Bulletin for Biblical Research (BBR) 1991
Bulletin for Biblical Research 1 (1991) 27-40
Self-Consciousness and
Conversation: Reading Genesis 22
ELLEN F. DAVIS
The major task of biblical scholarship in the last one hundred years
has been to establish historical contingency as a principle of interpre-
tation. The application of scientific method to the question of the com-
position of the biblical texts has enabled us to view them as products
of ancient
processes through which they emerged. The present essay seeks to
supplement that line of investigation by drawing attention to another
dimension of the historical or cultural conditioning of the text:
namely, that which unfolds when it is read. The same forces which
gave rise to historical study of the Bible also produced the discipline
of literary criticism, whose concern is systematic reflection on the
activity of reading itself. In the past two decades, "literary readings"
of biblical texts have proliferated in response to what some scholars
perceive to be the sterility of the historical approach. Yet to date, bib-
lical scholars have benefited only slightly from the insights of literary
theorists, whose own art or science has evolved as a slightly older
contemporary of critical biblical study. It is my contention that atten-
tion to literary criticism poses questions about our treatment of the
biblical text no less fundamental than those occasioned by the refine-
ment of the historical and social sciences.
The current generation of professional readers is characterized by
a preternatural degree of self-consciousness, and it is precisely that
which makes their discussions important for biblical scholars. Literary
critics challenge us to acknowledge the complexity of our responses to
the text and the way in which those responses are conditioned by par-
ticipation in certain traditions of reading. This essay reflects on the
activity of reading by looking at three interpretations of a single bibli-
cal text, Genesis 22 (the Sacrifice or Binding of Isaac). Its principal aim
is to induce self-consciousness: not to suggest a new interpretation,
but rather to highlight the presuppositions underlying those that are
28 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
that such self-consciousness is an important factor in the fostering of
conversation among different religious communities, communities
which are in large part defined by different ways of reading Scripture.
Because the three perspectives treated here have been influential
among Protestant Christians and Jews, what follows may contribute
something to the dialogue between those groups.
Stated in their briefest form, those three perspectives are the fol-
lowing:
1. This story is about
sacrifice.
2. This story is about Abraham, the hero of existential faith.
3. This story is about Isaac, the victim who is faithful even to death.
Moreover, I suggest that those interpretations represent three dis-
tinct ways of construing the task of reading itself. Their comparison
invites and perhaps requires some evaluative judgment about what
constitutes a "good reading" of this particular text. But a more signifi-
cant result of this study would be to promote among those who stand
in different interpretive traditions both a self-consciousness and a
mutual understanding that enable them to work more effectively at
their common theological task.
Literary Criticism and Biblical Interpretation
The modern science of literary criticism is a child of Romanticism,
born out of post-Enlightenment
Like all infatuations, it was fueled by the lover's giddy sense of hav-
ing some unique capacity for appreciation of the beloved. For the
Romantics, this meant using the new tools of historical research to
reconstruct the world that had produced the Western classics and the
Bible. The spirit of Romanticism inspired Friedrich Schleiermacher's
articulation of the first general hermeneutical theory. In his view, it
was the interpreter's function to situate contemporary readers "both
objectively and subjectively in the position of the author."1 This shar-
ing in the author's mental processes entailed both a thorough knowl-
edge of language and literary conventions, and also a "divinatory
method" whereby "the interpreter transforms himself, so to speak,
into the author, . . . seek[ing] to gain an immediate comprehension of
1. F. D. E. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts (
and Translations 1;
merle's edition of the notes and lectures composed by Schleiermacher between 1805 and
1833.
the author as an individual."2 The goal of Romantic hermeneutics,
then, was to shine the light of historical consciousness onto the world
behind the text, to probe the mind that had first given it utterance,
through the art and science of interpretation to reveal aspects of
meaning of which even the author might have been unconscious. A
burst of scientific activity—in the new disciplines of archaeology, cul-
tural anthropology, sociology, linguistics, comparative religion—
made available a wealth of material for reconstruction and assessment
of the past. W. Robertson Smith3 and Julius Wellhausen4 pioneered
the application of historical method in biblical study, suggesting that
the customs and social institutions of Arabic culture were related to
those of ancient
Grimm brothers' collecting of European folktales and the excavation
of Assurbanipal's library at
man Gunkel's project of tracing the patterns of
oral) literature.5 His great contribution was to temper the Romantic
ideal of uniqueness, turning biblical study away from an individualis-
tic focus on authors and sources and pointing instead to the way in
which the stereotyped speech forms were reinterpreted and preserved
through repeated usage in public life.
