Tuesday, September 29, 2020

The Aqedah as hieros logos

PROF. RAMI ARAV: The Binding of Isaac, a Sacred Legend for the Jerusalem Temple. (TheTorah.com).
The Akedah (binding of Isaac) takes place on a mountain in the obscure land of Moriah. When a Judahite scribe later revised the story to have the angel of YHWH stop Abraham from killing his son, he connected Moriah with the Jerusalem Temple, thereby giving it a new hieros logos—a sacred founding legend, to compete with the northern worship site Beth-El.
For more PaleoJudaica posts on the Aqedah, see here and here and follow the links. For additional evidence, not mentioned in the current essay, that the Aqedah was originally part of the Elohistic source, see here.

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