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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

The narrative holds rich promise for exposition. But is it notoriously difficult to interpret. Its difficulty begins in the aversion immediately felt for a God who will command the murder of a son. Erich Auerbach . . . has discerned that this text like others in Israel, is “fraught with background” and is presented to permit free play of interpretation. The intent is not clear. It requires some decisions by the interpreter.

Walter Brueggemann, Genesis The single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life is the open-ended dialogue. . . . To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, and with his whole body and deeds. (emphasis original)

Mikhail Bakhtin, “Toward a Reworking of the Dostoevsky Book” The goal of this chapter is to lay out my project and to describe the methodology

I will employ. Simply stated, the purpose of this study is to offer a plausible and

responsible reading of the interaction between God and Abraham represented in that

difficult yet foundational text, Gen. 22: 1-19. This narrative is often referred to as the

“Sacrifice of Isaac” or the “Aqedah”; I will refer to it as Genesis 22 in this study. My

strategies for reading this interaction are drawn principally from theories of the dialogic

nature of language and communication put forth by Mikhail Bakhtin. I will begin with

some preliminary comments about the reason for this study.

My scholarly interest in Genesis 22 began a few years ago when I participated in

a small group session at a professional meeting. The participants voiced various

responses to the biblical story, but the discussion soon came to be dominated by two

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individuals who put forth opposing views. One saw the entire story through the first

divine utterance, the command to sacrifice Isaac, which he saw as inexcusably

horrifying, and the deity who commanded it as demonic. The other filtered the story

through the second divine utterance, the reprieve from sacrifice, which he thought

justified not only the dreadful test but the God who ordered it. As the two contending

voices grew louder and more insistent, it struck me how this multi-layered text, so full

of ambiguity and unanswered questions, resists our attempts to reduce it to one

interpretation—or what I latter learned Mikhail Bakhtin calls “finalization”: our attempt

to offer a complete and exhaustive explanation of the narrative for all time, and to

contain, categorize and pin down its characters forever.1 Of course, even in the heyday

of historical-critical scholarship, when biblical scholars sought to unearth the single

meaning buried in a biblical text, Genesis 22 defied such attempts. For some two

thousand years Genesis 22 has informed two religious traditions,2 Jewish and later

Christian, whose differing titles for the passage reveal their distinctive interpretative

stances: Genesis 22 is commonly referred to as the “Aqedah” or the “Binding of Isaac”

within Judaism and as the “Sacrifice of Isaac” within Christianity.3

1Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson point out that Bakhtin’s sense of the unfinalizability of

truth “requires multiple voices and languages in potentially endless acts of exploration” in Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 328.

2The Qur’an also contains a similar narrative in which Allah commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, a story that is rehearsed yearly at the end of the Hajj. However, my study is restricted to the narrative as it appears in the Hebrew Bible, the scriptures of both Jews and Christians. For a good review of Jewish and Islamic traditions on the aqedah see Mishael Maswari Caspi and Sascha Benjamin Cohen, The Binding (Aqedah) and its Transformations in Judaism and Islam: The Lambs of God (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Biblical Press, 1995); although the title does not indicate it, Christian traditions are also covered. See also Mishael Caspi, Take Now Thy Son: The Motif of the Aqedah (Binding) in Literature (North Richland, Tex.: BIBAL Press, 2001).

3For a classic work on Jewish traditions of the aqedah see Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice: The Akedah, trans. Judah Goldin (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1993). For a classic work on the history of the exegesis of Gen 22 see David Lerch, Isaaks Opferung christlich gedeutet: Eine Auslegungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung, Beiträge zur Historischen Theologie 12 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1950).

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As I considered the plethora of methodologies that scholars currently employ in

reading the engagement of God and Abraham, I was struck by how few approaches take

into account the multi-layered and deeply resonant language of character and narratorial

discourse when reading the characters. The result, in my view, is that the characters are

often rendered as flat, and their relationship, one-dimensional: Abraham as the model of

radical obedience;4 Abraham as a self-serving rogue;5 Abraham and God as male

buddies engaged in a game of one-upmanship.6 These approaches to the text largely

read out the rich ambiguity present in the discourse. To put it another way, they do not

exploit Erich Auerbach’s seminal insight, referred to by Brueggemann,7 and offered

over fifty years ago, that the characters are “fraught with background” and their

relationship complex and entangled. I hoped to do the opposite and sought a reading

strategy that would take advantage of the richness that characterizes the discourse and

make it possible to render the characters as complex and conflicted. In Mikhail

Bakhtin’s theories of the dialogical nature of language and communication I found

concepts and tools to do this.

Genesis 22 is a highly visual text. This visuality is another aspect of the text

that has not been examined very fully, but I saw it as possibly contributing to a deeper

understanding of the characters and their engagement. In this study I look at how the

visual dynamics inform character dynamics. Also, for over two thousand years artists

4Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), chapter 12.

5Danna Nolan Fewell and David M. Gunn, “Keeping the Promise,” in Gender, Power and Promise: The Subject of the Bible’s First Story (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993); Idem, “Abraham and Sarah: Genesis 11-12,” in Narrative in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

6Phillip R. Davies, “Male Bonding: A Tale of Two Buddies,” in Whose Bible is it Anyway? JSOT Sup 204 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1995).

7Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 185. The classic work on Genesis 22 by Auerbach is Erich Auerbach, “Odysseus’ Scar,” in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 3-23.

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have been astute readers of this text, attuned to its visuality. Their visual commentary

fleshed out in their works of art sharpens our reading of the visual elements in the text

and further deepens our reading of the interaction between God and Abraham. In this

study I propose one way of inviting three artists, Rembrandt, Caravaggio and Chagall,

into the discussion of Genesis 22.

Aims and Thesis

The aim of this study is to provide a plausible and responsible reading of the

interaction between God and Abraham represented in Gen. 22:1-19. My focus will be

on narratorial and character discourse and on the visual dynamics in the text, because I

see Genesis 22 as a text that is designed to be listened to and “looked at.”

I am drawn to examine the character and narratorial discourse because it is full

of reused language that evokes the earlier dialogues between God and Abraham and

makes the speech of Genesis 22 more ambiguous and interaction between the characters

more complicated than is often read. Yet, while the language is multi-layered and

multi-voiced, the visuality of the text also seems central. This visuality is apparent on a

number of different levels. First, I would argue that visual dynamics affect character

dynamics. The engagement between God and Abraham depends on sight at crucial

points in the narrative, and therefore it is valuable to examine how sight functions in the

communication between them. Second, “sight” plays a role for readers as well, because

the narrator positions us outside the characters and positions us to “watch” the scenes as

they unfold. Third, while God speaks to Abraham in the text, the man’s response is

near silent, described by the narrator in a series of scenes that lend themselves to

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visualization. I believe we can discern conflicting responses in Abraham’s actions—

Abraham’s actions and gestures are as fraught as any of the words spoken. Fourth, the

narrator creates an arresting image at the climax of the narrative: Abraham, knife in

hand, standing over Isaac. Artists have variously fleshed out this moment and God’s

response; their paintings can be placed in conversation with the narrator’s image to

allow us to see the conflicting ways of reading the narrator’s image. I will use three

paintings, one each by Rembrandt (1606-1669),8 Caravaggio (1573-1610),9 and Chagall

(1887-1985).10 The paintings are all entitled the “Sacrifice of Isaac.”

