Abraham and Isaac - Maccoby's View

I came upon a web site...don't ask me how....that might have spurred on this "series" about the binding of Isaac. I think it was during some googling...I mean research... on human sacrifice. The web site featured quite a bit of the text of the book called The Sacred Executioner by Hyam Maccoby. The part about Isaac piqued my interest. Just for the record, I am not saying that I believe what Maccoby has to say...but I will admit it got my thinker going. First of all, he is an atheist...and he looks at much of scripture as myth. Girard believes that scripture uncovers the truth of sacred myths but I think Maccoby believes most of scripture is simply myth...made up stories of legend and folklore... meant to teach a specific lesson.

The purpose of the story is to show that God Himself ordained that animal sacrifice should be substituted for human sacrifice. At the same time, the story contains no moral revulsion from the very idea of human sacrifice. On the contrary, it is imputed to Abraham as extraordinary merit that he was willing to sacrifice his favourite son, Isaac, at the behest of God. We see here the dynamics of the historic move from human to animal sacrifice: on the one hand, this is a revolutionary step, by which a higher morality is brought into effect; on the other hand, the benefits of human sacrifice cannot be lightly relinquished, and the transition from human to animal sacrifice must appear plausible in the sense that animal sacrifice must acquire the same aura of reverence and holiness that previously belonged to human sacrifice.

He goes on to say:

In the Abraham-Isaac story as we have it in the Bible, the double aim is secured by having a father willing to sacrifice, but a merciful God who forgoes the sacrifice, allowing the substitution of an animal. In the original story, in which the sacrifice actually took place, there was no doubt some resurrection motif, by which the foundation of the tribe was miraculously renewed. Some traces of this original story, as we shall see, have been preserved in the Midrashic legends.

So Maccoby believes that it was the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice Isaac that prevents the move to animal sacrifice as something second rate. Since this event "marks" the beginning of a new society...there could be no event that would require a bigger, better sacrifice. Maccoby says it this way:

If the universal God was willing to accept an animal sacrifice on such a cosmic occasion (for the founding of the Israelite tribe was an event of cosmic importance, set as it is against the background of the Creation of the universe and the choice of Abraham from all the nations and families of the earth), then there was no need to require human sacrifice on any subsequent occasion whatever, and the institution of animal sacrifice can be relied on to do anything for which human sacrifice was previously held to be efficacious.

Maccoby also seems to believe that the sacrifice of Isaac actually occurred but that the "myth" in scripture was cleaned up a bit.

More on that in the next post.....