Feagal

It's quite possible for me to be sitting opposite someone, speaking at a normal volume, and for them to misunderstand or mishear what I am saying.

In fact it happens all of the time.

Anyway, I was talking to a fundamentalist about this the other day and he seemed to think that God was testing Abram's faith so that Abram would "know" that he had it... in other words, it wasn't a demonstration to God of Abram's faith because he obviously knows everything, it was purely for Abram's benefit.

What I failed to grasp was how this was any less of a ridiculous explanation than the other one.

Clouseau

It does. It happens when Dad is asked to mend the dripping tap, and when the kids are asked to tidy their rooms. But hearing acuity increases at mealtimes, oddly enough.

What do you think the original gospel was, Feagal?

That makes a lot of sense, too; and of course, we know it, too. So we have several motifs: the only son through whom generations of chosen people would be forthcoming, the 'sacrifice', the wood carried by the son, the absent but 'present' lamb, the substituted ram, and the demonstration of willingness to sacrifice an only son. Now I think it would have been a pretty clever person to make all that up, a thousand years before the event. But maybe I'm biased. Maybe I can hear mother calling for dinnertime.

Amaleq13

Only son? Didn't we just discuss the fact that he had others earlier in the thread?

Clouseau

News to me.

Lugubert

following my comment (#31) on "a" son, not "your firstborn."

Stephen T-B

"News to me." (Clouseau)

"You obviously haven't been reading the thread, either!" (Clouseau)

Amaleq13

The first reference was post 26.

It was repeated in post 55

Do you have Cege on ignore?

Before referring to Isaac as Abraham's "only son", Genesis tells us that Abraham already had a son before Isaac was born.

Clouseau

No, but I don't necessarily read all posts in a thread to which I contribute. I realise, perhaps better than many, that there are posters who, from their often exquisite timing, deliberately ignore points contra; I am not one of these annoying people, either.

Ishmael had been sent away, so, at the time of the ascent of Mt Moriah, Isaac was Abraham's only son as practical family. I don't see any material objection to the use of the phrase.

Clouseau

So how many Gods are there? Trinitarianism has affected people's minds so deeply.

Cege

Ishmael sent away made him no less a son of Abraham's. Ishmael was in fact Abraham's first born son, but by no means the last since Abraham fathered 7 more sons after Isaac was born.

Really, your apology is claiming "practical family" was the meaning intended?