Sacrifices and Stories

Hum 110

Gail Sherman

I. How does the book of Genesis function as a foundation myth?

1. Universal (1-11) and patriarchal (12-50) foundation myth(s)
2. Interpretation: text as palimpsest
3. Some interpretive traditions around Abraham

II. What does sacrifice do?

1. What does "I sacrificed my sleep to come to Hum lecture" mean?
2. Greco-Roman sacrifice: Hesiod, Theogony, 535-607
3. Nancy Jay on sacrifice, and on gender
   1. Sacrifice indexes membership in a group: familial, tribal, national, moral.
   2. "Throughout the stories of the Patriarchs, there is a continuing tension between descent from fathers and descent from mothers, which is treated in consistent and individually different ways by the three authors [J, E, and P]."

III. Sacrifices and Stories

1. Stories about sacrifice: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob

   1. matrilineal and patrilineal descent
   2. sacrifice as remedy to matrilineal descent
   3. father’s sons and mothers sons, and the problem of Moses

2. What (re-)interpretations of sacrifice does Genesis itself encode? To what ends?
   1. "It was probably the fall of [the kingdom of Judah] and the publication of [the Deuteronomic history] that precipitated a P-based narratized reading of the history from creation to Moses. This P history of Israelite beginnings . . . underlined the primacy of cult [i.e., sacrifice] as the true anchor of Israel." Gottwald, 480.
   2. Religious independence and political independence (the Hasmoneans, 140-63 BCE) followed by colonial rule by the Roman Empire (political dependence) and eventually the destruction of the Second Temple (religious dependence?).
   3. What do representations of sacrifice in Genesis (and, more broadly, in the Hebrew Bible: Torah, Prophets, Writings) tell us about First and Second Temple Israelite culture (i.e. 900 BCE - 70CE)?
   4. How is sacrifice reinterpreted in later biblical and extra-biblical works?

A. "And the child [Abraham] began to realize the errors of the land - that everyone was going astray after graven images and after impurity. And he began to pray to the Creator of all so that he might save him from the errors of mankind. . .And he said [to his father], 'What help or advantage do we have from these idols?. . .Worship the God of heaven.' . . .And his father said to him: '. . .Be silent my son, lest they kill you.'" Jubilees 11:16-17, 12:2, 6-7 [mid-second century BCE]; Kugel, 246.

B. "R. Hiyya said: Terah was an idolator. Once he went off somewhere and left Abraham to sell [idols] in his place. A certain man came wishing to buy. [Abraham] said to him: 'How old are you?' He said: 'Fifty.' he said: "Fifty years old and you are going to bow down to something only one day old [that is, this idol]!??' The man went off in embarrassment. Later, a woman came bearing a container of flour. She said to him, 'Here, offer this before them [the idols].' He took a stick and broke them [the idols] and then put the stick into the hand of the biggest of them. When his father came he said to [Abraham], 'What happened to these?' [Abraham] said to [Terah]: . . .'One [idol] said, "Let me be the first to eat," another said, "No, let me be the first to eat," then the biggest one took a stick and broke them [the others].' [Terah said:] 'Why do you mock me - do these idols know anything? [Abraham] said: 'Cannot your ears hear the words coming from your own mouth?' "Genesis Rabba 38:13; Kugel, 248-9. (A similar story is told in the Apocalypse of Abraham, c. 200 BCE-200CE).

C. Man born of woman may be destined to die, but man integrated into an 'eternal' social order to that degree transcends mortality. I use the word 'man' advisedly, for in sacrificially maintained descent groups, 'immortality,' which may be no more than the memory of a name in a genealogy, is commonly a masculine privilege. It is through fathers and sons, not through mothers and daughters, that 'eternal' social continuity is maintained. . . . Where participation in 'eternal' social continuity is a paternal inheritance, mortality itself may be phrased as a maternal inheritance. Nancy Jay, 39-40.

