Somebody told me his interpretation that Abraham was so staved that he had to ask his God if he could kill his only son to feed himself. God said Ok only anyone can kill their kids on the verge of their starvation. Abraham didn't have to kill his only son only because he was fed by something other than his son.
I don't think it's not likely though anyway Abraham thanked God as a result.
Let me hear your interpretation.
Read Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" for a radical and religious insight into this story.
ReplyDeleteThen there's always Leonard Cohen's classic song "Story of Isaac":
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 any more.
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 fathers 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.
I believe ,it was a test of obedience that the God of Abraham was asking him to do . After waiting all those years for a son ,God wanted to see who was loved more . The son or Him (meaning God )
ReplyDeleteYes, the test interpretation is the traditional one. It's not logical to me. If God knows everything, he'd know what Abraham would do, so why put him - and Isaac! - through that?
ReplyDeleteFor all I know, the myth may be a memory of a time when human sacrifice was practiced.
Yes, the test interpretation is the traditional one. It's not logical to me. If God knows everything, he'd know what Abraham would do, so why put him - and Isaac! - through that?
ReplyDeleteFor all I know, the myth may be a memory of a time when human sacrifice was practiced.
It is foreshadowing. Abraham was willing to make the same sacrifice that God actually made, thereby man kind was worthy of salvation.
ReplyDeleteOk, you believe in God and every night and day you pray. God is invisible and keeps silent. One day you insist God ordered to kill your son. Are you going to do by order of invisible silent being? It is better for us to take God for his conscience. The situation Abraham had to consider killing his only son is nothing but for Abraham's own sake. It is natural for us to guess that he must have had a time of starvation.
ReplyDeleteMer - the last thing a parent would do if the family starved was to kill his/her children. Most parents would rather kill themselves so that the children could survive. It's an insane interpretation.
ReplyDeleteAbraham, I think, was used to getting answers from God. Personally, if I received such a message: that I had to kill my child or any child, I'd go looking for another object of worship.
In Hebrew Biblical times there is one description that parents killed their child to feed themselves in time of extreme starvation. I think it's not uncommon for ancient people to eat their kids.
ReplyDeleteAbraham was willing to offer his only son but he didn't have to do that. God sent Jesus to redeem the original sin Adam made. Jesus was crucified but resurrected soon. He ascended to heaven and now he is going to rule God's Kingdom.
ReplyDeletethereby man kind was worthy of salvation.
God created Adam and Adam was given free will. He practiced the free will and got an original sin. Jesus is God's only son and sent to save mankind. God loves humans as deep as he sent his only son.
It's hard to understand Christian theology.
I think so, too.
ReplyDeleteI think killing (and eating) children has always been extremely rare. Basic human instincts haven't changed that much.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand: we know human sacrifice from many so-called primitive religions. There are indications that they at least sometimes were done with the victim's consent. What Abraham performs is obviously a cult ritual - the altar and so on.
I won't contradict you on this, my friend.
ReplyDeleteI wonder there was a forerunner. This story was repeatedly referred and interpreted in many ways. Thanks for interesting quotations.
ReplyDeleteI'm no expert on the Jewish tradition, but in those I know better, myths have been preserved orally for no one knows how long. While the substance of the story - the events - is usually preserved, the why and wherefore undergo many changes. Sometimes the interpretations become almost nonsensical.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know, no forerunner of the Abraham story is preserved in writing, but it's likely there was one. The Torah was thoroughly edited around 500 b.c.e., I've been taught.
Btw: the Islamic tradition claims that it was Ismael, Abraham's son with Hagar, that he almost sacrificed. Nowadays a sheep is sacrificed every year on the assumed day.
ReplyDeleteHuman sacrifice was so common till 1945 in Japan. Thinking the fact that Jewish tradition prohibited followers from making human sacrifice in times of Abraham, Jewish society was much more advanced than that of one East Asian country.
ReplyDeleteIn this particular area, perhaps.
ReplyDeleteFrom myself: at the time of Abraham there was no psychiatry...
ReplyDelete"I think killing (and eating) children has always been extremely rare. Basic human instincts haven't changed that much."
ReplyDelete-This page of human history will (dis)approve your notion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
I believe one word in about twenty of that website quote.
ReplyDeleteAs for "From myself": you're absolute right - and Abraham needed it.
