Jon Levenson on Understanding the Binding of Isaac as the Bible Understands It (Rebroadcast)

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, in their liturgical recitation and study of the Hebrew Bible, Jewish communities all over the world will relive the terrifying moment when God commands Abraham to take his son, his beloved son, who was to be his heir and fulfill his deepest dreams for family transmission and ancestry, Isaac, and sacrifice him.

What is this passage all about? What does it mean? What can be learned about Abraham, about Isaac, or about God by reading it carefully? Joining Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to discuss these questions on this week’s podcast (originally broadcast in 2023) is Jon D. Levenson, a professor of Jewish studies at Harvard Divinity School and frequent Mosaic contributor. Levenson has written about this episode in several books, including The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son published in 1993 by Yale University Press, and also in Inheriting Abraham, published in 2012 by Princeton University Press.

Akeidat Yitzḥak, the binding of Isaac, as the Jewish people traditionally refer to this episode, has a long afterlife in Christian and Muslim traditions; it is also a centerpiece of philosophical reflection among modern thinkers like Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierkegaard. Reading the text now in the aftermath of those later reflections, it’s difficult to retrieve its original meaning. The temptation is overwhelming to propose moral justifications for Abraham and for God, to excuse or at least to try to soften the drama of Genesis 22. To hear what the text of the Hebrew Bible really might have to say in response to that temptation requires undoing some modern assumptions—a task that Levenson and Silver take up.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week in their liturgical recitation and study of the Hebrew Bible, Jewish communities all over the world will relive the terrifying moment when God commands Abraham to take his son, his beloved son, who was to be his heir, and fulfill his
0:22.3	deepest dreams for family transmission and ancestry, Isaac, and sacrifice him. The narrative
0:29.1	force of this episode has been a foundation stone in works of literature, philosophy, theology,
0:34.9	and a great deal of moral reasoning has been generated by its imaginative study.
0:40.9	But how does the Hebrew Bible itself understand this text? Answering that question is our purpose in
0:46.5	today's conversation. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. This week, I'm
0:51.9	bringing you an episode originally broadcast in September
0:54.7	2023, a conversation with the wonderful scholar and teacher John D. Levinson of Harvard Divinity
1:01.5	School. If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Takefoot podcast on Apple
1:06.4	Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. I hope you leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of ideas.
1:13.2	I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes at podcast at tikfafund.org.
1:18.8	And of course, if you want to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website,
1:23.6	tikfafund.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
1:27.0	Here now is my conversation, originally
1:29.1	broadcast in September 2023 with John Levinson. John Levinson, welcome back to the Tickfah podcast.
1:36.5	Thank you so much for inviting me back. So in our conversation about the binding of Isaac,
1:42.4	as Jewish tradition has come to call this episode in the text,
1:46.4	I would like to start at least by some things I'm curious about related to the context of the
1:51.9	ancient Near East. And it's not as if the sacrifice of firstborn children or sons or
1:58.4	human sacrifice is unique to the biblical tradition. In fact,
2:02.7	the biblical tradition would seem to offer some kind of chastening or correcting to a much more
2:07.8	ubiquitous practice. Just tell us how to begin by looking at that question. Sacrifice, I would say,
	...

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