Unlocking Ancient Secrets: The Hero’s Journey Hidden in Scripture

In this episode of the Scripture Study Podcast, Susan Petersen and Cindy Madsen explore biblical literary criticism as a scholarly tool for understanding the Bible's composition and meaning. Cindy explains various critical approaches, emphasizing that "criticism" means analysis, not negativity. They discuss how biblical narratives use literary devices like the "two ways" doctrine, paired stories, and the hero's journey. Using Abraham and Lot as contrasting examples, they examine moral choices and consequences, before diving into the Binding of Isaac as a profound test of faith, obedience, and trust in God's promises.

00:00 Podcast Introduction
02:18 Types of Biblical Criticism
05:17 Layperson’s Access to the Bible
08:06 Transition to Abraham Story
11:58 Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
18:33 The Hero’s Journey and Monomyth
26:09 Wisdom, Knowledge, and Redemption
36:11 The Binding of Isaac: Introduction
46:50 Christ as the Fulfillment
46:56 Podcast Closing and Reflections

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The Scripture Study Podcast is your midweek Bible boost—designed to help you grow in understanding, confidence, and love for God’s word.

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Resources

Calvin Theological Seminary
https://calvinseminary.edu/

The Book of Mormon
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/29099/the-hero-with-a-thousand-faces-by-joseph-campbell/

Join Us

The Scripture Study Podcast is your midweek Bible boost—designed to help you grow in understanding, confidence, and love for God’s word.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Welcome to the Scripture Study Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

I'm Susan Peterson and I'm Cindy Madsen. We're so glad you're here with us. The Scripture Study Podcast is designed to be your midweek Bible boost. Let's dig in.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Hi. Hi, Susan. Welcome back to the Scripture Study Podcast. You guys, you may have noticed that we keep kind of just playing around with the structure here. And we're going to continue to do that as this evolves. And we're so grateful for all of you that are listening and leaving reviews. It just really means so much to us. So we're going to keep us going. It keeps us going. So we are going to drop a bunch of episodes right now. We're going back to the longer form episode. We're not going to cut them up. Thank you for your feedback on that. All you who gave us feedback on that, we really appreciate it. We will naturally split them up if they're long. Cindy now has a part one and a part two of one, but they may drop on the same day. So you can listen to them again at your leisure. And then we are going to try to catch up with the come follow me. So don't think we're flip-floppers. Cindy and I, when we started this, we said it will become what it needs to become. And we are letting the spirit lead on it. Exactly. We're just trying to figure this out. Yeah. It's new for both of us. Yes. And we want it to be helpful to people out there. And if you study this way, we are so happy you're with us. And so, yes, let's get into it. Cindy. Great. Take it away, girl.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Okay. So in today's podcast, I want to talk about literary criticism. And that's a method that scholars, biblical scholars, will use to study the Bible. So when I was at Calvin Theological Seminary, I took a class on the Swiss Reformation by this amazing professor. Her name was Karen Mogg. And I wrote this 23-page research paper on Desidirus Erasmus, who is a really important Renaissance Christian humanist scholar. And his work on the Greek New Testament helped to lay the foundation for modern biblical scholarship, which makes it all the more ironic that in her critique of my first draft, Professor Mogg asked me what type of critical theory I was using in this paper. And I had no idea what she was talking about. So I had to research that out and learn that. So biblical criticism is the scholarly study of the Bible that uses historical, literary, and analytical methods to understand how the biblical texts were written, transmitted, and interpreted. It examines questions such as who wrote the texts, when and in what historical context were they written, what sources or traditions were used? How does the literary structure communicate meaning? Biblical criticism uses several specialized approaches. For example, textual criticism, which is comparing manuscripts to reconstruct the earliest text, form criticism, which is studying the original oral forms and the genres of biblical traditions, redaction criticism, which is examining how editors shaped the material, literary criticism, which is analyzing the Bible as literature, and source criticism, which is trying to identify earlier written sources behind the books, such as the book of Genesis. I'm going to be honest with you, I'm a little skeptical of some of the types of criticism which are trying to identify earlier sources. I think that we've got to work with what we have. They'll say it's the priestly or the Yaoist or the Eloist, and they're basing it on certain words and structures. So got it. Anyway, biblical criticism then is the academic method of carefully analyzing the Bible to understand its origins, its composition, and its meaning within the literary and historical context. Okay, so it is not being critical of the Bible. It's not being critical. No. Right. It's looking at how the Bible was composed.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Sometimes I think we're going to get into this later, but in our black and white world, we hear the word critic. And we want to think, oh, I got to stay away from that. Yes. But this is just showing you the layers of the book. Exactly. And why it is actually a really well-written book.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

