The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity

273 Pages·1995·13.45 MB·English

by  Jon D. Levenson

The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son
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The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son
The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity
Jon D. Levenson
Yale University Press New Haven and London
Copyright © 1993 by rale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond
that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers
for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Santa L. Scanlon.
Set injanson type by Rainsford Type, Danbury, Connecticut.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levenson, Jon Douglas.
The death and resurrection of the beloved son : the transformation
of child sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity I Jon D. Levenson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 978-0-3000-6511-4
/. Child sacrifice in the Bible. 2. Child sacrifice—Judaism.
3. Child sacrifice—Christianity. 4. Judaism—Doctrines.
I. Title.
BS680.C45L48 1993
220.6'4^dc20 93-7545
CIP
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability oftbe Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity oftbe Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8
To Sam Joffe
and to the memory of
Sara Walkinsbaw Hazel
But we are Your people, the members of Your covenant, the children of Abraham
who loved You and to whom You swore an oath upon Mount Moriah; the
descendants of Isaac bis only son, who was bound on the altar; the community of
Jacob Your first-born son, whom You named Israel andjesburun because of Your
love for him and the delight You took in him,
Jewish Daily Liturgy
Contents
Prefac.e ix
Acknowledgme.nts xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
Part I A Father's Gift
I Child Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible: Deviation or Norm? 3
2 YHWH versus Molech 18
3 The Sacrifice of the Son as the Imitation of God 25
4 El and the Beloved Son 32
5 The People Israel as the Son of God 36
6 The Sacrifice of the First-Born Son: Eradicated or Transformed? 43
Part II The Beloved Sons in Genesis
7 First-Born and Late-Born, Fathers and Mothers 55
8 The lx)ved and the Unloved 61
9 Favor and Fratricide 69
10 "Let me not look on as the child dies" 82
11 The Aqedah as Etiology 111
12 Isaac Unbound 125
13 The Beloved Son as Ruler and Servant 143
Part III The Beloved Son Between Zion and Golgotha
14 The Rewritten Aqedah of Jewish Tradition 173
15 The Displacement of Isaac and the Birth of the Church 200
16 The Revisioning of God in the Image of Abraham 220
Notes 233
Scripture Index 251
Author Index 258
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Preface
The idea for this book came to me in connection with my preparation for a
course entitled "The Joseph Story and its Rabbinic Exegesis," which I taught
in the winter quarter of 1986-87 at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
It occurred to me that the loss and restoration of Joseph to his father constitutes
an analogy in narrative to the several Israelite rituals that substitute for the
literal sacrifice of the first-born son. In the Joseph novella, as in those rituals,
the father's choicest son receives his life anew, and the man who, one way or
another, gave him up or should have done so, gets back the offspring who had
been marked for death. Further reflection led to the conclusion that the
analogy holds for other important sons in Genesis as well—Ishmael, Isaac, and
Jacob—and for the man the Church believes to be the son of God.
The prominence of this theme of the near-death and miraculous
restoration of the first-born son (or of the late-born son promoted to that
exalted rank) led me to question the universal assumption that the great
prophets of the late seventh and sixth centuries B.C.F.. had eradicated the
scourge of child sacrifice from Israelite culture. Both the rituals and the
narratives that articulate this theme suggest that though the practice was at
some point eradicated, the religious idea associated with one particular form
of it—the donation of the first-born son—remained potent and productive.
Indeed, it proved central to Israel's efforts to render account of its origins
and character, and it was, again with modification, to prove at least as
central to the efforts of the early Church to do likewise. Similarly, the
rabbinic and Christian tendencies to celebrate Abraham for his willingness
to obey the gruesome command to slay and immolate his beloved son Isaac
demonstrate that the matter is more complicated than the language of
eradication allows. My term "transformation" is intended to imply that the
strangely persistent impulse in question remains alive as a driving force
behind the subtle and easily misunderstood theologies of chosenness that,
again in their different ways, undergird both Judaism and Christianity.