All this talk of crucifying Christianity must, I admit, seem rather impious to many ears. For surely our Christian faith is what we must accept at all costs, what we must courageously embrace, bow down before, and stand up to defend. Is this type of fidelity not the very virtue that we witness in the lives and deaths of martyrs throughout history? How is it possible to even contemplate Judas as someone whom Christians could or should consider a model of faith? The idea of Judas as a moral example would be laughable if it were not so distasteful. Judas is nothing less than a monster who can only be redeemed in the perverted minds of those who are seduced by the most ridiculous type of free-floating biblical revisionism. Christ would never ask that we betray our Christianity, for our Christianity is derived from the life and teachings of Christ. Surely then, if there is a human being whom we should model our lives upon it is Abraham, the famous father of faith, rather than Judas, the infamous betrayer of it.
The towering figure of Abraham overshadows the entire plain of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. An initial reading of his momentous life shows that he stood opposed to everything that we traditionally associate with the figure of Judas. For while Judas is commonly understood as having let go of God for the sake of earthly treasure, Abraham let go of his earthly treasure, his own son, for the sake of God. While Judas is the ultimate betrayer, Abraham is the true father and figure of faith.
Yet perhaps Abraham and Judas, far from standing in utterly incommensurable opposition to each other—indwelling two different worlds, separated by two different testaments, and presenting two diametrically opposed responses to God—may actually have a more intimate relationship than we initially imagine.
The perennial reason for which Abraham has been honored with the hallowed title “father of the faith” derives from his obedience to a terrifying call from God that asked him to murder his son as a sacrifice in the mountainous region of Moriah. The story informs us that, in response to this divine call, Abraham prepared transport and enough wood for the sacrificial fire before ascending a mountain chosen by God. Then, at a suitable place, he carefully constructed an altar with the wood, bound his son with rope, and placed him upon the mound. Without hesitation he then pulled out a knife and raised it high above his head. But at that moment, seconds before the knife was to plunge deep into the heart of his son, a voice from heaven cried out, “Abraham! Abraham!” and commanded that he lay down his weapon.22
In the now standard reading of this story, it is said that Abraham acted with absolute fidelity to the call of God, for despite his deep love for Isaac and his sense of correct ethical conduct he was prepared to murder his own son for the sake of the divine command. Abraham was prepared to follow the solemn dictate of God regardless of the consequences, suspending the ethical for the religious. Although Abraham loved his son and believed that he was to be the arch through which his descendents would enter the world, Abraham obeyed God and resolved in his heart to commit the murder. We must not in any way shy away from the fact that Abraham was a murderer, for at the very point when he decided to thrust that knife into the heart of his son, the radical act of renunciation had occurred and the transgression against both his son and the natural law—that one ought to protect the life of the innocent—had been committed.
One of the standard Christian interpretations of this story involves drawing out the similarity that exists between this test and the idea that Jesus was sacrificed by God on our behalf. But is not another analogy possible, not one between Abraham and God but rather between Abraham and the betrayer of God?
Upon reading the stories of Abraham and Judas, we are confronted with the fact that both individuals are divinely chosen for a murderous task: they are both required to sacrifice one to whom they are intimately related, and both renounce their victim. One pertinent difference is of course that Abraham receives Isaac back, while Judas fails to receive Jesus back. But surely this is because Judas commits suicide before such an encounter can take place. The Gospel narratives present us with the idea that a reencounter and possible reconciliation between Jesus and Judas would have happened had he not taken his own life.
The two stories are so similar that we can imagine the creation of a possible novel related to the Passion in which Jesus convinces Judas to commit the betrayal by relating the story of Abraham and Isaac. In this novel we could imagine a scene in which Judas goes on to kill himself in utter despair, wondering why he had not received Jesus back from the dead. We can imagine reading of Judas watching in disbelief as Jesus is crucified, weeping as he recalls the promise Jesus had made to him that, just as Abraham received Isaac back, so, if he had faith, he would receive his Lord back. In this story it would be presented as if it was only after the crucifixion of Jesus that Judas truly loses faith rather than before it. Here we would read of Judas as a type of failed Abraham, although who knows what Abraham would have done had the knife plunged into the heart of his beloved son and he was required to wait.
