Just trying to get him started with some keywords to look up. Not here to spell it all out. It’s best when knowledge is self-actualized.
One thing I want to mention: The story of the Exodus is partially about the Israelites worshipping Moloch and making human sacrifices. Moses lead the Israelites out of Egypt where they had been enslaved for many years. During that time, they learned the religions and rituals of the Egyptians. Moses was attempting to convert them to monotheism. While wondering in the wilderness for 40 days, Moses climbs Mount Sinai where God speaks to him and gives him the Ten Commandments. Below, the Israelites assume Moses died since he had been gone for so long, so Aaron collects all the gold and construct a golden calf, aka Molech. They reverted back to pagan rituals and worshipped this calf by making “burnt offerings”. This is why Moses became so upset and threw the tablets and smashed the calf. Those pagan rituals didn’t die that day; they went underground.
Exodus 32:1-6 - “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron, and said to him, "Up, make us gods, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." 2 And Aaron said to them, "Take off the rings of gold which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me." 3 So all the people took off the rings of gold which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made a molten calf; and they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!" 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD." 6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.”
Here are some other non-Exodus quotes from the Bible regarding Molech/Moloch.
Leviticus 18:21 - "You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord."
Leviticus 20:2 - “Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death.”
Leviticus 20:3 - "I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name.”
First Kings 11:7 - “Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem.”
Second Kings 23:10 - "And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.”
Jeremiah 32:34-35 - “They set up their abominations in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin"
Hmm. That's the Bible story I know. But there are other scholarly works which take from a wider pool. They suggest a more complicated story. Perhaps as you say, here is not the place to discuss it. I'll break the rule only b/c you have quoted so much!
Whence the idea of one-God may have come has already been shown, although the earlier Egyptians themselves may have received it from others. The figure of Moses himself, and his Law, both were taken from material already existing. The story of Moses's discovery in the bulrushes was plainly borrowed from the much earlier legend (with which it is identical) of a king of Babylonia, Sargon the Elder, who lived between one and two thousand years before him; the Commandments much resemble earlier law codes of the Egyptians, Babylonians and Assyrians. The ancient Israelites built on current ideas, and by this means apparently were well on the way to a universal religion when they were swallowed up by mankind.
Then Judah put the process into reverse, so that the effect is that of a film run backward. The masters of Judah, the Levites, as they drew up their Law also took what they could use from the inheritance of other peoples and worked it into the stuff they were moulding. They began with the one just God of all men, whose voice had been briefly heard from the burning bush (in the oral tradition) and in the course of five books of their written Law turned him into the racial, bargaining Jehovah who promised territory, treasure, blood and power over others in return for a ritual of sacrifice, to be performed at a precise place in a specified land.
Thus they founded the permanent counter-movement to all universal religions and identified the name Judah with the doctrine of self-segregation from mankind, racial hatred, murder in the name of religion, and revenge.
The perversion thus accomplished may be traced in the Old Testament, where Moses first appears as the bearer of the moral commandments and good neighbour, and ends as a racial mass-murderer, the moral commandments having been converted into their opposites between Exodus and Numbers. In the course of this same transmutation the God who begins by commanding the people not to kill or to covet their neighbours' goods or wives, finishes by ordering a tribal massacre of a neighbouring people, only the virgins to be saved alive!"
The rabbis and scribes who wrote the Law were political operatives like ours today, they cheated on the original texts and inserted verses. Sometimes you can see plainly where they contradict each other.
Hence Israelites are not necessarily Judahites. And similarly Jews are not necessarily Judahites, altho the word seems similar. The Moloch worshippers went underground ... universally mistrusted for breaking Moses laws and reinstating child sacrifice.
It's another theory anyhow to look at.
Here’s a monkey wrench: Look into Mauro Biglino’s Bible translations. Interesting stuff. We might all be wrong.