55 replies to this topic

[USU78]

Cobalt-70, on 08 August 2012 - 03:25 PM, said:

My problem is not with Abraham. The myth of Isaac's sacrifice was not that shocking in the context of Bronze age Hebrew philosophy. My problem is with anyone today who thinks that the ethical solution promoted by Genesis 22 and Hebrews 11 has any relevance in modern times, other than as an example of which parts of the bible we should ignore.

Couldn't disagree more.  Sometimes life presents us with insoluble problems . . . things whose solutions are, indeed, so horrible, given what we that we always knew, that to pursue solutions we come to see as being right in a particular instance breaks our hearts and makes us question everything about ourselves and our existence.  In such times, we put ourselves entirely in G-d's hands, trusting that He knows better than we . . . Nephi's solution to the Laban problem was one such . . . it broke his heart and changed him forever, yet he knew G-d expected from him acts abhorrent to him.

He sees things differently than we do.
We cannot always assume that our moral sense makes sense in such times.
Trusting Him, casting aside our egos, is all that we can do.

You find this to be irrelevant to XXIst Century lives?

Couldn't disagree more, having lived through some tough, tough times.

[volgadon]

USU78, on 08 August 2012 - 03:35 PM, said:

Couldn't disagree more.  Sometimes life presents us with insoluble problems . . . things whose solutions are, indeed, so horrible, given what we that we always knew, that to pursue solutions we come to see as being right in a particular instance breaks our hearts and makes us question everything about ourselves and our existence.  In such times, we put ourselves entirely in G-d's hands, trusting that He knows better than we . . . Nephi's solution to the Laban problem was one such . . . it broke his heart and changed him forever, yet he knew G-d expected from him acts abhorrent to him.

My kid brother shared an experience from a few weeks ago. As part of a youth program he is in, he got to see a high-ranking military official speak to the group. The officer posed a dillema, based on real-life situations. A rocket has hit a military post. There are three people critically wounded, but with a chance to survive. The post's commanding officer, with a wife and three young children; his secretary, who got married to her husband about a month ago; a young medic, single. The helicopter can only evacuate two people. You are the officer in charge of the evacuation operation, who do you save? If you save the officer and secretary, should the medic die because he is an unmarried male? If you save the officer and the medic, is the secretary's life woth less because her role isn't as important as those of the other two? If you save the secretary and the medic, you've made three orphans and placed an intolerable burden on a mother.
My brother said that the officer explained that no answers here are right, no answers are wrong either. No matter what choice you make, you've effectively sentenced a person to death. It becomes worse if one of the people you've saved dies enroute to the hospital.
This is one of the "nicer" dillemas out there.

[Monster]

Cobalt-70, on 08 August 2012 - 03:25 PM, said:

My problem is not with Abraham. The myth of Isaac's sacrifice was not that shocking in the context of Bronze age Hebrew philosophy. My problem is with anyone today who thinks that the ethical solution promoted by Genesis 22 and Hebrews 11 has any relevance in modern times, other than as an example of which parts of the bible we should ignore.

Well said. To use this as an example of obedience in todays world is immoral.

[Cobalt-70]

volgadon, on 08 August 2012 - 04:48 PM, said:

My kid brother shared an experience from a few weeks ago. As part of a youth program he is in, he got to see a high-ranking military official speak to the group. The officer posed a dillema, based on real-life situations. A rocket has hit a military post. There are three people critically wounded, but with a chance to survive. The post's commanding officer, with a wife and three young children; his secretary, who got married to her husband about a month ago; a young medic, single. The helicopter can only evacuate two people. You are the officer in charge of the evacuation operation, who do you save? If you save the officer and secretary, should the medic die because he is an unmarried male? If you save the officer and the medic, is the secretary's life woth less because her role isn't as important as those of the other two? If you save the secretary and the medic, you've made three orphans and placed an intolerable burden on a mother.
My brother said that the officer explained that no answers here are right, no answers are wrong either. No matter what choice you make, you've effectively sentenced a person to death. It becomes worse if one of the people you've saved dies enroute to the hospital.
This is one of the "nicer" dillemas out there.

But this is apples an oranges. It's one thing to choose who to save among limited options. It's quite another to put an innocent child on an altar, slit his throat, and burn his body because you think that God told you to do so. Nobody's life would have been saved had Abraham followed through with his human sacrifice.

