Another Abraham: The Exegesis of Douglas Rushkoff's Testament more

Another Abraham: The Exegesis of Douglas Rushkoff’s Testament A. David Lewis, Boston University To begin, let’s consider the happy linguistic coincidence, if it is a coincidence, of ur. From the Deutsch, it means “first,” “prototypical,” or, as passed down to the English vernacular, original. The prefix comes, most often, from the mouths of academes discussing the ur-text of a work or ur-language of a culture. Its flexibility can be lent to examinations, for example, of ur-jazz, ur-democracy, or the ur-Superman. For Frank Kermode, it used to explore the ur-gospels, making the texts “easier to think about if we imagine something behind it” (79) acting as a backstop or, more profoundly, a Truth. Ur’s second meaning, though, is far less epistemological or abstract, at least in geographical terms. To quote Genesis, chapter 11: “And this is the lineage of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran begot Lot. And Haran died in the lifetime of Terah his father in the land of his birth, Ur of the Chaldees” (27-28), part of southern Mesopotamia, now modern Iraq. Ur is the original home of Lot before he moved with his guardian-uncle’s family to Canaan and then, with his own family, to the “plain of Jordan” (Gen 13:11), just outside – and eventually within – infamous Sodom. His avuncular custodian, on the other hand, remained in Canaan and was given a new, more familiar name: Abraham. Name change aside, there is no ur-Abraham, only Abraham of Ur; that is, there was only one archetypical Abraham. Forefather of the modern monotheistic religions, while he needs no introduction, Abraham just as frequently is given no explanation, either. His story is a closed one, with few new canonical interpretations coming since the Lewis – 2 8th century end of the Rabbinic era. Whereas we can discuss an ur-Jesus, considering him a Second Adam, or even an ur-Adam (e.g. the first man created by the Greek gods or from Kingu’s blood), the concept of an ur-Abraham folds in on itself. In history or in myth, there is no other early monotheist radical promised to be and fulfilled as “father to a multitude of nations” (17:5). With Abraham’s fixity – and purpose – likely in mind, a working mission statement for 2005’s Testament can be gleaned from Douglas Rushkoff’s earlier book, the 2003 Nothing Sacred: “It’s time to wake up from the stories we’ve been telling ourselves and invent a new one” (xii, my emphasis). His DC Comics/Vertigo title with artist Liam Sharp serves as the media critic’s own attempt to reinvent Scripture – to unlock what he calls the “closed book” of the Old Testament (1). “Judaism has contracted and retreated” from what he sees as several of its original principles, “transparency, openended inquiry, [...] and a commitment to conscious living” (3, 2). It is time, in short, to invent a new Abraham – or to reclaim him. Understanding the first book of the Hebrew Bible and understanding the first volume of Testament are about understanding Abraham. That is, starting with Chapter 12 of Genesis, the goal is to propagate Abraham.1 “It is said that Abraham talked with the Fear,” Frederik Buechner’s name for God, the way a man talks to his friend. He would even argue with him. They say that sometimes he would even nag him into changing his mind. Perhaps that way why [Abraham] was the one whom the Fear chose out of all men on earth to breed a lucky people who would someday bring luck to the whole world. (10-11) The unseen, omniscient, singular God plainly has a special relationship with Abraham. God may have also “walked with” Enoch and Noah (Gen 5:24, 6:10), but he made no 1 See Helyer, Larry, “Abraham’s Eight Crises: The Bumpy Road to Fulfilling God’s Promise of an Heir.” Bible Review 11.5 (1995): 20-27, 44. Lewis – 3 covenant with them to father all of Israel. (For that matter, Lord knows what He said and did for Enoch.) Whereas some may suggest that God chose Abraham to sire a preordained Chosen People, we can sniff out a slightly different agenda here: God wished to make more of aged Abraham, to make further friends, to make continual companions. God was not waiting for an idol-smasher to found the Jews; He founded the Jews because of the idol-smasher. Tellingly, Rushkoff’s original storyarc for Testament, “Abraham of Ur,” was retitled for the collected trade paperback as Akedah, the Hebrew word for being bound, specifically the Binding of Isaac. It works as a cute pun on the repackaging of the original six issues, but that should not be the only meaning we take from it. Rather, it is the biblical scene first presented by the series and the name Rushkoff gave to the first issue’s script. (We will return to the significance of the former reshuffling shortly.) Considering its early placement and