Romanticism, then, gave rise to the first movement of modern lit-
erary criticism; and for a century, revitalization of the past remained
the established goal of literary criticism. But just after the
War, a shift in focus was discernible, when "the New Critics" (
Richards and T. S. Eliot being most notable among them) began to
challenge the Romantic preoccupation with what lay behind the text.
They argued that the proper focus of the interpreter's attention was
the actual words of the text and not what could be surmised from
other sources about the author's psyche or (in the case of anonymous
texts) the religious and cultural disposition of a nation.
Regarding the text in its suprahistorical purity, the New Critics
accorded a kind of revelatory status to those works deemed worthy of
inclusion in their canon. But if the quasi-religious suppositions of this
3. Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (
1885).
4. Reste arabischen Heidentumes (Skizzen and Vorarbeiten 3;
1887).
5. "Die Israelitische Literatur," in Die Kultur der Gegenwart, I/ VII: Die Orientalischen
Literaturen (eel. Paul Hinneberg;
of Hebrew Literary History," in Gunkel's What Remains of the Old Testament (
George, Allen and Unwin, 1928) 57-68.
30 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
approach6 are not widely known or shared, nonetheless its location of
meaning in the work itself, viewed within the context of a literary
corpus rather than of historical setting has become so familiar as to
seem to many the natural way to read. In biblical studies, the effect
has been felt in the production of "close readings,"7 which, without
denying the existence of various editorial layers, uphold the integrity
of the final form of the text.
The last two decades8 have seen the obliteration of the consensual
focus on the text itself, conceived as a self-contained repository of
meaning. If the text-centered critics challenged the possibility or rele-
vancy of entering into the world behind the text, the present genera-
tion questions the very existence of the text itself as an historically
fixed phenomenon. The act of reading is not aptly imaged as a form of
acute listening, nor is meaning a fixed quantity which the text deliv-
ers up when we position ourselves correctly before it. Rather, mean-
ing emerges from a dance between the interpreter and the text. It
follows, then, that the interpreter's activity is no less creative than the
author's own. Indeed, the text depends on the reader not just for illu-
mination but for its very existence: "Interpretation is the source of
texts, facts, authors, and intentions."9 The rhetoric of poststructuralist
heroism becomes most extreme with the Deconstructionists, for whom
interpretation is a dance over the abyss of meaning.
Each of these three movements in literary theory sets forth a dis-
tinct point of orientation for the task of interpretation: first, toward
the historical situation lying behind the text; second, toward the text
itself; third, toward the reader's own situation and concerns. What
different results these three perspectives may yield will be evident in
the following readings of Genesis 22.
cultural tradition that could withstand the social and spiritual depredations of industri-
alism (Literary Theory: An Introduction [
19801 17-53). John Barton discusses the theoretical foundations of the New Criticism
and structuralism, as well as their implications for biblical scholars, in Reading the Old
Testament: Method in Biblical Study (London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1984).
7. The term is associated with the "practical criticism" of F. R. Leavis, who was an
associate of Richards at
8. Within the typology presented here, structuralism may be subsumed under the
"text-centered" approach. This rebellious child of the New Criticism sought to dispet
the aura of mystery surrounding the work of interpretation by showing how meanings
are encoded in a system of intratextual relations. It is doubtful, however, that the struc-
turalists, whose decodings do not generally correspond to any conscious understanding
of the ordinary reader (or writer!), have solved the problem of ineffability.
9.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980) 16.
DAVIS: Self-Consciousness and Conversation 31
liberal Protestantism converged to find in this story an account of
comments:
And so the narrative teaches two great lessons. On the one hand, it
teaches the value set by God upon the surrender of self, and obedience;
on the other, it demonstrates, by a signal example, the moral superior-
ity of Jehovah's religion above the religions of
biblical evidence of child sacrifice in the ancient Near East and with
other biblical texts which record
practice.11 Moreover, it might be argued that the story serves the
larger purpose of the patriarchal saga in demonstrating
to bear YHWH's peculiar blessing.
sented in the person of Abraham, who breaks with the destructive
influences of the tradition and enters faithfully into a new arena of
ethical responsibility.12
Yet the present form of the narrative presents problems for such
an historical approach in at least four respects:
First, there is no suggestion that the command to sacrifice the boy
accords with established human custom: "After these things, God put
Abraham to the test." The notion of testing implies that these events
proceed from a divine initiative and, further, that the following com-
mand is wholly extraordinary and directed specifically at proving the
quality of Abraham's adherence to God's word.