It is an amazingly well-written book. I think that's one thing that's really important about literary criticism is that it shows how this book was so carefully constructed. It's not just this hodgepodge of pieces put together. Yes, I hadn't even thought of that point. No, no. I guess because for me, yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, you are so scholarly enough.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

That's a really but for the layman girl over here. I hadn't, and just so you guys know I guess sometimes it people they can be critical of the Bible. I mean, part of it is like criticism is does this stand up to and how and how and so that's fine. You guys don't know this, but I get a sneak peek of the podcast episodes, and so I listen to them on an app. And anyway, I was listening to this and I thought I love the way that Cindy explains stuff, and this is why I want to start a podcast with her, but I just think this is a way to understand the Bible, right? Yes, right, that's all it is.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Yes, yes, it's just a way to understand the Bible, exactly. And yes, and I want to make clear like you don't have to have gone to a seminary or a biblical seminary or read criticism to get meaning from the Bible. Well, I mean, I didn't even go to college, so here we go. The spirit can reveal so many can teach really good teachers, yes.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

So I yeah, the best teacher out there, in fact.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Is so I yeah, I think it can be very helpful in understanding the text, but that's not what's going to give you a testimony of the truthfulness of the text, right? No, but it is fun, it's so fun. I'm one of those really weird people that finds it incredibly fun, yeah, and can spend a lot of time. Yeah, no, I just want to pull the whole thing apart and put it back together and do it again the next day. It's fascinating. Yes. Okay, so sorry, keep going. Yeah, because I think that the Lord's advice to Oliver Cowdry is really good advice for all of us, where he said, You have supposed that I would give it unto you when you took no thought, save it was to ask me. But behold, I say unto you that you must study it out in your mind, and then you must ask me if it be right. And then he also, I think that the Lord expects us to seek ye out of the best books, words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith. So I think we need to use the best resources we have available to us. And for some of you, that might only be the scriptures themselves. And that's great. But if you study as diligently as you can, then the Lord will bless you with understanding and knowledge and testimony. And I think one of the things you do really well, Susan, is that you are very conscientious about looking down at what the footnotes are and following those footnotes to gain more understanding. Yeah. And thank you. Yeah. So you don't need the books. I mean, well, they're helpful, but I love context clues.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

My husband hates watching movies with me because I can usually figure out the ending right at the beginning. Yeah. And he's like, How did you know that? And I'm like, well, they tell you right there. So I love context clues. I love trying to understand what this one word means. And I love, love the layers of it and the beauty of it. It's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

