A Tale of Two Trees

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Does the story support such an interpretation? Seems to me that God was pleased with his willingness to go through with a command he didn't understand.

Well, Genesis 22:15-18 are the problematic verses. I haven't "d'rashed" them, but I will. One spin would be that God recognized Abraham's faith even in his error, and basically was saying; "Okay, okay already..."

Note: Abraham hears two commands: one from ha’elohim (literally “the gods,” or “the god;” the verb-form for “tested” appears to be singular). The second from (an angel of) YHVH, commanding him not to harm Isaac. So there seems to be an interplay here between either two deities or two aspects of the same deity. In that time and culture, Abraham’s real “faithfulness” may have been in rejecting the type of child sacrifice that may have been expected of a tribal chieftain—to satisfy ha’elohim—in favor of listening to, even being able to hear, the voice of YHVH. Hence, it may have been his willingness to obey the second command that he didn't understand that is important. (Lawrence Kushner offers a psychological interpretation here, on the kinds of thoughts we “hear” in our heads, and which “voices” we listen to; he attributes Abraham’s virtue to being able to hear—or even imagine—the second voice).

Most (if not all) Jewish readings of this story that I’ve come across read it as doing away with child sacrifice.

Originally posted by vistesd
Well, Genesis 22:15-18 are the problematic verses. I haven't "d'rashed" them, but I will. One spin would be that God recognized Abraham's faith even in his error, and basically was saying; "Okay, okay already..."

Note: Abraham hears two commands: one from ha’elohim (literally “the gods,” or “the god;” the verb-form for “tested” appears ...[text shortened]... eadings of this story that I’ve come across read it as doing away with child sacrifice.

In the classical Christian exegesis, of course, this episode is a type for the Crucifixion. God tests Abraham's faith by asking him to do something he doesn't understand; He doesn't let him go through with it (I believe the "Do not harm the boy!" is an imperative). But God knows that He will have to go through with it Himself when He comes to it. Through Abraham, the reader understands something of what God Himself must undergo later.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
In the classical Christian exegesis, of course, this episode is a type for the Crucifixion. God tests Abraham's faith by asking him to do something he doesn't understand; He doesn't let him go through with it (I believe the "Do not harm the boy!" is an imperative). But God knows that He will have to go through with it Himself when He comes to i ...[text shortened]... . Through Abraham, the reader understands something of what God Himself must undergo later.

Yes, and coming from that same tradition, I was initially startled by the possibility of an alternate reading.

I’ve started to work on it some—it seems that the interplay between verses 12 and 16 also needs to be looked at. This one is challenging my beginner’s Hebrew skills, though: I’ve already been to two dictionaries and a grammar.

One way to look at it, though—and again, this may hinge on the interplay between verses 12 and 16 (as well as imposed punctuation)—is that the second time, Avraham did not withhold his son from YHVH/life. We tend to think of sacrifice as having to do with (spiritual or physical) death—and that certainly comes out of the animal-sacrifice tradition, too (recall that the rabbis come out of the Pharisees who were to opponents of the temple-cult, for example)—but maybe there is a message here about sacrifice, in the old sense of the word as something made sacred, being tied to life, not death. I’m just thinking “out loud,” now, but that would seem to be in line with at least some Jewish tradition.... l’chaim!

Again, it’s going to take me some time to unpack these passages from the Hebrew, but it’s a good one to work on. 🙂

Originally posted by vistesd
Yes, and coming from that same tradition, I was initially startled by the possibility of an alternate reading.

It wouldn't surprise me that the Jews (especially post-Christian) would have different readings of the same. Christians have an entire layer of Christological hermeneutics to the OT that the Jews do not.

OTOH, the LXX is the base for the Christian OT (rather than the original Hebrew scriptures), so we probably wouldn't have the same "depth exegesis" that the Jews do.

Nevertheless, I sometimes wonder how much of the "depth" emphasis is post-Christian.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
It wouldn't surprise me that the Jews (especially post-Christian) would have different readings of the same. Christians have an entire layer of Christological hermeneutics to the OT that the Jews do not.

OTOH, the LXX is the base for the Christian OT (rather than the original Hebrew scriptures), so we probably wouldn't have the same "depth exegesis o.

Nevertheless, I sometimes wonder how much of the "depth" emphasis is post-Christian.

Nevertheless, I sometimes wonder how much of the "depth" emphasis is post-Christian.

I think that’s a fair question. Notice that in this one (the “two trees,” that is), I haven’t “gone deep” at all, and yet the possibilities arising from just the word-play itself are pretty rich.

At some point in the development of rabbinical Judaism a strategy of continuing hermeneutics was adopted to keep the Torah a “living stream” rather than “a pond.” It’s hard to tell when: the Mishna portion of the oral torah was written down circa 200 CE, the Gemara of the Babylonian Talmud circa 500 CE, I think—but these are based on previous oral arguments. Some of the Midrashim may be older (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrash).

What I do think is that there did not need to be too much “forcing” of the Hebrew to read deeper: the word-root base, lack of vowels or punctuation in the original, the fact that each Hebrew letter was also a number (there are no numerals in the original Hebrew). Here is a picture of a Torah scroll, to give an idea: http://www.ganhalev.org/torah/torah.gif. However, the fast-and-loose playing with context (relating verses from different books, sometimes on no more basis than that they share a word) and the reading-into the "empty spaces" in the text, are more radical.