timelets: (Default)
2022-08-05 08:41 pm

TIL

“As scholars of the Hebrew text have shown, there are strong indications that in the original version Abraham chooses to protect Isaac’s life in defiance of the divine command.
...
“There are good textual grounds, however, for regarding the angelic speeches as a later insertion. Both in terms of style and structure, they diverge in striking ways from the rest of the text. Most importantly, if one removes the angelic speeches one will find a consistent narrative where Abraham disobeys God’s command. The angelic speeches would thus have been inserted to cover up Abraham’s disobedience.”

--- Martin Hägglund. “This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom.” Apple Books.


The beauty and the beast story is definitely about sacrifice. But I'm wondering whether the Red Riding Hood tale can be construed along the same lines, i.e. a sacrifice for the sake of education of young girls and their families in generations to come.
timelets: (Default)
2022-05-13 12:36 am

Quote of the Day

“To have religious faith is not merely to sustain hope but to eliminate the very possibility of being in despair. “Not to be in despair must signify the destroyed possibility of being able to be in despair,” Kierkegaard explains in The Sickness unto Death. “If a person is truly not to be in despair, he must at every moment destroy the possibility.”

--- Martin Hägglund. “This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom.”
timelets: (Default)
2021-10-30 04:24 pm

(no subject)

“ their excitement resides in a sense of futurity, opening up ways of feeling and acting that were not possible before.”

--- Hägglund. “This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom.”