The Aqedah as ‘template’? Genesis 22 and 1 Kings 17–18

The story of Abraham’s willingness to give up his beloved son (Gen. 22) is a highly productive text – that is, it has triggered subsequent literary activity and played a significant role in the composition and shaping of other texts. In this essay, I want to first explore the possibility that 1 Kgs 17–18 is yet another text in which an author has alluded to Gen. 22 and then to reflect on the use of Gen. 22 as a source for narratives composed on analogies to it.

5. Jewish and Christian readings of the Binding of Isaac

‘Jewish and Christian readings of the Binding of Isaac’ assesses some of the readings of the Bible by believers, both Jews and Christians. It focuses on the Akedah, the story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac in Genesis 22. The Akedah is a story of strange violence and tenderness, of a father ordered by his God to sacrifice ‘his only son’. For Jews, this is a story read in the light of the history of Jewish persecution. Remarkable retellings of the story are to be found from Rabbis in the Rhineland during the Crusades. For Christians, the themes of the Akedah are largely subsumed in their reading of the Passion. Nevertheless, the story has continued to exert its spell, remaining a story which raises profound questions about the nature of faith and suffering. Its use by philosophers (Kierkegaard) and poets (Wilfred Owen) is examined.

‘Seeing You Have Not Withheld Your Son’: An Overlooked Motif in Genesis 22?

In Late Bronze Age diplomatic correspondence, vassals attempt to demonstrate their loyalty by declaring they would carry out any command of the king even if it is self-destructive. A critical aspect of these exchanges is that the seemingly harmful order was never meant to be fulfilled. The exaggerated offer to undergo needless suffering was sufficient proof that the subaltern was an arad kitti, or ‘faithful servant’. This rhetorical dynamic, wherein the ‘deferential gesture’ is enough to satisfy a seemingly overwrought demand, has relevance for evaluating components of the divine decree in Genesis 22, that Abraham deliver up his son ‘as a burnt offering’, his willingness to carry out its dictates, and the heavenly overlord’s ultimately setting aside its execution. The author suggests that the biblical episode was a symbolic ritual enacted between the deity and patriarch, whose intent was to exalt Abraham as the arad kitti, par excellence, and to demonstrate that God was the most trustworthy of suzerains.

La imagen del carnero en el Sacrificio de Isaac. Continuidad y variación de las imágenes en la cultura occidental

La figura del carnero destaca de forma significativa dentro del simbolismo animalístico en el cristianismo. El presente artículo se centra en el estudio diacrónico de las representaciones de dicho animal insertas dentro del tipo iconográfico del Sacrificio de Isaac, cuya fuente literaria es el Génesis 22. El análisis pormenorizado de este elemento significante dentro del pasaje veterotestamentario se torna fundamental a la hora de acudir a los primeros textos realizados por los Padres de la Iglesia, generando en si la aparición del ángel portando el carnero, una variante tipológica dentro del devenir del tipo iconográfico en su continuidad y variación. El objetivo, por tanto, es atender a aquellas representaciones que beben de las fuentes de la patrística, la haggadah hebrea y el tafsir islámico y son testigo de la pervivencia de las variantes iconográficas dentro de la tradición cultural convencionalizada occidental.