My overall strategy will be to exploit the wealth of ambiguity inherent in the

character and narratorial discourse to portray God and Abraham verbally and visually

engaged over the issue of sacrificing Isaac, anticipating and listening for the other’s

response, whether verbalized or displayed silently. In addition, I will make audible the

points of view of various voices in the text, both characters and the narrator, as well as

demonstrate how the narrator tendentiously situates God (and the reader) to watch and

react to the sacrifice.

To achieve this I will use a Bakhtinian approach to engage both the narrative

and the three works of art. While my methodology also engages recent biblical

scholarship and includes Mieke Bal’s insights on reading visual art narratively, my

reading strategies are drawn fundamentally from the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin.

8Rembrandt van Rijn, Sacrifice of Isaac. Oil in canvas; 193 x 133 cm. Signed and dated:

Rembrandt, 1635. St. Petersburg, Hermitage. 9Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Sacrifice of Isaac, 104 x 135 cm, around 1630. Florence,

Uffizi, No. 4659. Cat. 1926. 10Marc Chagall, Sacrifice of Isaac. Oil on canvas; 230 x 235 cm, 1960-66, Musée National

Message Biblique Marc Chagall.

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Now, having discussed my approach to the narrative, I can articulate my thesis: I

see and will portray God and Abraham engaged in an intense interaction in which

Abraham silently obeys but at the same time borrows God’s former tactics to set out a

visual argument (a display, if you will) to convince God to reconsider the sacrifice. In

addition, I will read the narrator’s language as an attempt to persuade the reader to view

the sacrifice as problematic because he tendentiously represents the interaction as a

severe test in which a father is called upon to kill his only son.

To elaborate this thesis more fully: I see Genesis 22 as the culminating dialogue

of an ongoing conversation between God and Abraham that begins in Genesis 12. As a

dialogue Genesis 22 is climactic but also retrospective. The verbal and visual dynamics

apparent in character dynamics depend on the fact that the promises have been spoken

and pointed out; as much as speaking and hearing, pointing out and seeing has

characterized the nature of the communication about the promises.

In Genesis 22 the dialogue begins with God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice

the son that God has miraculously given him and Sarah. By giving this command God

engages in a dialogue with Abraham, to which Abraham responds with a series of silent

and, I will argue, purposeful, actions that can be read simultaneously as obedience to

God’s command and as resistance to be viewed by God and to change God’s mind.

Abraham sets out to show God what the sacrifice of Isaac looks like, and to challenge

God to consider the implications in light of God’s previous promises. Abraham

“obeys” God’s command, but on his way to Moriah he tries to move God to rescind it.

Abraham does this, not by verbal argument as attempted on behalf of Sodom, but by

borrowing God’s own tactics, dramatically putting forth a visual argument, making God

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look at Isaac, as God had previously directed Abraham to look: at the land, at the stars

as a stand-in for descendents. The land itself is a land that God will show—and then

does show—Abraham. Sight accompanies the promise giving; it is part of the context

of communication between God and Abraham. Sight is not only a way that God and

Abraham gather information; it is one crucial way they communicate with one another.

In the climactic scene the narrator presents a stark and disturbing image of

Abraham, knife in hand, standing over Isaac ready to slaughter him. It is this image that

two of the artists, Rembrandt and Caravaggio, render in opposite ways—Rembrandt

glorifies the sacrifice, while Caravaggio depicts its horror. Yet each offers an original

way of seeing this climactic moment and highlights the conflicting ways of reading the

narrator’s image.

What God sees leads him, I will argue, to countermand the order to sacrifice

Isaac and to redefine the notion of a religious obligation. God renews the promises,

describing them again with a visual image, so that the two images of land and stars

merge into one image of landscape. God also redefines piety; that is, God shifts from

describing it as an act of “not withholding the son” (Gen. 22:12) to the stance of

“listening to God’s voice” (Gen. 22:18). Yet at the same time, the image and God’s

words are dialogized by earlier divine words of warning (Gen. 15:13).

Abraham is also shaped by his engagement with God. We watch him take up

God’s language (originally borrowed from Sarah) and verbally claim Isaac as his son.

We also observe a once myopic Abraham derive insight from sight as he

sees/recognizes that the lamb is to be the sacrificial victim instead of his son. Finally

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we see an Abraham, who once formerly questioned God’s words and intentions (due to

the long delay in the promises), name God as one who sees and provides.

The narrator’s closing words, however, introduce an element of ambiguity as he

depicts Abraham descending the mountain without Isaac and so leave the reader

wondering about the actual fate of Isaac and the promises. Again, an artist’s

perspective on the uncertain fate of Isaac enriches our reading as Chagall’s work fleshes

out the conflicting messages in God’s reissued promises.

Now that I have articulated my aims and elaborated the thesis, before turning to

Bakhtin and setting out my methodology, there are a number of procedures I will follow

that need to be explained. First, while three of the great world religions share the story

of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son, only two of them, Judaism and Christianity, share the

same written text, namely, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The third, Islam, has its

own text, the Qur’an, which includes a similar yet distinctly different narrative. Since

my reading attends to the discourse of Genesis 22, my engagement is limited to that

shared Jewish-Christian text (and restricted to current scholarship on it). The second

issue regards the question of how I refer to God. Some feminist biblical scholars make

a point of referring to God as “he” when speaking of God as a character in the biblical

text.11 I follow this practice here, although perhaps guided more by Bakhtin’s theory

on this point. In a Bakhtinian approach one’s gender should be as important as any

other specific aspect of ourselves that contributes to our uniqueness.12 In Genesis 22

11See, for example, Fewell and Gunn, “Keeping the Promise,”19, and W. Lee Humphreys, The

Character of God in the Book of Genesis: A Narrative Appraisal (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 3-4.

12Although Bakhtin himself did not pay as much attention to gender as we might like, feminists have found his theories compatible with their interests. See for example the volume of essays by Karen

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and the Abraham narratives in general, God is referred to by male pronouns (i.e., verbs

declined as masculine singular) and this specificity of gender will figure into my

analysis. However, when I refer to God as a deity in the world outside the text, I will

use inclusive language. Finally, all translations are my own unless noted otherwise.

Mikhail Bakhtin: Dialogism and Utterance

Since Bakhtin’s theories form the basis of my methodology, I need to elaborate those concepts most relevant to this work. After brief introductory comments on the

man himself, I explain Bakhtin’s concepts of “dialogism” and “utterance.” After each

section I discuss how I will use Bakhtin’s insights to read the character interaction

represented in Genesis 22. Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) was a Russian thinker and

philosopher who actively participated in the intellectual ferment of 1920’s Russia,

publishing several works, some apparently in collaboration with a group of close

colleagues. However, his career prospects greatly diminished as the Soviet regime

became repressive; although he managed to survive exile and to continue writing, his

views were often out of favor with the authoritarian state. Later, in the thaw of the

1960’s, Bakhtin and his ideas were “rediscovered” by students and his writings were

reintroduced to a larger audience, first in Russia and then the West. His books and

notes continue to be translated, circulated and critically evaluated to this day. Bakhtin’s

writing reflects his diverse interests. His theories cover a range of disciplines:

philosophy, aesthetics, linguistics and science. The theories most significant for this

Hohne and Helen Wussow, eds. A Dialogue of Voices: Feminist Theory and Bakhtin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 1-207.