It is beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Yeah, we just want to make sure you understand. I just want to, yeah. I'm gonna give you lots of stuff. You can mull it over in your brain, you can keep some of it, reject whatever you don't agree with. Yeah, and Susan's gonna interject, but yeah, you don't maybe this will be helpful for you. You don't have to have any kind of a degree or special books or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Yes, and I don't feel less than when I don't have a degree. Yeah, I just like to say it specifically in business meetings because it makes people underestimate me. This is me going off about me too much, but I love it. I love being underestimated, it's my favorite thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Okay, so what we're gonna do, we're gonna conclude the Abraham story that we've been talking about. You know, humans, as humans, we tell stories to explain our world. It's what we do, it's what we've always done. But as moderns, we don't think that we tell stories to explain our origins, but we do. We just couch it in different language. And it is so much a part of the air that we breathe that we don't recognize it for what it is, which is a story. For example, how did our universe originate? Well, we have the Big Bang Theory, or another way to phrase it is the Big Bang story. We took what we could observe about the universe and we made a story to fit those facts, which worked fine until we got a new telescope, the James Webb telescope, which can see more and more. And the findings have now challenged the existing models or stories of galaxy formation. And so here's the important thing to recognize we don't like to use the word story when it comes to certain fields like science, because when we use the word story, as moderns, we will often equate this with not real or fiction. But that assumption is just not true. Stories are very real and they carry truth. Of course, there are also narratives or stories that are not true. And so the question is, and it always has been, who will be your prophet? Who will be the voice that frames your story? What story will you believe? So Jesus uses stories to tell truths. What we don't often recognize is that he was using his cultural language to tell these stories. Biblical scholars have noticed that there are clear parallels between his parables and known Jewish, Near Eastern, and Greco-Roman story types. Jesus didn't repeat the stories. Instead, he repurposed familiar narrative patterns and motifs. For example, in the parable of the workers in the vineyard, in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 20, Jesus uses a known social situation in ancient Palestine. Day laborers would wait for work in the marketplace, and landowners would hire these workers during the harvest. There are known stories involving unexpected wage distribution or generous masters, which appear in later rabbinic teaching stories. Case in point, there is a parable connected with Rabbi Judah Hanasi in the second century AD, preserved in the Christian Talmud. In that story, a king hires many workers. One worker completes a large amount of work very quickly, and the king pays him a full wage despite working fewer hours. When other workers complain, the king explains that the worker accomplished more in a short time than others did all day. So Jesus transforms that familiar story or that scenario into a theological lesson about the radical generosity of God and the unexpected nature of his kingdom. In Jesus' parable, a landowner hires workers throughout the day. Some workers work all day and others only about one hour. But everyone receives the same wage. Those who worked longer complain about the equal pay. And Jesus gives the famous line: the last will be first, and the first will be last. Scholars find this comparison really interesting because it shows that Jesus was teaching within Jewish storytelling traditions. His audiences would have recognized the story structure. But the unexpected twist is what would have made the audience sit up and take note. And just as a little side note on that, one time when my husband and I were driving from Yellowstone to Glacier, we stopped in Helena, Montana, and they have in a beautiful cathedral there. We happened to be there over a Sunday, and so we went to Mass. And the priest gave a homily about this exact same parable. And he talked about how we are all at one point or another the worker who just works at the end of the day, or the workers who work all day. And God gives us the same pay. And I loved that. It just depends upon our stage in life. He talked about how maybe you had come to Mass last week and then you hadn't thought about it all week, and then you come to Mass the next week. He said, and yet God will still bless you for coming to Mass. But there might be somebody else who went to Mass and they thought about things all week and then came to Mass, and God still blesses them the same. I just thought he said, we're all the first and the last workers at different times. And I really liked that.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Well, and I think sometimes when you're the first, you have the experience, you can understand the other point of view. And that's so beautiful because sometimes when you're you're the first and you're like, what are these people coming in at the last minute? Blah, blah. And then when you're the last, it gives you, you're like, is this good enough? And so then when you're the first again, you're like, oh, come in. Yes. You that are coming in at the last minute. This is great. And then when you're the last again, you're so grateful for the first. And so there's all these things. I was thinking about how you were saying we tell stories in entrepreneurship. You're not keyed into any entrepreneurship stories. No. However, I'm wondering if you'll get this. If someone says it started in a garage, is that person going to be successful or not successful? Successful. Exactly. And so there's just this like that's always, they always want it to have started. In fact, when I started my business, people will say, Did you start this in your garage? And I said, No, at my kitchen table. But, you know, it's the same kind of thing. And I think that is what is happening here. The stories, each part of it is giving you a clue. Yeah, I love that. Yes, that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Okay, so everything that I was just saying is a lot of background to introduce one of the ways that scholars study the Bible, which is biblical literary criticism. And this is an approach to studying the Bible that analyzes the texts as works of literature, focusing on elements such as narrative structure, plot, characterization, imagery, motifs, and style in order to understand how the text communicates meaning. Rather than primarily asking about historical sources or who was the author of a text, literary criticism examines how the final form of the biblical text functions as a story or as a piece of writing. And this is important because just like Jesus' audience would have recognized familiar story structures and motifs when he subverted the expected ending, and that really caught their attention. Well, the authors of the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, they also would have recognized familiar literary patterns and motifs. And they would have intuitively understood the message, right? Just like I knew what you were talking about with it started in a garage. I'm thinking, oh, Apple Computer started in a garage, right? The same with them. So in one of the previous episodes, I talked about the doctrine of the two ways, which is ubiquitous in ancient Near Eastern legend. I mean literature. Like it's all over.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

We will talk about it all the time. Yeah. Yes, it'll be all the major themes.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

It is a big deal in the Bible.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

And it's in every scripture, actually. Yes, you see it in the first book of the Book of Mormon with Nephi and Lehi. Or Nephi and Laman and Lemuel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