Testament’s narrative trope – that biblical stories from the past are recurring in the near-future, determined by divine being existing just outside panels – being bound takes on even greater significance. That is, the title, coupled with the sequential art medium, suggests, as Rushkoff did in Nothing Sacred, the idea of being bound, of being closed off, of being boxed in – enpanelized, to coin a phrase. And, just as the humans of the story are caught between the gutters, the gods are themselves trapped within them while also tied to the characters and stories. The polytheists beings (Moloch, Astarte, and Atum-Ra) require human worship as fuel, while the monotheist agents (Melchizedek, Elijah, and Krishna) thrive literally on the mortal narrative. Like Prometheus, these gods, too, are bound. Lewis – 4 With this subtle shift of nomenclature, Rushkoff hints both at his agenda and at the power of comic books: to break boundaries. As he says in Media Virus: With surprising and almost frightening consistency, comic-book writers fill their stories with a unilaterally progressive countercultural agenda. Like most alternative and underground media, these comics promote psychedelic consciousness, environmental awareness, sexual permissiveness, racial equality, feminist values, distrust of authority, and conspiratorial paranoia. (188) We can see, when viewed this way, the allure that writing a comic book series would have for this media critic. If we have a holy text Biblical that, as New York Times reviewer Lore Dickstein says, is “full of lacunae and empty spaces” which, over time, have been filled in Iserian or Auerbachian fashion, then comics may be the best medium by which to reopen it. “[C]omic books exploit those gaps in order to communicate (Rushkoff Playing 57), perfect for when your purpose is specifically to reopen them – to de-delineate the boundaries. This exercise in liminality hinges on reshaping Abraham and his seed; the first patriarch’s varied attempts at securing an heir are sown through both the biblical and modern plotlines of Testament. Whereas we know the covenant will be fulfilled eventually, Abraham experiences three would-be failures for his sanctioned lineage first. Lot serves as the first faulty Abraham. With a barren wife and dead brother, Abraham takes his nephew Lot under his wing as a potential successor entering Canaan. He is blood, after all, and young. Beyond that, though, Lot has little going for him. James Kugel points out that “some of Lot’s deeds were questionable at best” (181). His separation from Abraham comes out a merchandise dispute, one which actually reaffirmed Lot’s special place in his uncle’s life. Louis Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews elaborates on the dispute that arises between Abraham and Lot’s respective herdsmen: Lewis – 5 Abraham furnished his herds with muzzles, but Lot made no such provision, and when the shepherds that pastured Abraham's flocks took Lot's shepherds to task on account of the omission, the latter replied: "…Never will he have children. On the morrow he will die, and Lot will be his heir…" (227-228) Somehow, this minor “contention” leads the two to “part company” (Gen 13:8-9), with Lot taking what he feels is the better part of the deal: “Lot chose for himself the whole plain Jordan” (Gen 13:11), leaving Abraham to toil in arid Canaan. “Until Lot moves away, Abraham treats his nephew as his son and probably considers him his heir” (Helter 22). Lot disappoints Abraham in a number of ways even as the uncle continues to save his former ward. When Lot and the people of Sodom are taken captive by Chedorlaomer’s allied Kings, Abraham leaps to the rescue. (Chedorlaomer et al are never heard from again.) When God declares the wicked cities will be struck down, Abraham bargains the Lord down to 10 righteous people to save them, thinking Lot’s family will meet the quota. (They don’t.) When divine Messengers leave Abraham to warn Lot, he is told to clear his family out of the town immediately. (He stalls.) When he is told to take them to the high country, he complains. (It is too far!) His family is told not to look back, but his wife does. (Salt!) When they are redirected to Zoar, Lot instead flees to the mountains. (Zoar is scary!) And then he has sex with his daughters. (We’ll get to that.) Paul Tonson says it all: “Lot was delivered not out of divine compassion […] but for the sake of Abraham” (95). No longer a contender for Abraham’s place, Lot is an afterthought. “Lot is the first major male character in Genesis for whom there is no record of death nor of his age relative to his father or sons“ (106). In all likelihood, Lot’s incest is his final act, perhaps his only worthwhile one. “[T]he implication, in the absence of any record of his death, [is] that Lot finally died on