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From: bts@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Re: Playing games with God, II
Message-ID: <5659@unc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Aug-83 22:25:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.5659
Posted: Wed Aug  3 22:25:16 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Aug-83 08:22:34 EDT
Lines: 68


     Todd Vierheller (tekmdp!toddv) has stated objections to
both of the Bible stories in my submission "Playing games
with God, II".  First, he suggests that Jephthah's daughter
was not sacrificed as a burnt offering.  Second, that Abra-
ham expected God to raise Isaac from the dead, anyway, after
he killed him.  In short, that neither sacrifice was "real".

     I have three reasons to believe that the story of
Jephthah's daughter really is a story of human sacrifice:

(1)  Steven Brams (author of the article I was summarizing)
     interpreted the story this way.  While I'm not aware
     that he's a biblical scholar as well as a game theor-
     ist, I would hope that he had checked some authorities
     about the story. (See point (2), below.)

(2)  The reference in the Encyclopedia Judaica mentions
     "human sacrifice" with regard to the story.  I have not
     looked this up, however; I'm trusting the accuracy of
     Brams' quote.

(3)  The conclusion of the story in Judges 11:39-40:

	And at the end of two months she returned to her
        father, who did to her according to his vow which
        he had vowed.  And she knew no man.  And it was a
        custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went
        yearly to tell again of the daughter of Jephthah
        the Gileadite, four days in a year.

     This seems an excessive response if the daughter was
     not sacrificed but only offered to God as a servant.

Todd is quite correct that the KJV never comes out and says
"Jephthah sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering", at
least not in Chapter 11 of Judges.  I agree that verse 31 is
ambiguous-- at least in the KJV.  Here's another place where
scholars on the net can help us out.

     Todd's other point is that Abraham might have offered
to sacrifice Isaac under the assumption that God would have
immediately raised his son from the dead.  In support of
this he refers to the book of Hebrews, in New Testament.
Let's look at Hebrews 11:17-19, again from an office mate's
KJV:

	By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up
        Isaac.  And he that had received the promises was
        offering up his only-begotten, of whom it was
        said, "in Isaac shall your seed be called."  For
        he was supposing that God was able to raise him
        up, even from the dead-- from which he did get him
        back, too, in a way of speaking.

This "Letter to the Hebrews" (Paul's?) is a later source
than Genesis, and, if this is one of Paul's letters, told
from a Christian rather than Jewish point of view.  It looks
to me more like an attempt to find precedents for the sacri-
fice-of-an-only-son-with-subsequent-resurrection than an
explanation of the Old Testament story.  But even accepting
this interpretation of Abraham and Isaac, we can only conclude
(with Brams) that Abraham might have acted by rationally ana-
lyzing God's intentions instead of acting on blind faith.

	Bruce Smith, UNC-Chapel Hill
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