It is not then the acts of Abraham and Judas that are fundamentally distinct but rather the difference between how they are perceived. The difference between them comes down to the way their motives are understood. For both involve the sacrifice of another and both involve acting in response to a higher will.23
By beginning with a reflection upon Judas (the betrayer) followed by Abraham (the father of faith) we can begin to see that an act that may appear to be a betrayal of faith (that of Judas) could be an act of deep fidelity to it (that of Abraham).
The relationship between fidelity and betrayal in the Judeo-Christian tradition is further complicated in the Scriptures via stories that seem to suggest that one must wrestle with, disagree with, and even disobey God for the sake of retaining one’s fidelity to God. Let us look at three different examples.
First, let us remain a little longer with Abraham. Before we ever reach the story of his being called to sacrifice his son, it is significant to note that we come across a very interesting situation in which Abraham seems to directly question the actions of God in the face of what would seem to be divine injustice. Thus we find that Abraham is not some weak-willed individual afraid to question what he believes to be wrong. In Genesis 18 we read that God is openly contemplating whether or not to destroy the city of Sodom because of its excessive immorality. In the story God is, at first, merely interested in finding out whether the quantity of sinful activity within the city is sufficiently high to justify its total destruction.24 However, Abraham responds to hearing this with a question that causes God to reconsider. Abraham plucks up his courage and asks whether God would really be justified in destroying the city if there were fifty righteous people within its walls, regardless of the quantity of sin. In response, God seems persuaded and agrees. Yet Abraham does not stop there, for now that he has been able to shift God’s perspective and consider the individuals who dwell in the city, he decides to push further and ask whether God would really be justified in destroying the city if there were forty-five righteous people. Again God agrees that it would be better to let Sodom remain if there were forty-five righteous people housed within its walls. This discussion continues until Abraham has persuaded God to hold back from destroying the city so long as there are as few as ten righteous people living there. Regardless of how one wishes to interpret the nature of this dialogue, it is obvious that the narrative affirms (1) that Abraham felt able to question God and (2) that God did not seem to mind being questioned. The story even seems to imply that God wants Abraham to disagree, for why else would God be presented as openly and audibly considering whether or not to destroy Sodom within earshot of Abraham?
The second example goes a little further than the last one and relates to the biblical figure Jacob. One night when Jacob was camped out near the ford of Jabbok we read that a stranger approached and started a fight with Jacob that lasted all through the night. The stranger in question is said to have been unable to overpower Jacob and so demanded that he be set free from Jacob’s grip. But Jacob refused, demanding that the stranger bless him before he would let him go. In response the stranger said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with human beings and have overcome.”25
Whereas Abraham questioned God with a certain deference and respect, this story presents Jacob in a much more defiant and aggressive light. Jacob does not seem in any way repentant when he discovers who this stranger really is, and God, far from seeming to have a problem with such an unrepentant follower, bestows the victor with the blessing of a new name that would come to represent, not only Jacob, but all of his descendants.
It is here, in this encounter between Jacob and God, that we discover why the Jewish community is marked out by the name “Israel.” This title represents the spirit of a people who have “wrestled with God and with men and have overcome.” This name illuminates the living dynamic of Hebraic faith. It magnifies a radical idea that marks out the Jewish people, describing something almost paradoxical about this faith: that absolute commitment to God involves a deep and sustained wrestling with God. In this story we discover that the Israelites are to be marked out, not as a people who live out their faith through unquestioning submission but as a people who demonstrate their love and commitment to the source of their faith in a radical commitment to fighting with that source. This is a people to be marked out by struggling, by passion, by critical engagement.
The name Israel is not some kind of curse, or dispassionate description, it is a blessing. Here God does not merely describe something that the Israelites do; the name describes what they ought to be. The people of God do not merely adopt this name; they are inscribed within it and they affirm it in the fabric of their lives. While the Islamic faith is derived from a word that can be translated as “submission,” the tribes of Israel bear a different name, one that evokes the image of conflict, tension, and turmoil. Thus, if relationship with God within this tradition is to be understood as promising peace and harmony, it cannot be understood as a peace and harmony that stands in contrast to a kinetic life of tension, striving, and conflict. For the blessing that God bestowed upon Jacob brings us face to face with the fact that God wants a fight.