Lewis – 6 the mountain” after being wooed by his daughters (108). They are not to blame, really; they thought all civilization had been destroyed and it was their duty to repopulate the planet. If that sounds laughable, it could be because it is: Melissa Jackson theorizes, “The story of Lot’s daughters…portray[s] quintessential comic female tricksters” (29). That is, this part of Lot’s story, if not all of it, are less than serious. If anything, their value comes from siring the Moabite line that will one day lead to King David. In the short-term, for Abraham’s sake, Lot’s line ends here. Abraham’s second and third attempts at securing progeny are entirely absent from Testament. His faithful servant Eliezer of Damascus, whom Abraham suspects will be his inheritor (Gen 15:2), has no role in Rushkoff’s script. In fact, one of the miraculous acts attributed to Eliezer in midrash becomes reassigned, instead, to Abraham in Akedah’s climax. Ginzberg notes that, instead of Abraham leading a force of 318 men against Chedorlaomer’s forces, Eliezer was imbued with their strength (231), with Parasha 43 of Genesis Rabba explaining, thanks to Rabbi Simeon ben Laqish, that the “numerical value of the letters of the name Eliezer is three hundred eighteen” (Neusner 114). Numerology aside, it is Abraham whose might becomes amplified in the Valley of Siddim to thwart the Anakim and Rephaim, giants imported in by Rushkoff from mentions in Deuteronomy, Numbers, the Book of Joshua, and the Book of Samuel. Only one of Abraham’s biblical sons appears in Testament. His child by Hagar, Ishmael, goes mentionless. The boy – for whom the biblical Abraham begs a blessing from God before Ishmael is cast out (Gen 17:18) – is absent. The only hint of his existence lingers still in the trial his brother comes to face, the akedah itself. “Although in the Bible the son is clearly identified as Isaac, in the Qur’an’s pithy version of the near- Lewis – 7 sacrifice, he remains unnamed because his identity is insignificant” (Kaltner 18). In that retelling of this pivotal event among the patriarchs, the specific child of promise and the troubled father – still haunted by his first child’s expulsion – are replaced with an unconflicted pair. If Testament’s Isaac exhibits any peace when faced with Abraham’s knife, thanks are due to this influence. The Bible’s concern with lineage disappears in the total faith of the Qur’an’s father and son. In his sole Testament scene, Isaac, the recipient of both God and Abraham’s blessing, faces a particularly crafted akedah. First, his mother Sarah witnesses and questions the men’s departure. Her absence has long troubled commentators, from Rashi’s sister over 400 years ago to modern feminists like Tikvah Frymer-Kensky. The Book of Legends details midrash of Sarah’s uninformed consent for Abraham to take Isaac to Mt. Moriah; Abraham leaves with him before she awakens, for “it is best that no one see” (Bialik 40). Not so in Testament. After all, as Rashi’s sister asks, “what model of marital relations does this present for us?” (Yanow 400). Instead, over a course of four panels, Sarah watches Abraham lead Isaac out of his tent and away. While Rushkoff’s original script called for this sequence to be silent, the final product grants Sarah the opportunity to ask what is afoot. Though Abraham curtly answers, “Don’t interfere. It must be done” (Rushkoff Testament 2), this exchange far surpasses the silence that precedes her death less than 70 lines later. “By contrast,” says Phyllis Trible, “the biblical story allows no opportunity, however small, for Sarah to be healed” (187). In Testament, she lives on. Sharp’s actual illustration of the akedah holds rather consistent with its prior depictions. His rendering of Lot’s incest seems consistent with modern archeologists’ Lewis – 8 investigations of Deir ‘Ain ‘Abata, the Monastery of the Abata Spring, where the refugees “committed the acts the daughters hoped would preserve humankind in a destroyed world” (Politis 30). Likewise, no ropes or cords lash Isaac down in Testament, consistent with the earliest images of the scene. “Isaac was never portrayed as bound on the altar until the mid-fourth century” (Kessler 77). Further, in her study of child abuse, psychoanalyst Alice Miller notes, “Abraham’s face or entire torso is turned away from his son and directed upward. Only his hands are occupied with the sacrifice” (138). True again of Testament. Testament’s most radical alteration to the akedah is the inclusion of the pagan deity Moloch as its instigator. Greater even than Sarah’s silence, concern over the motivations for God’s test have swamped (and sometimes stumped) clergy and laity alike. First, there is the strange formulation of God’s actual speech, “qualified by ‫ ,נא‬a particle of entreaty or urgency, rarely used