couldn't find one anywhere that matches what you said after a couple searches doesn't automatically mean I should discard it
b) I do not know enough about the Yoruba conception of certain things in other to authoritatively negate your argument.

Now let's assume you are correct: Imagine you are faced with a text that say, Iya re fun l'ebo


Working proficiency is not an abstract concept or something hard to benchmark. It just basically means knowing enough to work with the language or subject matter.
German scholarship dominated & pushed the field of biblical studies forward a couple of centuries ago. Because of that, many critical commentaries and works are written in German. Today most biblical scholars have to have enough knowledge of German in other to engage with many of those works. They might not be able to speak German fluently but they know enough of the language to work with it.
Most physicist have to know maths to a certain degree so they can do their calculations.
Even in MMA, regardless of one's martial arts background (kick boxing, karate etc), every MMA fighter needs to know how to grapple to an extent. Israel Adesanya comes from a kick boxing background and is not an expert grappler but he won't have been successful in MMA if he didn't pick up enough grappling skills to survive in the octagon.
As I said earlier, working proficiency is not an abstract concept neither is it hard to benchmark. It doesn't necessarily mean one is an expert in the field but means one at least has enough understanding of the field to effectively engage and work with it.

Our conversation has been about 2kings and A) whether what Josiah did was a ritual sacrifice to God and
B)whether translations were intentionally manipulated to hide this fact.
This has been the only conversation between the both of us.
The video of Dr kipp doesn't touch on any of this two points.
In what I watched, he doesn't associate Josiah's killing of the priest with a ritual sacrifice to Yahweh, neither does he even hint at it or even bring it up.
There's a reason for that...
(incase I missed it because I skipped right to section on Israel, pls provide the timestamp and I'll go back & watch it).

On the passages he raised, I believe you can engage his aurguments with the paper you provided a link to. The author already did well in providing arguments from both sides of the conversation . It's a good place to start following the rabbit trail from. Just my opinion though



That's not the point sir. The point is not about not thinking but about knowing our limitations on the things we might reasonably not be certain about.

I'll round up here by giving two examples
1) A scholar I respect alot made an aurgement connecting Hammurabi with Amraphel of Gen 14 using linguistic connections. Problem is, many other expert in the space reject this view and I don't know enough about the augment to speak confidently on it(one way or another).
Best I can do is mention it and leave it at that.( That's if I even mention it at all in the first place)
2) Recently, I was pondering on Matthew 7 and I had an interesting interpretation of one of the verses. It made sense to me based on the text but before I went out telling people about it, I checked it up against some sources to see how well my arguments stacked up. Slowly, I realized I had missed some things and my interpretation was possibly a bit skewed.

So the point isn't about not thinking but about knowing that with everything we know, there's a world of things we are yet to know especially if we haven't done due deligence.
Over the years I've learnt to live with ambiguities. There are very few things I hold on too very strongly. One of the things I can say for certain when it comes to my faith is that the God of the bible is exactly who Jesus portrayed him to be "A just & loving God". This is not an understanding that comes from emotions but from my understanding of the scripture on its own terms. I've seen other people who were anti christians but who allowed the bible speak on its own terms come to the same conclusion( some are even not still Christians but don't doubt God's justice and love ).

I know you might not see things that way but I hope some day, you will.
Have a great week ahead.

jamesid29:


This is where I believe ,the first problem stems from sir. You are using your understanding of a word in it's target language to reinterpret what it must mean in it's source language.

Pls note, a concordance is not the same thing as dictionary or lexicon


In other to accurately translate words from one language(SL) to another(TL), one has to have a working level proficiency of the language's structure, grammer, culture,worldview of the speakers,context, quantity, time period and so on.

Even to accurately do a word study without having to be highly proficient in a language, one has to atleast have a beginners level understanding of some of those things mentioned

Without the above mentioned, something might look evident, but that does not follow that it is encompasses the full picture or that it's even correct. I'm glad you recognize these complexities with your example of the usage of the Yoruba word "Ebo"(although your other example of Cult does fall under a different matter).

1 Kings 13:1-2
1Now behold, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word (command) of the LORD,
while Jeroboam was standing by the altar [which he had built] to burn incense.
2[I] The man cried out against the [idolatrous] altar by the word of the LORD,
“O altar, altar, thus says the Lord:
‘Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name;
and on you shall he sacrifice [the bodies of] the priests of the high places who burn incense on you,
and human bones shall be burned on you.’”

In that vain, I believe the first step is to address how the Hebrew grammar is structured and where the word wayyizbah fits into that

But before going into that, I would like to nail down your answer to the last conversation. You sort of explained around it but did not really answer the question( Sorry if I am the one that missed your point). I can assure you that my question is not in anyway intended to be a gotcha question. I truly believe it would help us down the road in having some common understanding of translation and language nuance.

So If I may ask it again in a clearer way,
In 2chronicles 18:2, would you say that slaughter/kill is a suitable translation of the verb or do you think the translators mistranslated the verb(whether malicious or otherwise)?

