Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Genesis

[Churro Bandito]

> Most, if not all, of my evidences come from vv. 1-2. Since those verses are God's initial contact with Abraham and his opening command, I feel I am justified in considering them "right off" the bat.

Okay, let's look at them:

Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!”
And he said, “Here I am.”
2 Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

There you go. God wanted to test Abraham, but what was his initial communication? "Hey Abraham, do this thing". Not "Abraham, I'm going to test you, do this thing." So you're going to say that those verses, alone, just by themselves, justify "we know right off that child sacrifice is not intended and God is not commanding murder"? That's insane. Even the author of the huuuuuge unattributed argument you pasted from elsewhere realized he had to go a little farther down the page before he could start making claims about abraham's mind-state.

> The sarcasm doesn't help us have a dialogue about this.

It's plain that we've plumbed the depths of your knowledge on this. You sit there and say "It was completely obvious to Abraham that he would not kill his son, and that there would be a substitution", and then you follow up with "Abraham knew he might have to kill his son, but that's okay, because he would be resurrected." You refuse to acknowledge that contradiction, because it's f***ing embarrassing, but there you go. So yeah, I used sarcasm - it helps me survive the frustration of talking to someone like you.

I think your argument is cartoonishly bad, but if nothing I've said so far can make you realize that, then nothing will.

[jimwalton]

> So you're going to say that those verses, alone, just by themselves, justify "we know right off that child sacrifice is not intended and God is not commanding murder"?

My point #1 was about the specific grammatical construction of v. 1, revealing it was no ordinary request about an ordinary procedure, viz., child sacrifice.

My point #2 came from v. 1 and the explicit mention that it was a test.

My point #3 came from v. 2 that God's request was unlike anything in the ancient world related to child sacrifice.

My point #4 came from v. 2 that what was being asked didn't have any of the common ritual elements of child sacrifice, so Abraham would not have understood God to have been commanding that.

My point #5 came from v. 2. God words were identifying Isaac as the child of the covenant, a child he has already promised would live to bear children. Abraham would not have understood his command to be about child sacrifice.

My point #6 is about the literary structure, so doesn't pertain to this claim of yours.

My point #7 came from v. 2 and its reference to the covenant.

My point #8 came from v. 2 and the meaning of Moriah.

So, yes, I stand on solid ground that God's initial communication would speak loudly to Abraham that this was not about child sacrifice and he was not being asked to murder his son.

> Even the author of the huuuuuge unattributed argument

I was the author of that huge argument, and I attributed every comment to its source. It's an important question, so I spent quite a bit of time digging into the research of, "Is God actually commanding murder by child sacrifice?" Commentators and scholars were quite convinced that He wasn't, and here is a list of their reasoning.