It's all over. So it means that there are two opposing moral paths that a person can take. And the Didicy, which is a very ancient, a really early Christian document, it opens with this sentence there are two ways, one of life and one of death. And great is the difference between the two ways. You'll see this in the book of Proverbs all the time. It'll illustrate the two ways, and there's this big difference. Well, in ancient Near Eastern literature, you can also find examples, which will juxtapose contrasting stories to illustrate these two possible moral paths. The two ways, it's all over. They will often place a positive example beside a negative or a cautionary example to highlight the consequences of different choices. For instance, in ancient Egyptian wisdom texts, the idea of two moral paths appears quite clearly in texts like the introduction of Pita, Hotep, and the instruction of Amenemop, the wise person follows order, humility, and restraint. But the foolish person is greedy, arrogant, and destructive. And these texts will frequently contrast the quiet, disciplined man with the hot-tempered or greedy man. That should sound familiar. Well, I was going to say Jacob and Esau. Exactly. Yes. So the structure often teaches by paired contrasts. So again, yeah, Jacob and Esau's story.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

Or the parable of the king and the servant, when he forgave his servant, but the servant wouldn't forgive the fellow servant. Right. Yes. You've got this paired story, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yes. Okay. So another feature of Egyptian storytelling tales is called tale pairs. So T-A-L-E-P-A-I-R-S, where some narrative collections place stories of success beside stories of failure. For example, there is the tale of the eloquent peasant and the tale of the shipwrecked sailor. And these are Egyptian tales. And these works will contrast injustice versus righteous justice and arrogance versus humility before divine order or ma'at. And these contrasts will reinforce the Egyptian cultural ethic of living according to Ma'at or the cosmic order. Well, the same juxtaposition of stories occurs in the Bible. We can see a great example of this in the stories of Lot and Abraham. Now, I want to be very clear that I believe that Lot and Abraham were real people who actually lived. And so I do believe that these stories are historical. But in any instance where someone is writing a history or a biography, they will choose which details of a life to add in or to leave out, to emphasize or to play down. And so they will write using the structure and literary conventions of their time. Now, if we as readers are aware of these story forms, you will be able to see the editors of the Bible repurposing and reshaping these forms and using them to structure the Abraham and Lot stories and other biblical narratives. So there are really, really old, old story forms that have existed for forever. In his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell argues that stories from different cultures follow a common structure. And he called this the monomyth. So the basic idea is that there is a hero's journey, and there are three main stages in the story. The hero leaves their ordinary world, they undergo trials and transformation, and they return changed, often bringing benefit to others. And each of these stages follows a similar pattern. There is the departure where the hero leaves their ordinary or known world. And the key element is a call to adventure. Now, sometimes there will be a refusal of the call. Jonah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Also, they will usually meet a mentor who can be human or supernatural. And finally, the hero will cross the threshold into the unknown. The second stage in the story is called the initiation. And in this stage, the hero faces challenges and is changed. The hero will travel in a strange world where he or she will meet with tests, allies or helpers, both mortal and divine and enemies. And there will be some sort of a major ordeal or crisis. And finally, reward or insight is gained. And this is the stage where the hero undergoes deep transformation. And finally, in the third stage, Campbell identifies that this as the return. The hero returns home with something valuable, which might be tangible like an elixir, a magic potion, or intangible like wisdom. And in this stage, the hero will journey on the road back. There will be some sort of resurrection or profound change. And the hero will return with quote, this is what Campbell says a boon that he brings restores the world. So in other words, something that will benefit others. Are you guys all thinking of Joseph? And are you also thinking of us? Yes. Premortal life, first stage, mortal journey, second stage, resurrection, and return to the presence of God, right? Third stage. We are all the heroes on the hero's journey. And we're either going to have it end well, which is remember the fairy tale. I'm going to talk about this more in this podcast, but I'll say it here and then I'll say it again. But fairy tale just means it has a supernatural being that's helping. Yeah. Cautionary tale, it ends badly. Yeah. So that's what we're talking about here. Yes. And the story of Joseph, you can see that.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

I mean, that one is very clear. Very clear.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Very clear. You see the hero's journey.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Yes. If you're like even Well, you're thinking other things, Harry Potter. The story of the ring. Yeah, whatever the Tolkien trilogy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Lord of the Rings trilogy.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Ooh, the children in the wardrobe. What is that? Line which is a big thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Oh, Lionel, the Narningham. All of those exactly. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

