Ishmaels versus Isaacs

Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel

Visitor TS and to a certain extent visitors Monsterball and bumi-non-Malay all support Shailoks which TS refers to endearingly as 'Isaacs', presumably a reference to the 2nd Patriarch Isaac, 2nd son of Abraham, who was chosen to head the Hebrews in place of his elder & more senior brother Ishmael but alas, one born from a slave woman Hagar.

The three Abrahamic religions do not dispute that Ishmael was born before Isaac, so Isaac could NOT be Abraham's '1st son'. Ishmael was!

However the Judeo-Christian argument has been that Ishmael was the son of Hagar, a slave and a concubine who was not a free woman nor loved, and therefore could not be considered as Abraham's son, let alone '1st son'.

Thus, based on their flimsy partisan beliefs, they ruled out Ishmael as Abraham's inheritor.




more importantly, note how the Judeans (from the line of Jacob and then Judah) marginalised Esau and his descendants in a Ketuanan Israelite move, turning Edomites (descendants of Esau) from Jews into Arabs even though Esau and Jacob were twins of same parents, Isaac and Rebecca


In my post Why 'God' loved Isaac more than Ishmael I wrote that:

The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) was written by various people but mainly by (though not all) Davidic supporters (obviously of the House of Judah). ‘Davidic’ supporters mean supporters of King David, the most evil and treacherous man in the entire bible, and who was of the House of Judah [...]

David was also guilty of many other crimes including consorting treasonably with Israel’s enemies, the Philistines, against Israel.

In the way that the New Testament would not have been written if there was no Yehoshua ben Yusof (guess who he was?), the Tanakh would not have thus been written if there was no David.

David's supporters wrote the Tanakh principally to exonerate his many crimes, themselves knowing of his many crimes and sins. Fortunately for posterity they weren't the only writers of the Tanakh, hence through the writings of those who weren't his supporters, we catch glimpses of his evil as well as the treachery of his cheating ancestor, Jacob who was subsequently known as Israel in the Old Testament.









Tanakh



With such biased authorship, needless to say, we would have Judean (Israelite) disparagement against Ishmael's mom (slave, concubine) and thus his pedigree within the Abraham household, that he wasn't Abraham's 'son' whereas Isaac was.

And if anyone wants to argue that Hagar was not a wife but only a concubine, please read Genesis 16:2-3 which states:

And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.
And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.

Indeed Hagar was the wife of Abraham (or at that time Abram while Sarah was then Sarai), and therefore Ishmael was the son of Abraham.




sorry Hagar baby, you have to go 'coz Sarah is green-eyed but worse is yet to come when her descendants would with invincible bias write of your son as not being my son contrary to Hebrew laws - it'd be their ketuanan bull



The Judeo-Christian tradition has been very biased, even ironically unto ignoring Hebraic laws. which tells us in Deuteronomy 21:15-17, that::

If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love.

He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him.

So, hasn't Deuteronomy 21:15-17, a Hebrew law (not an Islamic one), been very very clear about the very legitimate status of Ishmael in the eyes of God as compared to Isaac's?

Now, it could well be that was how Abraham treated Ishmael, in accordance with Hebraic laws, but leave it to those prejudiced Israelite authors who wrote bout Isaac being Abraham's 'only son' some 1300 years after Abraham passed away, effectively to change Ishmael status and to confer upon Isaac the honour of being Abraham's sacrifice to their Hebrew god.

As I explained in Why 'God' loved Isaac more than Ishmael we have biblical commentators who would even say the idea of firstborn in the Bible (as per Deuteronomy 21:15-17) is often a position of pre-eminence, not necessarily meaning 'first out of the womb'. Wakakaka, what utter ass-shit.

But anyhow, sadly Isaac was the son Abraham chose to sacrifice to his god who demanded he did so. Jewish scholar Rabbi Tzemah Yoreh said that act, that of Abraham murdering his son for his god, broke his heart.

I don't propose to repeat that sad story but to know more, please peruse same in my earlier post Did Abraham sacrifice Ishmael or Isaac?

The research into the sembileh-ing of Isaac wasn't done by Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists but by renown Jewish scholars, namely Richard Elliott Friedman, a biblical scholar and the Ann & Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia. The other famous (Jewish) biblical author who told us what had likely happened to Isaac has been Tzemah Yoreh.

Rabbi Tzemah Yoreh, Ph.D. is a Humanistic Scholar. Rabbi Dr. Tzemah Yoreh is one of the intellectual leaders of Jewish humanism and the head of the City Congregation in New York city. He attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he obtained his Ph.D. in biblical criticism in 2004. He earned a second Ph.D. in Ancient Wisdom Literature from the University of Toronto. As a community leader on the spectrum, he is a passionate advocate for the inclusion of the neuro-atypical in the Jewish community and beyond.

I am currently reading his book 'Why Abraham Murdered Isaac: The First Stories of the Bible Revealed'; earlier he had only presented papers on his dissertation of the child sacrifice.

I learnt one additional reason for Abraham so willing to sembileh his so-called only son, apart from his fear of his child-sacrifice-loving god was the belief that Isaac was actually NOT his son but the son of Abimelech of Gerar who had 'slept' with Sarah.

Yes, Sarah had 'slept' with both the Egyptian Pharaoh and Abimelech mainly because Abraham, being a coward, presented Sarah as his 'sister' rather than his wife, thinking the two kings won't kill him if Sarah was NOT his wife. T'was only after she has slept with both men that the Hebraic god intervened and told the two kings Sarah was Abraham's wife and to return her to Abraham. of course the timing was such that Isaac could only be Abimelech's child.

Now, what about the Isaac story in the 'revised' bible, though it was a very short one. According to Tzemah Yoreh, it was a fabrication made up of probably a very brief repeat of Abraham's story itself.

Then what about Jacob? According to Tzemah Yoreh, there was NIL connection between Abraham-Isaac and Jacob. T'was the subsequent editing of the original bible that the revisionists weaved (fabricated) the story into the 3 Patriarchs. Once I have read more of Tzemah Yoreh's book I'll narrate same here.

But my point to my visitor TS is that there's no 'Isaacs'; 'Jacobs' maybe, but 'Isaacs' illai lah,  wakakaka.