with a divine command…God may thereby signal the unusual character of the moment” (Fretheim 53). Further, Kugel asks: Why, to begin with, should God want to test Abraham? …Moreover, why in general should God need to test people? Does not an all-knowing God know in advance who is worthy and who is not, indeed, who will pass and who will fail? (170) Jacob Neusner’s translation of Genesis Rabba answers that God does so in order to counter future braggarts: “[Y]ou may reply to him, saying, “Can you do what Abraham did?” (267). Likewise, Kugel suggests – based on the chapter’s odd opening of “And it happened after these things” (Gen 22:1) – that this test may have been a response to others’ doubts, similar to later with Job (171). Some even respond that the akedah is a patchwork of separate stories, both those in support of the sacrifice and those looking to emancipate Abraham from any culpability. Omri Boehm posts a “later redactor, anxious Lewis – 9 to conceal Abraham’s disobedience and therefore shifting the responsibility for concluding the test from Abraham to the angel.” (3). The answer for Rushkoff, though? He chooses to ignore Terrence Freithem’s advice, that “readers are advised not to seek to interpret their way out of it” (54). Instead, he puts the full weight of the test into one of those Others’ hands, namely Moloch. Rushkoff exploits the confusing morality of the scene by opening a wedge between word and actor; God’s commands from Chapter 22:13 are placed in the fiery mouth of the pagan god. “It is a leap of sorts to portray Moloch as ordering the sacrifice,” admits Rushkoff, “but one absolutely consistent with how such actions would have been understood by the Torah's original intended audience” (“Mysteries” 113). He points to Jon Levenson’s research as his strongest support: “Israel did not always abominate the sacrifice of the first-born son, and some biblical passages are best taken as an endorsement of the practice” (Levenson 126). In a way, Malcolm Schrader agrees, suggesting that “what is really being tested is Abraham’s determination to complete his abandonment of pagan practices” (258), except the most morally difficult portions come not from God but, as Rushkoff has it, from Abraham’s spiritual past. “Most of their religious prohibitions were designed to help Jews resist the temptations of the land-based, pagan religions practiced by their hosts” and, in Abraham’s time, their own families (Rushkoff Nothing 12). “The real test is,” says Schrader, “Will Abraham, the monotheist in a largely pagan world… break away from this noxious practice of the pagan world, or will he succumb to it?” (257). Rushkoff’s consistent adaptation of the akedah into the modern tale creates a new, metaphysical path for Abraham’s lineage. Instead of Isaac, it is collegiate Jacob “Jake” Lewis – 10 Stern in the sacrificial role: He must be injected with a subcutaneous RFID tag. Being born overseas, Jake had avoided tagging at birth. “It was never about missing children,” says Jake’s mother Greta, a French expatriate (Rushkoff Testament 10). It is now the tracking and drafting tool for an unnamed U.S. war. Some of Jake’s friends oppose being forced into service, carving the RFIDs out of their arms or jamming its signal. Others, though, submit – much like Miller’s description of real-life generations made to pattern themselves after biblical Isaac: The younger generations will march, sing songs, kill and be killed, and they will be under the impression that they are carrying out an extremely important mission...They will resemble Isaac...Neither does the father ask any questions He submits to the divine command as a matter of course. The same way his son submits to him. (140) A government scientific contractor – and a co-creator of the RFID’s original software – Jake’s own father must oversee his son’s at-home implantation. Sharp, drawing on sketches provided by Rushkoff, shows Moloch outside the panels to be encouraging this act just as he does Isaac’s sacrifice. Likewise, a representative of the Judeo-Christian God stays the father’s hand by offering an animal in the son’s place. Both Abraham and Dr. Alan Stern defy the prevalent authorities of their societies and keep their sons from certain death. As a modern alternate for Isaac and Lot, Jake both becomes the total manifestation of what Elijah calls “the messianic line” (Rushkoff “West” 32). Our visual introduction to Jake and his father Alan on page 8 of Testament precisely echoes the layout of the volume’s first page, where Isaac is roused by Abraham for their journey to Mt. Moriah. Alan and Greta’s only son, Jake also faces an encounter similar to Lot’s; when his Arab ex-girlfriend Miriam chooses to take part in an anti-war protest, he tries to Lewis – 11 remove her from the danger site. Jake has been vaguely