So really good fairy tales follow this. They do. And the Bible follows this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And Joseph Campbell, he would say the reason is because all these stories reflect the universal human experience. Okay. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

Yeah. Yeah. Which is to your point, it is us. We are on the journey right now.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

We are all on the journey, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:34

We have a guide.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

We have choices to make. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So you will see this. If you're aware of this pattern, watch for it because you're going to see it all throughout the Bible. So we talked in the last podcast about lot, and we talked about that as a cautionary tale. And so I'll just remind you that cautionary tales are a story form that show the consequences of poor choices, moral compromise, or lack of faith. So Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, when the knight says he chose poorly because he chose the wrong cup. And there you go. That's the cautionary tale. So some examples of a cautionary tale in ancient Near Eastern literature are the tale of the shipwrecked sailor. Which I'm not familiar with. No, it's where a sailor boasts or he acts selfishly and he learns humility after the disaster. And there's also a recognition of divine power and of human limitations. In the tale of two brothers, which is also from Egypt, one brother's immoral acts, temptation and betrayal, lead to misfortune. And this narrative contrasts the wrong path with the virtuous path, other brother. In the epic of Gilgamesh, before becoming wise, he abuses his power, which leads to Inky Dew's death and personal suffering. So there's a moral lesson about arrogance. And the function of these cautionary tales is to serve as a warning about pride, immorality, or ignoring the divine order. And they reinforce cultural norms and ethical expectation. So cautionary tales end badly. Joseph Campbell said, What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure. You are called to new horizons. Each time there is the same problem. Do I dare? Do I dare embark? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there. And the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of fiasco. So the cautionary. In fact, you can count on it. You can count on it. He said, but there's also the possibility of bliss.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Which again, you can count on. If you're not filling the bliss, the story's not over yet.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

It's not over.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Yeah. Especially if you're doing the things that you're supposed to. I think sometimes because of this literary and because of the contrasting in the Bible, sometimes when bad things have happened, I've thought, oh no, am I a cautionary tale? It's not true. None of us are finished yet.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

No.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

And we are all in the middle of our hero's journey. When you are being tried or when things are happening, that just means you have an opportunity to turn to God.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Yeah. The cautionary tales will often function as warnings. Yeah. Warnings about how to act. And so you'll see in the book of Proverbs in the first nine chapters, it'll talk about two ways. They talk about lady wisdom and lady folly. So it's contrasting these two ways. And it's a father talking to his son, and he's saying, don't follow after Lady Folly. You want to follow Lady Wisdom. That's how they would do it. They would pair these things. And it was not as didactic as some of our ways of telling stories. It was much more of a pairing and showing two paths. And you can take these paths, but what we want to, yeah, we always want to emphasize you can turn around on the path and go back the other way. So that's an important thing to learn.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Like I heard once that knowledge is when you learn through your own experience something. Wisdom is when you're willing to learn from someone else's experience. And both of those have their gift. And learning is the outcome, right? Wisdom and knowledge. Both of those are beautiful. And so I've taken many folly paths in my life. Yes. But I love the atonement and how God is so there just to teach me and show me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Yes, God will always extend the maximum amount of mercy. Yeah, He really is so good. So, what kind of story form is the opposite of the cautionary tale? What kind of story form has the possibility of bliss? And that would be the hero tale, which is another name for the fairy tale. And fairy tale is actually a really terrible name because there are a lot of fairy tales that do not have fairies in them. But all fairy tales have a rescue by a supernatural being, or they have an enchanted world, and they all end well. So happily ever after. Exactly. So when I use the term fairy tale or folk tale or hero tale, there is no connotation here of true or false. It is simply a story form. Like a detective story is a story form. But what's interesting about the fairy tale form is that you will notice that the main character is an everyman sort of character. It's not a mythological hero or a demigod. It's just a flawed human being. What usually happens is that there are this everyman character will encounter inevitable obstacles, which are typically impossible tasks. And they're always supernatural helpers. And look at what that points to. Like each of us are on this journey, and we're going to have these impossible obstacles to overcome. But because of supernatural help, we can overcome them. The Grimm brothers had a theory that fairy tales are the ruins of what had been once a consistent and coherent Christian mythology. And that is why they say we see fragments of this all over the world. So like there's a Chinese Cinderella, just like there's the Grim tale Cinderella. So what you're dealing with or what you're reading in a fairy tale is they would say, Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, they would say you are reading the ruins of what had once been a full story, but was lost over time. And I think that's really true.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