Infanticide, yes, it has been fairly common when children were deformed as birth or when the family/group couldn't feed one more or the like. Sometimes for religious reasons; some African tribes used to kill e.g. twins because they were assumed to be demons or something. That's certainly not the same as cannibalism.
One thing is to kill (expose) a child at birth for one or more of the above given (by me) reasons. Another thing is to kill an older child who's already functioning in society, and I doubt that many early "primitive" societies could afford it. They needed all the people who didn't die from natural causes - usually many did.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, it's totally ridiculous to equate a certain cultural state with "emotional immaturity". Please tell that website to drop the White Man's Burden.
"In my opinion, it's totally ridiculous to equate a certain cultural state with "emotional immaturity"."
ReplyDelete-Why? It is not emotional but psychical immaturity. A plausible model explaining Holocaust and popularity of Nazis in Southern vs Northern Germany. The last mode - "helping" explains the difference between USA and Western Europe today...
What your website claims seems to be that if you belong to a gatherer/lower hunter culture (for instance), you're not as emotional or psychical mature as the writer (for instance). Well, that's nonsense to me. It's a left-over from a time when black slaves "ought to" be treated as small naughty children because that's what they allegedly were - because of their cultural stage back home in Africa. Arrrgh!
ReplyDeleteI don't know about possible psychical differences between Northern and Southern Germans in the 1930es. A kind of psychical immaturity may explain how a war-lecherous nitwit made it to your White House, but I really don't know enough about that either.
I'll clarify: the Americans I know don't strike me as particularly "immature". Well, some are, but that's also the case where I come from (Denmark). What I saw "over there" was a somewhat similar but also very different culture. Now, I don't believe that we can judge one culture as "higher" or "better" than another, at least not unless we're very careful about defining our criteria - one could be e.g. "technological level". When it comes to ethics or concepts as maturity, we're all trapped in our own culturally conditioned way of thinking. Better to leave value-oriented judgments alone.
ReplyDeleteI thought this comment was written by you till I finished reading 4.
ReplyDeleteI read this as a reference. Thanks a lot.
Sacrifice was edible. Offerings were in more commonly used term, tax, of our times. They couldn't replace goat, bull, sheep, by cat, rat, mole. We need coins, not stones.
ReplyDeleteGod asked his followers to offer their kids when nothing was found for sacrifice or offerings.
Abraham's God refrained from Abraham's offering human sacrifice for the first time in human history. Human sacrifice was common under Molek, God of surrounding peoples.
It is needless to say that this incident became the important step to building a civilised society lasting up to current world. Humans were valued for the first time as a successor of culture, not a food for themselves.
I think cannibalism was so common before the age of Abraham.
We can't, of course, prove anything about cannibalism in prehistoric times since we find only skeletons (but see below). I once read a survey of it in historic times, i.e. among tribes of a presumed similar stage, and it said that even among those who had a reputation for it, it was quite rare and occurred either 1) for cultic purposes; or 2) under extreme conditions causing famine. The latter is known from Greenland, for instance, but they didn't kill each other, they ate those who died naturally - and only as the very last resort.
ReplyDeleteSacrifice takes many forms. In Danish bogs, a number of well-preserved bodies have been found, and those people have obviously been killed - usually hanged or strangled - and thrown into the bog. Not eaten. We don't know, of course, whether they were sacrifices or perhaps criminals. Then you have the burnt sacrifice mentioned in the beginning of Genesis.
I agree with you that the Abraham myth reflects a transition from human to animal sacrifice.
That's the point.
ReplyDeleteAs to cannibalism, I went too far to say cannibalism was very common and widespread among prehistoric humans. Actually this is based merely upon my imaginative hypothesis. Probably cannibalism might have taken place only under extremely severe conditions like famine. Otherwise of course they would eat edible animals, fish and weeds.
Writers have their imagination work utmost. Scientists gather as many clues as possible to make some decisions, but many scientists end up in feeling satisfied before any conclusions were made. Many scientists just show evidence. It is writer's job that combines those evidence with sometimes even 'ridiculously exaggerated' imaginations.
Quite true - and I'm impressed with your imagination. You pose lots of interesting questions and theories. If they sometimes need a little modification, so what? The "extreme" form leads to good discussions.
ReplyDelete