Setember 11 Attack: A Crime Without Parallel in American History

[Chap]

By the way - allowing myself to fantasise about what (to me nowadays) is just an ancient story - I am attracted by the suggestion that God was rather hoping that Abraham's response to the command to sacrifice Isaac would have been "Sacrifice my son? What kind of a deity are you? You'll have to kill me first!"

But instead Abraham just did as he was told, and God (heaving a disappointed sigh) realised that these humans really were pretty primitive creatures and settled down to the long, long task of trying to get them to be just a bit nicer and more rational.

This idea was expressed by the poet Wilfred Own, killed in action a week before the end of World War I, on 4 November 1918, in the following piece, set beautifully to music in Benjamin Britten's 'War Requiem':

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

[Limnor]

[...]
Genesis 15:4 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.


For this promise to be true, Abraham would have to believe that God could bring his son back to life.

I’ll do more research and provide a further response concerning Jewish thought.

This is all very interesting.

But may I say that deducing what might have been thought about 'Abraham' many centuries ago on the grounds of logical consistency is a risky procedure?

I’d agree if it was my own logic alone. I have wrestled with this issue as well, but I’m certainly not the first. Centuries of commentators have wrestled with the same tension between God’s promise (Isaac as the seed) and God’s command (to sacrifice Isaac). Another reference is in James 2:20 in which James speaks of the reconciliation, though I’ll grant that his thoughts are based on an event that occurred centuries earlier.

I’d even grant that the event may not have occurred at all, which is probably a stronger counter-argument.

[Limnor]

By the way - allowing myself to fantasise about what (to me nowadays) is just an ancient story - I am attracted by the suggestion that God was rather hoping that Abraham's response to the command to sacrifice Isaac would have been "Sacrifice my son? What kind of a deity are you? You'll have to kill me first!"

But instead Abraham just did as he was told, and God (heaving a disappointed sigh) realised that these humans really were pretty primitive creatures and settled down to the long, long task of trying to get them to be just a bit nicer and more rational.

This idea was expressed by the poet Wilfred Own, killed in action a week before the end of World War I, on 4 November 1918, in the following piece, set beautifully to music in Benjamin Britten's 'War Requiem':

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

It would make for a shorter book, that’s for sure lol