In response to my friend Kevin, I personally have a hard time seeing the Akedah as a story expressing any sort of aetiology. I just don’t see any of the explicit or even implicit markers that would lead to such a conclusion.

I highly suspect that if this was the story’s original intent, i.e. to provide a story of origin for the cessation of child sacrifice in Israel, such a momentous intent would have included some sort of explicit indication that the Akedah marks the beginning of animal substitution. Consider the use of the textual maker ‘ad-ken in the account of aetiology witnessed in Genesis 2:

“Therefore [because this event happened] shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24)

Yet Genesis 22 lacks any such markers like those witnessed in the account of aetiology featured in Judges 11: 39-40, where the story of human sacrifice explains the origins for the “custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.”

The fact that we don’t encounter anything remotely similar to this marker identifying the story of human sacrifice in Judges 11 as an aetiology in Genesis 22 makes me doubt that such a purpose was originally intended for the Akedah.

Just my thoughts.

Rene Girard and many of those who follow his thinking view the Akedah in the same way. They argue that Abraham ended human sacrifice and instead animal sacrifice became the norm.

Thanks for your comment and the link. I will read through your essay.

I think that Day and Heider’s books are well written, erudite, and certainly worth reading. John Day in particular is a terrific scholar, and his volume Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan is one of my favorite works in that category of scholarly literature. Moreover, from my limited conversations with him, he seems like a wonderfully nice person.

Nevertheless, I find Saul Olyan’s position quite likely, given, for instance, that 1) it is beyond reasonable doubt that the Deuteronomists in other instances polemicized against Israelite beliefs and practices by labeling them Canaanite in an effort to delegitimize them, when in actuality these views and practices were native to ancient Israel (I think that Asherah/the asherah is a case in point, and Saul Olyan’s volume on that subject, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel, is simply splendid), and, in (inter)relation to point one, 2) it is apparent from archaeology and historical study that the majority of people who would eventually compose the nation-state of Israel arose predominately from Canaanite origins, and for this reason it is additionally clear that the Deuteronomistic historiographical presentation of ancient Israel adopting “foreign” Canaanite beliefs and practices is extremely misleading, because these views and practices were in fact indigenous to ancient Israel since Israel was of (mainly) Canaanite descent. Thus it is not a matter of syncretism at all, contra the Deuteronomists, but rather in reality it was the Deuteronomists (and those who shared their views, whether earlier or later) who were the innovators or revolutionaries in many instances!

I have a couple more posts that will discuss Asherah/the asherah, El and YHWH, and several of these other issues I have mentioned. I think they will flesh out my arguments here, and they fit together quite nicely at any rate.

Best wishes,

TYD

http://bycommonconsent.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/on-elkenah-as-canaanite-el.pdf

I didn’t say it there, but I sort of see the Akedah as an aetiiology for the cessation of child sacrifice in Israel.