The faith of Abraham

[yovargas]

I'm finding it very difficult to put a positive spin on this story. The closest I can come to doing so was that it was an attempt to teach this lesson:

God wants our love, not the ashes of our children.

Unfortunately, that lesson rings rather false for me when the God of the time wasn't particularly reluctant to kill people. From the "negotiation" story, for example, it seems that Abraham is more concerned with the live's of the righteous than God was.

[vison]

Frelga says: "I agree with Cerin's reading - that Abraham was sure that his God will not allow him to kill his son. "

So, what was the point of the whole exercise? God knew Abraham would obey, Abraham knew God wouldn't really let him kill Isaac.

Poor Sarah.

I guess, for me, this is at once easier and harder. Easier because I was never taught that this was an important or sacred story, harder because taken as I take it, just as a story, it's hard to figure out why it is central to so much!

People say, "Oh, the God of the Israelites was just like the kings of those days, a despot, a tyrant." Well, maybe he was. I don't know much about the kings of those days, and those I know a bit about are mostly in the Bible. I see this god that way, to be honest. Tricky, and jealous, and very, very ruthless.

I can't wrap this god into a package with the god who created everything. The Creator was grand, and had sweeping ideas of things, he made a cosmos, he made planets, he covered ours with water and dry land, and he made all the living things.

Then what does he do? He turns around to be the kind of god who got angry at his pet creation, humans, and tossed them out into the cold, for doing what he made them to do! Then he drowned almost everyone. Then he tests an old man by means of his only son. And so on, and so on.

I have read many times that there were several "narrators" or "writers" of the Old Testament. It seems pretty obvious to me that's true. Not only various writers, but they must have recorded many different stories from many sources, it's not linear although it's presented as linear.

Genesis, Chapter 22, verse 2: "And he said, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee onto the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."

This just comes out of the blue! We have Abraham and Hagar and Abraham and Sarah and some adventures in which Abraham assures some king named Abimelech that Sarah is his sister and this Abimelech "takes Sarah"! She's ninety years old, for pete's sake! What would king Abimelech want with her? Only God stops Abimelech from "taking" Sarah by pointing out that she is, in fact, Abraham's wife and when Abimelech asks Abraham about it, he gives him the same story, "Oh, she's my sister, she's the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife."

All of this because Abraham feared Abimelech would kill him for Sarah? I don't quite get what Abimelech would want with a 90 year old woman. I tell you, this Abraham is some guy.

So, according to my King James bible, Sarah was 127 when she died. I can't make out how long this was after Abraham didn't sacrifice Isaac.

Well, I don't know. The god dealing with Abraham, and Abraham's servants, is no way the same god that made us all. This is a different god altogether.

The Creator is what? The myth of Creation, I suppose.

After Adam and Eve were dismissed out of Eden, that Creator seems to have gone away and this other god came into being.

I am reading this all over and over. Parts of it are lovely and I've always loved the King James version for the poetry of the language.

One thing I like a lot, but I don't think I should. I like how god assures Abraham and Isaac in various ways that they will get to have everything that everyone who hated them had. Their flocks and cities, their lands. "You're my man, Abraham. It's all going to be yours and everyone who was ever nasty to you is going to be out in the cold."

[Cerin]

Frelga, I thought that was an interesting point you made raising the example of the Sodom and Gomorrah conversation. Clearly Abraham isn't reluctant to let God know what he thinks.

tp, I had a few observations on your comments:

If I used the word 'know' I shouldn't have. In this context it would be meant to convey the extent to which Abraham was convinced of something. But of course, in matters of faith, we can't know (in the evidenciary sense); that's what makes it a matter of faith.

I think faith is measured by word and deed. We aren't told whether Abraham suffered doubt, but I don't think it's important (and so I don't relate to the reasoning of the rest of that paragraph). What Abraham believed is represented by his words and actions.

Regarding Jacob, IIRC he was wrestling the angel of the Lord to obtain a blessing. The situation doesn't seem comparable to me to the one Abraham faced.



Regarding Sarah's death, Abraham was one hundred years old when Isaac was born. If Sarah was no older than Abraham, then Isaac was 27 when she died. I had always pictured Isaac to still be a boy at the time of the story of the sacrifice, but perhaps this is just an unfounded assumption.

