Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Steven R. Lo Vullo" <doulos AT appleisp.net>]

on 8/23/01 10:23 AM, Lisbeth S. Fried at lizfried AT umich.edu wrote:

> There were a couple of articles on the subject in either
> BAR or BR a while back. One was by Stager. From what
> I remember of the articles there is no archaeological
> evidence of child sacrifice anywhere, not even in Carthage.
> There is evidence of child burials which received some sort
> of sacred dimension beyond the ordinary burial in Carthage,
> but there is no evidence the children died of anything
> other than natural causes.


Hi Liz:

If you are referring to the article by Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolf
in BAR Jabuary/February 1984, their conclusion is that there was widespread
child sacrifice at Carthage for hundreds of years: "The Carthaginian Tophet
is the largest of these Phoenician sites and is indeed the largest cemetery
of sacrificed humans ever discovered. Child sacrifice took place there
almost continuously for a period of nearly 600 years" (p. 32). See the
article for details.

Steve