Earlier in this blog, I wrote about Soren Kierkegaard's book "Fear and Trembling", which studies the psychological baggage in the "Akeida" story. My conclusion back then was that Abraham failed God's "test" by agreeing to sacrifice his son, for he could just as easily rejected God's request and still come out looking good, for being a "mentsch". Well...that's what you call "post modern thinking": looking at the situation with the wrong CONTEXT. I now look at the story as being important, for it illustrates the shift in the mind of God...the story of Abraham and Isaac are just SYMPTOMS of what the REAL story is: a shift in the mind of God. Here's my new view on the Akeida (which I'd written as a reply to my earlier post on the subject):
"Lately, I've been having second thoughts about my initial conclusion that Abraham failed the choice, by preparing his son Isaac to be sacrificed. Lately I've been studying Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Olmec, and it appears that they DID use human sacrifice. If you contrast those cultures to the story of the Akeida, I get a different perspective on Abraham: it's necessary for Abraham to prepare for a human sacrifice...but then to be interrupted, having the sacrificial victim spaced, and in his place, a non-human sacrifice is offered up instead. To simply judge Abraham as "wrong" would make sense only if you judge him by TODAY's values. But if you put yourself in the mindset of a pagan worshipper 4,000 years ago, human sacrifice would probably be understood as the way the Universe worked. The Akeida, when looked in its proper historical context, is actually revolutionary in the history of religion. It represents the first nudges towards HUMANISM: the value of human life. While there are still sacrifices, they'll be now be ANIMAL sacrifices...something that we moderns would still recoil from ...
I'd like to cut Abraham some slack. In today's world, his act looks incredibly abusive--and I'm sure it looked that way too way back when. But story is necessary to show the SHIFT away from human sacrifice...and the Akeida gives us a front row seat at the precise moment that that shift happened. Although it's easy to judge Abraham for being a mindless true-believing zealot. But the story isn't really about Abraham, nor is it about Isaac. It's about God. God needs the Akeida to tell the Jews (and thus, all the rest of the World) that human sacrifice is a cruel and unusual way of worshipping the Divine. Although the book first appears a catalogue of horrors, it's actually about a change in consciousness. Even Kierkegaard gets caught up in the psychological dynamics of it all. But I now think that the story is a giant red herring...because the real story isn't about Abraham or Isaac, but rather, a SHIFT in the Mind of God."
(Note: the phrase "Mind of God" is not some cheap effort at appearing "deep"; it is a concept that abounds in the "Zohar" (a classic text in Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism). The sephirot diagram, as it's described in classes in Jewish mysticism at Temple Emanu-el, in Tucson AZ, is a "map of the Mind of God"). Our minds are plastic, and can grow. So why can't God's mind too? Well...it can and does! Exhibit A: the Akeida!)
"Lately, I've been having second thoughts about my initial conclusion that Abraham failed the choice, by preparing his son Isaac to be sacrificed. Lately I've been studying Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Olmec, and it appears that they DID use human sacrifice. If you contrast those cultures to the story of the Akeida, I get a different perspective on Abraham: it's necessary for Abraham to prepare for a human sacrifice...but then to be interrupted, having the sacrificial victim spaced, and in his place, a non-human sacrifice is offered up instead. To simply judge Abraham as "wrong" would make sense only if you judge him by TODAY's values. But if you put yourself in the mindset of a pagan worshipper 4,000 years ago, human sacrifice would probably be understood as the way the Universe worked. The Akeida, when looked in its proper historical context, is actually revolutionary in the history of religion. It represents the first nudges towards HUMANISM: the value of human life. While there are still sacrifices, they'll be now be ANIMAL sacrifices...something that we moderns would still recoil from ...
I'd like to cut Abraham some slack. In today's world, his act looks incredibly abusive--and I'm sure it looked that way too way back when. But story is necessary to show the SHIFT away from human sacrifice...and the Akeida gives us a front row seat at the precise moment that that shift happened. Although it's easy to judge Abraham for being a mindless true-believing zealot. But the story isn't really about Abraham, nor is it about Isaac. It's about God. God needs the Akeida to tell the Jews (and thus, all the rest of the World) that human sacrifice is a cruel and unusual way of worshipping the Divine. Although the book first appears a catalogue of horrors, it's actually about a change in consciousness. Even Kierkegaard gets caught up in the psychological dynamics of it all. But I now think that the story is a giant red herring...because the real story isn't about Abraham or Isaac, but rather, a SHIFT in the Mind of God."
(Note: the phrase "Mind of God" is not some cheap effort at appearing "deep"; it is a concept that abounds in the "Zohar" (a classic text in Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism). The sephirot diagram, as it's described in classes in Jewish mysticism at Temple Emanu-el, in Tucson AZ, is a "map of the Mind of God"). Our minds are plastic, and can grow. So why can't God's mind too? Well...it can and does! Exhibit A: the Akeida!)