So, what was the point of the whole exercise? God knew Abraham would obey, Abraham knew God wouldn't really let him kill Isaac.

Abraham couldn't know. He believed. The point of the exercise, imo, was to allow Abraham to learn something about his own faith, and to allow that faith to be confirmed. Our faith grows stronger every time it is confirmed.

[Impenitent]

Some extracts from http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/ ... /katz.html

I tried to summarise this and realised the original says it best. I like this reasoning, and this lesson could not have been learnt in any other way.

...the test Abraham had to pass was an ethical test, not a test of obedience to God. The test Abraham passed was to see the face of Isaac and abort the sacrifice...

<snip>

In his essay “A propos Kierkegaard Vivant,” Levinas writes, “that Abraham obeyed the first voice is astonishing: that he had sufficient distance with respect to that obedience to hear the second voice—that is essential.” If we are to understand why Levinas writes this, we must remember what happened before Abraham's trek to Mt. Moriah. We must remember that Abraham had to convince himself it was God, he had to lie to Sarah and to his servants, and he had to walk with Isaac up the mountain. We need to keep in mind all that it took for Abraham to convince himself that it is right to kill Isaac and what he needed to do to carry out the task. In other words, we need to keep in mind the psychological state in which we find Abraham. Therefore, Levinas's focus on Abraham's attunement to the second voice should not be minimized.

Like Silentio, Kierkegaard's pseudonym in Fear and Trembling, Levinas does not want us to gloss over the fact that the sacrifice did not happen. This distance from obedience, this receptivity to the other that Abraham displayed, is at least as extraordinary as his initial faith...

<snip>

...the religious stage for Kierkegaard is outside language. This means that one is “out of communication.” One cannot explain what one is doing. No one would understand what it means for Abraham to hear to this voice. And this is precisely the kind of relationship Levinas fears when he quotes Yossel ben Yossel with regard to loving the Torah more than God. For Levinas, to love the Torah more than God is precisely to love ethics more than God; it is to be willing to respond ethically to the other rather than to be willing to kill because one “heard” this commanded by the voice of God. To love the Torah more than God is precisely what prevents, or what should prevent, an act like the sacrifice of Isaac...

<snip>

For Kierkegaard, God is the mediator between the ‘I’ and the Other. For Levinas, it is crucial that God be removed as a middle term. Instead, the Other is the middle term between the ‘I’ and God. And it is in the Other that one sees the trace of God and is called to responsibility. For Kierkegaard, as for Christianity, one is able to be in relationship to another because one and the other stand in relationship to God. Everything we can say about human relations begins with the Supreme Being. For Levinas, we have the inverse. We begin with human relations and then move to God.

<snip>

While there may be places where Levinas misunderstands Kierkegaard, it seems safe to say that a fundamental disagreement between Levinas and Kierkegaard is over what God can command. Can God command something unethical? For Kierkegaard this is not the case. If God in fact commanded Abraham to kill his own son, then the command was not a murder, but a sacrifice. Hence, it was not an unethical command. Levinas disagrees and in fact is incredulous at the idea that God is above the ethical order. This disagreement reflects the problem with the Divine Command Theory, a problem similar to the quandary formulated in Plato's Euthyphro. The Divine Command Theory links ethics with God's word. An example of this theory would be a “literal” reading of the Ten Commandments: one ought follow them because they are the word of God. Socrates asks in Plato's Euthyphro, “Is the pious being loved by the Gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the Gods. A similar question could be posed to the ethical, and this question would carry with it the same implications. If something is ethical merely because God said so, then does not ethicality merely fall to the whim of God? Levinas would have to reject the Divine Command Theory as the basis for determining right from wrong, or he would not be able to hold Cain responsible for the murder of Abel, clearly something he wants to be able to do. Cain was never told killing, much less murder is wrong. At the very least we do not find this moral lesson in the story. Would not the Divine Command Theory necessitate moral instruction from God, or at least, the giving of the moral rules? So, for Levinas, knowing “right” from “wrong” or knowing what is ethical cannot be the result of waiting for God to tell us what is right and what is wrong. For Levinas “[e]thics is not the corollary of the vision of God, it is that very vision” (DF 17/DL 33). In other words, acting ethically is not the result of the moral rules given from God. To act ethically is not the result of acting in response to a command from God. Rather, to act ethically is already to be in contact with God.

