Isaac Unbound

Isaac Unbound is a work of fiction that fills in the details of the life and character of biblical Isaac. People read about Isaac in Gen 17:4--28:9, and conclude he is passive and not an independent thinker. Isaac is not the iconoclast or spiritual pioneer as was his father, Abraham. He is not the scheming activist that his son, Jacob, became. As a result of his near sacrifice by his father, he evolves into a sensitive, caring, understanding person who reaches out to reconcile with his brother Ishmael, with the Philistine king Abimelech, and works to align his values with his actions. Isaac Unbound develops out of the author's imagination as well as drawing on interpretations of ancient rabbis. The book raises questions about interpersonal reconciliation in a non-didactic way. It encourages heartfelt seeking by contemporary readers.

Isaac Unbound is a work of fiction that fills in the details of the life and character of biblical Isaac. People read about Isaac in Gen 17:4—28:9, and conclude he is passive and not an independent thinker. Isaac is not the iconoclast or spiritual pioneer as was his father, Abraham. He is not the scheming activist that his son, Jacob, became. As a result of his near sacrifice by his father, he evolves into a sensitive, caring, understanding person who reaches out to reconcile with his brother Ishmael, with the Philistine king Abimelech, and works to align his values with his actions. Isaac Unbound develops out of the author’s imagination as well as drawing on interpretations of ancient rabbis. The book raises questions about interpersonal reconciliation in a non-didactic way. It encourages heartfelt seeking by contemporary readers.

"The near sacrifice and miraculous restoration of a beloved son is a central but largely overlooked theme in both Judaism and Christianity. This book explores how this notion of child sacrifice constitutes an overlooked bond between the two religions."--

Glory and Agony is the first history of the shifting attitudes toward national sacrifice in Hebrew culture over the last century. Its point of departure is Zionism's obsessive preoccupation with its haunting "primal scene" of sacrifice, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, as evidenced in wide-ranging sources from the domains of literature, art, psychology, philosophy, and politics. By placing these sources in conversation with twentieth-century thinking on human sacrifice, violence, and martyrdom, this study draws a complex picture that provides multiple, sometimes contradictory insights into the genesis and gender of national sacrifice. Extending back over two millennia, this study unearths retellings of biblical and classical narratives of sacrifice, both enacted and aborted, voluntary and violent, male and female—Isaac, Ishmael, Jephthah's daughter, Iphigenia, Jesus. Glory and Agony traces the birth of national sacrifice out of the ruins of religious martyrdom, exposing the sacred underside of Western secularism in Israel as elsewhere.

Now available in paperback for the first time, Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century is both a comprehensive reference resource and a springboard for further study. This volume: examines canonical Jewish writers, less well-known authors of Yiddish and Hebrew, and emerging Israeli writers includes entries on figures as diverse as Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Tristan Tzara, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer, and Woody Allen contains introductory essays on Jewish-American writing, Holocaust literature and memoirs, Yiddish writing, and Anglo-Jewish literature provides a chronology of twentieth-century Jewish writers. Compiled by expert contributors, this book contains over 330 entries on individual authors, each consisting of a biography, a list of selected publications, a scholarly essay on their work and suggestions for further reading.

Are the Old and New Testament accounts of Jesus’ lineage contradictory or complimentary? Is the family tree of Jesus a calendar, and what may it tell us about our own generation? Why was Adam old at 900, Abraham old at 150, and David an old man at only 70? How long is a Biblical “generation”, and exactly when was Jesus born? Is there historical proof of Jesus’ resurrection? “The Family Tree of Jesus” explores these questions, and much more. Within these pages: Astonishing facts and numerical properties about the lineage of Jesus. Historical and archaeological proofs that substantiate the Bible’s accuracy. Biographies of over 150 real men and women in Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam. Irrefutable evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was exactly Who He claimed to be according to the prophecies concerning Him -- the Messiah Whose coming was predicted 40 centuries before His birth. “The Family Tree of Jesus” is a 4000-year journey of discovery: The master list that leads to the Master

This collection focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of current biblical studies, especially the interpretation of the Bible through the arts. Its aim is to illustrate how the crossing of boundaries enriches our understanding of the text itself. Contributors include Robert Carroll, Mary Douglas, Wendy Porter, Edward Kessler, Larry Kreitzer, John Hull and Martin O'Kane. The themes embrace literature (Kipling), music (Bach) and art (Holbein). The editor contributes an introduction and an illustrated essay on the Flight into Egypt as an icon of refuge.>

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.