warned by his father: The “disciplinary capacities” of the RFIDs will be activated, incapacitating all the protesters there (Rushkoff Testament 31). Interestingly, it isn’t the wicked struck down, as with their Sodomite and Gomorrahan analogs. Rather, the non-compliant and the revolutionary are paralyzed with a burst of pain. Miriam’s hesitation and turn back to the protest site leads to her being captured as well, linking her visually and narratively to Lot’s wife. Likewise, the rationales for either woman’s punishment overlaps. Her ethnicity (Cheon 19), her sympathy (Ginzburg 255), or even her lack of prudence in the face of calamity (Ginzburg 254) apply equally to both. Moreover, both Lot’s wife and Miriam leave Lot and Jake lost without a mate. To continue their line, Lot’s daughters assume this role; paralleled in design, layout, and story, Jake’s former student Dinah woos her old tutor. Succeeding where Lot failed, however, Jake’s story continues rather than ending there. His Isaac-ness trumps his Lot-ishness. Likewise, Jake’s dual role wholly affirms the embodiment of Abraham in Alan. When Jake is taken captive, Alan liberates him by means of a technological deus ex machina – aided, suggests the art, by Melchizedek’s hand just as Abraham is in the Valley of Siddim. Alan stands, too, in a similar social position: He and his wife oppose the overwhelming authorities that surround them, paganism replaced by corporatism. Alan’s long-time colleague Dr. Green serves as a dark reflection of Alan himself. Green sees the inevitability of both the RFID tags and their eventual implementation, in the subsequent volume of Testament, as the new global form of currency. That is, Green metaphorically worships an alternate aspect of Moloch, the all-mighty dollar, because he does not have the strength to oppose. Also revealed in the second collection West of Lewis – 12 Eden, both Alan and Green knew Greta in their youth, and both bedded her. The quiet question of Jake’s paternity, therefore, subtly implicates Green as a failed Abraham – as the one who would have followed through with Isaac’s sacrifice. (Worse, Green is likened to Cain, selling Stern out to mogul Pierce Fallow). We can see the possibility of Jake being Green’s child in the boy’s ability to portray weak, passive Lot. Jake’s strength, instead, should be attributed to his recognized father. True to the patriarch as well as his own surname, Alan Stern finds fortitude in the face of adversity, whereas Green, appropriately, bows down to money. But, just as Jake has more than one possible sire, Jake is not Alan’s only progeny. Yes, Jake is Alan’s only son. Long before Jake, though, Alan was a rising computer scientist who, along with Greta’s inspiration, gave rise to the artificial intelligence program; it would later, unknown to him, be used as the basis for the RFID’s currency system, the Globo. Like Jake, this “manmade life” is also dubbed “the next generation of the messianic line” by Elijah (Rushkoff “West” 32). As the Creator of this stolen, intangible offspring, Alan signals a plight that might echo Rushkoff’s own: That the core to Judaism has been taken away and closed off from the laity. Meanwhile, in later issues, Rushkoff will reveal that Jake and Dinah’s tryst left her with child. Similar to Lot’s daughters spawning King David’s Moabite line, perhaps Alan’s Abrahamic descendant will come from this non-sanctioned, less-than-legitimate union. With Dinah, not Miriam, carrying Jake’s seed, something is askew. Dinah, after all, follows Astarte, working at the sex club Babylon as an empowered “daughter of Ishtar” (Rushkoff “Babel”10). And even her fellow ‘sisters’ have compromised their calling, making it about crass prostitution rather than something spiritual; “It was never Lewis – 13 supposed to be about the cash,” she says (10). Her connection with Astarte remains unshaken, and vice versa. “In this time, as in the next time, and all time, she is our power,” says Astarte to Moloch from outside the panels (Rushkoff Testament 63). Though initially allied with the polytheists, Astarte reaches from beyond to save Jake plummeting to a certain death even as she eventually falls for Krishna on the monotheists’ side. “This isn’t right,” protest Melchizedek and Elijah. “See what you did, Krishna? The archetypes have been confused” (Rushkoff “Trip” 22). Miriam standing in Dinah’s place, her being sexually assaulted by modern day philistines like her friend’s biblical namesake was, is proof of a misalignment for those beings outside the story. Time itself has been reshuffled. In his other critical works, Rushkoff discusses the need for flexible, malleable media where innovative, non-traditional storytelling can take place. “Traditional linear stories tend to express themselves in duality. A cause leads to an