{bolding mine}

Interesting also that in Hebrew, the incident is known as the Akedah - the binding of Isaac, not the sacrifice.

Vison, I understand your frustration and disdain for the material you've quoted, but I think it all depends on how the material is viewed in the first place.

I don't view it as true; what I mean is, not only do I not take it literally, I'm not even sure I take it metaphorically. I view it, rather, as Story as a means for positing ethical confrontation.

When you pay attention to the details of the text (and I speak only for the first five books, anything I knew about the new testament I read too long ago and was too young to be able to refer to it with anything other than naivete) you notice that no one comes off peachy clean. All the patriarchs and matriarchs were far, far from perfect and God doesn't come off so great either. There is ambivalence and need for doubt and questioning everywhere. And that's the whole point and purpose. What would we learn, ethically speaking, from perfect people other than emphasising how imperfect we are?

[Impenitent]

I also found a version of the midrash which posits that it was Sarah's voice which prevented the sacrifice. This is a little different around the edges from the one I read a few years ago, but I couldn't find it so...oh well.

There is a modern midrash written by Lori Ubell:-

God came to Sarah and said " Take your son, your only son, the son that you love, even Isaac, to a place that I will show you and offer him there for a burnt offering. "
Sarah's response was " You've got to be kidding! "
Early the next morning , when she woke up, Avraham was not in their bed. Where could he be? She got up, walked over to the window and looked out over the landscape and saw, in the distance, on the road, a group of four men, three walking and one on a donkey. The smallest one looked sort of like Isaac.
But certainly Isaac was asleep in his bed. She raced to his bedroom and saw that Isaac was not there.
Suddenly panic struck her heart as she began to grasp what had happened. She ran outside, quickly saddled an ass, grabbed a loaf of bread and a skin of water, and chased after the band of travelers who were, by then, out of sight. She hurried in the direction which she had seen them take. She followed them for three days, stopping only to sleep when sleep absolutely overtook her. She finished her bread and water. She thought of Hagar and Ishmael out in the desert and regretted even more deeply her treatment of them. She repeated Hagar's words "Let me not see the death of the child". Finally, after three days, she saw the two men and the ass on the road at the foot of a mountain.
She raced over to them and asked, "Where is Avraham? Where is Isaac?"
"They went up the mountain to sacrifice. They told us to wait here and we're waiting."
"Did they have a sacrifice?"
"Not that we saw, but Avraham said that the Lord would provide."
Sarah spurred the ass with her heels and they headed up the mountain. Sweat poured from her brow and met the tears in her eyes making it difficult to see. The brambles on the mountain ripped her skirts and tore her flesh. Dust filled her mouth. The ass was so covered with perspiration that the saddle kept slipping. But Sarah held on tightly until finally she came to a clearing where she saw what she had dreaded seeing.
Yitzchak was tied to a rock and Avraham had a knife poised over him ready to kill him. "I'm too late" she screamed in her head. She opened her mouth and cried out "Avraham" , but her mouth was full of dust and she hadn't had anything to drink in two days. Nothing came out. Finally , she heard a harsh, scratchy voice say "Avraham". She turned around. No one was there and then she realized it was her own voice. So she repeated "Avraham! Do not stretch out your hand against the boy!"
Avraham did not recognize Sarah's voice. He looked up and saw a ram with its horn caught in a thicket. He took the knife and went to cut the ram free.
In that moment Sarah leaped forward and loosened Yitzchak's bonds. Yitzchak fell into her arms and the two of them stood there sobbing. When they had collected themselves, Sarah turned to Avraham and said, " Old man, old fool! What were you thinking of?"
"God commanded me".
"Fool! I have nothing to do with a God who commands me to sacrifice my son. Do not come home with us. Go to your concubine in Beersheva."
And Sarah and Yitzchak went down the hill, leaving Avraham standing with his hand on the ram's horns and Sarah and Avraham did not see one another again,

[vison]

Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't have disdain for the material at all. I think it is wonderful. I think these stories are wonderful. Wherever they came from they are full of wisdom and knowledge, particularly knowledge of human nature. The people in these tales are so real, so human!