[Cobalt-70]

USU78, on 08 August 2012 - 03:35 PM, said:

Couldn't disagree more.  Sometimes life presents us with insoluble problems . . . things whose solutions are, indeed, so horrible, given what we that we always knew, that to pursue solutions we come to see as being right in a particular instance breaks our hearts and makes us question everything about ourselves and our existence.  In such times, we put ourselves entirely in G-d's hands, trusting that He knows better than we . . . Nephi's solution to the Laban problem was one such . . . it broke his heart and changed him forever, yet he knew G-d expected from him acts abhorrent to him.

If you "put yourself in God's hands" by committing an atrocity you are not really trusting so much in God, as you are trusting in your own ability to interpret God's will.

Quote

He sees things differently than we do.
We cannot always assume that our moral sense makes sense in such times.
Trusting Him, casting aside our egos, is all that we can do.

You find this to be irrelevant to XXIst Century lives?

Absolutely. Abraham's kind of thinking is what gave us the Mountain Meadows massacre, the Lafferty brothers, and 9/11. In modern society, there is no situation where a person should feel justified in performing a cold-blooded killing, even if they think that God commanded it.

[altersteve]

Cobalt, I see so many flaws with your point of view that I'm not even going to point them out. So let's just agree to disagree.

[Ron Beron]

While such an action today would be considered murder and heinous murder at that there are several points that mitigate Abraham's actions:

• The assumption made here is that Isaac acted with his father out of sheer ignorance, but a Jewish Midrash states that Isaac was not a boy, but a young man in his twenties or thirties and did so willingly.  Like his father Isaac believed that God would provide his escape:

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  Rabbi Isaac said:  At the moment that Abraham sought to bind his son Isaac, he said to him, "Father, I am a young man and I am fearful that my body will tremble out of fear of the knife and I cause you sorrow, so that the slaughter will be rendered unfit and this will not be accredited to you as a sacrifice.  Therefore, bind me very tightly."  Immediately he bound his son Isaac .  Can one bind a man thirty seven years old without his consent (Gen. Rabbah. 56:
• The historical context of the time accepted the sacrifice of a first born child.  Whilst unusual the Hebrew people were commanded to sacrifice their first born.  " Exodus 22:29 “Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats. You must give me the firstborn of your sons. 22:30 You must also do this for your oxen and for your sheep; seven days they may remain with their mothers, but give them to me on the eighth day."  Ezekiel later discusses where the Lord gave laws that were at one time unjust.  "20:25 I also gave them decrees which were not good and regulations by which they could not live. 20:26 I declared them to be defiled because of their sacrifices – they caused all their first born to pass through the fire – so that I would devastate them, so that they will know that I am the Lord.’^"
  
• God also gave an "out".  In Exodus 34:20 God states, "Now the firstling ⁴¹ of a donkey you may redeem with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, then break its neck. You must redeem all the firstborn of your sons."  and Exodus 13, "The Lord spoke to Moses: 13:2 “Set apart to me every firstborn male – the first offspring of every womb among the Israelites, whether human or animal; it is mine.”
  
• Abraham knew that he and Isaac would walk away from this through prophecy.  22:5 So he said to his servants, “You two stay here with the donkey while the boy and I go up there. We will worship and then return to you.”   The medieval commentator Rashi stated that Abraham, "...prophesied that both of them would return."
  
• Jon Levenson states in his book, "The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity", that
  

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  "Abraham does not give up his son through sacrifice, he gives him nonetheless--to the God who gave Isaac life, ordered him slaughtered, and finally grants him his exalted role in the divine plan.  The aqedah (sacrifice) is not only about the aversion a a child sacrifice.  It is also about the profound and sublime meaning the cultic norm that the beloved son belongs to God: 'You shall give Me the first-born among your sons'.  Ex. 22:28

EDIT...I want to mention a further insight that delves into the mythic dimensions of the beginnings of religion.  All religions have begun with a sacrifice.  It cements the living with the cosmic nature of deity.  While it doesn't let the gruesome nature of the origins of Judaism off the hook it does explain it through a mythic archetype.

Edited by Ron Beron, 09 August 2012 - 08:58 AM.

[Kevin Christensen]

Cobalt-70, on 08 August 2012 - 03:19 PM, said:

I don't think it's correct to shoehorn in the English connotations of the word "offer" into this originally-Hebrew text. The word "offer" was the choice of the KJV people, but the word (עָלָה) translated as "offer" literally means "ascend." I like Young's Literal Translation the best, which says, "and cause him to ascend there for a burnt-offering...." In a burnt offering, it was imagined that the sacrificial animal ascended up to God via the smoke. So God was commanding Abraham to actually burn his son as a sacrifice.