Thanks

Pls note: I'm replying to the entirety of your last post, not just this quoted part. Thanks

Located about ten miles north of Jerusalem near the border of Israel and Judah, Bethel was known as Luz in pre-Israelite times (Gen. 28:19). The name “Bethel” (beit el) means the "house (or place) of God." Abraham, according to Genesis 12:8, built an altar east of Bethel shortly after arriving in Canaan from Haran. Later, Jacob, believing the place to be the "gate of heaven," named it Bethel. He is depicted as erecting a sacred pillar there shortly after having the dream of "Jacob's Ladder" (Gen. 28:18). The early shrine was apparently outside of the town of Luz, probably at a "high place." The exact location of either the primitive altar or later shrine at Bethel remains undetermined by archaeologists, although some believe the town may have been uncovered.[1]

In the Bible, God calls Jacob to return to Canaan from exile in Haran, and is reported to have said: "I am the God of Bethel" (Gen. 31:13). Later, after Jacob's family had settled near Shechem but had run afoul of the local population, God commanded him to move to Bethel and (re)build an altar there. The town nearby is still identified as Luz at this point, and Jacob called the place "El Bethel." When Deborah, the nurse of Jacob's mother Rebekah, died and was buried beneath an oak there, the site also became known as Allon Bacuth—“Weeping Oak” (Gen. 35:.

NNTR:
You dont appease, influence, induce a deity, with the aim, of it, to be well disposed towards you, by killing an animal on another deity's shrine different to its.

NNTR:

In the case of Josiah, alternatively yes, and to reduce it to another one word, desecration (i.e. defacement, befouling or even vandalism killing)

1 Kings 13:1-2
1Now behold, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word (command) of the LORD,
while Jeroboam was standing by the altar [which he had built] to burn incense.
2[I] The man cried out against the [idolatrous] altar by the word of the LORD,
“O altar, altar, thus says the Lord:
‘Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name;
and on you shall he sacrifice [the bodies of] the priests of the high places who burn incense on you,
and human bones shall be burned on you.’”[/i]

NNTR:
The confusion you see, is your confusion.


Your dishonesty has clouded your view and thus prevented you from seeing that Jehoshaphat was never a father-in-law to Ahab

jamesid29:

Please where did you get your translation from or did you come up with it on your knowledge?

Secondly, In view of 2chronicles 18:2, would you agree that the best way to translate the verb in that passage would be "to slaughter/kill"?
As to Sacrifice, might give a modern reader a different connotation of the text because of how we understand the word in our worldview. And to Offer could likewise mislead a modern reader into thinking he just gave him the animals.

Are we in agreement on this?
Please bear in mind biblical Hebrew does has words for offering & killing

The word CULT.

There are some points of interest to be gleaned from studying the etymology of the word cult. The word entered the English language in the 17th century from 2 sources. French culte, and Latin cultus. The French is itself derived from the Latin.

The meaning of Cult in Latin encompasses To Inhabit, To Cultivate, To Protect, To Grow, To Worship, To Train or To Educate,.....

It is from the Latin Cultus that we get the English words Cultivation, and Culture.

Exploring the connection of these uses for the word Cultus we come to a deeper understanding of Religious activity.

A religious Cult should be a place where a certain spirit in a person can be nurtured and developed.

In studying African traditional religion, many concepts can be misconstrued. For instance in Yoruba religious thought (and other tribes too) practitioners talk of going to offer ẹ́bọ́ to a shrine. Too many scholars loosely translate ẹ́bọ́ to mean sacrifice, and go on to explain that something must be given in order to get something as if the offering of ẹ́bọ́ is a business transaction.

But actually the word ẹ́bọ́ in Yoruba just means nourishment. To offer ẹ́bọ́ is to feed. In other words to 'cultivate', to culture, To cult. (In Yoruba it is said that the Wife bọ́s the Husband and the Husband bọ́s the Wife). Furthermore this misconstruing of the meaning of ẹ́bọ́ ignores a very important key part of the ẹ́bọ́ ceremony. And that is that the ẹ́bọ́ is mostly eaten by the person doing the offering and shared with everyone else present. So how can it be an offering or a transaction if you are just going to eat it yourself?

This fact is true of every traditional religion that I am aware of and that is that the Offering is eaten by the Offerer. This is true even of traditional Hebrew religion from which Christianity is derived. You can tell from certain passage that most offering were eaten:

1 Samuel 2
29 Why then do you scorn[b] my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?’

The sons of Eli fell into disfavour because they would purposely select the best part of the sacrifice for their own bellies.

And the other famous Offering was the Tithe which was again eaten by those who made the offering and shared with others.

Deuteronomy 14
23 Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and olive oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always.



So what exactly is going on when ẹ́bọ́ is offered? When a meal is dedicated to a deity at a shrine the meal is then consumed by the practitioners in the belief that when the eat the meal they are nourishing the spirit of the deity in them. An Ogun devotee when he eats of the sacrifice is nurturing the spirit of industry, invention, pioneering within himself. He is cultivating the Ogun aspects of his being.