Reading about Abraham, I can see the dust and the tents and the flocks of many-horned Jacob sheep. I see the old man in his robes, sitting in the door of his tent. I see him leading his little boy up the path to the altar. Then what? Did he ask Isaac to lie down? Was he calm? Was he listening? What did he hear with his ears, the cry of a hunting eagle, the wind over the rocks?

No, I don't have disdain for the material at all. As for the god in these stories, I don't understand him. He's beyond me.

But then, I suppose god would be.

[Impenitent]

There are some who interpret the text to indicate the Isaac was a grown man at the time of the Akedah; around 30.

Changes the reading, no? He would have known what it was all about, as an adult, and allowed it. Why? What lesson was in it for him?

[Jnyusa]

I do have a problem with the ages attributed to people in the Bible. Everything else we know about that era suggests that life expectancy was about 40 years. Isaac and Rivkah would have been married by age 12, as soon as she menstruated. Isaac would in fact be working in the fields alongside his father by age 9 or 10.

I do think of all of them as being much younger than they are presented in the story. These are also ... as, I think it was Cerin, suggested ... stories one tells about much younger people, e.g. other men wanting to marry Sarah and her having a child at late age ... a woman who lived to her mid-thirties and had a child at that age would be considered miraculous, but it's not biologically impossible. A woman who has a child at age 100 is mythical, not miraculous.

Jn

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Imp, thanks for posting that material, particularly the stuff from Levinas. Challenging stuff, but worth following.

[vison]

If Isaac was a grown man, a man of 30, of course the whole story is entirely different.

Was he merely humouring his father? Had his father convinced him that this was God's will?

It makes it a little harder to see, for sure. I can come up with several reasons why Isaac obeyed his father, or maybe only "went along" with his father. I would like very much to read the story with Isaac at 30. Can anyone point me to one? What an exercise that would be, for a writer.

I liked, very much, the story Impenitent posted, telling Sarah's "version".

As for the long quote from Levinas, well, it's one of those things people write trying to explain contradictions, isn't it? Two clever and scholarly men, Levinas and Kierkegaard, who see the thing so differently, who have such opposing views of the nature of God and of "the right", the ethical. How is a mere person like me supposed to understand what they have such difficulty explaining? It makes me feel very "mere" indeed.

Joking aside, I don't see that a god needs to be constrained by human ideas of ethics. God's agenda is not ours, after all. We cannot know what it is.

So, Cain did not know it was wrong to kill Abel? That's not what I read, when I read it. The first thing Cain did when God asked him where his brother was, was to lie, "I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?"

Why would he lie if he didn't know he'd done something wrong? Interesting ideas, in that post.

The nature of the God of Genesis is hard to pin down or even describe, since this God has so many faces.

[truehobbit]

Another reply to replies to me without having read all in between - sorry again.

I'm pretty sure, though, that's not what Cohen intended. The song is not addressed to Abraham.

No, it's not addressed to Abraham - I never said that! Why should it be?

the righteousness of Abraham is presumed by cultural context.

What makes you think so?
I mean what part of the text make you think so?

He is someone we revere, and we know the reason for his actions.

Again, where in the text do you read that?

Isaac is the 'narrator.' In the first two verses he is telling the story of his trip up the mountain. In the second two verses heis talking to the the leaders of our country, stating his conclusions about them. Our leaders are the ones who are 'building these altars.'

Exactly!
And the first two verses serve to illustrate the second two!
The song is not about Abraham, it's about the Vietnam war! It uses the story of Abraham as a metaphor for the Vietnam war.
There's of course the possibility that the first two verses are meant to contrast the second two. To contrast the righteous deed with the unrighteous. It's just that I don't see any such contrast expressed in the text anywhere.

To me, Cohen questions the righteousness of sending your children to death for a higher cause by pointing to a new reading of Abraham's story - what Cohen (IMO) says is: you guys all think Abraham did right, but what would Isaac have said?

If you see Cohen as portraying Abraham as righteous, what do you make of the way he is desribed?
I'm not good at understanding pop-songs, but after you'd given me the hint that this is a Vietnam protest song, I looked at it more carefully and found it all makes sense.
I don't think any of the words used here is mere gibberish or coincidental - so, if it's not to censure Abraham's harshness, what do you make of the words used to describe him?