One of our mine and Cindy's favorite podcasts, The Ancient Traditions, she talks about that. Yes. That these are traditions that have been passed down and they're basically all the same.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

You'll see bits of truth in every tradition. Yeah. So let's briefly look at Campbell's structure of the hero tale and the story of Abraham. Okay. So the call to adventure, God's first command to Abraham in 12:1, go forth from your native land, the known place, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you, the unknown world. Okay. Okay. It's a place he doesn't know. He doesn't recognize. He has to go out from what he knows to an unknown world, right? And he has a guide because a guide will show him. But he has a guide, yeah. Right? He's going out into quote unquote the enchanted world, right? Okay. The place that is not recognizable. Yes. Then the hero encounters trials or obstacles. So I mean, think of all of Abraham's trials. He's got tons of trials. But he has help from mentors, friends, or allies, or he's got supernatural help. And we see all of those in that. So in the case of Abraham, the supernatural help obviously is Jehovah, Yahweh, and the angels. And then there's a final challenge for him, the sacrifice of Isaac. And then the hero will return home transformed. And in this case, it will be to the promised land and the burial place that he purchased. But ultimately, you know, he's going to return home to God. And so a common thread in these stories is that a character demonstrates faith, obedience, or moral courage, which often will result in blessing or divine favor or successful outcomes. The hero's tale provides a model of virtuous behavior, demonstrating the right way to live in relation to God and others. And again, we have examples of this type of story in ancient Near Eastern culture. In ancient Near Eastern literature, hero tales, they will typically celebrate courage, wisdom, or divine favor. They will often highlight a character's special relationship with the gods. Again, in the epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh starts as an oppressive king, but he grows through his friendship with Inkidu and his quest for immortality. And the story shows the moral growth of Gilgamesh, his acceptance of death, and his pursuit of wisdom as heroic traits. He's aligning himself with Ma'ad, is what he's doing, this cosmic divine order. Well, because the authors of the Bible lived in the ancient Near East, they were obviously influenced by this type of literature. And so they take these story forms and then they'll tweak them to create a distinctive Hebrew form of literature. Biblical narratives often explicitly contrast these two paths, the two ways, in one narrative. So you've got Abraham and Loc or Joseph and his brothers. Whereas in ancient Near Eastern texts, they'll usually separate heroic and cautionary figures across episodes rather than intermixing them side by side in one narrative. So ancient Near Eastern hero tales frequently emphasize kingship, fame, or cosmic order, whereas the biblical hero and cautionary tales will emphasize faith, obedience, and ethical choices versus, and then show you the opposite of that. In the ancient Near Eastern text, the gods or cosmic forces enforce the consequences. But in biblical texts, it's Yahweh or Jehovah who enforces the ethical and covenantal consequences, emphasizing human responsibility and faith. But both traditions teach using story rather than abstract rules. Heroes show what you should emulate. Cautionary figures show what you should avoid. So, really, what's happening is that we have the cosmic battle of Jehovah and Lucifer being played out on earth. And you can see that in the first story after the fall, Cain and Abel, right? Abel represents faithful and obedient offering. Cain represents disobedience, jealousy, and violence. And their stories illustrate the two possible responses to God. Biblical scholars, they think that Genesis repeatedly uses these types of paired narratives, Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers to dramatize the two ways, the two ways. You know, there are two ways, the way of life and the way of death, and great is the difference between them. So that's what they think through story rather than through very explicit and didactic teaching. Now, in our earlier podcast, we have talked a lot about the Abraham story. We've gone through, we've talked about the tricky bits like the wife as the sister stories. We've talked about the Hagar story. We've talked about the story of Lot and the downward narrative arc of this really, really sad story. This is a great example of the author of Genesis juxtaposing two stories using the narrative technique of parallel structure and contrasting outcomes to dramatize two possible ways of living. One way is trusting divine promises despite uncertainty. And the other is pursuing immediate prosperity at moral cost. And it models this ancient tradition of teaching ethical choices through paired characters and contrasting stories. And I want to say too that in both of these stories, you've got flawed human beings. And yet flawed human beings can make different choices and they have different outcomes. And so that's what the story's showing. They're not showing us perfect human beings, they're showing us flawed human beings who make different choices. And it all goes back to how are you going to react to God? So the narrative then communicates two possible trajectories or two ways: the way of Abraham, which is the way of generosity, trust in divine promise, and moral courage. And then there is the way of law, which highlights attraction to prosperity, gradual compromise, and eventual loss. The teaching or the true way emerges through the story rather than explicit moral instructions. We as the reader are supposed to be able to see and learn the lessons without having them spelled out for us. The Bible puts a lot of trust and faith in us as the reader. And so that's one of the reasons why I love these Old Testament stories. So I want to finish up this section of the podcast by talking about the most famous and poignant part of Abraham's story, which is the Agita or the binding of Isaac.