This is a valid observation.  However, if Abraham understood the command at face value (in spite of his many personal experiences with substitutes being provided), it still does not account for what Abraham says in Gen. 22.

And saying that Abraham was engaged in either fanaticism or blind obedience overlooks another key story about Abraham.  Far from demonstrating blind obedience to whatever God asked, Abraham was one who asked "Why?"  And not just rhetorically to a silent heaven, but to a God that spoke directly to him.  His attempt at understanding the judgement against Sodom being a case in point.  He pleads for Sodom.  Why not for his own own son, unless, as Gen. 22 depicts, he did actually understand what would happen?

FWIW

Kevin Christensen
Pittsburgh, PA

Edited by Kevin Christensen, 13 August 2012 - 08:19 AM.

[USU78]

Cobalt-70, on 08 August 2012 - 10:57 PM, said:

If you "put yourself in God's hands" by committing an atrocity you are not really trusting so much in God, as you are trusting in your own ability to interpret God's will.


Absolutely. Abraham's kind of thinking is what gave us the Mountain Meadows massacre, the Lafferty brothers, and 9/11. In modern society, there is no situation where a person should feel justified in performing a cold-blooded killing, even if they think that God commanded it.

Why do I hear the echoes of the feet of the armies of Antiochus Epiphanes?  Knowing, as they did, that the defilement of the body via circumcision was a bad thing, any notion of personal liberty had to give way to the ultimate good of a sound mind in a sound body for every subject of the Hellenistic State.

Yet every Jew knew, and knows today, that G-d's covenant with His people is conditioned upon the circumcision of every male child at 8 days old throughout all generations.

These two antithetical notions led to bloody impositions by the state and bloody revolution from state control.

Life sometimes requires hard, occasionally terrible, things from us, as volgadon has so beautifully demonstrated.

Sometimes you have to kill Laban, though it breaks your heart and scars you forever.  99.99999% of your life is lived within the safe bounds of "normal," where G-d's law as understood by most if not all of us holds.  In that 0.00001% of our lives, extraordinary and terrible TRVTHs are revealed at times and in circumstances where the stakes are enormous and the risks unimaginable.

In the movie, Troy, Achilles tells Briseis that the g-ds actually envy man the brevity of his life and the intensity of his experiences.  If normal life is so precious, how much more precious the 0.00001%?

That's what makes Nephi's choice to follow G-d's will against his own such a transcendent thing.
And Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac.

[Cobalt-70]

Kevin Christensen, on 09 August 2012 - 08:52 AM, said:

This is a valid observation.  However, if Abraham understood the command at face value (in spite of his many personal experiences with substitutes being provided), it still does not account for what Abraham says in Gen. 22.

And saying that Abraham was engaged in either fanaticism or blind obedience overlooks another key story about Abraham.  Far from demonstrating blind obedience to whatever God asked, Abraham was one who asked "Why?"  And not just rhetorically to a silent heaven, but to a God that spoke directly to him.  His attempt at understanding the judgement against Sodom being a case in point.  He pleads for Sodom.  Why not for his own own son, unless, as Gen. 22 depicts, he did actually understand what would happen.

Where does Abraham say "Why?" in Genesis 22? In verse 2, Elohim tells him to take his son to the land of Moriah and burn him as an offering. Abraham's only response, in verse 3, is load his *** up with chopped wood and head off with his son and his slaves to Moriah. Abraham doesn't seem to push back at all as to Elohim's diabolical order. So that makes all the more contrast to his bargaining with YHWH on the issue of how many righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah it would take before YHWH would save those cities. Clearly the god of Abraham, though sometimes cruel, malevolent, and devious, was capable of being reasoned with. So why didn't Abraham try to change the mind of Elohim when Elohim commanded Abraham to commit a human sacrifice.

Perhaps it is because Elohim, the God that commanded Abraham to commit a human sacrifice, was technically a slightly different god from YHWH, the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. These two stories are from different Hebrew denominations, and are in the same bible, and part of the same religion, only because some priests in the Josiah era blended them together into the same book. Actually, a lot of modern scholars think that in the sacrifice story as originally told (as recorded by the Elohist), Isaac was actually successfully sacrificed. However, later editors invented the "way out" in order to harmonize the sacrifice story with the writings of the Jahwist, who had already recounted myths involving Isaac as a Hebrew ancestor. So they had to find a way to make him survive in the storyline.