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study are his insights on the dynamics of language and consciousness which he brings

to bear on literary theory. A number of biblical scholars have fruitfully appropriated

Bakhtin’s theories and have demonstrated his value in reading biblical narrative. 13 This

study is indebted to gains they have made.

Dialogism

Dialogism is a vast concept and is interwoven into Bakhtin’s thought on many

topics; here I explain only those insights pertinent to this study. Michael Holquist

describes dialogism as a “pragmatically oriented theory of knowledge. . . that seeks to

grasp human behavior through the use humans make of language.”14 It is an

epistemology that depends on the reconceived notions of language and the self that

arose in the early twentieth century in the disciplines of philosophy and science. Many

scholars regard dialogism as the foundational concept on which Bakhtin’s thought is

based and employ the term as the umbrella under which to discuss his various theories

on the dialogic nature of reality and language. Dialogism is a term coined by others;

Bakhtin himself never used it. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist offer this

definition of the term:

13See Robert Polzin, Moses and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic

History, Part I: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges (New York: Seabury, 1980); Idem, Samuel and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History, Part 2: 1 Samuel (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989); Idem, David and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History Part 3: 2 Samuel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); Barbara Green, Mikhail Bakhtin and Biblical Scholarship: An Introduction (Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000); Idem, How Are the Mighty Fallen?: A Dialogical Study of King Saul in 1 Samuel, JSOT sup 365 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003); Ilana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); Idem, The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the Bible (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

14Michael Holoquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (New York: Routledge, 1990), 15.

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Dialogism is the characteristic epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia. Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole—there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others. Which will affect the other, how it will do so and in what degree is what is actually settled at the moment of utterance. This dialogic imperative, mandated by the pre-existence of the language world relative to any of its current inhabitants, insures that there can be no actual monologue.15

Holquist and Katerina Clark point out that dialogism is not simply another literary

theory or a philosophy of language; rather, “it is an account of relations between people

and between persons and things that cuts across religious, political and aesthetic

boundaries.”16 Bakhtin’s insights about self-other relations are thus fundamental to his

theories about language and literature. Holquist names alterity as the foundation for

Bakhtin’s conception of the self. He writes, “in dialogism, the very capacity to have a

consciousness is based on otherness.”17 Barbara Green remarks that Bakhtin’s notion

that our encounter with the other is essential in constructing a self is the “unifying

insight” around which the diverse concepts comprising dialogism gather.18

In this interaction between selves, dialogism assumes that there are always at

least two voices, possibly themselves braided, each with its own viewpoint, set of

experiences, and responding from its unique place. Bakhtin describes how we

dialogically engage each other in an ongoing process in which each approaches the

other with empathy,19 while simultaneously retaining our individuality and external

15Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and

Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 426. 16Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge: Belknap Harvard

University Press, 1984), 348 17Michael Holquist, Dialogism, 18. 18Barbara Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, 25. 19Bakhtin’s term for this was “sympathetic co-understanding or co-experiencing.” As Green

notes, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, fn. 21, 20, Bakhtin did not like the term “empathy,” yet it is a useful shorthand. See Mikhail Bakhtin, “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity,” in Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 81-87 for his explanation of the concept of sympathetic co-experiencing.

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perspective (“outsidedness”) made possible by our “surplus of vision.”20 In other

words, we approach the other by listening sympathetically and respectfully, never

“merging” with the other entirely, but returning to our own position outside of them.

From this outside position we acquire a “surplus of vision”—we see what the other

cannot see, for example, the back of his head. It is from our surplus of vision that we

provide each other with the evaluative insights that foundationally shape and change us

both.21 Morson and Emerson remark, “outsideness creates the possibility of

dialogue.”22

Bakhtin names discourse as the primary place to see the dialogical nature of

reality at work. For Bakhtin language, whether in life or literature, is dialogic, that is, it

is multi-voiced, multi-layered and full of words of ever-shifting meaning; his strategies

center on how speech intersects speech. He identified the utterance, rather than the

sentence, as the base unit of communication. I will discuss the utterance more fully in a

separate section, but here I will sketch it briefly in order to distinguish the three senses

in which Bakhtin discusses dialogic reality.

An utterance (ranging from a single word to a novel) is what one person says to

another; it assumes an author and a listener. Unlike a sentence, an utterance is always

addressed to someone; it is ended by a pause that anticipates, invites, and awaits a

response. It is a speech shaped dialogically: I shape my utterance in anticipation of

what you will say, as your response shapes my original utterance. It is formed “on the

20Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford:

University Press, 1990), 53-54. 21To be thus dialogically engaged is how we author a self, that is, each of us “authors” the other

but also is “authored” by the other. However in this study, I am less concerned with the fact that God and Abraham are authoring selves than in the nature of their dialogic engagement and how they are shaped in this one interaction in Gen 22.

22Morson and Emerson, Creation of a Prosaics, 55.

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border” between interlocutors in conversation. An utterance assumes that there is a

semantically common context shared by two speakers. Bakhtin defined an utterance as

what is said and what is left unsaid but assumed.23 Intonation is often present but the

shared context can be extraverbal, for example, understanding another’s utterance may

depend on sight. An utterance always offers an evaluation. And for Bakhtin an

evaluation always has ethical implications and assumes “answerability,” that is, owning

and taking responsibility for one’s choices.24

Having outlined the characteristics of an utterance, now it is possible to discuss

the various ways in which Bakhtin used the term “dialogue.” Bakhtin employed the

term in at least three different senses, often shifting between the three without alerting

the reader that he was doing so. Morson and Emerson attempt to impose clarity by

defining the three aspects.25 In the first sense every utterance is dialogic in the ways I

have outlined above. Every utterance is shared by a speaker and a listener who have

joint ownership of it and who are foundationally shaped as they interact dialogically.

The second sense Morson and Emerson identify is that an utterance can be, to a varying

degree, monologic or dialogic. In a monologic utterance only one voice, one point of

view, is perceptible. To be dialogic as opposed to monologic two distinct voices must

be heard within one utterance. A parody of an official statement is an example of an

utterance that is dialogical in the second sense; it expresses a point of view that

contends with the viewpoint of the official statement. In the third sense, dialogue is

considered a global concept, a view of the world and of truth. Bakhtin saw the

23Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 207. 24Morson and Emerson, Creation of a Prosaics, 134. 25Morson and Emerson, Creation of a Prosaics, 130-133, in addition see 49-54, 234-37.