SPEAKER_03 36:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

And it isn't a sacrifice because Isaac is not sacrificed. Rather, the text tells us it is a test. It says sometime after these things, God tested Abraham. So I read an article by a Hebrew scholar named Yahair Zakovich called Through the Looking Glass, Reflections and Inversions of the Genesis Stories in the Bible. And in this article, he makes a really interesting connection, which is that God's first command to Abraham in Genesis 12:1, go forth from your native land and from your father's house to the land that I will show you, is echoed again in the story of the binding of Isaac, the Agitah. Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights, that I will show to you, that I will say to you, is what it says. So this interrelationship was already clear to the early rabbis. The Holy One, blessed be he, said to Abraham, The first test and the last test I try you with, go forth. Go forth from your native land and go forth to the land of Moriah. And that's from the Tanhuma Buber. The resemblance between the two commands is striking. Both commands are structured so that the difficulty of the test is emphasized with a test presented generally at first, but immediately qualified from your native land and from your father's house. And then in the second one, your son, your favored one. The final destination is unknown. So the first 12, the first test to the land that I will show you, the second test, one of the heights, H-E-I-G-H T S, one of the heights that I will say to you. The name land of Moriah contains a word play on God's first command, the land that I will show you. The name Moriah is derived from the root Ra-a, meaning to see. And the same root reappears several times in the story of the binding of Isaac in verses 8, 13, and 14. So you can see Morah, Moriah, and then Raa to see. Land that I will show you, land that you will see. The language of the blessings is similar. It says, and I will bless you, and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you. That's in chapter 12, verses 2 through 3. And then in chapter 22, I will bestow my blessing upon you. All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants. Then Zakovich points out that despite the significant similarities, the relationship between the stories is an inverted one. In the first one, Abraham is commanded to leave his father. In the second, he is commanded to offer his beloved son. The first test does not threaten Abraham's chances of offspring. On the contrary, God promises to make of him a great nation. The meaning of the last test, the offering of his son, that represents a threat to the materialization of the blessing. And yet, Zakovich says, Abraham does not hesitate to obey his God. Quote, sometime after these things, God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham, here I am, Abraham replied. God said, Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him up there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you. Early in the morning, Abraham got up and saddled his donkey right away. God is requiring of Abraham what is most precious to him. Isaac, this long-awaited child of God's promise, who bears all of Abraham's hope for the fulfillment of the covenant promises. But I think that what Abraham realizes is what Job articulates: the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Abraham knows that he only has Isaac through the gift of God in the first place. And it is only as the initial gift is freely surrendered that the Lord restores it again with renewed blessings. If we look at verses 15 through 18 of Genesis 22, you'll notice that the angel of the Lord speaks to Abraham a second time. We often focus on the initial words of the angel as he calls from heaven. Abraham, Abraham, do not harm the boy. Do not do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God because you did not withhold your son, your only son, from me. That seems to be the climax of the story. And we all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Isaac is saved, and God is not a horrifically barbaric God requiring human sacrifice. And so we pass lightly over verses 15 through 18. And yet, those verses are of great significance in the traditional Jewish interpretation. In an earlier podcast, I talked about how God revealed and bestowed covenant blessings line upon line, precept upon precept, of those texts which mention the blessings promised to Abraham and his descendants. This is the only one in the Bible where these blessings are explicitly presented as a reward because of Abraham's unquestioning, unhesitating obedience and actions. Quote, the Lord's angel called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, By my own self, I swear, declares the Lord, that because you have done this thing and have not held back your son, your only one, I will greatly bless you and will greatly multiply your seed as the stars in the heavens and as the sand on the shore of the sea, and your seed will take hold of its enemy's gate, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through your seed, because you have listened to my voice. Abraham has already been promised innumerable posterity, but now he has proven himself truly worthy of that