Secret_History

400 The Secret History of the World
And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out
to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her
he had neither son nor daughter.
And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my
daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me:
for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back.
And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do
to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the
Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of
Ammon.
And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two
months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I
and my fellows. And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she
went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.
And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who
did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And
it was a custom in Israel, That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the
daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.
Well, aside from the fact that if we are to take the Bible literally, we have here a
definite indication that Yahweh was originally a God who may have demanded
human sacrifice, we most definitely have an indication that Yahweh at least
accepted human sacrifice upon occasion! But, in another sense, this is merely
another version of the story where Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac, which
is almost identical to a Vedic story of Manu. These acts were based on what was
called sraddha which is related to the words fides, credo, faith, believe and so
on. 280
The word sraddha was, according to Dumezil and Levi, too hastily understood
as “faith” in the Christian sense. Correctly understood, it means something like the
trust a workman has in his tools and techniques as acts of magic! It is, therefore,
part of a “covenant” wherein the sacrificer knows how to perform a prescribed
sacrifice correctly, and who also knows that if he performs the sacrifice correctly,
it must produce its effect.
In short, it is an act that is designed to gain control over the forces of life that
reside in the god with whom one has made the covenant. Gods such as these, who
make covenants are not “literary ornaments” or abstractions. They are active
partners with intelligence, strength, passion, and a tendency to get out of control if
the sacrifices are not performed correctly. In this sense, the sacrifice is simply
magic.
280 Meillet, Antoine, Memoires de la Society de Linguistique de Paris, XXII, 1992.