The Akeda: A ‘Type’ or an Abomination?

If you are like most Christians, you’ve already thought of another Biblical example to bring home the “God demanded a sacrifice and Jesus Was It” point. “Jesus was the ‘anti-type’ of Isaac. God told Abraham to go and sacrifice Isaac! God told Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac on the altar!”

Step away from tradition from a moment and try to look at this story as if you’ve never heard it before. Ask yourself, “Is the Character of God really on display within this story?” If you heard what you thought was the Voice of God instructing you to go ‘slay your son’ or daughter, would you really believe that it was God who was instructing you to do such a heinous thing?

Such circumstances have happened within the modern era as otherwise good Christian people have murdered their own children; wholly because they heard what they thought was the voice of God telling them to do so. Many of us are understandably shocked and horrified over such actions of these otherwise “good” Christians.

One such story is that of Deanna Laney, a highly religious Texas woman who slew two of her sons and severely injured another; all because she felt God was telling her to do so.  Laney’s attorney, F.R. “Buck” Files, argued that Laney believed that “the word of God was infallible. It destroyed her ability to discern the wrongness of her act.”[1]

Laney herself explains, “I thought it was the Lord speaking to me, ‘You’re just going to have to step out in faith. This is faith. You can’t see the why. You just got to obey’ … It was like, I had been given the instructions, and it was a matter of obeying or disobeying.”[2]

While we in Christendom repeatedly “sanitize” the story of God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, how can we honestly condemn Deanna Laney for acting on her faith and “obeying God” if we believe God asked the same thing of Abraham regarding his son? Is there really a difference? The fact is that there is no difference in ethical and moral behavior here! Murder is murder; it is an act prohibited by God; as such, God would not ask anyone to murder his or her child, even as a test!

One can easily insert a different commandment to bring this point home. Would God ask someone to commit adultery to prove his or her love for Him?  Come to think of it, many people would appreciate that one. “Babe, it wasn’t really cheating. God told me to go get a hot young honey on the side to prove my love for Him!” Ridiculous, isn’t it?

Can we really believe it was somehow okay for Abraham to (attempt to) slay his son as a human sacrifice just because this event was written into the Torah and later canonized into the Protestant Bible?

What Christians are never told, mostly because we aren’t familiar with Judaism, is that this episode within Torah creates a huge contradiction and conundrum for Judaism’s ostensive belief in the inerrancy of Torah. Jewish scholars have been well aware of this contradiction for centuries.

This event within Torah known as the Akeda or “Binding of Isaac” is considered by most Jewish scholars to be Judaism’s most ethically troublesome passage. On the one hand, Torah is considered utterly infallible and without error; on the other hand, God will not void His Covenant by asking man to violate His commands. Period.

Christian scholars all too easily dismiss the deep contradiction without realizing the discordant issues the Akeda represents to mainstream Christian soteriology[3] and the Character of the Eternal One.

Rashi, a Hebrew acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, or Rabbi Shlomo Yarchi, (circa late eleventh century), was the author of the first comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud and Tanakh. Rashi was very highly respected then and in the present:

“Acclaimed for his ability to present the basic meaning of the text in a concise yet lucid fashion, Rashi appeals to both beginning students and learned scholars. His commentaries, which appear in all printed editions of the Talmud and Torah (especially the Chumash), are an indispensable companion to both casual and serious students of Judaism’s primary texts.”[4]

Part of Rashi’s commentary on Genesis 22 includes the following:

“Said Rabbi Abba: Abraham said to Him, “I will explain my complaint before You. Yesterday, You said to me (Genesis 21:12): ‘for in Isaac will be called your seed,’ and You retracted and said (Genesis 22:2): ‘Take now your son.’ Now You say to me, ‘Do not stretch forth your hand to the lad.’” The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him (Psalm. 89:35): “I shall not profane My covenant, neither shall I alter the utterance of My lips.” When I said to you, “Take,” I was not altering the utterance of My lips. I did not say to you, “Slaughter him,” but, “Bring him up.” You have brought him up; [now] take him down.”[5]

Realizing the incredible contradiction the Akeda creates, many Jewish scholars argue that God had never actually asked Abraham to “sacrifice” his son because of the Law that forbade human sacrifice; but believe instead that God had instructed Abraham to “‘alah’ for a sacrifice on the mountain.” These scholars argue that the word ‘alah’ had two meanings and could have been taken one of two ways by Abraham; to “take him up” onto Mount Moriah, or to “burn him” (as a sacrifice) on the mountain. It seems to have been a kind of test for Abraham—‘What would Abraham believe God was really asking of him?’