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necessity of having a theory about the world and truth that reflects the dialogic nature of

reality. He put forth the novels of Dostoevsky as best representing the dialogic nature

of reality.26 This third sense of the dialogic “insists on the situated quality of truth, the

importance of the distinctive point of view which finds itself in relationship with other

distinct viewpoints—as over against the realm of impersonal and universal

propositions.”27 This sense gives rise to the polyphony that Bakhtin found so

characteristic of Dostoevsky’s novels.28

Yet even while Bakhtin points to discourse as the best place to view the dialogic

nature of reality, he hints that language cannot fully describe that reality and qualifies

the idea that dialogue is essentially “verbally expressed”: “In this dialogue a person

participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit,

and with his whole body and deeds.”29 This view is supported by Holquist, who asserts

that Bakhtin recognized that in life discourse alone is not sufficient to cover all that

occurs in dialogical relationships.30 Sight and gestures can also be significant aspects of

communication. We can extend Bakhtin’s insights to literary texts. These two ideas—

the importance of discourse, and the importance of sight and gesture—have

ramifications for reading biblical narrative. First, it means that we read attending to

what characters say to each other, and what they and the narrator say about each other,

rather than trying to discern their psychological state or their motivations. Second, we

can also “watch” what they do, and consider how their actions and gestures

26Morson and Emerson, Creation of a Prosaics, 60. 27Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, 25. 28Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, 25; Morson and Emerson, Creation of a Prosaics, 61. 29Mikhail Bakhtin, “Toward a Reworking of the Dostoevsky Book” (1961) in Mikhail Bakhtin,

Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 293.

30Holquist, Dialogism, 62.

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communicate meaning. Third, we can consider the role of sight in their dialogical

interaction.

Dialogism and Genesis 22

Bakhtin’s theories about self-other interaction have significant implications for

reading the interaction between God and Abraham in Genesis 22. Bakhtin, having

derived his theories from various aspects of the dialogical nature of reality and

language, developed them with literary texts; consequently, he did not view characters

in formalist terms, as mere types or elements of the plot. Instead, he envisioned them as

self-aware consciousnesses, each with its own voice, expressing distinct points of

views, contending or agreeing but foundationally shaping one another in their

interaction. I will read the characters of God and Abraham listening simultaneously and

actively anticipating and responding to each other, influencing each other as they

dialogically interact over the issue of sacrificing Isaac.

As Green points out, appropriating Bakhtin’s theories has consequences for

readers and how we position characters; she writes:

Characters and narrator alike will achieve their positions and make their meaning while contending with each other. The readerly task will involve not only discerning a way amid the cacophony but of claiming her own path forward as she construes speech in her particular way. The reliable and omniscient narrator is displaced from an erstwhile natural authority, as are other voices long accustomed to dominate.31

Two voices that often dominate a biblical narrative are the voice of God and that of the

narrator. Bakhtin allows us to view each of their voices as simply one among others in

31Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, 27.

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the text. Therefore I will treat God as character who, like the other characters, has a

voice we can discern and viewpoints we can hear. Also, rather than assuming that the

narrator is omniscient and has special knowledge about the characters or privileged

access to the mind of God-as-character, I will view the narrator’s voice as one among

the narrative’s distinct voices.32 One of the consequences of this reading strategy is that

the narrator is not seen as neutrally dispensing information but as expressing a point of

view. Bakhtin did not focus on the role of readers but, as many others have done, I will

extend Bakhtin’s insights to readers and assume that readers can, and often do,

participate by responding to the discourse of the characters and narrators in the text. As

a reader, I will make certain choices, leaving others behind as I construct the characters

and their interaction.

Utterance

Previously, I briefly introduced the utterance; I will now explain this concept in

more detail. Bakhtin rejected the sentence as the primary unit of language and instead

chose the utterance as the fundamental building block of communication. As Holquist

asserts, “utterance (vyskazyvanie) is the topic of analysis when language is conceived as

32Here I am following Green, Mikhail Bakhtin and Biblical Scholarship, fn. 41, 48, who

summarizing Sue Vice’s insights and clarification of Bakhtin’s notion of the narrator/author, describes the narrator as “an authorial construct, part of the artistry of the text, a voice to be reckoned with; it is not found as an impersonal and reliable reporter but as one of the voices performing the text.” Sue Vice discusses these issues in her book Introducing Bakhtin, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 4-5, 41, 67, 126-27, 146. However, Polzin, whose methodology is also based on Bakhtin, in his book Samuel and the Deuteronomist, 19, allows the narrator a qualified omniscience.

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dialogue, the fundamental unit of investigation for anyone studying communication as

opposed to language alone.”33

Bakhtin’s description of an utterance takes shape in his polemical debates with

the formalists, and consequently we come to learn what an utterance is as much by what

it is not as by what it is. An utterance is not to be equated with the sentence, in the

sense that the sentence is a syntactical unit. In contrast, an utterance (ranging from very

short to very long) is considered the base unit of social interaction. An utterance is

therefore thoroughly relational. A sentence can be a mere statement spoken without

thought of a reply, but this is impossible with an utterance. An utterance must have an

engaged author: It is always addressed to someone by someone and expects a response;

Bakhtin refers to this as “addressivity.” I construct my utterance dialogically, that is, in

anticipation of your particular response, as your response too is simultaneously shaped

by my original utterance. Therefore an utterance is marked by a pause rather than a

period; it indicates a relinquishing of the floor as the first speaker awaits the answer of

the person addressed. Yet an utterance is never original; it is always an answer.34 As

Bakhtin commented, none of us is the biblical Adam, “dealing only with virgin and still

unnamed objects, giving them names for the first time;” the topics of our utterances

have already been “articulated, disputed, elucidated, and evaluated in various ways.”35

Any utterance is grounded in the particularities of our shared speech (e.g.

grammar and syntax); it is concrete, specific to our common circumstance; it is unique

and unrepeatable. This shared context is often “extraverbal,” and includes sight and

33Holquist, Dialogism, 59-60. 34Holquist, Dialogism, 60. 35Mikhail Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee, eds. Caryl

Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 93.

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gestures. We can imagine a situation in which no words are spoken and a simple

friendly wave or angry gesture communicates volumes.36 Bakhtin defines utterance as

what is both said and unsaid, that is, what is assumed.37 Clark and Holquist stress that

intonation forms the immediate interface between what is said and not said, and contend

that, “more than any other aspect of utterance, [intonation] stitches its repeatable,

merely linguistic stuff to the unrepeatable social situation in which it is spoken.”38

Morson and Emerson, though, point out that gestures often function as intonation does,

and that seemingly “meaningless” words and gestures “may be complete, and highly

expressive, utterances.”39

Bakhtin offered particular strategies for analyzing discourse, but not for

wordless gestures. Emerson criticizes Bakhtin for failing to take account of “dialogic