For a New Testament example of this wrestling let us briefly note an interesting event to be found in the book of Acts. In Acts 10 we are told that Peter falls into a trance and experiences a vision in which he is informed that he can eat animals that were previously considered unclean within the Jewish religious system. Here we read,
About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.26
This vision fundamentally challenges what Peter holds to be the command of God and opens up a difficult dilemma: in order to obey the command of God he must disobey the command of God.
The interesting feature about the above examples is that each of them brings the reader face to face with a time when individuals have questioned, fought, and even betrayed the word of God as a direct result of their fidelity to the way of God. More than this, each of these examples is framed in such a way that the reader is left in no doubt that the wrestling was acceptable to, and even desired by, God. Yet the text is structured in such a way that it challenges us to go deeper, for it does not merely offer us examples of people who wrestled with God but also presents us with situations in which we are invited to do the same. The text itself places us into various situations where the God we read about is one whom we must question, not out of our weakness and selfishness but rather from out of the very depths of our faith.
One of the clearest examples of this relates to the first great conflict described within the Bible, the conflict between God, the first humans, and a cunning serpent. Contrary to what we may have been told, this event is not depicted as a great battle between God and the devil, for regardless of the serpent’s motives, it is never described as Satan. In fact the serpent’s motives, upon closer reading, appear rather ambiguous. Indeed there is a wonderful Jewish mythology that claims to reveal the true identity of the serpent, an identity that turns out to be rather surprising. (In chapter four we will reveal this identity.)
The story itself informs us that in the beginning God formed a tree in the center of Eden and named it “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat of its fruit with the warning that, if they consumed its fruit, they would surely die. The truth that God did not reveal was that, if one ate from the tree, one would immediately gain knowledge of good and evil and become like God. Into this scenario enters a snake with an unnerving ability to talk. This snake addresses Eve and encourages her to question God’s prohibition, telling her truthfully that she will not die upon eating the fruit. Indeed the snake also reveals to her what God had concealed, namely that this fruit would bestow deep insight into the nature of good and evil and enable them to become like the divine.
With such an appealing possibility laid before them, it is not long before both Eve and Adam pick some fruit from the tree and begin to eat of it. When God eventually finds out what has happened, God becomes angry and curses them. To the serpent God declares that both it and its descendants will crawl upon their belly for the duration of their existence. Then, between male and female, God places enmity and discord. To women God also declares that childbirth will be painful and that they will be subject to the rule of men. To men God pronounces a curse on the ground upon which they labor so that they will always have to struggle for food. We are then introduced to another tree in the garden called the “tree of life,” a tree with fruit that bestows everlasting life to those who eat of it. So that Adam and Eve will not become immortal, God banishes them from Eden and places both cherubim and a flaming sword at the entrance to prevent them from re-entering.27
From Sunday school to the church pulpit, from religious tracts to devotional books, this story has been presented as a basic tale detailing how human beings, from time immemorial, selfishly chose to disobey their loving God. Yet a close and faithful reading reveals a much more controversial possibility, for this story itself presents us with a deep level of ambiguity, a disconcerting moral dilemma, and a cosmic twist that makes Dan Brown’s latest religious ponderings seem rather unimaginative. Indeed, it is amazing that any preacher would want to go near this subversive narrative or any churchgoing parent would want to share it with their child. For if we attempt to follow the grain of the story we are forced to reassess whom we consider to be just and whom we consider to be unjust. While it initially seems obvious that we ought to side with God against the serpent’s act of sedition, the story itself causes us to question such an assumption.
To be a biblical literalist means that one attempts to attend to the text as it stands before us rather than importing foreign ideas, regardless of how obvious they may seem. In this way I wish to steadfastly affirm biblical literalism; I wish to stand side by side with the Christian fundamentalist who demands that we let the text speak for itself. Of course I also wish to be informed by the scholars who engage in biblical criticism. But this does not in any way stand opposed to the attempt to attend to the text as we have received it in its final form. And so, as a literalist of sorts, I must chide any so-called literalist who would secretly import foreign Greek philosophy into this narrative by assuming that God must, of necessity, be right and the serpent wrong.28 There is little evidence of this reading within the story itself, if we want to read it literally, that is.
