Kugel on Christian Interpretation of the Binding of Isaac Story in Genesis (5/13/21)

This week’s session (5/16 at 9:30am) will include a discussion of how Christians and Jews interpret the Binding of Isaac story in Genesis 22:1-19 .   Randy Scofield, will be leading that discussion.  I thought it might be helpful to readers to have a different view of the Christian interpretation.  This view is from James Kugel, an Orthodox Jew and a noted Hebrew Bible scholar who has considered both Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, as presented in his wonderful book, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, Amazon here.  In a subsection of his chapter 8 on the Trials of Abraham, Kugel offers the following on Christian interpretation of the Binding of Isaac story (footnotes and endnotes omitted):

The Foreshadowing of the Crucifixion

The typological approach to Scripture (see chapter 1) had some Jewish antecedents, but it was essentially a very Christian way of reading. According to this approach, early things foreshadow later ones; more specifically, Christians came to believe that things contained in the Old Testament are actually there as hints or allusions to events in the life of Jesus or to elements of Christian belief and practice (the Trinity, the Eucharist, baptism, and so forth). To put it another way: the Old Testament may not seem like a Christian book, but its stories and laws and prophecies all correspond to something in the New Testament or even in post–New Testament Christianity.

The roots of this idea are not hard to find: as we shall see, certain verses in the Psalms and the book of Isaiah were, from a very early stage of Christianity, taken as prophecies of the events of the Gospels. But after a while, the typologies began to suggest themselves at every turn: Adam, Abel, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and other figures were all read as foreshadowings or prefigurations (figurae they were called in Latin, “figures”) of Jesus. So was Isaac. After all, his father offered him up to be killed as a sacrifice—certainly anyone who thought of Jesus as the son of God could see the parallel.

If God is for us, then who is against us? He who did not spare His own son but gave him up for us all, will He not also give us all things along with him?

     Rom. 8:31–32

[Jesus was the fulfillment of] that which was foreshadowed in Isaac, who was offered upon the altar.

     Letter of Barnabas 7:3

Eventually, other elements were found to suggest further correspondences between the story of Isaac and the crucifixion:

And on this account Isaac carried the wood on which he was to be offered up to the place of sacrifice, just as the Lord himself carried his own cross. Finally, since Isaac himself was not killed—for his father had been forbidden to kill him—who was that ram which was offered instead, and by whose foreshadowing blood the sacrifice was accomplished? For when Abraham had caught sight of him, he was caught by the horns in a thicket. Who then did he represent but Jesus, who, before he was offered up, had been crowned with thorns? 

   Augustine, City of God 16:32

Such, in short, is the portrait of Abraham that first emerged toward the end of the biblical period. Having been tested by God on multiple occasions, Abraham never lost his faith; even when God demanded he give up his beloved son, the biblical patriarch did not flinch. As for Isaac, he was a willing victim, a would-be martyr to his own trust in God. For Christians, the story of that great near-sacrifice was confirmation of the Old Testament’s foreshadowing of the New—and hence, further proof that God had arranged all in advance and according to His own plan. These interpretations, created by the Bible’s ancient interpreters, were then lovingly passed down from late antiquity through the Middle Ages and on to the present day.

 Just a plug for Kugel’s book above.  It is simply my go-to book for understanding at least traditional interpretation and modern Jewish and Christian scholarship on the Hebrew Bible.  He has a parallel offering in the Bible as it Was, but How to Read the Bible is the go-to book for me. 

By the way, I noted above that, in the excerpts I copy and pasted, I omitted footnotes and endnotes.  It is a rare book indeed that has both footnotes and endnotes.  Kugel uses endnotes for the scholar/reader but footnotes for the lay reader.  I love footnotes and endnotes, even in the usual format of only offering footnotes or endnotes.

And, for those who are Wikipedia fans, here are the Wikipedia discussions of the two different views:  Wikipedia – Jewish Views and Christian Views