Did the Ancient Israelites Think Children Were People?
Personhood in the Hebrew Bible
T. M. Lemos • 04/16/2018
A few years ago, I was teaching a course on the first five books of the Bible. When the class session on the 10 plagues in Exodus came around, an interesting discussion ensued among the students about the plague of the firstborn and whether or not the Israelite deity was morally justified in killing Egyptian babies. After some handwringing, one student in the class chimed in: “Since they were babies, they were innocent, so they went straight to heaven.†His friend then replied flatly, “By that logic, abortion is the best thing ever invented.â€
This fifth-century B.C.E. relief on a Phoenician funerary monument from Pozo Moro, Spain, is commonly interpreted as a scene of child sacrifice in an underworld banquet. A seemingly two-headed monster, who may well be a Phoenician deity, holds in his right hand a bowl containing a child and grasps with his left hand the leg of a piglet. Photo: Rafael dP. Iberia-Hispania licensed by CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/ancient-israel-children-personhood/
