Wallener

Back up a bit. Let's assume 3000 years ago this was understood to be a "story" and not "history". This implies the point of the story isn't directed at a character inside the story, but at a member of the listening audience. Imagine sitting around the campfire with your tribal buddies, in a hostile land, surrounded by different tribes who did, in actuality, practice child sacrifice from time to time. Perhaps someone in your own tribe was also tempted to do the same, perhaps had even succumbed to such temptation. Your tribal elders tell the story, in dramatic verbal fashion.

In that circumstance, what point do you think you'd be more likely to take from the story - that G-d did, or that G-d didn't require the sacrifice your own children?

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Not withholding your house from me would be a sacrifice though, would it not? Maybe not exactly easy to do, even if you knew I meant to give it back some time afterwards.

Well, certainly I don't mean selfish, pathological love fulfills the law!

If this is a sick practical joke, then God is indeed not worthy of worship. Perhaps we have an indication in Isaac also worshipping God afterwards, that this was not a shallow, pointless exercise, for Abraham, or Isaac … or God. I have heard it said that this mountain might even be the hill called Golgatha, the place where Jesus' cross was raised.

Most calm, severe, is heaven's strife,
And to reveal God's steps with man
He put the very flame of life
Within the hand of Abraham.

Face set to resurrection-hope,
With bonds of faith they both were bound,
And Isaac bore the cordwood up,
And Isaac laid it down.

The sun had set, the air was still
As one who loved the Father's will,
A three-year's ram, an untorn dove,
Sealed stroke, but not of power . . . of love.

But he didn't have to offer her, God did not require this of him:

Leviticus 5:4-6 Or if a person thoughtlessly takes an oath to do anything, whether good or evil-- in any matter one might carelessly swear about--even though he is unaware of it, in any case when he learns of it he will be guilty. When anyone is guilty in any of these ways, he must confess in what way he has sinned and, as a penalty for the sin he has committed, he must bring to the Lord a female lamb or goat from the flock as a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for him for his sin.

If we can see how it is good…

Genesis 50:20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Regards,
Lee

John A. Broussard

Witholding a house=killing someone
Depending on a future event from an imperfect being=depending on god doing the right thing

Surely you are jesting.

What evidence do you have from scripture to indicate that this wasn't a shallow, pointless exercise?

And, if it wasn't a shallow, pointless exercise, what was it?

What was the point in bringing up Golgotha?

I truly have difficulty following your arguments.

Avatar

No wonder becoming a spiritual leader is so popular. You teach the populace a whole series of rediculously convoluted and contradicting rules, then train them to come to you with some kind of offering when they run afoul of any of these rules...and they praise you for shearing them no matter how shamelessly you do it!

Anat

John, another Jewish take on the aqedah and how it relates to omniscence:
Supposedly God already knew Abraham would obey a commandment to sacrifice Isaac, so why bother testing him? The answer is so he can be rewarded for passing the test. Just like a teacher can know in advance that a student is capable of passing the course test, but for the student to get credit s/he has to actually do the test, and do well.

John A. Broussard

Good point. If God had been a teacher, then Abraham would have had to actually do the test, i.e., kill his son.

DeDia

None of the above excuses, explanations, rationalisations for child-sacrifies and baby killing makes the least sense to me. I think I will never understand how it is possible to look at these things without despair and nausea. God in the OT demands sacrifices, both of animals and humans.

Remember the 32 virgins set aside for his priests to sacrifice? There is no getting around these horrible acts. No lessons are to be learned from this except that these stories reflect the mindset of a cruel and barbaric warrior tribe. Never mind if their victims too were cruel and barbaric child sacrificers. Two black doesn't make one right! I am amazed when people defending the bible talk like if they were there at the time of these events and actually KNOW exactly how very evil those other tribes were, where every man , woman, child and animal deserved to die. And claim that we shouldn't worry about the dear littles one who got their brains bashed in because they are now cute little angels so the Israelites only did them a favour.

This depends on what theology you support. Unbaptised children has been condended to hell for the large part of Christian dogmatic history. In the same time, it is clamed that God never changes. There is a clear evolution going on in every religion from ancient times to modern times. Even fundamentalist are not as bad as they used to be when it comes acting on their beliefs.

I am sic of these bending over backwards apologies for brutality on biblegods and his followers part. I have been around people from all parts of the world for several years , from all classes, and many different kind of religious, philosofical and political convictions. I have NEVER encountered a human being who I think deserved to be killed on account of these convictions. I have over the years come to the conclusion that all human being are indeed very much alike and equal to each other, the differences are mainly on an individual basis, temperamental, level of intelligence etc.

Religion has NOTHING to do with their moral or human qualities. Only if you live a very isolated life surrounded by, and indoctrinated by people who hold the simular values is it possible to believe that people outside your group are dangerous and EVIL. Or if you are a true narrowminded, stupid, insensitive and basically unloving IMMORAL human being.

I rember a christian tenager who once on another forum was challenged on this issue, and eventually , he admitted that he was the kind of person who didn't really care about what happened to people that he didn't know or were in close proximity with. This is unfortunately very common in isolated groups, and small, shut in societies.

I am not a total pessimist however. I have seen how people are more than ready to change their opinions once they get to meet those other people on a neutral and pleasant ground. This hope is what keeps me going, I am a witness to this happening EVERY day in my classroom.

Wallener

4000 years ago human sacrifice was common. Today it is not. The story/stories worked, that's good enough to tell me they weren't "a shallow, pointless exercise". Put another way, to get from "there" to "here", there had to have been at least one story like this showing that G-d/gods don't actually need or want human sacrifice.

New understandings evolve, they don't spring fully-formed from nothingness like an ID universe.

andrewcriddle

FWIW I'm pretty sure that the Lord's tribute in Numbers 31:38 is the fraction of the human loot/booty given to the priests, (31:47 implies that there would have been another 320 virgins given to the Levites).

The actual killing of people is IIUC already over by this stage. This part of the story is about how the surviving captives were supposedly shared out.

Andrew Criddle

Wallener

There is a difference between rationalizing, apologising, and explaining one's understanding. If it makes no sense for fundamentalist believers to take the text ultra-literally, it also makes no sense for fundamentalist critics to do the exact same thing. Literalism is literalism, regardless of desired outcome, and both cases are examples of taking things grossly out of context.

If you want to read Malaparte's Kaputt as a literal instruction, you are free to do so, but that doesn't make your subsequent rage justified.

Frankly, I'm much more concerned about Disney's propensity to kill off the mother in the first reel of every movie it makes.