[Ron Beron]

'Cobalt-70'

Quote

In verse 2, Elohim tells him to take his son to the land of Moriah and burn him as an offering. Abraham's only response, in verse 3, is load his *** up with chopped wood and head off with his son and his slaves to Moriah. Abraham doesn't seem to push back at all as to Elohim's diabolical order.

You are missing the subtext in the chapter.  Abraham took three days to travel to Mt. Moriah while normally in should have taken only an afternoon.  The scriptures show he was delaying the inevitable.  Since Beer Sheba was about 46 miles from Jerusalem and an average man could walk at least 40 miles in a day it would seem that Abraham took his time.

Quote

Actually, a lot of modern scholars think that in the sacrifice story as originally told (as recorded by the Elohist), Isaac was actually successfully sacrificed. However, later editors invented the "way out" in order to harmonize the sacrifice story with the writings of the Jahwist, who had already recounted myths involving Isaac as a Hebrew ancestor. So they had to find a way to make him survive in the storyline.

Not so much modern scholars or theorists, but medieval rabbinic academics who felt that Isaac was variously sacrificed and restored or wounded and healed in Eden.

[rodheadlee]

ok i'll try and mumble through this. God was testing Abraham's faith regarding the promise that through Issac his seed would be called. That through Issac his seed should be numbered as the sand on the shore or thb stars in the sky. In Genisis 21 God says:
12 ¶ And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in ^aIsaac shall thy ^bseed be called.

This is long before God tells Abraham to take Issac up the mountain. So Abraham already has the promise that Issac will be fruitful and multiply so he figures God will supply the sacrifice or raise Issac from the dead to fullfil promises already made.

I could look up more of those promises but i'm doing the dishes. One of you scholar types can prolly rip them off from memory..

[wenglund]

I can't read Abraham's mind. Sorry.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[volgadon]

USU, I can't think of a more poignant and compelling retelling of the Binding of Isaac than the piyut "Et Shaarei Ratzon" (When the Gates of Acceptance). Sung during the Days of Awe by the Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, the song was written by the 12th c. poet, Yehudah ibn Abbas. The deeply personal note reflects the author's own tragedy- his son converted to Islam.
Ibn Abbas used "the Binder, the Bound, and the Altar," a recurring refrain at the end of each verse to reinforce in the worshippers the centrality of three things in this drama, Abraha, Isaac and the worship of God. This is tied to the penitent's request for God's mercy to remember the "Binder, the Bound, and the Altar," to save his children both as individuals and as a nation, but it is interesting that the poet actually pushes God's involvment to the background, focusing on Abraham's response to God's call and his love for Isaac. One of the verses contains the line, "That son which Sarah bore you/ IF your soul has become deeply attached to him/ Arise, and offer him up unto me a pure burnt offering..." The key here is the word "if." Abraham is not some stern, wild-eyed zealot rushing to shed blood at the first whisperings of his deranged mind, he is a man deeply attached to his son with all the fiber of his being, faced with a parent and spouse's worst possible nightmare. One of the verses is an incredibly powerful portrayal of the conflicting emotions Abraham and Isaac faced. "He prepared wood for the burnt offering in might and strength/ Binding Isaac as he would bind a ram/ And the light of day was darkness in their eyes/ And the multitude of his tears flowed mightily/ An eye bitterly weeping and a joyous heart/ The Binder, the Bound, and the Altar." After Isaac movingly worries about the fate of his mother, the angels are in a tumult of emotion, pleading with God to provide a substitute, "let not the world be without its moon." This is the moment when Abraham and Isaac have transcended their own selves, being transformed into men of cosmic magnitude. God stops the trial, and dismisses the angels, saying, "This is a day of merit for the children of Jerusalem/ In it I open the gates of compassion..." The piyut closes with a plea from the worshippers. "For your covenant's sake, Dweller in the Zebul, and for the oath/ Remember this for a tempest-tossed and afflicted congregation/ And hear the Tekiah, Tokeah, and Teruah/ And tell Zion that the time of redemption has come/ Yinon and Elias I am sending/ The Binder, the Bound and the Altar." Tekiah, Tokeah, and Teruah are the various blasts sounded on the shofar, which is meant to commemorate the horn of the substitute ram. Yinon is one of the Messiah's names, but it is by virtue of both Abraham and Isaac's act, and the way their descendants cherish it that helps hasten redemption. Among many of the Berber Jewish communities in Morocco, this piyut was sung when a woman went into labour. Women even called the pains of childbirth their Akedah. Can't blame them, modern medicine, including painkillers, hadn't made its way into the harsh, rugged Atlas mountains, and mortality rates were high, but of all things, why pick the Akedah to identify with? Apart from imagery of labour pains found in Jewish descriptions of the Messiah's advent, the story is about finding the faith to become more than yourself in times of the worst hardship, also it tells of how the ancestor's merit will aid their descendants in time of need, and that God will provide blessings beyond their wildest dreams to those that overcome trials.
All incredibly immoral in this enlightened day and age, right?

