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| Caravaggio - "The Sacrifice of Isaac" |
In order to understand the tale in its widest context, let us look first at some of the parallels
The Greek (in fact the Cadmean, the Cadmeans being Beney Kedem - Kedemites - descendants of Yishma-El who crossed the Aegean and founded Boeotian Thebes) myth of Athamas tells of the sacrifice of his son Phrixus to Zeus, interrupted by the arrival of Heracles and the divine appearance of a ram - the same ram that supplied the Golden Fleece (cf Graves/Patai, "The Hebrew Myths" pp 176/7). Athamas is connected to the Beney Chet (Hittites), being a brother of Sisyphus, who was originally the Hittite god Teshub. The fact that the Greeks got their tale from the Beney Yishma-El should not be surprising, but also should not be ignored.
The myth in full: King Athamas the Boeotian married Queen Nephele of Pelion, who bore him a son named Phrixus; later he fathered a second son, Melicertes or Melkarth or Melqart, on Ino the Cadmean. Nephele cursed Athamas and Melicertes; Ino responded by creating a famine and bribing the priestess of Apollo to say that fertility would only be restored if Athamas sacrificed Nephele’s son Phrixus on Mount Laphystium. Athamas agreed, and had already grasped the knife when Heracles intervened, saying Zeus loathed human sacrifices. A golden-fleeced ram, sent by Zeus, appeared, and Phrixus escaped on its back to Colchis. Ino and Melicertes fled Athamas' anger by leaping into the sea, from where Zeus rescued and deified both: Ino as the White Goddess, also known as Io, the sister of Phoroneus (Ephron), the sun-god of Chevron from whom Av-Raham "purchased" the Cave of Machpelah; the sun-god, Melicertes, as the new year god of Corinth.
Does this suggest an original expurgated version of Yitschak? Genesis gives us no reason for the testing of Av-Raham, but of course all Jewish laws and creeds make the connection between the keeping of the god's laws and the god providing rain for the harvests. Can we then add in a fertility-explanation to the Akeda? And is Hagar playing the Ino role (Hagar as we have seen was the priestess of the Egyptian cult of Isis, and thus both she and Ino were associated with fertility cults), avenging herself on Sarah by ascribing a famine to Av-Raham? Famines occur repeatedly in the Av-Raham stories, as they do in the Yitschak at Gerar story (Genesis 26) - a logical expectation in a fertility cult, the barrenness of the earth, like the barrenness of the women, creating an opportunity to praise the fertility goddess when the famine ends. Who was the equivalent of the false prophet bribed by Hagar - or has that been expurgated too? And of course, Greek Io is Canaanite Yah, the Hebrew name for the sister of Ephron (Phoroneus) of Chevron (Hebron).
The Code of Hammurabi suggests that: "If a man marries a priestess (a naditum or hierodule, who is forbidden to bear children), and if she gives her husband a bond-maid in order to bear his children, the bond-maid may not demand equal honour with the priestess-wife; if she does, the princess may not sell her, but only return her to bondage as previously." Note the interchange of "priestess" with "princess". Casting a shoe - as Sarah did in Hagar's face according to the Midrash - was a ritual act of asserting possession (Ruth 4:7, Deuteronomy 25:9 ). But the casting of the shoe was also an aspect of the Levirate Law, for it was by lifting his shoe that Bo'az made his own claim on Ruth. Of course, those who deny these speculations, who do not regard Sarah or Hagar as priestesses, need not pay any attention to the Hammurabic Law, which in their view does not apply anyway.
Alternately we can ask: is the tale of the sacrifice of Yitschak an allegory for the Hammurabic Law? Or was the Cadmean original that allegory, further diminished into the Yitschak-Yishma-El story. Athamas may well be Eytan (אֵיתָן - Ethan; Aitham in the Septuagint makes it very likely), a mythical early sage and poet whose name means "strong" (1 Kings 5:11, or 4:31 in some translations). Just as a side-note, Ha Etanim (הָאֵתָנִים) was the original name for the month now called Tishrey, the seventh month, the one in which New Year falls; we know this from 1 Kings 8:2, where Shlomo held a feast on the New Moon of Ha Etanim, the earliest Rosh ha-Shana feast recorded. Men named Eytan are mentioned in 1 Chronicles 2:6, 6:27 and 29, 15:17 and 19.
