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This chapter takes issue with something fundamental in the overall outlook of many of the contributors to the volume. It sketches a traditional religious approach that nevertheless agrees with the critics on the ethical awfulness of some of what the Hebrew Bible attributes to God. The approach draws its inspiration from Jewish tradition, and focuses special attention on the Akedah and the Book of Job, stories that present extreme challenges to the conception of God as ethically perfect. These stories, it is argued, have great religious power and meaning, which is not to say that we understand God's role in them, his attitude towards his beloved, what he allows, commands, mandates. The chapter ends with some speculations about what we might make of God's treatment of Abraham and Job.

The chapter states how Abraham’s story and the Akedah Model are relevant to the study of Job as a historical counterfeit. It discusses how Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac and how his faith was not really tested as God “saved” him from doing so. The same event is made known today by Shalom Spiegel who collected and analyzed it in his book, “The Last Trial.” Spiegel also notes that the story in Akedah has very ancient reverberations and how the story of Abraham and Isaac can be compared with Jephthah and his daughter in Judges 11. The Akedah whose basic theme tells of a son almost sacrificed but was saved by a merciful God at the last moment and Abraham’s story is best seen as a musical counterpoint where traditions that form a biblical narrative are best understood when heard together rather than isolated and analyzed as discrete identities. Spiegel considers the Akedah as a model that will help with the understanding of the book of Job.

To further understand the story of Job and how he is the most patient of men, the linear reading of the book of Job specifically in relation to the dating of the Prologue/Epilogue and the Poem is not advisable. Avi Hurtz made a study on the language of the prose sections of Job which points out the role Satan plays in the life of Job but not a single verse in its poetic section at the same time not leaving any trace in the Epilogue. The question is what accounts for the presence of the Satan in the authorized version of the book. The chapter also makes connections with the Joban tradition and the Akedah which both deal with patriarchal figures subjected to severe testing by God. Like the ancient Akedah, the riginal Job story is considered more comprehensive than the one found in the book’s authorized version. It is important, though, that the polyphonic relationship between what is ancient and what is authorized is not neglected or else it will not be the story of Job at all. The ancient story of Job and the authorized version from the Prose Frame Story have the same contrapuntal relationship as the ancient and authorized stories of Akedah. The chapter also shows how Ezekiel equates Job with two other well-known legendary figures—Noah and Danel, all considered as righteous men.

This chapter takes issue with something fundamental in the outlook of many religious people. It sketches a traditional religious approach that nevertheless agrees with religion’s critics on the ethical awfulness of some of what the Hebrew Bible attributes to God. The approach draws its inspiration from Jewish tradition, and focuses special attention on the Akedah and the Book of Job, stories that present extreme challenges to the conception of God as ethically perfect. These stories, it is argued, have great religious power and meaning, which is not to say that we understand God’s role in them, His attitude towards his beloved, what He allows, commands, mandates. The chapter ends with some speculations about what we might make of God’s treatment of Abraham and Job.

After Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70CE, Jewish tradition reimagined animal sacrifices as devotional acts, such as prayer, fasting, and study of Torah, as well as giving up individual desires to fulfil God’s will. Rabbis interpreted the story of Abraham’s binding Isaac for sacrifice (the Akedah) as the model of absolute obedience to divine commands (mitzvoth) and as the basis for the election of the Jewish people to bear witness to the one God. Their commentary, however, included the horrified reaction of Sarah’s scream to the news of Abraham’s act, ending in her death, indicating dissent from sacrifice as religious ideal. Rabbinic tradition transferred the site of sacrifice from temple to synagogue in rituals of High Holy Days, to the family table in Passover and Sabbath rituals, and to the individual will in submission to Torah. In the mystical teaching of Kabbalah, God sacrifices to create the world and Jews are called to sacrifice to redeem the world (tikkun olam). Such vocation of redemptive suffering was called into question by the Holocaust, and some contemporary Israeli poets refer to the Akedah in expressing misgivings about calls to sacrifice in defense of Israel.

Romanticism favors feeling over reason, first separating and isolating the two. Taking too narrow a view of reason, both admirers and detractors may regard religion as a blind leap of faith. But a prudent leap needs orientation, moral and epistemic. We need to oriented ourselves ontologically and axiologically if we are to pursue transcendent goals and not mistake emotional intensity for a criterion of truth, confusing violence with power, or freedom with caprice, as if wilfull choices were somehow self-justifying and could create moral or spiritual truths. Echoing Maimonides’ theses thatx reason is humanity’s link to God, and rejecting Kierkegaard’s tendentious misreading of the Binding of Isaac, I defend an ideal of holiness that finds expression in a life uniting the active and practical with the thoughtful and spiritually uplifted and uplifting—seeking holiness not in irrational excesses but in the irenic discoveries of reason.