36Holquist writes that Bakhtin makes clear that verbal discourse alone does not sufficiently

account for all possible ways of interacting dialogically in life. Holquist then relates this illuminating example (which may or may not be from Bakhtin; it is in a work attributed to Voloshinov): There are two men seated in a room. One looks at the other as says, “Well.” The other does not reply. Bakhtin says that even if we know the intonation of the word, for example, that “Well” expresses surprise or indignation or some other emotion, we still do not know the meaning of the utterance as a whole. We still do not understand what the two understand, what the utterance means to them. What we lack, Bakhtin writes, is the extraverbal context that clues us in to the meaning. In this case, he says that the extraverbal context includes (along with their common understanding of the situation and their common evaluation) their “common spatial purview” which in this example is the room, the window and so on. Bakhtin then fills in for us the extraverbal context that we lack. He writes:

At the time the colloquy took place, both interlocutors looked up at the window and saw that it had begun to snow; both knew that it was already May and that it was high time for spring to come; finally, both were sick and tired of the protracted winter—they were both looking forward to spring “and both were bitterly disappointed by the late snowfall. On this “jointly seen” (snowflakes outside the window), “jointly known” (the time of the year – May, and “unanimously evaluated” (winter wearied of, spring looked forward to)—on all this the utterance directly depends, all this is seized in its actual, living import—is its very sustenance. And yet all this remains without verbal specification or articulation. The snowflakes remain outside the window; the date, on the page of a calendar; the evaluations, in the psyche of the speaker; and nevertheless, all this is assumed in the word well. (Punctuation as in Holquist.)

This passage by V.N. Voloshinov, “Discourse in life and discourse in art” in Freudianism: A Marxist Critique, 98-99, is quoted in Holquist, Dialogism, 62-63.

37Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 207. 38Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 207. 39Morson and Emerson, Creation of a Prosaics, 135.

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situations” in Dostoevsky in which gestures, not words, are the principal means of

communication. She writes:

More significant is that Bakhtin has also almost nothing to say about the centrally important, affirmative, “godly” dialogic situations—if they happen to be wordless. Among these crucial scenes are Raskolnikov and Sonya on the banks of the Siberian River in the epilogue of Crime and Punishment, Prince Myshkin’s meaningless babble as he embraces a stunned Rogozhin over Nastasya Filippovna’s corpse at the end of The Idiot, and–most famously–Christ kissing the Grand Inquisitor after having listened, in silence, to that brilliant and lengthy diatribe. In Bakhtin’s readings, however, only the interaction of one verbal utterance with another verbal utterance can be adequate to the most subtle and multilayered messages.40

There is some indication that late in life Bakhtin began to attend to these wordless

dialogic moments in literature. In a late journal entry he jotted this note: “The unuttered

truth in Dostoevsky (Christ’s kiss). The problem of silence. Irony as a special kind of

substitute for silence.”41 I think it is more accurate to say that while Bakhtin did not

offer specific theories about gestures he was aware that they had the potential to be read

dialogically. This is evident in the quote below where he mentions Dostoevsky’s

remarkable ability to represent the dialogic nature of not only speech but of gestures as

well. Bakhtin writes:

In every voice he could hear two contending voices . . . in every gesture he detected confidence and lack of confidence simultaneously; he perceived the profound ambiguity, even multiple ambiguity, of every phenomenon.”42

I think therefore that it is possible to extend Bakhtin’s theories about utterance to

include wordless gestures, as long as we mark our moves carefully and remember that

40Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1997), 132. 41Mikhail Bakhtin, “From Notes Made in 1970-71” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed.

Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 148.

42Bakhtin, “Dostoevsky’s Polyphonic Novel,” in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 30.

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they are narrated gestures. That is, they are always double-voiced: They bear not only

the viewpoint of the character but also the views of the narrator who describes them to

us.

Yet words are, in most cases, what utterances are composed of, so it is important

to summarize the significant features of the word within a Bakhtinian conception of

language. First, the constitutive feature of the word is that it bears a multiplicity of

meanings.43 Second, a word’s meaning does not reside in the word itself, or in the

speaker, but is derived dialogically through the process of “active responsive

understanding;” in other words, “meaning is the effect of interaction between speaker

and listener.”44 Third, all words (and utterances) are evaluative, and the most obvious

example is “expressive intonation.” A word is a vehicle for intonation and value

judgment.45 As suggested earlier, sometimes intonation is the only means for

determining a speaker’s evaluative stance; and as we noted, gestures can serve to

43V. N. Voloshinov (Bakhtin), “Theme and Meaning,” in Marxism and the Philosophy of

Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 101. 44 Voloshinov, “Theme and Meaning,” 102-103. 45Voloshinov, “Theme and Meaning,” 103-4, quotes this paragraph from Dostoevsky’s Diary of

a Writer to make his point. Dostoevsky describes the interaction between six friends whose only verbal exchange is one word, an obscenity, spoken by six different persons with six different intonations. Voloshinov’s point is that the word carries the intonation and hence the value judgments of six different speakers. Here is a section of the quotation:

Here is what happened, first, one of these fellows voices his noun shrilly and emphatically by way of expressing his utterly disdainful denial of some point that had been in general contention just prior. A second fellow repeats this very same noun in response to the first fellow, but now in an altogether different tone and sense—to wit, in the sense that he fully doubted the veracity of the first fellow’s denial. A third fellow waxes indignant at the first one, sharply and heatedly sallying into the conversation and shouting at him that very same noun, but now in a pejorative, abusive sense. The second fellow, indignant at the third for being offensive, himself sallies back in and cuts the latter short to the effect; “What the hell do you think you’re doing, butting in like that?! Me and Fil’ka were having a nice quiet talk and just like that you come along and start cussing him out!” And in fact, this whole train of thought he conveyed by emitting just that very same time-honored word, that same extremely laconic designation of a certain item, and nothing more save that he also raised his hand and grabbed the second fellow by the shoulder [italics mine] . . . And so, without having uttered one other word, they repeated just this one, but obviously beloved, little word of theirs six times in a row, one after the other and they understood one another perfectly.

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indicate it as well. Morson and Emerson remark, “words ‘remember’ earlier contexts”

and what is often considered their connotation is really “the effect of manifold

voices.”46 Words bear and carry their previous contexts generating new meaning as

they are borrowed and repositioned by new speakers. A speaker or reader often

“reintones” another’s words, and if in the process the presupposed values of its previous

use are called into question a word acquires a new accent, much as, e.g., the word

sentimental was “reaccented” in the nineteenth century.47 This process of

reaccentuation, where speakers “add to and alter the ‘already-spoken’ quality of the

word,” is crucial in shaping a word’s evolution.48

For Bakhtin all language is reused language. Therefore it is important in a

Bakhtinian approach to pay careful attention to the places words have resided: who has

used them and in what contexts, and to listen for reintonation or reaccentuation in the

process of reuse. Green remarks, “where words have lived before we reach for them, or

where they still dwell as we employ them, makes all the difference in the choices for

constructing meaning.” She also points out that as we construct meaning dialogically,

we must remember that words are not owned by the speaker who uses them, but are

“co-owned” and “co-shaped;” this makes discourse “deeply communal and social.”49

A related point is that discourse is not only social but also historically grounded,

reflecting the concrete particularities of its time and place. Any utterance or word is

saturated with its actual historical time, place, culture and social factors. In a narrative

46Morson and Emerson, Creation of a Prosaics, 139. 47Morson and Emerson offer this example in Creation of a Prosaics, 139. 48Morson and Emerson, Creation of a Prosaics, 139. 49Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, 270. Green contrasts Bakhtin’s views with the related

stance of intertextuality where choices for constructing meaning reside with the reader. She comments, 270, “Bakhtin's sense of reuse is more intentional on the part of author and characters, presumably for a reader as well.”

