Unbinding Isaac

Unbinding Isaac PDF Author: Aaron Koller
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827618433
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Unbinding Isaac takes readers on a trek of discovery for our times into the binding of Isaac story. Nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard viewed the story as teaching suspension of ethics for the sake of faith, and subsequent Jewish thinkers developed this idea as a cornerstone of their religious worldview. Aaron Koller examines and critiques Kierkegaard's perspective--and later incarnations of it--on textual, religious, and ethical grounds. He also explores the current of criticism of Abraham in Jewish thought, from ancient poems and midrashim to contemporary Israel narratives, as well as Jewish responses to the Akedah over the generations. Finally, bringing together these multiple strands of thought--along with modern knowledge of human sacrifice in the Phoenician world--Koller offers an original reading of the Akedah. The biblical God would like to want child sacrifice--because it is in fact a remarkable display of devotion--but more than that, he does not want child sacrifice because it would violate the child's autonomy. Thus, the high point in the drama is not the binding of Isaac but the moment when Abraham is told to release him. The Torah does not allow child sacrifice, though by contrast, some of Israel's neighbors viewed it as a religiously inspiring act. The binding of Isaac teaches us that an authentically religious act cannot be done through the harm of another human being.

Unbinding Isaac

Unbinding Isaac PDF Author: Aaron Koller
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827618433
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
Unbinding Isaac takes readers on a trek of discovery for our times into the binding of Isaac story. Nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard viewed the story as teaching suspension of ethics for the sake of faith, and subsequent Jewish thinkers developed this idea as a cornerstone of their religious worldview. Aaron Koller examines and critiques Kierkegaard's perspective--and later incarnations of it--on textual, religious, and ethical grounds. He also explores the current of criticism of Abraham in Jewish thought, from ancient poems and midrashim to contemporary Israel narratives, as well as Jewish responses to the Akedah over the generations. Finally, bringing together these multiple strands of thought--along with modern knowledge of human sacrifice in the Phoenician world--Koller offers an original reading of the Akedah. The biblical God would like to want child sacrifice--because it is in fact a remarkable display of devotion--but more than that, he does not want child sacrifice because it would violate the child's autonomy. Thus, the high point in the drama is not the binding of Isaac but the moment when Abraham is told to release him. The Torah does not allow child sacrifice, though by contrast, some of Israel's neighbors viewed it as a religiously inspiring act. The binding of Isaac teaches us that an authentically religious act cannot be done through the harm of another human being.

Unbinding the Binding of Isaac

Unbinding the Binding of Isaac PDF Author: Mishael Caspi
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761835660
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Unbinding the Binding of Isaac is an anthology of three faiths' interpretations of the Genesis 22:1-19 story. The various exegeses of this story have been mined by the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian faiths for a protracted period of time. The "Aqedah," as the binding story is known universally, stimulates the interests and imaginations of theologians, linguists, poets, historians, and artists of various skills and stripes. The Aqedah continues to stimulate inquiry and application to modern situations. Unbinding the Binding of Isaac is at once ancient and modern in its scope, purpose, and relevance to scholarly inquiry regarding this ongoing debate.

The Unbinding of Isaac

The Unbinding of Isaac PDF Author: Stephen J. Stern
Publisher: Studies in Judaism
ISBN: 9781433111600
Category : Akedah
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The author upends traditional understandings of this controversial narrative through a phenomenological midrash or interpretation of Genesis 22 from the Dialogic and Jewish philosophies of Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and, most notably, Emmanuel Levinas. He intersects Jewish studies, Biblical studies, and philosophy in a literary/midrashic style that challenges traditional Western philosophical epistemology. Through the biblical narrative of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebecca, he explains that Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas Judaically exercise and offer an alternative epistemic orientation to the study of ethics than that of traditional Western or Hellenic-Christian philosophy.

Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought

Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought PDF Author: Aaron Koller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107048354
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This book situates the book of Esther in the intellectual history of Ancient Judaism and provides a new understanding of its purpose.