This is the way I've always understood it because of context. It is one of many protest songs from that era.

Yes, but that doesn't mean it can't be critical of Abraham's story, does it?

(Voronwë, thanks for replying, too!

hobby, the obediance that you are looking for is contained in this sentence:

Yes, Abraham took up the knife. Why? To show for all time that he cared no less for God than the pagans did for their bloody idols.

That's quite interesting. Yes, a very positive reading of his obedience.

Is there such a thing as teleological suspension of the ethical? He then goes on to assert that the story of Abraham contains such a teleological suspension of the ethical.

I'm afraid I can't wrap my mind around Kierkegaard right now. Will try to read the excerpt later. )

Btw, yesterday I talked to a woman in my choir who turned out to be from a radically Reformed Christian background (the kind I thought you'd sooner find in the US than the rural areas not 50 miles from Cologne ) and, even though she isn't into their conservatism, she said she sometimes missed their absoluteness - in order to explain to me the comparative wimpiness ( ) of the Lutheran churches she got to visit these days she told me that she'd heard sermons about the story of Abraham saying that Sarah should have stopped Abraham from taking her son and that that was something women should do to stop wars - I take it from this that in modern, enlightened reading Abraham's obedience is a problem.

[Jnyusa]

Hobby, I don't know how to answer your post. I think your interpretation is legitimate, and interesting! I just never thought about it that way before.

Jn

[Cerin]

What makes you think so?
I mean what part of the text make you think so?

To contrast the righteous deed with the unrighteous. It's just that I don't see any such contrast expressed in the text anywhere.

hobby, to address a couple of your questions/comments to Jn, I think the parts of the text that convey that are the word 'now' ('You who build these altars now'), 'anymore' ('You must not do it anymore') and 'a scheme is not a vision and you never have been tempted by a demon or god'. I think that contrasts the world then and the reasons Abraham had, with the world now and the reasons men have now for why they sacrifice other people's children.

[truehobbit]

Excellent point, Cerin!
Yes, I think I haven't considered those lines before - he does make an excuse for Abraham: he had a vision, he was tempted and he was forced to do it.
That is, (in contrast to all grammar rules I've been teaching for years) I take the line "you must not do it anymore" to mean "you don't have to do it", instead of "you are not allowed to do it" - would you agree?

But he is still condemning what Abraham did, isn't he? Even though he says he couldn't help it.

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,

This, I think, says: you are doing the same thing Abraham did!
But if he thought Abraham had done a righteous thing, he wouldn't hold it up as a warning example.

You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
and you never have been tempted
by a demon or a god.


So, I think this is contrasting Abraham's reasons with modern day reasons. Abraham was forced (if "must not do it" means "don't have to" - like A. did), he had a vision, you only have a scheme, so his reason is better. And lastly the most shocking line (interestingly quite changed in the version Jewel posted) he was tempted by - something!
I think Isaac's suspicion that it wasn't God who told Abraham to sacrifice him, is quite important - the God, with a capital "G" doesn't even enter the story in this version! It must have been something else, a demon or some god - but whatever it was, it makes clear, I think, that Cohen's Isaac believes that Abraham was cheated!
Also, I think he makes interesting use of that word "tempted" - I think here it is negative, you are tempted to do something evil, not something righteous. This is what I wondered at when I looked at the story in my Bible - my translation also says God "tempted" Abraham. (I should read the posts in between to see if that question has been adressed. )

The explanation of Abraham's deed ends with the puzzling lines:
And my father's hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.

Don't you think that's fascinating? "The beauty of the word" made Abraham willing to sacrifice his son.

[Cerin]

Copying for easier reference:

The door it opened slowly,
my father he came in,
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
his blue eyes they were shining
and his voice was very cold.
He said, "I've had a vision
and you know I'm strong and holy,
I must do what I've been told."
So he started up the mountain,
I was running, he was walking,
and his axe was made of gold.

Well, the trees they got much smaller,
the lake a lady's mirror,
we stopped to drink some wine.
Then he threw the bottle over.
Broke a minute later
and he put his hand on mine.
Thought I saw an eagle
but it might have been a vulture,
I never could decide.
Then my father built an altar,
he looked once behind his shoulder,
he knew I would not hide.

