4 billion

The unescapable fact is that he abuses the child, sure he doesn't actually kill, but the very act of tying the child up, placing him on the sacrificial altar, holding the knife to his throat, is not open to interpretation, this is child abuse pure and simple. The fact that you can propose there can be interpretation of these acts other than child abuse, exposes the 'grey' area around child abuse created by this piece of Abrahamite perversion.

To make matters worse, Abraham gets a bunch of Camels etc in reward for his crime. There can only be one conclusion from this god's rewards to Abraham, and that is, it is not offended by child abuse. This god did not blast him with a lightning bolt for torturing a child.

WishboneDawn

That's a cool idea, never heard that one before. I have to go crack my OAB now.

rhutchin

Well, not exactly--

Genesis 22
1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.
4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.
5 And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.
6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.
7 And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

God speaks directly to Abraham as recorded in v 1-2. In v 8, Abraham refers to God and the earlier conversation that resulted in the trip.

We may have two authors or we may have two sources of information used by one author. Given that we have two participants, Abraham and Isaac, we can have two different accounts written describing the events which happened. If both men wrote separate accounts of the incident, then the redactor (thought to be Moses originally but later perhaps Ezra) would then weave the two accounts together to get a complete account of all that happened. Those who follow the Documentary Hypothesis don't seem to know how the final account came to be written and speculate as is convenient for them.

This is nice, but we then find that a man who is called Isaac and who is described as the son of Abraham and who figures prominently in the historical account of the birth of the nation of Israel. How is the "second" Isaac explained? How is it good evidence if the man alleged to have been killed shows up alive and kicking later in the story and without whom there would be no Israel?

rhutchin

It certainly establishes the precedent that it was OK for God to abuse His son, Jesus, by allowing men to nail Him to a cross and let Him hang there until He died.

JPD

But wasn't God nailing himself? He didn't really actually die did he because wouldn't the universe have ground to a halt? Is God one or three or both or neither? Perhaps Mary, mother of God, who gave birth to God after being prepared by God, can answer this conundrum. Perhaps the Lord Jesus could have developed a backbone and a bit of spunk.

JPD

Let's have a quick look at one "explanation" for the Holy Trinity:

This is taken from Catholic Encyclopedia: The Blessed Trinity :

Quote: "The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion -- the truth that in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another. Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God." In this Trinity of Persons the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent. This, the Church teaches, is the revelation regarding God's nature which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to deliver to the world: and which she proposes to man as the foundation of her whole dogmatic system."

So that's completely clear then but I digress for which I apologise and humbly bow out.

Dean Anderson

Yeah, sure. Of course the 'E' and 'J' authors were Abraham and Isaac...

So if Abraham and Isaac wrote the two accounts (which itself stretches probability well beyond breaking point and is even more ridiculous than the normal claim that Moses wrote the whole Torah) which one of them wrote the version where Abraham sacrifices Isaac?

I would suppose that it would have to be Abraham's version - unless Isaac had his version ghost-written...

As I explained...

In the (plainly unhistorical) account by the 'E' writer, Isaac is never mentioned again. The 'E' writer jumps from talking about Abraham sacrificing his firstborn to talking about Jacob - without mention of how the two are related.

In the (also plainly unhistorical) account by the 'J' writer, Abraham doesn't sacrifice Isaac - and Isaac goes on to father Jacob and Esau.

Two different writers - two different stories about how things happened.

This isn't a problem to anyone other than people who have a purely faith-based insistence that the Bible must be 100% inerrant and therefore can't contain two different stories.

Dean Anderson

That's the problem with virgin births - no spunk is involved at any stage in the process...

James Brown

What's not often mentioned in a Judeo-Christian context was Abraham's treatment of his first born son Ishmael and his mother Hagar. Sarah didn't like them (even though it was her idea to have Abraham sleep with Hagar to begin with), and after nagging Abraham about it long enough, Abraham just kicks them out into the wilderness to die.

Why Muslims consider Abraham to be a hero is beyond me.

JPD

Then I shall refrain from making any references to Jesus getting wood in the wilderness - as a carpenter this would have been quite normal.