The god at this point bears many epithets, of which, as a consequence of the Akeda, "Pachad Yitschak - The Fear of Isaac" - is one (Genesis 31:42 and 53). This recalls Phrixus, the victim in the Greek version, whose name in that language means "Horror". The mock-sacrifice of a man dressed in a black ram's fleece is still celebrated to this day by Boeotian shepherds on Mount Laphystium as a rain-making ceremony.
There are other parallels as well, which further testify to this as a cultic ceremony rather than a mere biographical detail. Yiphtach (Jephtha), for example, vowed (Judges 11:29) to give his god the first living creature that met him after his victory over the Beney Amon (Ammonites) ; this turned out to be his daughter. The sacrifice was accepted because, as we are told in that text, "it was a custom in Yisra-El". And if indeed "it was a custom in Yisra-El", then the Akeda cannot have been an allegory to rule it out, as the Talmudic Rabbis would insist, but in fact its opposite, an allegory to rule it in.
Idomeneus, you might be interested to learn, made a similar vow to Poseidon when faced with shipwreck; the victim in this case was his son, and then the whole of Crete, which was inflicted with a plague as a consequence; they expelled Idomeneus, and the plague immediately ended; which tale also parallels the shipwreck of Yonah (Jonah). Plutarch tells the tale of Meander, who promised to reward the Queen of Heaven with the first person to congratulate him on the storming of Pessinus; this proved to be his son Archelaus, whom he duly killed; only to drown himself in the river that bears his name. Agamemnon more famously sacrificed Iphigenia; though in later Greek versions (Euripides may be compared with Thomas Bowdler for doing this!), when horror at human sacrifice had begun to take root, Iphigenia was spared - guess what? - by the appearance of a doe - the goddess Artemis in disguise - on whose back she fled to Tauric Chersonese. The Greek revision belongs to about the 4th century BCE - can we pinpoint this as the date at which an earlier Yitschak legend, in which the boy is indeed sacrificed, was replaced by the one that we now have?
Nor did the practice of human sacrifice die out. The burning of children to Hercules Melkarth (note that the Greek version of the Akeda has Heracles rescuing the victim) continued among the Phoenicians long after the Hebrews abandoned it; and the terms Phoenician and Canaanite are literally interchangeable: Phoenicia was the Greek name, Canaan the Canaanite (Hurrian); both mean "purple", from the murex-dye that was their principal source of wealth and trade. Michah (מִיכָה - Micah), a contemporary of Yesha-Yahu (Isaiah) around 750 BCE, claimed (6:8) that YHVH hated animal sacrifices as much as human ones, a radical view for its time, but one which he would not have bothered to hold if there were not such practices to hold them about; more significantly for this tale, in that verse he states, as all the prophets do eventually (see for example Ezekiel 20:24, that what YHVH wants, rather than the sacrifices, is the obedience, and this is precisely the moral of the Akeda as presented in the Genesis text: YHVH is testing Av-Raham's obedience, and relents on the sacrifice because it is unnecessary once that obedience is confirmed. We may read it today as an allegory for the end of child sacrifice, but that is not what was intended when it was written.