Abraham's Silence

Abraham's Silence PDF Author: J. Richard Middleton
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 1493430882
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
It is traditional to think we should praise Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his son as proof of his love for God. But have we misread the point of the story? Is it possible that a careful reading of Genesis 22 could reveal that God was not pleased with Abraham's silent obedience? Widely respected biblical theologian, creative thinker, and public speaker J. Richard Middleton suggests we have misread and misapplied the story of the binding of Isaac and shows that God desires something other than silent obedience in difficult times. Middleton focuses on the ethical and theological problem of Abraham's silence and explores the rich biblical tradition of vigorous prayer, including the lament psalms, as a resource for faith. Middleton also examines the book of Job in terms of God validating Job's lament as "right speech," showing how the vocal Job provides an alternative to the silent Abraham. This book provides a fresh interpretation of Genesis 22 and reinforces the church's resurgent interest in lament as an appropriate response to God.

Time Binds

Time Binds PDF Author: Elizabeth Freeman
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822348047
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
By foregrounding bodily pleasure in the experience of time and its representation in queer literature, film, video, and art, Elizabeth Freeman challenges queer theorys recent emphasis on loss and trauma.

Rav Kook

Rav Kook PDF Author: Yehudah Mirsky
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300164246
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
DIV The life and thought of a forceful figure in Israel’s religious and political life /div

Ritual Unbound

Ritual Unbound PDF Author: Thomas Cousineau
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874138511
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
This study explores the vestiges of primitive sacrificial rituals that emerge in a group of canonical modernist novels, including The Turn of the Screw, Heart of Darkness, The Good Soldier, The Great Gatsby, and To the Lighthouse. It argues that these novels reenact a process that achieved its seminal expression in the Genesis story of The Binding of Isaac, in which Abraham, having been prevented from sacrificing Isaac, offers up a ram in his place. Modernist reenactments of this pattern present narrators who, although vigorously protesting the victimization of certain characters, unfailingly seize upon others as their surrogates. Each novel is designed in such a way, however, as to resist the reconstruction of a sacrificial ritual to which its narrator is prone. The resulting tension between the binding and unbinding of ritual persecution dramatizes the paradox that we can neither believe convincingly in the guilt of our scapegoats nor imagine a society that has dispensed with them entirely. Thomas Cousineau is Professor of English at Washington College in Maryland.

Iran, Israel, and the Jews

Iran, Israel, and the Jews PDF Author: Aaron Koller
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532661703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
Iran, Israel, and the Jews have a relationship that is in the news all the time. But it cannot be understood just in modern terms. Its roots are 2,500 years old. This volume surveys that history through case studies and broad overviews—from the first intensive contacts under Cyrus the Great, through Persian influence on Judaism evident in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Babylonian Talmud, into the Middle Ages and the flourishing of Judeo-Persian literature and culture, and finally into modern times, when the political, social, and cultural ties are multifaceted and profound. Written by experts in both Iranian and Jewish studies, these essays convey the richness and complexity of a long and tumultuous relationship between two ancient and great civilizations, which continues to shape the world today.

Fighting For Your Freedom

Fighting For Your Freedom PDF Author: Bishop Isaac Ogbeta
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 1478786647
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Fighting for Your Freedom. Let My People Go. Free At Last. This book will teach you how to fight for your freedom; Freedom from financial bondage, Fear, Relationship, and Addiction. There used to be generational curses in my life; Generational curses of Poverty, Failure and Loss; As a result, I was in debt and the pressure was unbearable that I decided to take my life at which point The Holy Ghost told me to go into fasting and prayers and it was revealed to me in my dream to sow a seed (Giving Sacrificial Offering to the poor (those dying of hunger and to the orphans); In obedience, I sowed my seed and thereafter an idea was given to me to write books whereby millions of copies of my books had be sold all over the world and God took me out of debt by breaking generation curses from my life.