You who build these altars now
to sacrifice these children,
you must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
and you never have been tempted
by a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
your hatchets blunt and bloody,
you were not there before,
when I lay upon a mountain
and my father's hand was trembling
with the beauty of the word.

And if you call me brother now,
forgive me if I inquire,
"Just according to whose plan?"
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
man of peace or man of war,
the peacock spreads his fan.

That is, (in contrast to all grammar rules I've been teaching for years) I take the line "you must not do it anymore" to mean "you don't have to do it", instead of "you are not allowed to do it" - would you agree?

Yes. He has no authority to tell them they can't do it, but he is saying, morally, they must not continue to do it.

But he is still condemning what Abraham did, isn't he? Even though he says he couldn't help it.

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,

This, I think, says: you are doing the same thing Abraham did!
But if he thought Abraham had done a righteous thing, he wouldn't hold it up as a warning example.

You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
and you never have been tempted
by a demon or a god.

I wouldn't say he is condemning Abraham, nor that he is saying these men today are doing the same thing Abraham did. They are superficially doing a type of what Abraham did, building altars and sacrificing children, but I think Cohen is contrasting the nature of what Abraham did (as something deeply personal and mystical -- tempted by a devil or a god [that may speak to some ambiguity the songwriter feels about that]) to the nature of what these men are doing; the reasons today reflect human motivations of hatred, power, greed, etc.

I think Isaac's suspicion that it wasn't God who told Abraham to sacrifice him, is quite important - the God, with a capital "G" doesn't even enter the story in this version! It must have been something else, a demon or some god - but whatever it was, it makes clear, I think, that Cohen's Isaac believes that Abraham was cheated!

I take it more that Cohen isn't judging Abraham's experience, though it seems he doesn't identify with it to the extent that he is willing to identify the power as God. I think the other translation makes this more plain as it contrasts God with the devil (rather than 'a god' with 'a demon'). So I think this reflects the songwriter's voice, not the character of the first two stanzas; I think that the last two stanzas of the song are in a different voice, the modern day voice, no longer from the perspective of the child at the beginning of the song.

Also, I think he makes interesting use of that word "tempted" - I think here it is negative, you are tempted to do something evil, not something righteous. This is what I wondered at when I looked at the story in my Bible - my translation also says God "tempted" Abraham.

I thought someone had touched on this earlier; I think 'tempt' is interchangeable with the idea of 'test' so not necessarily meaning tempting to do something bad, the way we exclusively think of 'tempt'.

Don't you think that's fascinating? "The beauty of the word" made Abraham willing to sacrifice his son.

I think Abraham's faith is what allows him to go forward, but I think 'trembling with the beauty of the word' goes along with that observation from the passage Voronwë excerpted, that 'faith is a passion'. And I think it is fascinating.

[Democritus]

hobby, the obediance that you are looking for is contained in this sentence:

Yes, Abraham took up the knife. Why? To show for all time that he cared no less for God than the pagans did for their bloody idols.

Of course, the passage that I quoted is just a brief snippet that is part of a dramatic narrative. The main purpose of it is to illustrate the character of Aaron Jastrow. One has to take a closer look at Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling for a better understanding.

In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard poses the question: Is there such a thing as teleological suspension of the ethical? He then goes on to assert that the story of Abraham contains such a teleological suspension of the ethical.


He first points out that, Abraham's relation to Isaac, ethically speaking is quite simply expressed by saying that a father shall love his son more clearly than himself. Then, after describing the ethical conduct of several tragic hero, he differenciates Abraham thusly:

The difference between the tragic hero and Abraham is clearly evident. The tragic hero still remains within the ethical. He lets one expression of the ethical find its telos in a higher expression of the ethical; the ethical relation between father and son, or daughter and father, he reduces to a sentiment which has its dialectic in its relation to the idea of morality. Here there can be no question of a teleological suspension of the ethical itself.

