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life, thus they became humanized, in a sense, through their lack of total
power. We also have seen that human and animal form was assigned some of
their objects of worship, while the other gods were, the sun, moon, and stars.
Jeremiah 7:30-8:3 reinforces the fact that they worshipped the sun, moon and
stars; just as the Greeks and Romans did. "For the children of Judah have
done evil in my sight saith the Lord: they have set their abominations in the
house which is called by my name, to pollute it. And they have built the high
places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their
sons and daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it
into my heart. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it
shall no longer be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the
valley of slaughter: for they shall bury in Tophet, till there be no place.
And the carcasses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven,
and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them away. Then will I
cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusalem,
the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom,
and the voice of the bride: for the land shall be desolate. At that time,
saith the Lord, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the
bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the
prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves:
And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of
heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they
have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they
shall not be gathered, nor be buried; for they shall be for dung on the face
of the earth. And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue
of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places
whither I have driven them, saith the Lord of hosts.".
    In Aramaic Topheth means fireplace while in places outside of Israel it
was a common noun meaning "place of child sacrifice". The Valley of Ben
Hinnom was used as a trash dump and a place for sacrificing children to pagan

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gods. It was abbreviated to Valley of Hinnom or in Hebrew ge' hinnom which
became Gehenna, or in Greek geena, which is consistently translated in the New
Testament as "hell".
    The statement about the bodies being exhumed and no burials, is consistent
with the curses assigned for covenant breaking. The survivors could also see
that the gods they were worshipping were powerless to do anything about the
strewing of their followers bodies for fertilizer. In light of this
discussion, possibly a deeper meaning can be assigned to Joshua 10:12-14:
"Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the
Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged
themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher?
So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about
a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the
Lord hearkened to the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel.". For
just a moment put yourself in the place of the Amorites, who worshiped the sun
and the moon, and consider the confusion you would feel to learn that your
gods were powerless against the God called on by Joshua. Is it possible that
God in His grace had attempted, once again, to show them the error of their
ways? Looking ahead Socrates teachings through Plato and beyond, developed
into a description of a society that would have embraced communism. There
would appear to be a problem with this since communism today is atheistic, not
polytheistic. However, modern science has shown that the sun, moon, and so
forth are as Anaxagoras had taught, not gods but simply material, the same as
man, destructible. It is but a brief step from the gods of the Greeks to
atheism, or to the true God JEHOVAH, through ever changing 'scientific truth'.
It all boils down to faith. Either faith in humanism or faith in God.
Socrates was a humanist. It is up to us which faith we choose, there is no
middle ground. You say, but there are polytheistic societies in the world

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today. I answer, yes but they, for the most part, have animated their gods to
the exclusion of astronomical entities. Those who still worship the
astronomical entities are at the same or lower intellectual level as the
ancients.

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