10. The Book of Genesis (London: Methuen, 1904) 222; cf. recently J. Crenshaw: "In
short, a polemical thrust pervades the story in its present form; it argues for the position
that God does not require human sacrifice" (A Whirlpool of Torment [
tress, 1984] 26; italics mine).
11. Lev 18:21, 20:2; Deut 12:31; 2 Kgs 3:27; 17:31. However, the fact that it was not
a legitimate part of the cult (at least from the perspective that achieved canonical status)
does not mean that child sacrifice was completely absent from
mists charge both the northern and the southern kingdoms with that abomination
(2 Kgs 16:3; 17:17; cf. Mic 6:7) and credit Josiah with dismantling of the tōpet ("roaster")
in the
cf. also the heavily ironic Ezek 20:26). Cemetery precincts at Phoenician settlements in
Stager and S. R. Wolff, "Child Sacrifice at
Vaux suggests that from these neighbors it passed over to
(Ancient Israel [2 vols.; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965] 2.441-46).
12. That the narrative is concerned to represent Abraham as possessed of a refined
moral sense is not, in fact, a view with which I would agree. My point is merely that the
argument could plausibly be mounted.
32 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
Second, it is hard to understand the lack of historical reference in a
story that supposedly represents one of the key moments in the evolu-
tion of Israelite religion. If the aboriginal form of our story was a pre-
Israelite saga about a shrine where animal victims were substituted
for humans,13 then the present narrative stands at a great distance
from its origins.
oblivion; we have only a vague reference to an otherwise unknown
place called "the
Third, the present narrative gives no evidence of Abraham's
struggle with the problem of ethical discernment: he shows no doubt
about what God requires of him, nor does he discover that he heard
the demand wrong the first time.
Fourth, and most problematic for the historical interpretation: God
utters no general repudiation of child sacrifice. On the contrary, the
story ends with a promise of blessing, bestowed specifically because of
Abraham's willingness to go to this extreme of obedience (22:16-18).
In a narrative as carefully styled as this one, it is difficult to
escape the impression that the author15 has deliberately directed our
attention away from the historical and ethical issue as the context for
interpretation.
tive, that of text-centered interpretation. In contrast to an historical
approach, here the context for interpretation is purely literary: we
read this passage in terms of the larger narrative of which it is a part,
looking for internal clues to its meaning. Viewed from this perspec-
tive, the words of God's command to Abraham would seem to point
13. H. Gunkel, Genesis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910 [repr. 1964])
242.
14. The Chronicler's reference in 2 Chr 3:1 associates the place with David rather
than Abraham. G. von Rad suggests that "the
intended to claim this story as part of the ancient tradition of
delphia:
do not support this identification (cf.
lical
15. The traditional means of identifying the Pentateuchal narrative sources fail
with this text, in which, despite its stylistic unity, there appear both the Tetragramme-
ton and the generic name of God, generally considered to be here a mark of the "E"
source. E. A. Speiser observes: " ... based on style and content, the personality behind
the story should be J's. Since the crystallized version was such as to be cited and copied
more often than most accounts, it is possible that a hand which had nothing to do with
E (conceivably even from the P school) miswrote Elohim for Yahweh in the few in-
stances involved, sometime in the long course of written transmission" (Genesis [Anchor
Bible; Garden City: Doubleday, 1964] 166).
DAVIS: Self-Consciousness and Conversation 33
cial for our understanding of these immediate events.
