Materiali su Moloch II: il viaggio di Moloch nel Mediterraneo, come quando e perché.

Abstract

The Author tries to find when and why in the biblical exegesis the connection between the biblical Molek and the Carthaginian rite of the so called children sacrifice was made. In order to solve this question it is necessary to have in mind two facts: the first one is to be found in the history of exegesis, the second in the historical studies on the Phoenician and Carthaginian/Punic religion. As it concerns the biblical exegesis firstly the biblical commentator of the Middle Age, Rashi, quoting the midrash, asserted that Molek was a statue. In the same age he was followed by Nicholas of Lyre, and in the Reformation age by Martin Luther and Jean Calvin. After the publication of the Greek text of Diodorus Siculus in the Renaissance the historian of Semitic religions John Selden (1617) remarked the coincidence between the Greek tale of Diodorus and the midrash quoted by Rashi. In the 17th century the two exegetes, the catholic Cornelius a Lapide (1621) and the Calvinist Hugo Grotius (1648), also made the same comparison quoting a lot of classical writers – see here our excursus – on the matter of human sacrifice in Phoenician and Punic world. This formal coincidence between two different historical traditions – the Hebrew and Phoenician ones – around the same time is the reason why the children sacrifice became almost until now a firm tradition both in Biblical and Phoenician scholarship.