Theology Today - Vol 51, No. 2 - July 1994 - BOOK REVIEW - The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity

295 - The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity

The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity
By Jon D. Levenson
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993. 258 pp. $27.50.

Jon Levenson of Harvard continues his publication of important books that are aimed at the problematic relationship between Judaism and Christianity. In this book, Levenson takes up a quite specific theme: the offer of the beloved son by the father. He shows that Judaism and Christianity in different ways are saturated with reflection and interpretive energy around this theme.

In the first part of the book, Levenson considers the most elemental scriptural evidence for the "sacrifice of the first-born son" as an act of religious devotion. Whereas Exodus 34:20 provides for the redemption and rescue of the first-born son by purchase, the parallel law in Exodus 22:28 (English: v. 29) makes it plausible that the actual sacrifice of the first-born was indeed an acceptable and legitimate rite that was not everywhere overcome by the provision for redemption. The actual practice could be continued in its awesome specificity in some instances. In this section of his book, Levenson demonstrates his ready capacity to move skillfully in and through a great amount of textual material, both biblical and comparative.

When there was provision for sublimation of the elemental act of sacrifice, that sublimation might be ritual in character (animal sacrifice), but could also be done through a narrative. In the latter case, the tale is often told (as in the Aqedah) as an account of a "narrowly averted death" and an astonishing restoration to life.

On the basis of this daring historical judgment, Levenson offers an imaginative exploration of the theme in the book of Genesis. In addition to the centrality of the Aqedah text, attention is given to a number of other texts. The outcome of this scrutiny of materials is the awareness that the ancestral narratives of Genesis are intensely preoccupied with the theme of the risk of the oldest son in service to God by the father who cherishes the son but is devoted to God.

In the end, Levenson's intention is theological and hermeneutic. It is evident, on the basis of his argument, that the Christian notion of such an offer of the beloved son by the father (compare John 3:16) is much

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informed by and derivative from a long sequence of Jewish reflections on the theme that gave to it an enduring theological authority and significance. Thus, it is a theme common to Judaism and Christianity, which gives a shared propensity to the two traditions. In the Jewish tradition, Isaac is the prototype and continuing reference point for all that will be subsequently said upon the theme.

But here lies exactly the problematic point, which I take to be the focus of Levenson's argument. Whereas, for Jews, all statements on the theme "manifest" Isaac, in Christian tradition, Jesus supersedes Isaac and, now, becomes the beloved son who is offered. In the end, the commonality of Jewish and Christian reflection upon the theme is broken by Christian supersessionism, preempting for itself the very source from which the notion has been appropriated. Levenson, here, as in much of his writing, is especially concerned with the issue of Christian supersessionism, but he does so here without any excessive polemic, polemic beyond that intrinsic to the evidence itself.

Levenson has written a book that warrants intense attention. His argument is a remarkable gathering of data but also a most compelling hermeneutical conclusion. Whereas Jews will appropriately focus upon the issue of supersessionism, Christians are likely to focus on the pattern of death-resurrection and construe the theme vis-a-vis Jesus in ways Levenson, or any other Jew, does not. Thus, the death of Jesus as understood by Christians is not simply symbolic but real, and resurrection is not restoration from a "narrowly averted death" but a genuine novum. This Christian propensity to give closure to the theme with reference to Jesus means that Christians understand this matter concerning Jesus not as the presentation of a pattern but as something intrinsic to the event itself. What Levenson rightly views as supersessionism is taken by Christians to be something intrinsic to the event itself and not a subsequent act of construal.

There is and will be no easy resolution or accommodation of such a deep issue that both binds and divides Jews and Christians. In any case, Levenson has contributed valuably to a new phase of conversation wherein the divisions between Jews and Christians are more acute and delicate precisely because of the undoubted commonality. Levenson relentlessly insists that supersessionism is a major issue because Christians have preempted the theme and that Jews and Christians might have peaceably shared this interpretive motif without such Christian closure. And, of course, the intellectual problem of supersessionism is magnified by the political problem of domination and persecution, from which tension over the theological theme cannot be separated. That is, Christian interpretive preemption goes along with political domination. Levenson invites a quite fresh and specific struggle with the issues of commonality and difference, and his book is an important offer for all who are willing to keep thinking about a problem that appears to be intractable. The fact that the conversation can go on in fresh ways may even suggest a subversion of that seeming intransigence. This book is a must for Chris-

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tian readers, for it places in context much that has seemed passionately distinctive for Christians, and Christian interpretation can never shake off that old and compelling context.

Walter Brueggemann
Columbia Theological Seminary
Decatur, GA