Deconstructing Myths: The Testing of Abraham
Anicce Crasto
TYBA
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http://childrenschapel.org/biblestories/isaac.html |
THE TESTING OF
ABRAHAM
The myth itself
speaks of Abraham (a patriarch to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, and
therefore appearing in each of their religious texts and histories) is
commanded by God to sacrifice his son, Issac on an altar up on a mountain.
Issac is unaware of what is to happen to him and believes that they are headed
for an animal offering. On the day of the act, Abraham and Issac travel up the
mountain and Abraham places Issac on an altar built by himself. As he takes out
his knife, the voice of God immediately commands Abraham to stop the act and
subsequently prevents Issac from being sacrificed. In the end, Abraham is
rewarded with blessings for his own lifetime but also for his son and the
generations that come from them, for having obeyed God’s command (New American
Bible, 2005, Gen. 22:1-18).
BIBLICAL STORIES AND MYTHS
It is important to
recognize that when it comes to events from religious texts, identifying them
as a myth poses a risk of a negative evaluation as the term myth is also used
to denote a fiction or falsity. Instead, the selected definition of myth that
is used here relates to the understanding of the world of its myth tellers in
the context of what Levi-Strauss calls a primitive society. Levi-Strauss's
understanding placed non-advanced or prescientific societies as those that were
characterized by their lack of complicated mechanisms to understand and
interpret the world around them. Yet, we now understand that these are relative
terms and are used by us because we have been members of said advanced
societies and have therefore adopted an ethnocentric view after seeing the
societies, communities, and
subsequent cultures that we have lived in (Rogerson, 2014).
Old Testament (the
chronologically former division of the Bible that also contains the myth being
explored) scholars explored the traces of myth patterns in what is called the
Near East and found that rituals are essential to understanding Near Eastern
myths (Rogerson, 2014). Rituals represent the signs found in these myths and
these structures are capable of being more insightful when Roland Barthes’ five
narrative codes are applied. According to Barthes, these codes may be found in
all kinds of stories, myths,
and narratives across cultures, thus creating a universal operating mechanism
of using chronology and meaning (n.d., 2022).
Culturally, rituals in Near Eastern myths explain the presence of holocaust offerings that were also found in the Biblical Israelite practices of animal offerings. It is only true that if Issac had to be sacrificed, proairetically, he would be placed on an altar and sacrificed with methods similar to animal sacrifice. The proairetic code is defined by the basic principles operating in the myth through actions and its consequences in a sequential manner. Yet, the concept of sacrifices, particularly that of a father to his own son appeared convoluted to me, especially as we were all surrounded with other loving biblical relationships, the belief in a loving God and our own loving family institutions. Hermaneutically (the suspense factor), the moment that Abraham’s knife is about to hit Issac and the subsequent command that stops him brings the conclusion to a suspense that had existed right from the initial command of the ordering of the sacrifice. As we grew older from our childhood stages, we also progressed in the understanding of death. In this story before us, life and death exist. Personally, the story of Abraham sacrificing Issac appeared horrific. But semantically, the answer was available in the moral of the story. Obedience produces rewards. This obedience is applicable on supernatural entities and other authority figures in our lives. While this is Abraham’s test of obedience, Issac is also dutifully obedient to his father and unknowingly to his God.
The parental practices of disciplining children often involve some form of punishment. Further in the myth, the wishes of a patriarch have been particularly considered in the administering of obedience. This pattern of instilling discipline is universal, where discipline is often explained as necessary and a part of parental love. The hate-love impulses are manifested in Freud’s ‘id’ and ‘ego’ respectively. The emotions can be said to be mutual, as children also experience both impulses. In Freud’s psycho-sexual stages of development, the Oedipus complex named after the Oedipus myth explains that children at a certain stage experience feelings of hatred to a parent of the same sex. Symbolically, these binaries represent universal behaviors.
Beyond the Near East, in both stories of the Oedipus myth based in Greek Mythology and in the testing of Abraham, the former is a biological evolution taking place in stages and the latter is a religious evolution that makes Abraham the patriarch of three religions that also transform the practices and prosperities of those religions. In both cases, there is a moral component and a moment of struggle. If one adheres to the requirements of the situation or stage, there is a blessing awaiting the obedient Abraham and Issac and their future generations while the acceptance of each psycho-sexual stage according to its needs produces a healthy and normal individual for their adulthood (Wellishch, 2013).
Thus, myths are capable of holding ideologies that become important to the people who consume it. In my case, the obedience in the testing of Abraham was taught with other obedience stories in the Biblical universe to strengthen the importance of this virtue in a Christian’s life. Further, it was possible to observe the patterns of parent-child relationships in love and conflicts through different situations. Abraham and Issac were placed in complicated situations by which they were expected to navigate around the unusual and possibly difficult situations with the urgency of decision making. Yet, to any consumer of the myth, the elements around which they are shaped guide the course of action for those consumers who will be in completely different situations than those of the mythical characters they were consuming. This speaks for the universality of the underlying thematic operation found with consistency in many seemingly unrelated myths around the world that cross those structural markers of geography, space and time (Cuff et al., 2005).
As observed, myths have been useful to members of its societies in multiple ways. Yet, conflict resolution and any form of expression of hopes and fears is not unique to such examples of primitive societies. Firstly, the use of a term such as prescientific presents a contrast, because it may be possible in the future of societies to find that their past and our present have now become prescientific. Secondly, following the primitive-advanced dichotomy suggests that our societies do not have to and possibly cannot require the support of myths which would be untrue (Rogerson, 2014). Using the myth of the testing of Abraham, one can see the importance of the transmission of the message of obedience, particularly in parental-filial relationships. These relationships continue to be important even in our so-called advanced societies. Thus, myths and their patterns not only cross geographical confines but also the boundaries of time over many years and generations.
References
Cuff, E. C.,
Sharrock, W. W., & Francis, D. W. (2005). Structuralism. Perspectives in
Sociology, 4. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203965276
New American Bible.
(2005). Divine Printers & Publishers.
Rogerson, J. W.
(2014). “Myth” in the Old Testament. Myth and scripture: Contemporary
perspectives on religion, language, and imagination, 15-26.
Roland Barthes' 5 narrative codes. Media Studies. (2022, August 30). Retrieved September 8, 2022, from https://media-studies.com/barthes-codes/
Theoretical Context for Barthes’s Theories of the Text. Introduction :: Theoretical Context. (n.d.). Retrieved September 8, 2022, from http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~raha/700_701_web/BarthesLO/theory.html
Wellisch, E. (2013). Isaac and Oedipus: A Study in Biblical Psychology of the Sacrifice of Isaac. Routledge.
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