With Abraham the situation was different. By his act he overstepped the ethical entirely and possessed a higher telos outside of it, in relation to which he suspended the former. For I should very much like to know how one would bring Abraham's act into relation with the universal, and whether it is possible to discover any connection whatever between what Abraham did and the universal … except the fact that he transgressed it. It was not for the sake of saving a people, not to maintain the idea of the state, that Abraham did this, and not in order to reconcile angry deities. If there could be a question of the deity being angry, he was angry only with Abraham, and Abraham's whole action stands in no relation to the universal, is a purely private undertaking. Therefore, whereas the tragic hero is great by reason of his moral virtue, Abraham is great by reason of a purely personal virtue. In Abraham's life there is no higher expression for the ethical than this, that the father shall love his son. Of the ethical in the sense of morality there can be no question in this instance. In so far as the universal was present, it was indeed cryptically present in Isaac, hidden as it were in Isaac's loins, and must therefore cry out with Isaac's mouth, "Do it not! Thou art bringing everything to naught."

Why then did Abraham do it? For God's sake, and (in complete identity with this) for his own sake. He did it for God's sake because God required this proof of his faith; for his own sake he did it in order that he might furnish the proof. The unity of these two points of view is perfectly expressed by the word which has always been used to characterize this situation: it is a trial, a temptation (Fristelse).47 A temptation–but what does that mean? What ordinarily tempts a man is that which would keep him from doing his duty, but in this case the temptation is itself the ethical … which would keep him from doing God's will. But what then is duty? Duty is precisely the expression for God's will.

Here is evident the necessity of a new category if one would understand Abraham. Such a relationship to the deity paganism did not know. The tragic hero does not enter into any private relationship with the deity, but for him the ethical is the divine, hence the paradox implied in his situation can be mediated in the universal.

Abraham cannot be mediated, and the same thing can be expressed also by saying that he cannot talk. So soon as I talk I express the universal, and if I do not do so, no one can understand me. Therefore if Abraham would express himself in terms of the universal, he must say that his situation is a temptation (Anfechtung), for he has no higher expression for that universal which stands above the universal which he transgresses.

Therefore, though Abraham arouses my admiration, he at the same time appalls me. He who denies himself and sacrifices himself for duty gives up the finite in order to grasp the infinite, and that man is secure enough. The tragic hero gives up the certain for the still more certain, and the eye of the beholder rests upon him confidently. But he who gives up the universal in order to grasp something still higher which is not the universal–what is he doing? Is it possible that this can be anything else but a temptation (Anfechtung)? And if it be possible … but the individual was mistaken–what can save him? He suffers all the pain of the tragic hero, he brings to naught his joy in the world, he renounces everything … and perhaps at the same instant debars himself from the sublime joy which to him was so precious that he would purchase it at any price. Him the beholder cannot understand nor let his eye rest confidently upon him. ...
[long diversion omitted]

The story of Abraham contains therefore a teleological suspension of the ethical. As the individual he became higher than the universal. This is the paradox which does not permit of mediation. It is just as inexplicable how he got into it as it is inexplicable how he remained in it. If such is not the position of Abraham, then he is not even a tragic hero but a murderer. To want to continue to call him the father of faith, to talk of this to people who do not concem themselves with anything but words, is thoughtless. A man can become a tragic hero by his own powers–but not a knight of faith. When a man enters upon the way, in a certain sense the hard way of the tragic hero, many will be able to give him counsel; to him who follows the narrow way of faith no one can give counsel, him no one can understand. Faith is a miracle, and yet no man is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is unified is passion, and faith is a passion.

Awful, just awful, this is an argument to suspend ethics and morality in favour of duty as defined by some logically internal, didactic faith imperative. It doesn't take much imagination to consider what would happen if all believers follow the faith compulsion of their different "Gods" rather than give consideration to universal considerations of right and wrong that effect us all. Those that argue that duty and subservience over one's own personal understanding of what is right and wrong should understand that that is the same place that the Nazi's in Nuremberg argued when they said that they just followed orders and fulfilled their duties to their Nazi overlords and that personality morality did not come into it.