In fact, sacrifice of the first-born was a common practice. 2 Kings 3:27 has the Beney Mo-Av (Mo'abite) King Mesha burning his eldest son to Chemosh. Leviticus 18:21 and 20:2 likewise have the Beney Amon offering their sons to Moloch, but here the text specifically prohibits the practice to the Beney Yisra-El. The Aramaeans of Sepharvayim offered theirs to Adram-Melech and Ana-Melech (two names which may well add weight to earlier comments on Av-Raham and Sarah as sibling-spouse Moon and Sun Gods, but which also date the text, because Sepharvayim was one of the principal towns from which the expelled Samaritans, settled in Yisra-El by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, originated - cf 2 Kings 17:31). Nor was it confined to the goyim: the Hebrew kings Achaz (2 Kings 16:3) and Menasheh (2 Kings 21:6) both perpetrated human sacrifices, including their own sons, and there is a good case to be made that the strange affair of the honey (1 Samuel 14:43) was an attempt by the jealous to oblige Sha'ul to sacrifice his first-born Yah-Natan (Jonathan) to the bee-goddess Devorah. See also 1 Kings 16:34 (somewhat less explicit, but possibly another reference to child sacrifice).
The end of child sacrifice is confirmed in the Mosaic laws (probably an Ezraic reform, given retroactive validation in this manner) in Exodus 13:13-16, where the custom of Pidyon ha ben is introduced: all first-born male children, rather than being sacrificed, are formally redeemed, though there is neither ceremony nor ritual attached to this. Numbers 3:45 then replaces the physical sacrifice of the first-born with the spiritual sacrifice of the Beney Levi, by requiring them to be dedicated to the priesthood, and does now add (verses 46-48) a specific to the redemption (interestingly it is called "ransom" in some translations, as though YHVH had previously kidnapped these children!) of the first-born: "For the redemption of the 273 of the firstborn of the sons of Yisra-El who are in excess beyond the Levites, you shall take five shekels apiece, per head; you shall take them in terms of the shekel of the sanctuary(the shekel is twenty gerahs), and give the money, the redemption of those who are in excess among them, to Aharon and to his sons." Just as a side-issue, there was no Sanctuary in Moshe's time, and Moshe did not mint coinage in the wilderness; both textual evidence of a much later writing of the text. And as a secondary side-issue, if the numbers given in the census are accurate (Numbers 1:46), there would have been close to two million Habiru wandering with Moshe in the desert; a mere 273 first-born rather undermines this statistic.
Nor did it end with Av-Raham. There is strong evidence that David abolished it when he established his capital in Yerushalayim; we known that he tore down the Tsi'un, the obelisk on the summit of Tsi'on hill, bringing to an end the worship of Moloch and Chemosh in Yerushalayim ; children were previously burned at Tophet, in the Valley of Hinnom (Gey-Hinnom, whence Gehenna) - cf 2 Kings 23:10. Shlomo (Solomon) however re-introduced the custom (1 Kings 11:7).
Victims were sometimes surrogates for the king as sun-god. The cult, as we have seen, was denounced by most of the Prophets (see for example Micah 6:7, Jeremiah 7:31, 19:5 and 32:35, Ezekiel 16:20, 20:26, as late as 580 BCE, the last days before the destruction of the First Temple, which again suggests that this was an Ezraic break with what had actually been a pretty continuous history. Prophets do not repeatedly rail against something that is not actually taking place!
So what are we to think? Perhaps that the sacrifices only, or at least usually, took place at times of national emergency, or to coincide with the laying of important foundation-stones, or with the annual sun-festival. And if this is right, then which of these occasions was Yitschak's? The argument that it was a fertility-rite seems to be the strongest; the weakest argument is the Rabbinic one, that the tale of the Akeda was an allegory for the ending of the practice, rather than a mere example of its normality. People sacrificed their first-born to their gods: apples, oranges, barley, wheat, goats, lambs and yes, their sons and sometimes their daughters as well.
One last thought. Av-Raham sent Yishma-El away to establish the right of land-ownership for Yitschak - itself a variation of the sacrifice of the first-born, but also important in the context of the Akeda, because Yitschak is being sacrificed as the first-born of Sarah, and yet he counts as the second-born of Av-Raham. Are ultimo- and primo- geniture being married? Are we recognising Jewish identity on a line that is matrilocal or patrilocal?
Copyright © 2016 David Prashker
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