God Dramatically Converted Abraham to Monotheism

Biblical account in Genesis 22: 1-2 is straightforward:

“God called to him, “Abraham!” And Abraham said, “Here am I.” God said, “Take your son, your only-begotten son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you”

To properly understand this passage and the whole story of “burnt offering” of Isaac (thankfully, it never took place), you must understand that the Old Testament is NOT a history textbook.

In reality, it is a book of historical (and religious) fiction based on true stories. In other words, a collection of fictionalized (often heavily fictionalized) true stories. Which means that in order to extract truth from these stories, you need to use scientific approach of history, psychology, theology, etc.

The sad truth is that at the time Abraham was a pagan. A polytheist who worshipped a whole pantheon of gods… including Baal (Moloch). One really horrible dogma of cult of Baal/Moloch was that at the time of crisis the chieftain of the tribe (in this case, Abraham) had to sacrifice his firstborn child (not necessarily male) to Moloch. By burning him alive (hence “burnt offering”).

Abraham was talking to a different god – Jehovah (the chief god of the tribe that he belonged to). Those days it was normal for such a god to command the chieftain of the tribe to perform a human sacrifice to a somewhat higher god (Baal/Moloch) … and for the chieftain to oblige. Hence, Abraham offered no resistance.

Abraham prepared the sacrifice according to “Baal/Moloch Rite” (Genesis 22: 9-10)

“When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son”

Author(s) of Old Testament for obvious reasons (not to inflict severe psychological trauma on women and children who would listen to public readings of Torah in the synagogues) deliberately softened the narrative. The “Baal/Moloch Rite” required the child to be burned alive during the ceremony of human sacrifice.

But then something very, very unexpected happened (Genesis 22: 11-13):

“But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And Abraham said, “Here am I.” Angel said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now, I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only-begotten son, from me.”

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son”

And that was the end of human sacrifice in Abraham’s tribe – which immediately made him and his tribe different from every nation in the land who continued to perform human sacrifice for centuries (until Romans and other progressors did away with this genuinely diabolical practice).

Then Jehovah (via His angel) made a solemn promise (Genesis 22:17-18)

“I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore… and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves”

In practice, it meant that the descendants of Abraham (i.e., Jews) will become a conduit of Divine Grace for the whole mankind – and thus genuine saviors of the latter (which makes anti-Semites very, very wrong). However, to make it happen, God had to make them ones – and take care of a genuinely existential problem.

The problem of the Church of Moloch.