Having come out of a deeply pagan culture, Abraham must not have stopped to really think that the God he had been worshiping all these many years was not like the pagan gods who demanded human sacrifice. Obviously, Abraham must have taken God’s statement to mean that he was supposed to offer his son in the fire! Clearly, it is argued, Abraham was misunderstanding God’s character and His Law. Citing Rashi, these Jewish scholars, much more in concert with and attuned with God’s Word (His Character) than today’s Christians might be, correctly assert that God could not have actually asked Abraham to slaughter his son, because God would never ask anyone to do something contrary to his own law.[6]

Muslims also have deep problems with the Judeo-Christian Scriptural account of Abraham and Isaac. Muslims who believe only the Qur’an and reject the Sunna[7] teach that Abraham had a dream in which he saw himself slaughtering his son.[8] Thinking the dream was from God, he attempted to sacrifice his son in order to show his obedience to the voice in the dream. These Muslims are adamant in their belief that the dream could not have really been from God, because God would not contradict Himself and order Abraham to commit what He had prohibited, even as a test.[9]

Christianity however, with its peculiar contradictory soteriology (forgiveness through the breaking of God’s Law) to uphold, doesn’t agree with either these Jewish or Muslim understandings. Christians teach that they have a much more advanced understanding of this event, because Abraham offering his son as a “sacrifice” was a “type”[10] that pointed forward to its ‘antitypical’ fulfillment in God offering His own son, Jesus, as the final atoning sacrifice for our sin.

But now we must face an unavoidable situation: the Christian version of God’s Character, His Word, utterly contradicts God’s Law. We believe on the one hand that ‘God would not ask us to do something that is totally against His Law’. But we also believe that God did the exact opposite in His dealings with Abraham by asking Abraham to do something that drastically went against God’s own commandment.

Worse still is the implication that if the Most High so despised sacrifices—especially human sacrifice—then He would not have made Jesus any kind of ‘sacrifice’ on the cross! Again, this essentially amounts to “forgiveness through the breaking of God’s Law”

What Christians are generally not taught in Bible class or church is that this ‘human sacrifice for the sins of the world’ concept comes straight out of the ancient tenets of a long-dead and originally Persian religion.

Historically, the concept and dynamic of “a human sacrifice by a god-man (part god, part human) who is murdered to atone for the sins of humanity and then resurrected and ascends into heaven” has a well-established pagan precedence from ancient Persian-Greco-Roman mythology. It comes from the religion called Mithraism.

What Is Mithraism?

Christianity after the first century borrowed much of its practices and traditions from Roman paganism. For example, part of the Mithraic communion ritual reads: “He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation.” Compare this with John 6:53-54, where Jesus is said to have repeated this theme: “…Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” Ironic, isn’t it, how both religions incorporated cannibalizing or pretending to cannibalize one’s “god” as part of their worship?

Regarding the stark similarities between Christianity and the pagan religion of Mithraism, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote:

“Originally Mithra was one of the lesser gods of the ancient Persian pantheon, but at the time of Christ he had come to be co-equal with Ahura Mazda, the Supreme Being. He possessed many attributes, the most important being his office of defender of truth and all good things … He hears all and sees all: none can deceive him. [Footnote: Cumont, Mysteries of Mithra, pp. 2, 3.]

“Tarsus, the home of Saint Paul, was one of the great centers of his [Mithra’s] worship; and there is a decided tinge of Mithraism in the Epistles and Gospels. Such designations of our Lord as the Dayspring from on High, The Light, the Sun of Righteousness, and similar expressions seem to come directly from Mithraic influence.[Footnote: Weigall, op. cit., p. 129.]

“Again tradition has it that Mithra was born from a rock, “the god out of the rock.” It must also be noticed that his worship was always conducted in a cave. Now it seems that the general belief of the early church that Jesus was born in a cave grows directly out of Mithraic ideas. The words of St. Paul, “They drank of that spiritual rock … and that rock was Christ” also seem to be a direct borrow from the Mithraic scriptures.

“The Hebrew Sabbath having been abolished by [proto-Roman Catholic] Christians, the Church made a sacred day of Sunday, partly because it was the day of resurrection. But when we observe a little further we find that as a solar festival, Sunday was the sacred day of Mithra; it is also interesting to notice that since Mithra was addressed as Lord, Sunday must have been “the Lord’s Day” long before Christian use.[Footnote: Ibid., p. 137.] It is also to be noticed that our Christmas, December 25th, was the birthday of Mithra, and was only taken over in the Fourth Century as the date, actually unknown, of the birth of Jesus.

“To make the picture a little more clear, we may list a few of the similarities between these two religions: (1) Both regard Sunday as a holy day. (2) December 25 came to be considered as the anniversary of the birth of Mithra and Christ also. (3) Baptism and a communion meal were important parts of the ritual of both groups. (4) The rebirth of converts was a fundamental idea in the two cults. (5) The struggle with evil and the eventual triumph of good were essential ideas in both religions. (6) In summary we may say that the belief in immortality, a mediator between god and man, the observance of certain sacramental rites, the rebirth of converts, and (in most cases) the support of high ethical ideas were common to Mithraism as well as Christianity. In fact, the comparison became so evident that many believed the Christian movement itself became a mystery cult. “Jesus was the divine Lord. He too had found the road to heaven by his suffering and resurrection. He too had God for his father. He had left behind the secret whereby men could achieve the goal with him.” [Footnote: Enslin, op. cit., p. 190.][11]

While some of this may come across to us as shocking or even totally unbelievable, the history is factually unassailable, so much so that some Christian leaders are in fact now preaching that “Satan established the pagan religion of Mithraism centuries in advance of Jesus to unseat the faith of Christians who would come later …” This is clearly a severe leap of logic to make, yet for many it is far preferable to make that leap than to acknowledge that Christianity’s most precious doctrine comes straight out of a mystery religion that was very popular in the home town of the Apostle Paul, who many consider to be the Father of Christianity.