Properly the name is Gey Ben Hinnom (גי בן המום) = "the valley of the sons of Hinnom"; whence Gehenna; it is located to the south and east of Yeru-Shala'im, and includes the Hill of Tophet (2 Kings 23:10). The southern border of Bin-Yamin and the northern border of Yehudah ran through it, which is not uninteresting in itself.
Gehenna is considered to be more or less the Jewish equivalent of Purgatory, but really it isn't. According to 2 Chronicles 33:6 it was originally a site of Moloch worship and included human sacrifices, which is interesting in the light of the traditional association of Mount Mor-Yah (Moriah) with the Akeda, the non-sacrifice of Yitschak in Genesis 22. Yoshi-Yahu (יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ - Josiah) outlawed the practice (2 Kings 23:10) The site later became the city's refuse dump.
References to it can be found in Joshua 15:8, Jeremiah 7:32 and 19:2, the latter denouncing it as an abomination.
Tophet was properly Ramot ha-Tophet (רמות התפת), meaning an artificial mound used as a place of sacrifice. This can be understood as some sort of a tumulus. Isaiah 30:33, plus the word Taphteh which occurs in both Assyrian and Persian writings, give it the more simple meaning of a place where bodies are burned or buried, though we should not infer from this that the practice of child sacrifice is an overstatement for the mere habit of cremation. Much more plausible is that the children were sacrificed on an altar at the top of the tumulus, and their bodies burned or buried in the grave-barrows beneath it.
Tophet was properly Ramot ha-Tophet (רמות התפת), meaning an artificial mound used as a place of sacrifice. This can be understood as some sort of a tumulus. Isaiah 30:33, plus the word Taphteh which occurs in both Assyrian and Persian writings, give it the more simple meaning of a place where bodies are burned or buried, though we should not infer from this that the practice of child sacrifice is an overstatement for the mere habit of cremation. Much more plausible is that the children were sacrificed on an altar at the top of the tumulus, and their bodies burned or buried in the grave-barrows beneath it.
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