But Where Is the Lamb?: Imagining the Story of Abraham and Isaac - Hardcover

Goodman, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805242538 ISBN 13: 9780805242539

Publisher: Schocken, 2013

Synopsis

“I didn’t think he’d do it. I really didn’t think he would. I thought he’d say, whoa, hold on, wait a minute. We made a deal, remember, the land, the blessing, the nation, the descendants as numerous as the sands on the shore and the stars in the sky.”
 
So begins James Goodman’s original and urgent encounter with one of the most compelling and resonant stories ever told—God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.
 
A mere nineteen lines in the book of Genesis, it rests at the heart of the history, literature, theology, and sacred rituals of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For more than two millennia, people throughout the world have grappled with the troubling questions about sacrifice, authority, obedience, and faith to which the story gives rise. Writing from the vantage of “a reader, a son, a Jew, a father, a skeptic, a historian, a lover of stories, and a writer,” Goodman gives us an enthralling narrative history that moves from its biblical origins to its place in the cultures and faiths of our time. He introduces us to the commentary of Second Temple sages, rabbis and priests of the late antiquity, and early Islamic exegetes (some of whom imagined that Ishmael was the nearly sacrificed son). He examines Syriac hymns (in which Sarah stars), Hebrew chronicles of the First Crusade (in which Isaac often dies), and medieval English mystery plays. He looks at the art of Europe’s golden age, the philosophy of Kant and Kierkegaard, and the panoply of twentieth-century interpretation, sacred and profane, including the work of Bob Dylan, Elie Wiesel, and A. B. Yehoshua. In illuminating how so many others have understood this story, Goodman tells a gripping and provocative story of his own.

About this title

Review

Amazon Guest Review of “But Where Is the Lamb?” by James Goodman

By Wendy Doniger

Wendy Doniger (O’Flaherty) has published over thirty books, including Śiva: The Erotic Ascetic; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities; Other Peoples’ Myths; The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade; The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was; and The Hindus: An Alternative History.

James Goodman’s But Where Is the Lamb? is a great read from the very first line; I really could not put it down until other tasks forced me to take a break. The tone of voice is what hooked me; it’s like reading Biblical scholarship written in the voice of Holden Caulfield. Goodman asks precisely the questions that any thoughtful person would ask, starting with the question of the title, Isaac’s question, and a very good one it is, too: Hey, where is the lamb? The only piece of writing I know on this subject that even begins to compete with the down-to-earth approach of Goodman’s book is Woody Allen’s hilarious dialogue in Without Feathers (which Goodman quotes); but Woody’s language-joke there is that God uses King James English to say things that a New York Jew would say—“Doth thou listen to every crazy idea that comes thy way?”—whereas Goodman does just the opposite: he uses Sam Spade English to ask the same sort of straight questions, and to ask them of Biblical scholarship as well as of the Bible. The result is that the tone begins to feel like your own voice asking these questions, and the book invites you in to ask your own questions, too. It would make a wonderful book to teach with, opening up the sorts of questions that readers as young as Isaac might have had; and it’s also a great book to carry around and read wherever you are. I loved it.

About the Author

James Goodman is a professor at Rutgers University, Newark, where he teaches history and creative writing. He is the author of two previous books, including Stories of Scottsboro, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Edition details

• Publisher: Schocken
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0805242538
• ISBN 13: 9780805242539
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320