I do not claim the following take on the binding of Isaac to be true; what I do claim, however, is that it is a possibility that my guess is true, because it’s just that: a guess.

Abraham lived in a culture where child sacrifice was the norm, so it would have been a surprise when God sent an angel to intervene. The moral of the parable is then, of course, that human sacrifice is wrong.

A problem arises, however, if you interpret the Bible literally. Why did God wait so long before teaching man that human sacrifice is wrong? Why didn’t he interrupt the first human sacrifice or, with his omnipotence and omnipresence, speak to all of mankind and teach them it was wrong before any human sacrifice was even considered?

The answer to this is very simple: the story isn’t real. Whoever wrote the story looked around at society and saw the horror that was human sacrifice. And of course, since human sacrifice was a divine command, the only way to stop it was with an opposing divine command. Hence the binding of Isaac.

Yeah, yeah...Bible...crappy attempt at morality...failed miserably...turned into war machine propoganda...succeeded way too well.

quote:Originally posted by Hexadecimal:

Yeah, yeah...Bible...crappy attempt at morality...failed miserably...turned into war machine propoganda...succeeded way too well.

I'm... sorry?

quote:Originally posted by Raw_Power:

I'm... sorry?

Sorry, getting bored with the forums. Been doing the My God bit for about 5 years and it takes about a week or two for anything new to discuss to come in here.

Hehehe, that's true. Especially with this topic, the bible is a story, although if one were to look into it for truth, it would have to be found literally, and generally in the sense that it is something that resonates with your belief system.

Literally, and objectively, the bible is pretty much full of odds and ends and things we're supposed to believe and wrong intentions. Most commonly, there is the whole situation of Jesus being the focus of the bible, and talking about being against religion and establishment.

What's more is that they've founded a cult called Christianity off of the believe that the contacts and messages from that time were about some being called god which existed everywhere.