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like Genesis 22 it is difficult to discern cues that give clues to its concrete historical or

cultural situation, but Bakhtin would maintain those hints are there even though they

may be hard for us to determine. Though the historical circumstances relevant to

Genesis 22 will not be so focal as they sometimes are in studies on this text, I will

include useful information when possible.

There is one last point about utterance to make here, and that is how Bakhtin’s

view of the dialogic nature of language influences how he understands characterization.

Bakhtin spoke of a character having a “character zone.” A character’s zone is

constructed by the discourse of the characters and the narrator: what a character says,

including what he says about himself and what the narrator says and other characters

say to and about him. The zone can travel with a character but the boundary is ever

changing as the character’s speech intersects with the speech of another, and as the

context shifts.

Utterance and Genesis 22

Because I am constructing the represented interaction between God and

Abraham in Genesis 22 as a dialogical engagement, I will be focusing on the utterances

of the characters and narrator. Listening to their utterances, it will be possible to detect

their voices and their points of view on the issue of sacrificing Isaac. I will attend to

who addresses whom, consider the context of their utterances, and examine the reused

language they employ that often makes their communication doubled and ambiguous.

The divine voice addresses Abraham three times (vv. 2, 11-12, 16-18) and we can read

these words as doubled by the language of their earlier conversations. The narrator

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describes Abraham’s response (vv. 3-10, 13, 19); however, reading Abraham’s intense

gestures as utterances will reveal how it is possible to construct his response as

conflicted and multilayered. It is also possible to hear the narrator’s viewpoint on the

sacrifice in the words he chooses to narrate the interaction. In addition, paying attention

to reused language will make audible the voice of Sarah who is conspicuously absent,

her words borrowed by the males and reintoned for their own purposes.

Mieke Bal on Visual Textuality

There is another theoretic piece to include in this discussion of utterance. In this

study I will consider paintings portraying the sacrifice of Isaac as utterances in color

and line. A painting is an artist’s visually rendered response to the text and to the

viewpoints put forth in it as surely as any spoken or written answer or rejoinder.

Bakhtin did not speak about paintings as utterances; however, in concluding his

discussion of how dialogical relationships are possible among various kinds of

utterances, he states that dialogic relations can exist between the images of two different

art forms. He writes:

In conclusion, we remind the reader that dialogic relationships in the broad sense are also possible among different intelligent phenomena, provided that these phenomena are expressed in some semiotic material. Dialogical relationships are possible, for example, among images belonging to different art forms. But such relationships already exceed the limits of metalinguistics.50

A Bakhtinian approach thus allows us to place an artist’s visual image in

dialogue with a narrated verbal image so that the paintings dialogize the image in the

text. Bakhtin offers no hints on how to do this. Mieke Bal, however, has theorized

50Bakhtin, “Discourse in Dostoevsky,” in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 184-185.

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extensively about how to read visual and verbal images together, and I will borrow one

of her concepts: visual textuality. By visual textuality Bal means that we should read

visual texts narratively for the stories they tell.51 We do this, Bal argues, reading

“narratively” by means of the visual elements, that is, by looking at the narrative the

line, color, and composition relates. She contrasts this approach to viewing paintings

with what she calls iconographic reading. To understand Bal’s approach we need to

say a few words about how her concept of narrativity relates to iconography.

Bal’s notion of reading visual works for their narrative calls into question the

iconographic reading that she perceives as a predominant reading strategy in the visual

arts.52 Reading iconographically is problematic for Bal because it is essentially a verbal

and antivisual strategy that encourages us to ignore the story in paint in favor of the

written narrative that is its “pretext.”53 The problem, Bal contends, is that we tend to

“overread” the written narrative into the picture and “underread” the visual elements on

the canvas.54 That is, we project the biblical narrative onto the canvas—or more

precisely our interpretation of the narrative—instead of seeing the narrative fleshed out

before our eyes.

Bal, however, does not reject iconographic reading entirely. Rather she views it

as a powerful discursive tool that facilitates recognition and guards against “doxa.” Bal

defines doxa as a culturally dominant reading that is often gender-biased. She proposes

51Bal explains her concept of visual textuality throughout her book Reading “Rembrandt”: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). My elaboration of the concept is drawn largely from chapter 5.

52Iconography is a method developed by Erwin Panofsky. He redefined the concept of iconography, pushing it beyond its minimalist task of identifying symbols to explore the development of an artist’s theme in a piece of work. Panofsky’s classic works on iconography and iconology are Meaning in the Visual Arts, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955) and Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Icon Editions/Harper & Row, 1972).

53 Bal, Reading Rembrandt, 181. 54 See Bal, Reading Rembrandt, 181-207, especially p. 187.

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a reading strategy, “iconography-in-tension,” in which new meanings arise from the

juxtaposition of an iconographic and narrative reading of visual works.55 She writes:

The two modes of reading work together to help us recognize something; the iconographic reading, to recognize a particular traditional story; the narrative reading, to recognize “story” as a mode . . . recognition in turn needs to be supplemented by narrative interpretation if we don’t want to miss the distinctive effect of each work.56

One of Bal’s methods for reading the visual elements in a work of art is to look for a

“navel.” A navel is that detail in the work that does not fit an “official” interpretation.57

Looking at the visual elements of a painting through a navel allows us to break free of

iconographic reading and see the story on the canvas. However, we all see differently:

My reading of the visual elements and my identification of a navel might differ from

another’s. Bal (like Bakhtin) assumes that we read and evaluate from our own situated

place; therefore it goes without saying that the narratives I see in the paintings represent

only a selection of the possible narratives that can be read in these works.

My method for placing the verbal and visual texts in dialogue will be to draw

broadly on Bakhtin’s concept of the dialogic and employ Bal’s concept of reading

visual texts narratively. First, I will approach the artworks dialogically, making audible

the “voices” of the artists, looking at their visual arguments presented in line and color,

55 See Bal, Reading Rembrandt, 186-192. 56 Bal, Reading Rembrandt, 209. 57 Bal discusses the reason she chooses the term “navel” on pages 20-24 of Reading Rembrandt.

She chooses the metaphor of the “navel,” she writes, because “[It] is a metaphor for an element, often a tiny detail, that hits the viewer, is processed by her or him, and textualizes the image on its own terms” (22). That is, the navel allows a narrative reading and encourages an interaction between “word and image.” She describes her metaphor of the navel as she takes up and rejects Derrida’s concept of the “hymen;” and argues that the navel is a more appropriate metaphor for reading texts narratively because a navel is “a center without meaning, it is yet a meaningful pointer that allows plurality and mobility, that allows the viewer to propose new readings to meet his or her needs, but without letting those readings fall into the arbitrariness that leads to isolation” (22).

