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In the Bible Abraham is called to Sacrifice his son...

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
I was always taught that it was Abraham's sacrifice. Wasn't it actually Isaac's sacrifice?

I learned this pearl of wisdom from watching the movie "Venom".
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Reading stories like the one about Abraham's sacrifice, Job's trials or similar made me think that the authors or people in general were what we would call psychopaths today.
We see every person as an individual but that may not have been so 2600 years ago. The protagonists are individuals but their children are often depicted just as property, valuable property, yes, but not individuals. With such a mindset killing a child becomes a punishment for the parent or killing one's own child becomes a sacrifice.
And it is not that we have overcome that indifference to human death and suffering completely. In an action movie we don't think about the henchmen that get killed left and right as people. They are just moving props - like the unnamed people in biblical stories.
 

Enoch07

It's all a sick freaking joke.
Premium Member
I was always taught that it was Abraham's sacrifice. Wasn't it actually Isaac's sacrifice?

I learned this pearl of wisdom from watching the movie "Venom".

Ask yourself then.

Would be easier to get killed?

Or

Kill the person you love the most?

Luckily God stopped him before he plunged the knife. So there was no actual sacrifice.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
We are reading those stories from within a very different time and culture. To us, every individual is unique. Our children are afforded their own unique status as individuals. But in the culture that generated these stories, children were considered "offspring" in a very literal way. A son was a kind of physical proxy for the father. Agreements made with a father were binding on a son, and agreements made with a son were considered approved and instituted by the father. This was a culture ruled by family-clan patriarchy. Sons were not their own beings, they were extensions of their fathers. For God to demand that Abraham sacrifice his own son was equivalent to demanding that he end his whole family-clan lineage. It would have been viewed by that culture as an ultimate sacrifice: the sacrifice of everything they held important in life - of all meaning and purpose.
 

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
Ask yourself then.

Would be easier to get killed?

Or

Kill the person you love the most?

Luckily God stopped him before he plunged the knife. So there was no actual sacrifice.

That's a relationship that I never had and can not comment on.
 

Enoch07

It's all a sick freaking joke.
Premium Member
That's a relationship that I never had and can not comment on.

I've had to make that choice. Not to kill the person. But I had to chose to keep the person in my life and risk my sanity. Or abandon that person for the sake of my sanity. Hardest decisions ever made, and for 3 years I chose to keep that other person around before I finally pulled the chord to save myself and my own sanity.


So the answer is.


It's hard

Very very very hard to make the choice Abraham made.
 
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Heyo

Veteran Member
We are reading those stories from within a very different time and culture. To us, every individual is unique. Our children are afforded their own unique status as individuals. But in the culture that generated these stories, children were considered "offspring" in a very literal way. A son was a kind of physical proxy for the father. Agreements made with a father were binding on a son, and agreements made with a son were considered approved and instituted by the father. This was a culture ruled by family-clan patriarchy. Sons were not their own beings, they were extensions of their fathers. For God to demand that Abraham sacrifice his own son was equivalent to demanding that he end his whole family-clan lineage. It would have been viewed by that culture as an ultimate sacrifice: the sacrifice of everything they held important in life - of all meaning and purpose.
That's also my hypothesis. You write it as if it was not only your own pondering but objective fact. Do you have any link to a study or some other corroborating evidence?
 

sooda

Veteran Member
I've had to make that choice. Not to kill the person. But I had to chose to keep the person in my life and risk my sanity. Or abandon that person for the sale of my sanity. Hardest decisions ever made, and for 3 years I chose to keep that other person around before I finally pulled the chord to save myself and my own sanity.


So the answer is.


It's hard

Very very very hard to make the choice Abraham made.

Abraham expresses no angst over it.

First Person: Human Sacrifice to an Ammonite God ...

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/.../first-person-human-sacrifice-to-an-ammonite-god
Sep 23, 2014 · Indeed, the most famous Biblical episode of (almost) human sacrifice involves a son who walks three days up a mountain with his father and converses with him. On the last leg of the journey the son carries the wood. He is referred to as a lad or a youth (na’ar).
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
Also consider the culture of the time and the sacrifice of the first born to pagan gods.
 

susanblange

Active Member
I was always taught that it was Abraham's sacrifice. Wasn't it actually Isaac's sacrifice?

I learned this pearl of wisdom from watching the movie "Venom".
God was testing Abraham's faith. It was meant to teach him trust and obedience. Abraham believed in the one true God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. On the last day, the death and resurrection of the Messiah, salvation will once again come down to belief. This will be the final judgment by fire and it's called the "Day of Decision". The heathen will be cut off by fire. Joel 3:12-14. Zechariah 14:12.
 

leov

Well-Known Member
I was always taught that it was Abraham's sacrifice. Wasn't it actually Isaac's sacrifice?

I learned this pearl of wisdom from watching the movie "Venom".
OT is also a theological treatise, teaching tool, message of Isaac's sacrifice was that G-d does not want human sacrifices.
 

sooda

Veteran Member
God was testing Abraham's faith. It was meant to teach him trust and obedience. Abraham believed in the one true God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. On the last day, the death and resurrection of the Messiah, salvation will once again come down to belief. This will be the final judgment by fire and it's called the "Day of Decision". The heathen will be cut off by fire. Joel 3:12-14. Zechariah 14:12.

Zechariah 14:12 was fulfilled during the Maccabean wars.
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
Abraham had to haggle Yahweh down regarding the destruction of Sodom before all of this, no? The end result of this Isaac sacrifice thing was the substitution of animals instead of humans for sacrifice, no?

Abraham was both smart and wise. ;)
 

sooda

Veteran Member
Abraham had to haggle Yahweh down regarding the destruction of Sodom before all of this, no? The end result of this Isaac sacrifice thing was the substitution of animals instead of humans for sacrifice, no?

Abraham was both smart and wise. ;)

The catastrophe that destroyed the cities of the plain happened long before Abraham.
 

LightofTruth

Well-Known Member
The writer explains it thus:

Heb 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,
Heb 11:18 Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called:
Heb 11:19 Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.
 
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