[USU78]

volgadon, on 10 August 2012 - 10:50 AM, said:

All incredibly immoral in this enlightened day and age, right?

I'm sorry . . . I can't read this last line of yours with these tears blocking my sight.

[volgadon]

Cobalt-70, on 08 August 2012 - 10:47 PM, said:

But this is apples an oranges. It's one thing to choose who to save among limited options. It's quite another to put an innocent child on an altar, slit his throat, and burn his body because you think that God told you to do so. Nobody's life would have been saved had Abraham followed through with his human sacrifice.

One of the nicer dilemmas, as I've said. Nobody'slife would have been saved, hmm, have you read Philo of Byblos?

[volgadon]

Quote

other than as an example of which parts of the bible we should ignore.

I never cease to be amazed by such a narrow outlook.

[Cobalt-70]

volgadon, on 11 August 2012 - 12:33 PM, said:

One of the nicer dilemmas, as I've said. Nobody'slife would have been saved, hmm, have you read Philo of Byblos?

Are you talking about his description of child sacrifices by the Phoenicians? I still don't see how the fact that the Phoenicians did it makes Abraham a role model for 21st century Mormon morality. Do you really think that human sacrifices by the Phoenicians saved Phoenician lives? And even if they did, I personally could not be a part of any ethical system that justifies the ritual sacrifice of a human child. Let my kingdom perish--I will not slit the throat of an innocent child. How anyone could, and feel like it's the right thing to do, is unfathomable to me.

Edited by Cobalt-70, 13 August 2012 - 06:19 PM.

[Ron Beron]

Cobalt-70, on 13 August 2012 - 06:17 PM, said:

Are you talking about his description of child sacrifices by the Phoenicians? I still don't see how the fact that the Phoenicians did it makes Abraham a role model for 21st century Mormon morality. Do you really think that human sacrifices by the Phoenicians saved Phoenician lives? And even if they did, I personally could not be a part of any ethical system that justifies the ritual sacrifice of a human child. Let my kingdom perish--I will not slit the throat of an innocent child. How anyone could, and feel like it's the right thing to do, is unfathomable to me.

It amazes me that we can take this so literally.  Why can't we read it in the obverse.  Abraham didn't want to sacrifice Isaac, but he felt he was commanded by God and probably felt let down because he believed God had commanded to not sacrifice our children, yet the Bible is full of paradoxes.  At one point we are commanded to give our first-born children, but in another passage we are commanded to offer another in proxy for the first.  If we are seeking for examples of God's commands in allegorical action then we should look no further than this chapter.

[Cobalt-70]

Ron Beron, on 13 August 2012 - 07:42 PM, said:

It amazes me that we can take this so literally.  Why can't we read it in the obverse.  Abraham didn't want to sacrifice Isaac, but he felt he was commanded by God and probably felt let down because he believed God had commanded to not sacrifice our children, yet the Bible is full of paradoxes.  At one point we are commanded to give our first-born children, but in another passage we are commanded to offer another in proxy for the first.  If we are seeking for examples of God's commands in allegorical action then we should look no further than this chapter.

There's no reason to think that the bronze age Palestinians alive when the Abraham myth was formulated, or their Hebrew descendants, would have taken it any way other than literally. As volgadon mentioned, it was customary for these people to perform human sacrifices to El, so why should the mythical Abraham have thought that commandment unusual? There was no Ten Commandments. It was just pure and simple a commandment of God to commit a human sacrifice. There's no moral or ethical lesson to be learned, because nobody in the Western world actually worships the murderous pagan god of Abraham.