26

and drawing out their perspective on the sacrifice. Second, I will employ Bal’s method

of seeing texts, that is, making salient the ways in which the visual elements tell a story

that contends with (Caravaggio), or glorifies (Rembrandt), or calls into question

(Chagall), the points of view audible in the biblical narrative.

Though approaching the paintings dialogically, there are several things I will

clearly not be engaged in, such as determining meaning based on the author’s intention,

or delving into issues pertaining to historical reconstruction. However, in so far as

utterances are social and their significance is dependent on their historical, social and

cultural situatedness,58 I will pay attention to fact that the work of Caravaggio and

Rembrandt falls within a particular cultural/religious milieu of Western Christendom,

the Baroque period (spanning the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). I will also

pay heed to the fact that Marc Chagall is a twentieth century Russian-born Jewish artist,

whose body of works spans the period both before and after the Holocaust. One more

caveat: In employing Bal’s notion of “seeing” texts, it should be obvious that I will not

be attempting to ascertain whether the paintings are faithful to the biblical text, although

I will point out some of the ways the artists borrow from and comment on it. My aim

here is limited to reading the paintings within a Bakhtinian perspective, that is,

“looking” empathetically and with respect, and then stepping back and offering an

evaluative (and signed) stance based on a surplus of vision derived from my position of

outsidedness (just as the artists’ offer their evaluative perspectives on the biblical

narrative).

58Bakhtin [with Voloshinov], “Discourse in Life and Discourse in Poetry,’ in Bakhtin School

Papers, trans. A. Shukman, Russian Poetics in Translation, 10, Essay in Poetics (Essex: Essex University Press, 1983),18-19.

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Outsidedness and surplus of vision are crucial in viewing works of art, just as in

dialogue. For Bakhtin this outside evaluation provided by the other is essential; he

argued that a work of art is not complete without a viewer.59 As Caryl Emerson

emphasizes, understanding always requires at least two consciousnesses. She observes:

For Bakhtin, art requires above all a second self who perceives the creation as art, that is, as a finalized object viewed from the outside. There must be someone exercising a surplus of vision with respect to the event. In this regard, of course, artistic creators and their audiences are functionally indistinguishable, in that both must remain outside their heroes’ event in space and time. So important is the shared status of outsidedness that Bakhtin frequently combines the author with the spectator or contemplator into a single composite term, avtor/sozertsatel.60

To invite the artists into the conversation on Genesis 22 is a mutually shaping

endeavor: By participating in the visual texts, our understanding of the verbal (biblical)

text is enhanced.

Historically Situating the Utterance of Genesis 22

The remaining topic to discuss in light of methodology is how to situate Genesis

22 historically. Before doing so, I will state the assumptions with which I will approach

the text. First, this study is literary, rather than historical in nature; that is, I concentrate

on the representation of the interaction between the characters God and Abraham, and

focus specifically on character and narrator discourse. Second, I am reading the

narrative as an artistic representation, not as a depiction of actual historical event; I

presume that the narrative’s aims are more ideological than historical. Third, while I

59The classic work that discusses Bakhtin’s concept of outsidedness in relation to the visual arts

is Deborah J. Haynes’s, Bakhtin and the Visual Arts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Her chapter on outsidedness is found on pages 71-100.

60Caryl Emerson, First Hundred Years, 217.

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assume that Genesis 22 has a complex compositional history, I also assume that it has

been sufficiently edited to be read in its final form as a coherent whole. I will take this

same view in approaching the overall Abraham narrative (i.e. Genesis 12-25).61 Fourth,

I presuppose, with Bakhtin, that the narratorial and character discourse is saturated with

the particularities of its actual historical period. In fact, Bakhtin warned that, because

utterances are permeated with their specific historical, social and cultural context, we

are in danger of misunderstanding the significance of an utterance if we lack knowledge

of its context.62

However, it is not easy to date or historically situate Genesis 22, and as of yet,

no new scholarly consensus has emerged to replace the once reigning documentary

hypothesis that designated Genesis 22 as an Elohist text.63 Therefore in dating Genesis

22 I will follow E. T. Mullen who identifies the post-exilic period as the time when the

diverse materials of Pentateuchal literature, and hence Genesis 22, were gathered,

61That is, I recognize that authorial intention is perceptible in the text; however it is made visible

by means of readerly construction of the narrative. 62Mikhail Bakhtin [with V. N. Voloshinov], Bakhtin School Papers, 18-19. V. N. Voloshinov, (with Bakhtin) describes what is meant by the “significance” of an utterance.

The significance of an utterance is its theme (rather than its meaning). A theme is unitary, irreproducible, and individual. A theme is “the expression of the concrete historical situation that engendered the utterance” at the time it is uttered. An utterance is incomprehensible apart from its concrete, specific historical/social circumstances, and the common assumptions shared by speakers. Meaning on the other hand is the “technical apparatus for the implementation of a theme.” Meaning covers those aspects of an utterance that are reproducible and self-identical. For example Voloshinov, in “Theme and Meaning,” 99-100, asks us to consider the question: “What time is it?” He points out that the theme of the utterance differs each time it is asked (for one, because time has passed and the concrete historical situation has changed.) Whereas the meaning of the utterance, “What time is it” remains the same regardless of whenever or whatever situation one is in when asking the question.

63 For scholars who provide a more recent defense of the Elohist see Robert B. Coote, In Defense of Revolution: The Elohist History (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991); Anthony F. Campbell and Mark A. O’Brien, Sources of the Pentatuech: Texts, Introductions, and Annotations, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993); Sean McEvenue, “The Elohist Text,” in Interpreting the Pentateuch (Collegeville: Michael Glazier Book/The Liturgical Press, 1990); Idem, “The Elohist at Work,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 96 (1984): 315-332.

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redacted and transformed into scripture.64 So although the narrative of Genesis 22 is

“set” by the narrator/author in patriarchal times, I am assuming that the intended

audience is the diverse community of the post-exilic period in Judah (that is, fifth

century BCE or later). No doubt other readers have convincingly argued for other

periods.

There are a number of things that make it plausible to ground the discourse of

Genesis 22 in the early post-exilic period. The restoration community was composed of

at least two groups: the exiles from Babylon, i.e., “returnees,” and those who had

remained in Judah during the exilic period, i.e., the “remained.” Mullen makes three

points about this period that are relevant to this study: First, he argues that the group

responsible for fashioning the Pentateuch narrative were the exiles (i.e., temple staff,

especially guild scribes and professional scribes of the Persian governor) who were

born, raised and trained in Babylon or Persia.65 Second, he argues that this period was a

time in which religious rituals were transformed and folk traditions were developed, as

the post-exilic community shaped and consolidated its distinctive ethnic identity.66

Third, he notes that the sacrificial system was at the heart of worship, he writes:

In order to understand the reformulation of the identity of “Israel,” one must reckon with the centrality of the priesthood and the temple, as well as with the requirements for sacrifice and ritual performances. There can be little doubt, in historical terms, that these matters were at the heart of the temple-centered religious community that was established in Jerusalem during the Persian period

64Mullen, Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations: A New Approach to the Formation of the

Pentateuch (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 14, places the process for the “literature” of the Tetrateuch/Pentateuch being transformed into “scripture” somewhere between 500-150 BCE, that is, in the Persian and Hellenistic periods.