D. When the gods and mortal men were settling their accounts
at Mekone, Prometheus cheerfully took a great ox,
carved it up, and set it before Zeus to trick his mind.
. . .
From that time on the tribes of mortal men on earth
have burned the white bones for the gods on smoky altars.
. . .
[Zeus] thereafter never forgot that he had been beguiled
and never gave to ash trees the power of unwearying fire
for the good of men who live on this earth,
. . .but{Prometheus} within a hollowed fennel stalk stole the far-flashing
unwearying fire. This stung the depths of Zeus's mind
...
so straightway because of the stolen fire he contrived an evil for men
. . .Zeus who roars on high made woman
to be an evil for men, helpmates in deeds of harshness.
And he bestowed another gift, evil in place of good:
whoever does not wish to marry, fleeing the malice of women,
reaches harsh old age with no one to care for him;
then even if he is well-provided
he dies at the end only to have his livelihood shared
by distant kin. Hesiod, Theogony, 535-607

E. The story of Isaac is a patriarchal cautionary tale. Isaac is a transformation of the same theme as Abraham but without sacrifice. Like Abraham, Isaac married a patrilineal classificatory sister. Like Abraham, his brother had twelve sons while his own wife was barren. Like Abraham, Isaac claimed his wife was his sister and she spent a time in a foreign king's harem. Like Abraham, he had two sons, the older a "father's son," the younger a "mother's son," who also carried the ambiguous line of descent. The outside/inside contrast, which in Abraham's generation was a feature of the two women (one exogamous, the other endogamous), has shifted to the two sons: Esau was a man of the outdoors, "a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents" (Gen 25:27). The stories of both Abraham and Isaac tell of conflict about descent, but Abraham saved patrilineal descent by sacrificing, and Isaac never sacrificed. In the Isaac stories the descent conflict latent in the Abraham narratives is played out to its full disastrous consequences." Nancy Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 102; (Jay's emphasis).

F. The births of Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Joseph, and Benjamin are never described in terms of a begetting (holid) by the father; only afterward is such paternity indicated in the concluding toledot lists. The conception is always represented by God’s opening the womb of the barren woman, after which she can give birth (yaldah). J.P. Fokkelman, 39.

G. The blessing of Jacob (Gen 49) . . . is older than the work of [the hypothesized sources] J, E, or P. . . . As in other Genesis narratives, descent flows through the blessing. All twelve sons were blessed, but only Joseph received a blessing of the mother: "blessings of the breast and of the womb" (49:25). Biblical scholars who try to explain this blessing of the mother do not ask why only Joseph was so blessed, nor do they consider that a social issue of descent may have been involved.

The next verse (49:26a) continues Jacob's blessing and is a lucid and explicit expression of the conflict and resolution of patriarchal descent: It condenses the whole story into a single phrase. . . ."The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors' [literally, 'conceivers' (horai, masculine plural form)] unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of him that was separate from his brethren." . . . The ancient poet needed a word referring to Rebekah and to Laban and probably also to their whole family, including Rachel. (Jacob's struggle was with Laban, not with Rebekah). Not having access to terms like "matrilineal descent group," the author sensibly, grammatically, and aesthetically chose "conceivers," in the masculine plural. The passage is to be understood in this way: The blessings of (and therefore descent from) your father (Jacob, who restored patriliny by sacrifice) have prevailed over the blessings of (descent from) my conceivers (my mother's family: Laban and his line of descent through mothers) unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills. Nancy Jay, 110.

Selected Bibliography:

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. trans. Willard Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.

Feldman, Louis H. Jew And Gentile in the Ancient World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Fokkelman, J.P. "Genesis." In Alter, Robert and Frank Kermode. The Literary Guide to the Bible. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987; 36-55.

Gottwald, Norman K. The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction. Philadelphia: Fortress, l985.

Jay, Nancy. "Throughout your generations forever:" Sacrifice, Religion and Paternity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and trembling. trans. Walter Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941.

Kraemer, Ross Shepard. Her Share of The Blessings: Women's Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Kugel, James L. Traditions of the Bible: A guide to the Bible as it was at the start of the Common Era. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Pardes, Ilana. Countertraditions in the Bible. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Spiegel, Shalom. trans. Judah Goldin. The last trial : on the legends and lore of the command to Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice: the Akedah. Philadelphia : Jewish Publication Society of America, 1967.