“And God said, ‘Take your son, your only child, whom you
love . . .'” (22:2). In a long moment, even before Isaac is named, we
recall the special history and the quite unnatural hopes that attach to
him, hopes which rest solely on God's promise that through this child
of barrenness and old age will offspring numberless as the dust or the
stars come forth to inherit the
Yet in one sense, the command does not seem to fit the history, for
Isaac is not an only child to Abraham. Indeed, his mother's anxiety
over the fact that he has an older brother, albeit the son of a concu-
bine, is a prominent theme in this narrative. In order to resolve the
contradiction, the Hebrew yěhîdkā is sometimes translated as "your
beloved/favored child."16 It seems more likely, however, that the nar-
rator has chosen a word that specifically denotes singularity17 in order
to highlight one part of the background of this event. In the previous
chapter, we heard of the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. Then, too,
Abraham rose early, gathered provisions for the journey, and placed it
on Hagar's shoulder, as he would later load on Isaac the wood for his
own immolation.18 The crucial point for our story is that now, as far as
Abraham knows, he does have only one son. He sent a woman and a
child off into the wilderness of the
Although he has God's promise that Ishmael will survive to father
some distant nation, there is no indication that Abraham ever saw
Ishmael, his firstborn, again. Now there is no mistaking the fact that it
is upon Isaac alone that the hope for a future rests.
"And go forth (wělek-lěka)." That is the same charge with which
God called Abraham to leave all that was familiar and set out for
some unknown, unspecified place: "Go forth from your homeland,
and from your birthplace, and from your kin to the land which I shall
show you" (Gen 12:1). In each case, the command drums out a terrible
triple beat, emphasizing the preciousness of what must be given up in
order to serve this God. But in the first instance, the harsh demand is
qualified by a promise of blessing: "Go forth . . . and I will make of
you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great and
you shall be a blessing" (12:2). This time, however, the charge to
17. The midrash recognizes this, observing that each boy is to his mother an only
son (Gen. Rab. 55:7).
18. For further correspondences between Gen 21 and Gen 22, see Crenshaw, Whirl-
pool 18 n. 31.
34 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
immolate the only son stands alone, in blatant contradiction to the
promise of countless offspring.19
"And after these things, God put Abraham to the test." After
these things: the wild promise that alienated Abraham from every-
thing he had known before, Isaac's impossible conception, the further
alienation of Ishmael. It is against the background of those events that
we are to view this ordeal, whose object is to show whether Abraham
can hold to God so tightly that he is willing to let go of everything
else, even the beloved child who is his only hope to see God's promise
fulfilled. In the Hebrew Bible, no one but Job20 is so baldly confronted
with God's tyrannical21 right to lay claim to all that we have.
In contrast to the history-of-religions approach, this second read-
ing of the narrative identifies the key issue as obedience rather than
ethical discernment. The question for Abraham is not whether God
speaks more truly through the tradition or his own conscience, but
rather whether he will submit to a clear word from God which con-
tradicts all that he has previously known of this God and received
from God's hand. Far from showing the awakening of new ethical
insight, this story portrays in the starkest terms Abraham's blind
unreasoning faith; as Luther says, here Abraham is called to perform
the "mortification" of his own reason and will.22
That irrational certainty with which Abraham journeyed to
Moriah is the theme of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. The thing
that rivets Kierkegaard's attention, and also appalls him, is precisely
Abraham's transcendence of ethical behavior: in his awful willingness
to commit the abomination commanded by God, Abraham becomes
"an emigrant from the sphere of the universal,"23 abandoning ordi-
19. In Genesis 22, the promise of blessing is reiterated only in v 17, where, as noted
above, it now stands in causal relation to Abraham's proven merit (v 16). The tone of
this section (vv 15-19) differs from the restrained style of vv 1-14; von Rad comments
enigmatically, "This second speech of God is certainly an addition to the ancient cultic
legend, though scarcely a later one" (Genesis 242).
20. The midrash explores the theme of Abraham's testing, using diction drawn
from the Book of Job (Yashar Wa-Yera 43b; see Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews
[
21. The Greek term tyrannos refers to a ruler, whether good or bad, whose absolute
power is not limited by law or constitution. The divine speeches in the Book of Job are
God within a legal system.
22. Lectures on Genesis, ad Gen 22:3. Both the great Reformers anticipate Kierke-
gaard in playing on the image of blindness to characterize Abraham's astonishing faith.
Calvin says that Abraham moves toward his son's slaughter "as with closed eyes"
(Genesis, ad Gen 22:2, 4); Luther observes that the whole field of domestic responsibility
is excluded from his vision.