65Mullen in Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations, 13-14. In the same work (38) Mullen makes the point that, as far as we can surmise, none of the actual exiles from Judah “returned”; those we call the “returnees” had never actually lived in Judah.

66Mullen, Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations, 12.

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and which continued to develop around that focal point until the Great War against Rome (66-79 CE).67

In this diverse community, composed of both exiles and those who had remained, one

can imagine that there would have been varied views expressed not only concerning

various ritual practices but also in regard to the rationale or justification for them. It is

possible that the practice of child sacrifice, or its place as a foundational idea within the

religious ideology of the community, was an issue. It is beyond the scope of this

dissertation to pursue or demonstrate this point; however the work of several scholars

renders it plausible enough for heuristic purposes. Jon Levenson provocatively

contends that at some point in Israel’s history child sacrifice was considered a

legitimate form of Yahwistic worship and that even after its eradication and

transformation the idea/ideal of the donation of the first-born to the deity remained

powerful in the religious ideology of ancient Israel.68 And, as Joseph Prentiss points

out, there is no hard evidence that child sacrifice was practiced in Babylon, but the

evidence offered is often weak and inconclusive.69 In addition, the Babylonia and

67Mullen, Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations, 16. 68Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of

Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). How the ancient Israelites viewed child sacrifice, whether it was considered a foreign import or a part of the official religion, are issues actively debated by biblical scholars. Levenson provides a good summary of the scholarship and the main issues in the debate in the first chapter of his book. Patrick D. Miller, in The Religion of Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 59, suggests that child sacrifice was brought into Israel from outside, incorporated into the Yahwistic worship by way of Phoenicia, sometime in the eighth to seventh centuries. It was most likely practiced by the upper classes or members of the court. He remarks that it seems that the practice was continued or revived in the post-exilic period. He argues that, as yet, there is no archeological evidence that sacrifice was practiced in Israel, but mentions that some scholars have argued that tophets (cult locations for sacrificing children/burning corpses) have been found in Syria-Palestine.

69Joseph J. Prentiss notes the two references often named—the burial of soldiers at the Royal Tombs at Ur and the Assyrian texts of the ninth through the seventh centuries BCE alleging that babies were immolated to the divinities Adad and Ishtar—have been understood variously by different scholars. See his discussion in “The Sacrifice of Isaac: A Comparative View,” in The Bible in the Light of Cuneiform Literature: Scripture in Context III, ed. William W. Hallo, Bruce William Jones, Gerald L. Mattingly (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 208.

31

Israelite sacrificial rituals were founded on different sacrificial ideologies.70 Babylon of

course was where the “returnees,” especially those responsible for editing/compiling the

Pentateuch, had lived previously. The work of these scholars makes it possible to

imagine that at least two divergent views about child sacrifice were circulating in the

restoration community as rituals were reapplied and transformed.

My point is not to prove these theories by analyzing character and narratorial

discourse in Genesis 22, but to use them heuristically to provide a sociocultural and

historical backdrop against which to read the narrative. So as I read/construct the

interaction between God and Abraham represented in Genesis 22 I will make three

assumptions. First, that Genesis 22 is addressed to a post-exilic community in the

process of rethinking and redefining their religious rituals as they are shaping

themselves into a distinctive community. Second, I will assume (with Levenson) that

the donation of the first-born is a powerful religious idea/ideal extant in the community.

And third, I maintain that the discourse of Genesis 22 reflects a debate over its place in

the religious ideology of the community’s ritual.

70Katz notes that animal sacrifice in Mesopotamian religion is part of the larger ritual action of

“feeding the gods,” whereas in biblical sacrifice it is a self-contained ritual action, and understood as a ransom or expiation; see Marilyn A. Katz, “Problems of Sacrifice in Ancient Cultures,” in The Bible in the Light of Cuneiform Literature, 89-201. Lambert reinforces Katz’s point, and contrasts the religious ritual slaughter of biblical religion with the “butchering” for food (for the gods) in Babylonian religion. In addition he argues that there was no custom of burning sacrificial victims in the Babylonian practice of sacrifice; see W.G. Lambert, “Donations of Food and Drink to the Gods in Ancient Mesopotamia” in Ritual and Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, ed. J. Quaegebeur (Leuven: Peeters Press, 1993), 191-194. Leichty points out that sacrifice in Mesopotamian religious ideology takes places within the larger framework of divination, see E. Leichty, “Ritual, ‘Sacrifice,’ and Divination in Mesopotamia” in Ritual and Sacrifice, 237-242. I thank Mary Frances Wogec for pointing me towards the sources on Mesopotamian sacrifice.

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Individual Chapters

Now that I have set out my goals, explained my project, introduced the theorists

I will use, and described my methodology, I will briefly summarize the content of the

remaining chapters.

In chapter 2 I lay the groundwork for the interaction between God and Abraham

in Genesis 22 by collecting the pertinent material from their previous interactions in

Genesis chapters 12-21. In examining character and narratorial discourse my focus will

be on the content and context of their past utterances, and on how sight functions in

their communication.

In chapter 3, after discussing how the narrator’s utterance situates the reader in

Genesis 22, I explore how God’s reuse of language doubles his command in a number

of ways, rendering it less straightforward than is normally assumed, and complicating

his engagement with Abraham. In addition, I will construct a measure of conflictedness

in God’s language about Isaac, who the deity describes as a beloved sacrificial victim.

In chapter 4 I demonstrate how the actions and gestures that comprise

Abraham’s near-silent response (Gen. 22: 3-10) can be read as conflict-ridden: as

obedience but also an argument against sacrificing Isaac. I also analyze how the

narrator visually and verbally presents the sacrifice and makes salient Abraham’s and

his own ambivalence towards the sacrifice.

In chapter 5 I demonstrate how sight and insight figure significantly in the

character interaction: Due to what he sees, God is moved to stop the sacrifice as well as

to redefine religious obedience. At the same time we watch as Abraham derives insight

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from sight, and comes to “see” God’s provision. In addition, I discuss the narrator’s

disturbing ending in which Isaac is out of view.

In chapter 6 I extend Bakhtin’s theories, with the aid of Mieke Bal, to a different

medium, inviting the artists Rembrandt, Caravaggio and Chagall into the conversation

to make visible the possible contradictory ways of “seeing” the climactic image of

Abraham, knife in hand, on the verge of slaughtering Isaac (Gen. 22:9-10). In my

reading the artists reintone this image in dramatically different ways as each constructs

a “commentary” on Genesis 22 in his own style.

In my conclusion, I provide a number of summary observations about the gains

made by employing Bakhtin’s strategies to read the richly resonant character and

narratorial discourse of Genesis 22.

So with the whole project sketched, the next task is to turn to the Abraham

narratives and collect the necessary materials from chapters 12-21 to situate us to read

the climactic interaction between God and Abraham in Genesis 22.