promise. Yet here Sakovich writes that the blessing in chapter 22 appears only after Abraham has proved his readiness to obey the Lord's command. Abraham's devotion and trust in God is intensified with the transition from the first test to the last one. The reader's admiration grows with reading the second story. And yet, chapter 22 helps us to evaluate Abraham's behavior in chapter 12. If the first go-forth story suggests that Abraham obeys God only because of the blessings which accompany the command, it's relatively easy to be righteous when the sacrifice demanded is not enormous. The second story shows that this is not a correct judgment. Abraham is ready to obey any command from God, even if it demands the greatest sacrifices. Dzokovych notes that the combination of the two go forth test stories reminds us of the story with which. The book of Job begins, in which the covert lesson of the Abraham stories becomes overt. The Satan, the adversary, accuses Job of fearing God only because God has made him prosperous. He assumes that Job's faithfulness will not survive God's test. The adversary, Hasatan, is proved wrong. Even after his most difficult trial, the death of his children, his faithfulness is not shaken. For all that, Job did not sin, nor did he cast reproach on God. So finally, I want to point out that there is a difference in the divine promise given in chapter 22, which is that it is through Abraham's descendants and not Abraham himself, that all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And perhaps this is because the test of Abraham focused entirely on his son. And by implication, all of his descendants were at risk. And there is no sand of the sea if Isaac dies. And so it seems appropriate that the divine blessing should concentrate entirely on those descendants. Also, there is this really interesting note of military triumph in verse 17 that the seed of Abraham would take hold of its enemy's gate. I think that although this does refer to each of us, it ultimately is speaking of Jesus Christ, through whom and because of whom all the nations of the earth are blessed. The Father's hand was not stayed in his sacrifice upon that cross at Calvary. It was Jesus who took hold of and unlocked the doors of the enemy's gate. We sing a hymn, we'll sing all hail to Jesus' name. And it says, We'll sing all hail to Jesus' name and praise and honor give to him who bled on Calvary's Hill and died that we might live. He passed the portals of the grave. Salvation was his song. He called upon the sin bound soul to join the heavenly throng. He seized the gates, the keys of death and hell, and bruised the serpent's head. He bid the prison doors, those gates, unfold, the grave yield up her dead. Right now, as we're recording this, we're in the middle of Lent, we're just approaching Holy Week, we're approaching Easter. And this is what we're celebrating. He seized the keys of death and hell. He seized the gates of the enemy and he opened them up to all of us. So one day we can complete the hero's journey and we can return, having overcome the obstacles through him, to our Father in heaven.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Great stuff. Good stuff. Happy Lent. Happy Lent. Happy Holy Week and Easter's coming. Um, I had a thought while you were reading about well, you're talking about this. I have a friend who lost a baby and full term and just in the last little bit. It was tragic. She says Mary knew what she was getting into from the beginning. And I've heard people often say, Oh, do you think that Abraham's wife, do you think Sarah knew what was happening? And I think she did. I think she too was part of that following God and trusting him and being probably terrified and upset and fearful and crying. And yeah, I don't think that he did this in a vacuum. I think they did it together.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Not did it, but I think that they trusted God together.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

Yeah, there's a a Jewish midrash that talks about the fact that the faith of Abraham was so great that he believed that even if God had called on him to sacrifice Isaac, God would have resurrected him. And I think that that idea, right, that sometimes we are called on to sacrifice the things that are very precious to us. But as it says in the Book of Mormon, the Lord will consecrate all of our losses for our good. And I think that there is ultimately consecration through him in the sacrifices that we are called to make.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

Yeah, and it's usually not the end of the story. Right. At that point, God, he has, he will, and he will continue to provide the ram and the thicket. Yes. Okay, so that's it for today. Okay, thank you, Cindy. Yeah, and we will see you guys here next week. Thank you for listening to the Scripture Study Podcast, your midweek Bible boost. Everything we mentioned on this podcast, if we said there would be a link to it, it is in the show notes wherever you find your podcast. Cindy Madsen currently does not believe in or participate in social media. However, if you would like to follow along with Susan Peterson, she could be found on Instagram at susan.m.peterson. Have a good weekend.