23. Fear and Trembling (Garden City: Doubleday, 1955) 124.
nary human responsibility in order "to stand in an absolute relation to
the absolute."24 The agonizing paradox, that God should require the
sacrifice of the blessing itself, cannot be explained; it is comprehensi-
ble only to one who has taken that same journey. For Kierkegaard,
who found in Abraham's riddle the key to his own sacrifice of a pro-
spective marriage, "Silence is the mutual understanding between the
Deity and the individual."25
If Kierkegaard's reading represents a text-centered mode of inter-
it also presents a very strong view of the text as it confronts
the reader with the coercive power of God's Word, here exercising
that power with an offensiveness that brooks no mitigation. While it is
not Protestants alone who adopt a text-centered stance for biblical
interpretation,26 that position is evidently congenial with a theology
whose essential tenet is the transformative and saving power of the
Word as experienced in Scripture. Kierkegaard's work can be seen as
a brilliant reapplication of that principle in opposition to the rational-
izing tendencies of his Christian contemporaries, to whom he
staunchly asserted the unreasoning, coercive power of the divine
Word.27
25. Ibid. 97.
26. With some exceptions (cf. note 10 above), the current consensus among both
Christian and Jewish scholars supports the view that the narrative as we have it is de-
signed to demonstrate Abraham's obedient faith, and this consensus indicates how far
biblical criticism has moved toward a concern to balance historical investigation with
literary sensitivity. The commentaries of E. A. Speiser and G. von Rad exemplify such a
balance.
27. There is evident contrast between Kierkegaard's representation of the one
whose subjectivity is heightened and transformed through encounter with God's Word,
and the New Critics' posture of objective witness to meaning. The contrast points to the
fact that a typology of readings based on secular critical theory may sensitize us to some
of the assumptions underlying different interpretive styles but is not finally adequate to
the singularly strong claim of textual authority and depth of personal commitment
which scriptural interpretation entails within the believing community. This limitation
is evident also in the following section (cf. n 36). It should be noted also that the three
points of orientation for interpreters set forth above (viz., the historical situation behind
the text, the text itself, the reader) do not exhaust the possibilities among contemporary
secular critics. For example, Wayne Booth, whose work is, in my opinion, of importance
for biblical scholars, follows Wolfgang Iser in locating the "literary work" and the focus
of critical attention in the space of interaction between text and reader (The Company We
Keep: An Ethics of Fiction [
"implied author" as embodied in the text (Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of
Pluralism [
"text-centered" critics, but his sensitivity to the ways in which the reader's experience is
broadened and character shaped by the text exposes the narrowness of the New Criti-
cism's abstract concern for meaning.
36 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
Reading III: A Midrash on Isaac
ham's faith; and in this they follow the majority of Jewish and Chris-
tian interpreters since ancient times. But there has been a secondary
yet persistent line of interpretation which considers that Isaac's faith,
too, was tested on Moriah, that he participated in his sacrifice as a
conscious and willing victim. The notion that Isaac suffered willingly
is implicit in the early Church's identification of Isaac as a type of
Christ.28 But it is the rabbinic midrash that shows Isaac's full develop-
ment as a model of faith. As usual, the midrash finds in the spare bib-
lical narrative the starting point for its speculation. We are told that
Isaac is a "youth" (na'ar)—more than a child—and therefore presum-
ably had the physical power to resist his centenarian father, had he
been of a mind to do so.29 Playing on this hint, the Rabbis break the
silence which the biblical narrator imposed upon Isaac. Through the
medium of midrash we hear Isaac begging to be bound well, lest in
his death struggle he violate the integrity of the sacrifice and of his
own willing soul.30
Yet the most striking amplification of the biblical text is not Isaac's
words, but rather his blood. It was an early discovery; the first gen-
eration of rabbinic commentary speaks of "the blood of the binding of
Isaac."31 And here again, the midrash proceeds from what is missing
in the text. For there is a peculiar gap in this narrative: we hear (22:19)
that Abraham left the mountain and went back to the attendants
camped below; but there is no mention of Isaac's return from Moriah.