When a christian eats the Eucharist he is nourishing and nurturing the spirit of Christ within himself. The hope is that the Christ nature within will grow and come to fruition.

Please bear in mind biblical Hebrew does has words for offering & killing

DeepSight:




But this is the essence of a ritual sacrifice. You are going round in circles.

jamesid29:


Interesting viewpoint. Just so I'm accurately getting your point.

Are you saying wayyizbah should no longer be thought of as a word that exclusively denotes a ritual sacrifice but should be taken more generally as a term to denote a killing done in other to induce/ appease someone. That person could either be human or a deity.

I'm i correct in my understanding of your position?

budaatum:


What would be the point of one's asking and knocking and seeking if not correct sauce making?

At a certain time in one's life, one must have learnt enough about sources in order to not just accept the sauce one is given. That's what one learns from Paul after all, how to make Sauce.

jamesid29:

2 Chronicles 18:2

NNTR:


Smh, I give up. Blind as a bat.

_{Personal text: Jesus is not a theologian. He is God who told stories.}

In your quackness, dumbness and pointless self, you fail to grasp and understand that God is completely against humans, being offered up as a dead burning sacrifice. Get this fact and truth set in the bone framework enclosing your brain please

Look at you, making a fool of yourself playing very hard trying to explain a non-existent event by proof-texting one single verse of the bible and another single verse.

Duh, did king Josiah say he made the sacrifices to God? Answer nah. Smh.

If anyone wants to confirm they can check any concordance, to see that, it was desecrate (i.e. inverse of sacrifice) that king Josiah did

Its only an arrant nonsense, fake paistor like you, who wouldnt know that king Josiah's act of desecration (i.e. embarrassed the bad priests by killing them all and leaving them as sacrifices on their fake gods' altars) was prophesied well before he was born

_{Personal text: Jesus is not a theologian. He is God who told stories.}

DeepSight:


And this is a response to something so self-evidently fundamental to the Christian faith - the indisputable fact that Christ is said to have been offered up as a sacrifice for sins?

In response to that being pointed out, you shamefully attempt to pretend the poser is too stupid to countenance, and accuse the poster of being "blind as a bat," while therefore throwing up your hands in surrender.

Cringe-worthy, but nothing new.

jamesid29:


@bolded is not really correct sir.

NNTR:

God doesnt take delight in human beings, offered as burning sacrifices. No human being has offered God, approved human burning sacrifice. God has never accepted any human beings, offered as burning sacrifices. God finds the practice not only to be repulsively but its a stupid thing to do. God intervened before Abraham got to sacrifice his son Isaac.

NNTR:
al, for [the goddess] Asherah,
and for all the [starry] host of heaven;


Running away? What a daft thing to imagine and say, on top of when I've earlier put forward to you Exodus 32:7-28, so you can see confirmed what happens to idolators.

See how you found it hard to admit what the calibre of priests were that King Josiah killed. You couldn't engage your brain to see that the priests were idolators. They, essentially were priests turned bad

Of course they are human priests, or were you expecting them to be animal priests

NNTR:
Exodus 32:7-28
I ask you who were the priests killed by Josiah?
What calibre of priests are they?

_{Personal text: b]Jesus/b] is not a theologian. He is God who told stories.}

NNTR:
Take ownership of the imagined human sacrifice problem you created and stop passing the buck

Romans 1:28
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or consider Him worth knowing [as their Creator], God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do things which are improper and repulsive,

Its not unusual to give people up or give them over to worthless things, so they be free to indulge in their whims and caprices or whatnot of no values. Look at Satan for example, look at Judas, look at Pharaoh etc, loll

There is nothing to address in Ezekiel 20:25, but if you want to, then lets go there.

Warn you, though, that I'll put your head under water, so make sure you can swim, if not bring along a life jacket. Be ready to contextually take Ezekiel 20:25 apart.

_{Personal text: Jesus is not a theologian. He is God who told stories.}

NNTR:
Deuteronomy 12:28-32a

Why would anyone want to stop your imaginary human being burnt offering sacrifice

N

LordReed:


This is funny. Why would Jephthah be sad to the point of ripping his own clothes if it was just celibacy his daughter was going to endure? Why didn't Samuel's mother become sad when she gave him up? You are just trying to shield yourself from what is evident, the daughter was made a burnt offering.

And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”

Even the girl understood what was going to happen.

36 “My father,” she replied, “you have given your word to the Lord. Do to me just as you promised, now that the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites.

Truvelisback:
God doesn't accept human sacrifice. His daughter wasn't killed and used for sacrifice, rather she served the Lord all the days of her life without getting married and bearing children. It be came their custom.

DeepSight:


So there is this constant evolution we go through, undergirded by past and succeeding memories which defines the totality of the mental being that we are, forming a composite but transient sense of self at any point in time. That is well understood and I even recall a comment you made several years ago about not being sure you are the same person as you were twenty four hours ago or something to that effect. My take is that all of this is still the mental evolution of a single being whose root-consciousness or spirit, remains the same.