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On the Pertinence of Abraham or the Paradox of the Forbidden Sacrifice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
No doubt all are familiar with the story of Abraham, of whom God demanded the sacrifice of his son, Isaac, and who, at the last minute, received from this same God the order not to touch the child since it was by then certain that Abraham would not refuse to do so. Ultimately, as the Bible itself seems to say, was this not simply a test in those remote times when, after all, sacrifice was a common occurrence? And so, perhaps, we might think this is all there is to this story, simply a matter of fear. Nevertheless, how can we not be amazed by the seeming gratuity of such an ordeal? Was not Abraham, and already since a very long time, the chosen one of God? Can we not, then, ask if a more attentive reading of the texts will provide a more substantial message?
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- Copyright © 1989 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 Marie Balmary, Le Sacrifice interdit, Freud et la Bible, Grasset 1986. Here cit ed with the abbreviation SI.
2 Crainte et Tremblement, lyrique-dialectique, by Johannes de Silencio (pseudo nym for Kierkegaard), translated from the Danish by P. -H. Tisseau, Introduction by Jean Wahl, Aubier 1984 (3rd edition). Abbreviated CT.
3 SI, 121.
4 Genesis 22, 1-19.
5 SI, 199.
6 SI, 196.
7 SI, 197-198, 203. We know that Freud used the term split personality to desig nate the coexistence within the ego or consciousness of two psychic attitudes for eign to one another, questioning the relationship of consciousness to reality, with one denying reality and the other reacting normally. Here Abraham's words would seem to derive from the second attitude whereas his acts, under the influence of impulses, would seem to indicate a phantasmic regression to ancestral customs that Abraham would have broken with long ago.
8 Genesis 22, 12 and 16-17 (our italics). Here, along with Marie Balmary, and with the modifications that she introduces, we are following the (French) translation of André Chouraqui. "… since you have done this command", meaning, "since you did in fact respond to my appeal with an act."
9 CT, 42, 81.
10 SI, 203.
11 SI, 199.
12 For we should note that without action there is no story.
13 CT, 198; Genesis 22, 8.
14 Genesis, 22, 6 and 8.
15 SI, 200, 201.
16 SI, 203.
17 CT, 47-48 (too soon, italics by the author; if it was to be necessary to do so, our italics).
18 CT, 72.
19 Genesis, 22, 5.
20 SI, 202 (our italics since this interpretation would seem to depend on the con junction).
21 SI, 203 (our italics).
22 SI, 170. "Element" is here taken in the sense that water is the element of fish.
23 Genesis 2, 23.
24 SI, 251.
25 SI, 260-265. We know that primitives eat the flesh of an individual whose su periority they recognize in order to acquire his qualities for themselves.
26 CT, 48.
27 SI, 156-160; 174-177.
28 SI, 212.
29 SI, 216.
30 SI, 248; law in the sense of physical law, not in the sense of commandment.
31 Genesis 2, 16-17; cf. SI, 255-267.
32 SI, 255.
33 SI, 265.
34 Genesis 3, 22 (our italics).
35 SI, 248, n. 12. Marie Balmary notes that this means that God "does not know human speech". This is why he "'comes to see' how Adam will name the animals".
36 Genesis, chapter 1.
37 SI, 277.
38 SI, 240-241. Cf Genesis 1, 26-28.
39 CT, 86, 105.
40 CT, 186, 87.
41 CT, 88; cf. Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis.
42 CT, 91-92.
43 CT, 37, 38, 87, 105, 118.
44 Jean-Michel Gliksohn, Iphigénie, de la Grèce antique à l'Europe des lumières, Paris, P.U.F. 1985, p. 62 ff; Judges 11, 30-40.
45 CT, 86, 188.
46 Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, Prologue.
47 J. -M. Gliksohn, op. cit., 44 (our italics). These remarks concerning the sacrifice of Iphigenia should not, through an incorrect assimilation, lead us to ask the ques tion, "What about the sacrifice of Christ?". From the point of view of Christiani ty, Jesus, far from being simply one human individual among others, is also not simply a demi-god but God incarnate in person, the Word made flesh, itself sym bolically transformed into bread to be given as food for men. An interpretation of this sacrifice should take into account, through contrast, the nature of the origi nal sin, the effects of which can be discerned in the tragic sacrifice. In this sense Salomon Reinach shows, in his "Observations sur le mythe d'Iphigénie" (Revue des Études grecques, t. XXVIII, No. 126, Jan. -March 1915, pp. 10-11), that the interpretation of Euripides that links the sacrifice of the deer to the favor of the winds is quite late. According to him originally "the true object of the sacrifice of Aulis was more general. It was a matter of divinizing, through participation in a celebration in which a divine victim paid the price, those who, at the moment they were to undertake a perilous journey, needed to fortify the divine element in themselves." This supposes a divinity conceived as immanent and thus unable to intervene from the outside in human affairs. In this case, "to avoid failure, disease and misfortune, man … must capture it (the divinity) and eat it". Although he was not aware of the meaning of these words nor of the reality corresponding to them, is this not what Adam did also? But the sacrifice of Christ cannot be seen prefigured in Iphigenia or in the daughter of Jephthah. Further study of this question, too large to be included in the framework of this essay on Abraham, should be the sub ject of later research.
48 One can, of course, deny the reality of an Absolute transcending the human, but by affirming it, immediately and inasmuch as it defines Being in its plenitude subsisting in itself, it is the divine. Conversely, affirming the divine means affirm ing it as Absolute.