andy5

I am a person in the midst of great change in my life, being raised in a fundamentalist Church, and I have found your site most interesting and helpful. I have been trying to think of every last argument I have ever heard from my parents and Church and seen here that most of them are no good. There is one though that seems to be the potential last straw-The story of Abraham and Isaac, in the old Testament, with it's parallels to Christ, plus since it says through your seed all nations shall be blessed, are a seemingly good argument that man didn't make it all up since it was foretold there, in that he would test Abraham to see if he would do what God would do, and then gives him a sacrifice in Isaac's stead, like Jesus presumably. I know the early followers of Christ could have invented everything based upon passages like that, but is there any other counter-argument or refutation. Your speedy answer would be appreciated, as this is a very important issue to me and I need peace from it. Thank you.

The Evil One

Not quite sure I get your point, in particular, it's not clear what the argument is that you want a "counter-argument or refutation" for. Obviously I've heard the parallels between Abraham/Isaac and God/Jesus mooted before, but they've never seemed particularly strong.

In particular, God stops the sacrifice of Isaac, because human sacrifice is supposed to be baaaad; yet suddenly, by the time of Jesus human sacrifice is no longer bad, but essential for the salvation of the world. It doesn't quite add up.

(That said, there are people who will argue that Abraham did kill Isaac in the earliest version of the tale, and the sanitised version we have today is a rewrite. Make what you will of that).

temeraire

http://www.usbible.com/Sacrifice/AbrahamIsaac.htm

You need to ask yourself what sort of perverse nature God has in testing someone's faith, knowing that, in this case, Abraham would pass that test, and knowing that Isaac would have been terrified. Note from Scripture that Isaac didn't know what was happening: he asked where the lamb was for the sacrifice.

Having had that little insight into the nature of God - and here you may want to reflect also on God's dealings with Job and the perversity in winning a bet with Satan - you may wish to conclude that it is completely irrational and fanciful, and has no bearing on anything else, that something else also fanciful in its own right.

In this case, you will glean the 'truth' and subsequent 'freedom' (from falsehood) when you open up your mind and thoroughly analyse why you believe what you do. Then you'll have no hesitation in seeing the irrationality and nonsense in so much of Scripture.

You'd have had no hesitation in swapping places with Isaac, right?

Ray Moscow

Speaking as another former Christian: it has long puzzled me that Judaism and Christianity are both based on a story about some guy hearing a voice in his head telling him to kill his son -- and him deciding to actually do it! And then, we're supposed to admire that?!!!!

Then when some nut nowadays actually does the same -- like Andrea Yates, for example -- most Christians (including the prosecutor) want her to get the death penalty, for the same thing.

Having said that: most of the gospel traditions can be easily attributed as midrashic re-writes of the Hebrew Bible. The Father killing the Son is one of these, as you have seen for yourself.

Ray

WishboneDawn

Could you clarify what you're after a bit Andy?

Lugubert

One interpretation may be that the Exodus God decided to enforce the sacrifice of the firstborn like written in the Book. Then his boss thought this to be cruel, and sent one of her underlings to stop it.

Clouseau

There are far more parallels, prefigurements of Christ, in Genesis than that, and of course in the rest of the OT. Part of the problem is that so-called churches, even the non-fundamentalist ones, do not teach these things. It is unsurprising that fundamentalists do not see parallels if they think that everything is literally true, and if they never get past reading it all in the KJV. To study the OT (while knowing the NT), and Genesis in particular, in Hebrew is very difficult to do, imv, without discerning a prescience that is beyond the usual wit of man.

dug_down_deep

The Abraham/Isaac story means that you're supposed to be loyal to YHWH, no matter what. There is no mention of Jesus. The parallels are tenuous at best. Was God being tested when He sacrificed his son? Who was testing?

RED DAVE

From Clouseau:
Stuff and nonsense. Christians use the OT like a Rorschach blot and project their fantasies into it.

From Clouseau:
Ah, even the Christian churches are not as wise as Clouseau.

From Clouseau:
Actually, it's quite easy. Jews do it all the time. Religious and nonreligious Jews read the OT in Hebrew, usually with knowledge of the NT these days, and find no hints that JC is a'comin'.

RED DAVE

Clouseau

Not like that, no. One must go from man's condition, not from a ritual. It is mankind who hates, who murders, and the murder of a perfect man, should he have appeared on the earth, was inevitable. It was the murder, of fellow man, and of Christ, that made the sacrifice both possible and necessary. The sacrifice is made through the very conviction that the death of Christ was murder, and, moreover, murder on my part and yours.