I realized that I had neglected to mention something whilst discrediting evilbible.com‘s claims that there is ritual human sacrifice in the Bible.
You may recall that there indeed is ritual human sacrifice in the Bible when, that is, the Bible is recording the doings of Gentile Pagans or Jew who have gone astray by worshiping Gentile Pagan gods. For some odd reason evilbible.com‘s author never got around to condemning the Gentile Pagans but, in typical atheist fashion, kept going back to condemning the Jews. And doing to based on misunderstanding, misapplications which came about by taking texts out of context to make pretexts for prooftexts.
In Atheism, Ritual Human Sacrifice in the Bible, and EvilBible.com, part 2 of 5 evilbible.com‘s author was quoted thusly,
Even more peculiar is God’s obsession with first-born sons. In Exodus 13:2 the Lord said “Consecrate to me every first-born that opens the womb among Israelites, both man and beast, for it belongs to me.” Later it says that you can redeem (replace) an ass with a sheep and that you must redeem a child for an unspecified price. It is clear from the context that “consecrate” means a burning sacrifice. These priests are guilty of theft and kidnapping. Since any [sic] sins in the Old Testament were punishable by death, these priests used the threat of death to extort food and money from their followers. What do we call a scum-bag that threatens to kill your kids unless you pay a ransom? A kidnapper! If these priests were alive today they would be in prison with Abraham_
What I wanted to point out now, in the form of an addendum, is that the Gospel of Luke it states:
Now when the days of her [Mary’s] purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him [Jesus] to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the LORD”), and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons” (Luke 2:22-24).
What?!?!
They did not offer Jesus as a human sacrifice?!?!
They broke the law?!?!
The question is: who understood the Bible better, the Old Testament better, Judaism better, the Temple and its rituals better: evilbible.com‘s author or Joseph and Mary?
This is a tough one.
One the one hand: evilbible.com‘s author is evilbible.com‘s author and is most certainly not a scholar or any sort particularly when it comes to the Bible, the most basic concepts, contents and contexts of which are lost to evilbible.com‘s author.
On the other hand: you have Joseph and Mary who lived two millennia ago, attended the Jewish Temple services in Jerusalem, at a time when the Jewish Temple services were carried out by the Jewish Temple priesthood, when the Law of Moses – the Law of the Old Testament was in place.
This is a tough one.
One the one hand: evilbible.com‘s author asserted that “consecrate” means a burning sacrifice and that the priests were kidnapping scum-bags who threatened to kill kids unless they were ransomed.
On the other hand: Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to the Temple since He was their fist born but they do not sacrifice Him. We are not even told that they ransomed him but simply that “they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord” and also to “to offer a sacrifice.”
This is a tough one unless you conclude that people living whilst the Temple was functioning know more about it than someone two millennia later who succeeds only in discrediting themselves while attempting to discredit the Bible by demonstrating their lack of knowledge of even the most basic of the Bible’s contents, concepts and contexts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.
Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page.