Tova Hartman and Charlie Buckholtz
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199337439
- eISBN:
- 9780199362370
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199337439.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism, Religion and Literature
This chapter examines the iconic figures of Iphigenia and Isaac, two children who were raised to understand family, love, and relationship as sacred inviolable values. It explains the resistance of ...
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This chapter examines the iconic figures of Iphigenia and Isaac, two children who were raised to understand family, love, and relationship as sacred inviolable values. It explains the resistance of Iphigenia and Isaac to their fathers’ plan to sacrifice them, as duty to a nation and as obedience to God. Iphigenia reminds Agamemnon that his role as a father takes precedence over his role as a military and political leader of Greece, while Isaac reminds his father Abraham of his erstwhile devotion to the family triangle of father-mother-son. This chapter also explores some of the ways in which the lens of devoted resistance opens new layers of interpretive possibility and questions some of the core assumptions underpinning their dominant interpretive legacies.Less
This chapter examines the iconic figures of Iphigenia and Isaac, two children who were raised to understand family, love, and relationship as sacred inviolable values. It explains the resistance of Iphigenia and Isaac to their fathers’ plan to sacrifice them, as duty to a nation and as obedience to God. Iphigenia reminds Agamemnon that his role as a father takes precedence over his role as a military and political leader of Greece, while Isaac reminds his father Abraham of his erstwhile devotion to the family triangle of father-mother-son. This chapter also explores some of the ways in which the lens of devoted resistance opens new layers of interpretive possibility and questions some of the core assumptions underpinning their dominant interpretive legacies.
