The Trojan Horse in Our Theology Part 1
The Odyssey recently came out, providing a fresh version of the story passed on through generations and captured in written form by Homer. In response to the recent release, I picked up a copy of the Iliad. When reading Homer’s epic poetry, recorded in the eighth century BC, about events set in the 13th century, it’s hard to not notice structural similarities in the biblical narrative. The telling of Israel’s pre-exilic existence reached its final form in the 6th century BC, but it concludes a history that goes back beyond the 13th century.
The histories in either case are not told for the first time. Both are bringing prior oral traditions and written records into a fixed form that has persisted. While there are differences for sure, it’s hard to miss that both narratives come from a similar cultural
river.
On the surface one obvious place to look is the human-divine interactions. In both narratives, these interactions between divinity and humans are often mediated through prophets with signs, visions and oracles. The prayers and prophecies are communication between the human and divine realm, and sacrifices (animal, drink offerings, etc.) are seen as the way to influence the divine disposition towards the humans who offer them.
While at a surface level there are similarities, there is a Trojan Horse that’s often allowed in when we don’t pay attention to important differences. It can appear that in both stories that sacrifices are offered to appease divine wrath or win their favor. King
Agamemnon at one point says, “...Zeus’s heart has turned—his mighty heart is set on Hector’s offerings more than ours. I’ve never seen or heard tell of a single man wreaking so much havoc in one day as Hector, Zeus’s favorite..." (Iliad, Book 10, lines
51-55)
In Homer, the gods are capricious. Their favor can come and go and sacrifices serve as a quid pro quo. The relationship is transactional with humans providing meat and drink to gain a divine advantage in life. While the biblical narrative might seem to share this view, there’s a subtext through the story that says otherwise.
The Altar of Sacrifice Reimagined
The earliest sacrifices reported in the biblical narrative are from Cain and Abel. Keep in mind the event and the writing of the event are separated by millennia. The biblical narrative, looking deep in to the past, describes the sacrifices offered as a human idea. There is nothing in Genesis that says that Yahweh demanded or asked for a sacrifice. A plain reading would suggest that the offerings were a human idea.
Setting aside a review of every altar, we can trace a pattern. To be clear, Yahweh does prescribe sacrifices, but he takes a familiar human intuition and cultural practice and infuses it with deeper meaning. They become a divine object lesson—using what is already known to humanity to reveal something far beyond culture-based expectations.
Although Yahweh would use sacrifices to impart understanding, the use was designed with a planned obsolescence: repeated animal sacrifices were a temporary object lesson pointing forward to the ultimate, once-for-all sacrifice where God would provide
the offering himself.
While on first reading, we can still hear ‘divine wrath turned away by animal sacrifice’, the overall narrative offers something deeper. This is where the biblical narrative departs from the common cultural touch points. One place we hear the whisper is in
Abraham’s binding of Isaac. Abraham heads up Mount Moriah. He takes two servants, wood, fire, and a knife, along with his son Isaac. Isaac recognizes the preparation for a sacrifice and ominously asks, “The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb”
(noticeably leaving out the knife from his list).
The whisper is in Abraham’s response “God will provide the lamb”. In the immediate context, it represents Abraham’s hope that his son will be spared, but in the bigger scriptural narrative, this is the departure from surrounding pagan culture. The gods
were not the ones to provide sacrifices. To a modern reader this might sound like a small variation but for an ancient reader the idea that a god would provide a sacrifice was a radical breach of protocol.
The Whisper Becomes a Shout
The whisper about the God who provides a sacrifice grows into a full shout in the New Testament. In 1 John 4:10 we read, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice (hilasmon) for our sins.” Paul puts it this way about Jesus in Romans 3:25, "God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, (hilasterion) through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith".
The common practice in the Greek pagan world was for humans to provide a sacrifice for the gods to win their favor. In a complete turn on this practice, John tells us that God has provided the sacrifice (his own son), in order to demonstrate his love and desire to bring humans back into right relationship with him. What John gives us is not a blood-thirsty deity who needs his wrath appeased. Rather this God is love and is the one who provides to restore connection.
The biblical narrative reveals not a moody god, but a God whose wrath is the protective, passionate energy of his love confronting the injustice that corrupts his good creation. A god that doesn’t have wrath is a god that doesn’t love. The God that the psalmist gives witness to ‘displays his wrath every day’ (7:11).
So while the ancient narratives seem common on the surface, the biblical narrative turns the expectation on its head and reveals something that surprises human expectation - the God who loves and provides the offering, so that divine-human relations can be set right.
Comments
Post a Comment