And why not? Probably, the Rabbis reasoned, because he didn't go
28. See Gal 3:16 and especially Rom 3:32, whose language recalls LXX Gen 22:12,
16. With a philological play on Isaac's name ("he laughs"), Clement of Alexandria uses
this narrative to portray Isaac as a prophet of the crucifixion: "Isaac only bore the wood
of the sacrifice. . . . And he laughed mystically, prophesying that the Lord should fill
us with joy, who have been redeemed from corruption by the blood of the Lord. Isaac
did everything but suffer, as was right, yielding the precedence in suffering to the
Word" (Paidagogos 1.5, cf. Stromata 1.5). This notion of Isaac's willing self-sacrifice does
not altogether disappear from later Christian interpretation. Although Luther foregoes
typological exegesis, he also asserts Isaac's confidence in God, based on solid doctrine
rather than mystical foreknowledge: "There was a great light of faith in that young man.
He believed in God the Creator, who calls into existence the things that do not exist
[Rom 4:17], and commands the ashes that are not Isaac to be Isaac. For he who believes
that God is the Creator, who makes all things out of nothing, must of necessity conclude
that therefore God can raise the dead" (Lectures on Genesis, ad Gen 22:11).
29. The rabbinic texts set his age at 37, on the basis of Sarah's age as given in
Gen 23:1.
30. Gen. Rab. 56.8.
31. Mek. R. Ishmael, VII, XI (1:57, 88 in the edition of Jacob Z. Lauterbach [Philadel-
phia: Jewish Publication Society, 1933]).
back with his father. And why not? Well, maybe he couldn't go back;
maybe Isaac did not escape Abraham's knife unscathed. So the mid-
rash shows us a picture very different from the biblical one: Abraham
did not stop at the angel's command, the knife came down on Isaac's
flesh, and his body was borne away by angels to paradise, where for
three years they nursed him back to health.32 Some strands of the
midrash develop the story even further, speaking not just of Isaac's
blood, but of his ashes.33 The implication is clear: the burnt offering on
Moriah was indeed carried through to the end. The angels intervened,
not to save Isaac from death, but to resurrect him.
It was in this most extreme version that the Jews of the Middle
Ages made Isaac's story their own. Shalom Spiegel gives a remarkable
account of how, "in the nightmare period of the Crusades,"34 the
ancient midrash of Isaac's death and resurrection reasserted itself. In
the twelfth century, Isaac became a type for European Jewry in its
martyrdom, his binding on Moriah completed in the sacrifice of thou-
sands of other children of the promise, whose blood poured out in riv-
ers for the sanctification of God's name. Desperation drove them to
seek assurances of God's faithfulness beyond those given by the bibli-
cal text; according to their reading, God is faithful to Abraham's seed,
even on the other side of death.
For the purposes of Jewish-Christian dialogue, perhaps the most
important point about the midrash is this: it is as a community that
Jews have found in Isaac a model for their faithfulness. And it is not
only in times of persecution that this identification is asserted; at the
beginning of each new year, according to Talmudic tradition, the
sounding of the ram's horn recalls to God the event on Moriah, and all
of
It is, then, in connection with the experience of whole communi-
ties that Isaac is spotlighted, and here the contrast between the mid-
rash and Kierkegaard's reading is absolute. For Kierkegaard, the focal
point is Abraham's radical individuality; he is the solitary journeyer
of faith, called into terrible isolation from every other human being.
But what the midrash has seen in Isaac is the too common situation of
the victim. Perhaps it is coincidental that in all of Scripture, Isaac
hardly emerges as a distinct personality; he is the least individualized
figure among the three paradigmatic generations of
Yet it is fitting that this almost faceless patriarch should stand for
House, 1969) 6-7.
33. Spiegel traces this tradition of Isaac's death, which became prominent during
the persecutions of the Middle Ages, back to the third century (ibid. 42-44).
34. Ibid. 17.
35. BT, Rosh Hodesh 16a.
38 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
those thousands—now, in this century, millions—of Jewish martyrs
whose deaths horrify and shame us precisely because they were not
isolated.
Obviously, with this midrashic account of Isaac's death and resur-
rection, we have moved far from what could reasonably be assumed
to be the biblical narrator's intention. But it is the basic tenet of mid-
rash that Scripture exists in dynamic relation with the experience of
the people who call themselves
achieved only when the present community draws on its own experi-
ence to activate the paradigms in the text. Recalling the three critical
perspectives with which we began, the midrash can be understood in
terms of the third of those, which sees the interpreter's own situation
as crucial to the act of reading. Although the creators of midrash are a