Coming to the story as it stands, it is difficult to unquestionably side with God. Upon reading the story, one is confronted with a variety of problems. For instance, why is it wrong to want to be like God, knowing the difference between good and evil? Is it not the case that some of the greatest saints we have ever known have spent their entire lives attempting to be like God in both their mind and actions, going so far as calling this pursuit the highest good? Also, even if eating of this fruit were a cosmic criminal act, it is difficult to see how the punishment is in any way commensurate to the crime.
In short, the story possesses a deep and fascinating ambiguity, so much so that it helped to fuel a third-century Gnostic sect called the Ophites (Ophis meaning snake), who actually sided with the snake in the whole Genesis affair. It is difficult to say much about this little group, as what we know about them is derived almost exclusively from the writings of those who opposed them. However we do know that they understood the snake of Genesis to be a type of Promethean hero who stood up against the God-tyrant in an attempt to set humans free. We can see a glimpse of this when we consider what Hippolytus wrote about them.
This serpent is the strength that stood by Moses, and the staff that turned into a snake. . . . This all-comprehending serpent is the wise logos of Eve. That is the mystery of Eden, the sign over Cain, that no one who found him might kill him. The serpent is Cain, whose sacrifice was not accepted by the God of this world: he accepted the bloody sacrifice of Abel instead, for the Lord of this world is well pleased with blood. And it is the serpent that in latter days, at the time of Herod, appeared in the form of a man. . . . So none can be saved and rise again without the Son, who is the serpent. His image was the bronze serpent held up by Moses in the desert. That is the meaning of the words (John 3:14): “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”29
The Ophites sought to add scriptural weight to their sect by relating the curse given to the serpent by God in Genesis to the death of Christ on the Cross, arguing that both suffered at the hands of the divine for attempting to open the eyes of the people. They advocated a type of religious anarchy directed against God, an anarchy that they believed was birthed from the biblical text itself.
It would be a mistake to think that such Gnostic ideas were rejected by the church authorities because they stood in such direct opposition to the Bible and were therefore implausible (for, if this were the case, then their falsity would be evident to all). Rather, the problem for the church lay precisely in the opposite problem: such a view of God seemed deeply plausible and thus required a rigorous rebuttal. My point here is not to make the claim that these antagonisms and ambiguities in Genesis point toward the existence of a Gnostic subterranean narrative nestled deep within the Scriptures, one that presents God as a tyrant who must be resisted at all costs. My point is rather to show how such a view gained plausibility because the story itself is infused with ambiguities.
It is also worth noting that this is not the only example of the text placing us into the rather awkward position of needing to wrestle with and question its descriptions of God. We are presented throughout with images of the divine that are morally questionable. For instance, we must wrestle with the idea of the God of peace and forgiveness acting as a heartless warrior who endorses the Israelite massacre of three thousand Levites and the population of Canaan. We are driven to question the image of an all-loving God as nationalistic, as advocating the theft of land and of endorsing the ownership of slaves. And we must struggle with the idea that this God of liberation is slow to be moved by injustice, for instance, when the Israelites are enslaved by the Egyptians.
And so, even with the few examples we have looked at above, it would seem almost impossible to argue that the biblical narrative is a calm, clear, and uncontentious text. Rather, the Scriptures reach our ears in an often ominous and scandalous tone. From the opening pages of this ancient text, we are confronted with a shocking series of ambiguous stories and complex conflicts that defy easy categorization and interpretation.30
When faced with these conflicts there are two common responses. One involves attempting to explain them away in an attempt to defend the idea that the text is the divine Word and that the idea of God we find there is in fact coherent. The other involves affirming the conflicts and rejecting the idea that this text is divine. While one seeks to maintain the divine status of the book through calming the conflicts and reconciling the differences, the other rejects this divine status by arguing that the text cannot be rendered coherent without the most outlandish interpretive gymnastics. But what if we are not forced to choose between these two positions? What if we can affirm these conflicts at one and the same moment that we affirm the idea of this text being deeply branded by the white-hot presence of God? Indeed, what if the conflict we encounter in the examples above is precisely what we would expect to find in a text claiming divine status rather than something that witnesses against it?