I am with the "tragic hero" in that if asked to choose between duty and what I know to be right or wrong then it is my duty to do what I know is right. God's test or trial of Abraham is a test of his loyalty and trust in his God, a test to see how good a foot soldier for the Lord, Abraham would be. I do not blame Abraham here as much as I blame God for asking Abraham to put duty, trust and loyalty over right and wrong, a right and wrong that God is supposed to represent. The trial should have been about whether Abraham was prepared to do the right thing regardless of God's instructions, and the correct response that God should have celebrated should have been Abraham refusing to pick up the knife. A man who is always prepared to do right over wrong is the kind of man that God should have wanted to be his foot-soldier, someone who always puts the 'right' in 'righteous'.

As an aside, in a world that exists where not only God is real but also the Devil who has impersonated God before, is it not only right, but also prudent and wise for Abraham to unfailing act in accordance with a moral code that God has previously said is God's code regardless of what this particular instance of God is saying? Did it not also occur to Abraham that the devil may have been trying to prove to God that even his seemingly most loyal and righteous subjects can so easily be convinced to break, in the most awful manner, God's most sacred moral tenets (tenets that even God should be bound to).

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

I have presumed that the story is a mythological way of describing how the Jews turned from human or child sacrifice, an established custom among certain Mediterranean/Middle Eastern cultures in Bronze Age times or earlier to animal sacrifice. Abraham was used in the myth as he was the real or mythological father of the tribe.
The glosses on the story that we see here and elsewhere are the ways we interpret and get value from mythology.

[Democritus]

I have presumed that the story is a mythological way of describing how the Jews turned from human or child sacrifice, an established custom among certain Mediterranean/Middle Eastern cultures in Bronze Age times or earlier to animal sacrifice. Abraham was used in the myth as he was the real or mythological father of the tribe.
The glosses on the story that we see here and elsewhere are the ways we interpret and get value from mythology.

Oh I agree, my reply was based on pointing out real problems with the story as told and interpretated by literalists.

[Lidless]

I had never considered what the underlying story of the Abraham metaphor was, but Tosh makes sense.

The point is that the story of Abraham is part of an epic written by men who were relating their oral history through the lens of their religious beliefs. I cannot accept the Bible as literal history any more than I can accept certain 19th Century histories of the Civil War which attempt to excuse slavery. While the Bible must not be read IMO as a factual rule-book, it is, and always was, still a valuable tool for learning positive ways to live today.

[Frelga]

Interesting that the discussion of Abraham should focus so intensely on this one act.

Couple points to remember. First, while Abraham took up his knife, he did not, in fact, murder his son. Whether he was prepared to do so is up for discussion, but no fair calling him a murderer.

Second, and much more interesting to me, the interpretation that I find most compelling, is that the Akeda was not about Abraham at all but about Isaac. In that interpretation, God's purpose was not to test Abraham's faith - a bit too late for that - but to form his young son.

The portrait painted of Isaac is so unique, so unlike that of any other biblical leader, that we are justified in assuming that only some unique and overpowering event could have molded his character in such a special way.

When next we see Isaac after the Akedah, the Torah reports "that he is walking in the fields (24:63). The Midrash understood that Isaac was davvening Minhah, praying and meditating. [...] Walking quietly, lost in a world of though and contemplation we have not seen in a biblical figure, nor something we shall see again. [...]

Isaac also relates to others in an unprecedented way. He marries Rebekah and the Torah tells us "he loved her (24:67)." [...] Only one other husband-and-wife couple, Jacob and Rachel, are reported this way in the Tanakh (the five books of Moses. --Frelga)

But Isaac's insight extends beyond the realm of love. He is also a man of peace. Three times he digs wells of water, and three times those wells are contested by Philistine chieftains. Each time, Isaac ceded his wells rather than wage war. [...] His life, his family, the safety of his own followers was worth more than a few wells of water. Having himself been offered on an alter, Isaac was not going to sacrifice young lives for material wealth. [...] The Philistines were taught a lesson in human kindness and priorities by Isaac's behavior. Impressed by his grandeur and magnanimity, they sought Isaac and exchanged oaths of friendship.

I don't have time to expand on this, and I apologize in advance that I may not have the time to come back and answer questions.

Did it not also occur to Abraham that the devil may have been trying to prove to God that even his seemingly most loyal and righteous subjects can so easily be convinced to break, in the most awful manner, God's most sacred moral tenets (tenets that even God should be bound to).

I doubt it, since Judaism doesn't have a concept of Devil as Christianity developed it.