Lecture 5: Isaac

Lecture 5: Isaac

 

What moral judgment should be made concerning Abraham?  Concerning God?

On the surface, the story seems to call for us to judge Abraham as good, for his obedience.  C.S. Lewis says, in his book Mere Christianity, that we all have an internal capacity to judge right from wrong – he sees it as evidence of our creation by God.  We know that child sacrifice – child murder – even as commanded by a god, is wrong.  We cringe at this story, because we judge God as wrong for his demand of the sacrifice and Abraham as wrong in his obedience.  We hesitate to say it, because God is God, and we are not, and yet our moral compass comes from God, and this passage makes that compass spin.  How do we come to terms with the Akedah?

Sacrifice was as common in antiquity as television is today.  Why did it become less common, and is it something that has replaced or should be revived?

I have no desire to go back to sacrifice as outlined in the Old Testament, and I don’t think God has called us to do that.  Jesus was the ultimate, never-needs-to-be-repeated sacrifice.  Our idea of offering as worship could be strengthened, and we would benefit from it.

Why might Judaism have chosen this passage as the New Year (Rosh ha-Shanah) reading?

The main themes of the Prayer Service for Rosh ha-Shanah are repentance by man and judgment by God.  Sacrifice, in the Old Testament, was often about repentance – could this story be a repentance / sacrifice story?  Does God “staying the hand of Abraham” translate into an image of mercy?

Lecture 3: Murder, Flood and Dispersion

Lecture 3: Murder, Flood and Dispersion

What are today’s equivalents for “sacrifice” – a practice in antiquity as common as we find watching television?

 

My first thought is that today’s “sacrifice” is offering – bringing gifts to God as an act of worship.  I would add to that the practice of sacrifice during Lent – giving up something in order to grow closer to God.  Could that be extended to practices such as fasting?   Could “sacrifice” be defined as an outward ritual to indicate an inward devotion?  Then perhaps communion could be used as an example – a ritual remembering of Christ’s sacrifice and an outward movement of devotion to indicate a internal communion with God.

 

 Is Noah a hero?  Is his story comforting or threatening?  Why would ancient Israel so describe its flood story’s protagonist and its God?

 

Heroes in the Bible are rarely perfect.  Noah is considered a hero – someone God calls to move forward the work of God’s kingdom.  The story is really not comforting.  It is a story of a society so separated from God in sin that God decides to destroy it.  He saves one person and his family – maybe only so that Noah can provide care for the rest of creation?  I hope that is not the case.  We do receive a promise that God will not destroy creation with a flood again, but it’s a promise with a rider – only by flood.  And there is nothing in the story that says God’s creatures, humans, have improved any.  God doesn’t stay his hand of flood destruction because we have done better, only because he has promised not to respond to sin in the same way again. 

 

Ancient Israel would have nothing to tell if it avoided telling about non-perfect people.  I think the story portrays the society’s (far from perfect) understanding of God and its real understanding of sin.

 

Why does Israel detail, at the beginning of its sacred history, God’s disappointments and humanity’s continual failures?

 

The answer to this one is much the same as the answer to the last question.  What would the stories be about if not humanity’s continual failures.  We continually fail.  Anything else would be disingenuous.  We continually disappoint God.  We need stories to demonstrate to us God’s response to our failure, because that is where we are.  And that’s why this story isn’t very comforting.  We don’t like this response.

Lecture 2: Adam and Eve

Lecture 2: Adam and Eve

This story of Eden is never mentioned again in the Old Testament/Tanakh (its next canonical appearances are the Old Testament Apocrypha / Deuterocanonical writings).  How then, if at all, does the story affect interpretations of later texts (e.g., the man speaks of leaving home to cleave to his wife; do most male characters do this)?

 

I think first and foremost, the story of Eden provides a basis for us to understand who we are.  We are created by God in God’s image.  I think that would certainly affect the interpretations of later texts.  For example, Psalm 139 – “he knit us together” – created by God.  Job has many references to the idea of God as the one who set the world in motion.  The Adam and Eve story create a reference for the rest of scripture that God expects obedience, and there are (perhaps even self-inflicted) consequences of disobedience.  The Adam and Eve story sets up the idea that we have been expelled from paradise and we cannot return.  It establishes the idea that we have the freedom to choose.  And the expulsion story sets up the idea of family – a unit working together.

 

 How closely do later retellings (Milton’s Paradise Lost, the film The Bible, popular cultural renditions) adhere to the text?

 

We have a tendency in the retelling of any biblical story to homogenize the story – for example, the first chapter of Genesis combined with the second chapter into one homogeneous story.  We also have a tendency to stamp the story with our own cultural interpretation.  We have an impression that Eve tempted Adam to eat the fruit, when he was standing right there as the snake tempted her.  

 

 Is Eden a desirable place?  A return to childhood?  A prison?

 

I would think that for it to be considered a prison, the occupants would have to lack free will – no ability to make their own choices – and they would desire to leave.  Neither one of those are true.  In some ways, one could consider it a place of child-like life and faith.  Before the fall, the occupants were innocent and were in close relationship to God (as one would be with a parent).  I imagine they found it to be a desirable place, and were sorry to be made to leave.  Do I think heaven is like Eden?  No, not really.  We don’t have the innocence that Adam and Eve shared – even in our salvation, we are not like them in that way.  We are called to a more child-like faith in God, and the day to day walk with God is a frightening but desirable relationship.

Biblical Literacy

I'm working my way through one of the classes from The Great Courses, an online business where one can purchase courses recorded by well known professors throughout the country.  I'm listening to The Old Testament, taught by Amy-Jill Levine, a professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. 

After each lecture, I'm trying to have the discipline to read and answer the questions from the study guide.  This one is from the first lecture.  I thought it might make an interesting blog post.

Cultural critics have claimed that biblical literacy is on the decline among today’s youth.  Is the text as important, culturally or religiously, today as it has been in the past?

Important is a subjective word, and I think the question can be answered two ways.  First, do I believe that the text is deemed to be important to today’s youth?  To some of them, yes.  The decline in biblical literacy could perhaps be attributed more as a failure of an older generation to teach the text than the younger generation to value it.  Blaming young people for biblical illiteracy would be like blaming the kindergartner who can’t read;  has he been taught the value of reading?  Has he been taught to read?

Secondly, is the text important to the youth of today’s society?  Yes.  God speaks through the text – to those who lived 500 years ago, to those who lived 100 years ago, and to those who live today.  My faith tells me that it is a means by which God makes himself known, so it has immeasurable value to all of us.

So, if youth are biblically illiterate and may not value the text, and we believe it is of high value to them because it reveals God, then woe to us for not teaching the faith to the next generation.