effect…Nonlinear stories tend to express themselves differently” (Rushkoff Playing 66). For Rushkoff, comics are one of those “alternative forums [that] give media activist low-cost, highly resilient, and provocatively interactive viral shells for the memes they wish to disseminate” (Media 180). His “meme” is a new engagement with an Old Testament, a freed one. R.W. Moberly’s sentiments support this idea: If we will not read the Bible with at least the same degree of imaginative engagement we accord to our favorite novels or soaps, no contemporary account of biblical authority or trustworthiness is likely to be much more than a form of words (Moberly 189). Therefore, as with Lost or Memento, Testament exploits chronology in the Hebrew Bible. Rushkoff frankly admits to taking “liberties with the timeline” (“Mysteries” 115), since the Old Testament itself “doesn't really treat time the same way as a modern book might” (114). For instance, Ginzberg recounts, “It was on the first evening of the Passover, and Lewis – 14 Abraham was eating of the unleavened bread, when the archangel Michael brought him the report of Lot’s captivity” (231) – of course, Passover, the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, did not properly exist yet. Another example comes from the odd place of Melchizedek2 in Genesis. “Melchizedek thus seemed to be a priest. But how could that be? The priesthood itself had not yet been established” (Kugel 151). Midrash translated by Neusner answers, “So Melchizedek was the priest of Jerusalem even before the Temple was built. Once more the history of Israel is joined to the life of Abraham” (120). In short, the rabbinical belief that biblical stories predicted the future fate of Israel already establishes trans-temporal elements to the Old Testament long before Rushkoff’s intervention. “Nothing is random, all things connected, and fundamental laws of history dictate the sense and meaning of what happens” (Neusner 106). With some degree of biblical permission, Rushkoff can re-sort the events of Abraham’s life so as to create a new patriarch. In the traditional story, “[s]tarkly put, Abraham failed as perhaps no other father had” (Moltz 65). Lot is lost, Abraham and Isaac never speak again after the akedah, and Sarah dies almost immediately thereafter. For that matter, “Abraham never again speaks to God or seeks his blessing; instead, he speaks only about God (64). In Testament, though, the akedah precedes both the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah as well as the Battle in the Valley of Siddim. For this fight, Rushkoff and Sharp make Abraham an elder warrior, “like he's more of an established prophet going back to war than a young mercenary” (Rushkoff “Re: NYCC”). Sarah, 2 “Melchizedek is something of an enigma in the Bible. We are not told the name of his father or his mother, or anything about his family. He is not mentioned anywhere in the various lists of Noah’s descendants. We are not told when he was born – not even that he was born – and the Bible is equally silent about his death” (Kugel 151). In fact, from his mention in Psalm 110, there arose the “interpretation of the Psalm 110 that there emerged the figure of a heavenly Melchizedek, an angelic being who sits next to the divine throne” (155). The extended life of Elijah, too, makes them prime candidates as Testament’s supernatural representatives of the Judeo-Christian God. Lewis – 15 raven haired and surprisingly youthful, has survived – the trauma of the akedah absent – to express her concern about his return to war. And Lot lives to thank his uncle for, once again, his lasting guardianship. Testament gives us the ur-Abraham we mistakenly thought we always had. Instead of the troubled, broken man of Buechner’s Son of Laughter, we have a virile, vital forefather – one who strides the borders of his own reality like a colossus. “I wanted to show Abraham more as emerging father of his people,” says Rushkoff (“Re: NYCC”), and, in doing so, he has pried open the scriptural stories for revision. “Since Biblical times, we have been living in a world where the stories we use to describe and predict our reality have been presented as truth and mistaken for fact” (Rushkoff “Renaissance” 2). Akin to the ways in which Testament’s characters penetrate the panels to engage the gutter-filling “godspace” (Rushkoff “Mysteries” 113), Rushkoff feels “[w]e must shatter the walls surrounding this religion” (Nothing 3). According to Harold Bloom, “Christians were to ‘save’ the Old Testament from those like Marcion who would cast it out completely, that is precisely what they saved – their Old Testament” (292). Rushkoff, too, has saved his holy book, saved his patriarch, yet saved little tradition from falling under scrutiny. A. David Lewis April 5, 2007 ADL@bu.edu Lewis – 16 Works Cited Bialik, Hayim Naham and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky, eds. The Book of Legends (Sefer Ha-Aggadah): Legends from the Talmud and Midrash. New York: Schocken Books, 1992. Bloom, Harold. “Before Moses Was, I Am.” Notebooks in Cultural Analysis: An Annual Review. Durham: Duke UP, 1984. Boehm, Omri. “The Binding of Isaac: An Inner-Biblical Polemic on the Question of ‘Disobeying’ a Manifestly Illegal Order.” Vestus Testamentum 52.1 (2002): 1-12. Buechner, Frederick. The Son of Laughter. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. Cheon, Samuel. “Filling the Gap in the Story of Lot’s Wife (Genesis19:1-29).” Asia Journal of Theology 15 (2001): 14-23. Dickstein, Lore. “Jacob: The Novel.” The New York Times. 19 September 1993. 1 April 2007 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5DE1E39F93AA257 5AC0A965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all Fretheim, Terence E. “God, Abraham, and the Abuse of Isaac.” Word & World 15.1 (Winter 1995): 49-57. Genesis. Robert Alter, trans. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. Ginzberg, Louis. The Legend of the Jews I: Bible Times and Characters from the Creation to Jacob. Henrietta Szold, trans. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913. Helter, Larry R. “Abraham’s Eight Crises.” The Bible Review 11.5 (October 1995): 2027, 44. Lewis – 17 Jackson, Melissa. “Lot’s Daughters and Tamar as Tricksters and the Patriarchal Narratives as Feminist Theology.” Journal of the Study of the Old Testament 98 (2002): 29-46. Kaltner, John. “Abraham’s Sons: How the Bible and Qur’an See the Same Story Differently.” Bible Review 18.2 (April 2002): 16-23, 45-46. Kermode, Frank. The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1979. Kessler, Edward. “The Sacrifice of Isaac (The Akedah) in Christian and Jewish Tradition: Artistic Representations.” Borders, Boundaries, and the Bible. New York: Scheffield Academic, 2002. 74-98. Kugel, James L. The Bible As It Was. Cambridge: Belknap, 1997. Levenson, Jon D. The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993. Miller, Alice. The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness. Hildegarde Hannum and Hunter Hannum, trans. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Moberly, R.W. L. “Living Dangerously: Genesis 22 and the Quest for Good Biblical Interpretation.” The Art of Reading Scripture. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. 181-197. Moltz, Howard. “God and Abraham in the Binding of Isaac.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 96 (2001): 59-69. Neusner, Jacob, trans. Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis, A New American Translation. Vol II. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1975. Lewis – 18 Politis, Konstantinos. “Where Lot’s Daughters Seduced Their Father.” Biblical Archaeology Review 30.1 (January/February 2004): 20-31, 64. Rushkoff, Douglas. “Life in the Tube.” Futures 28.1 (1996): 87-90. ---. Media Virus. New York: Ballantine, 1994. ---. Playing the Future: How Kids’ Culture Can Teach Us to Thrive in an Age of Chaos. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. ---. “Mysteries and Meanings: Notes on the Biblical History Behind Testament.” Testament: West of Eden. New York: DC Comics, 2007. ---. Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism. New York: Three Rivers, 2004. ---. “Renaissance Now! The Gamers’ Perspective.” New York Law School. 22 March 2007 http://www.nyls.edu/docs/rushkoff.pdf ---. “Re: NYCC Meeting?” E-mail correspondence with the author. 28 March 2007. Rushkoff, Douglas (w), Peter Gross, and Gary Erskine (a). “West of Eden, Conclusion: What God Giveth...” Testament #7 (August 2006). DC Comics. Rushkoff, Douglas (w), and Liam Sharp (a). “Babel, Part Three: Double Cross.” Testament #15 (April 2007). DC Comics. ---. Testament: Akedah. New York: DC Comics, 2006. ---. “Trip Resent: The Rape of Dinah.” Testament #12 (January 2007). DC Comics. Schrader, Malcolm E. “The Akedah Test: What Passes and What Fails.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 32 (2004): 251-258. Tonson, Paul. “Mercy without Covenant: A Literary Analysis of Genesis 19.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 95 (2001): 96-116. Lewis – 19 Trible, Phyllis. “Genesis 22: The Sacrifice of Sarah.” “Not in Heaven”: Coherence and Complexity in Biblical Narrative. Jason Rosenblatt and J. Sitterson, Jr., eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. 170-191. Yanow, Dvora. “Sarah’s Silence: A Newly Discovered Commentary on Genesis 22 by Rashi’s Sister.” Judaism 43 (1994): 398-408. References Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans., Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1953. Bodof, Lippman. “God Tests Abraham, Abraham Tests God.” Bible Review 9.5 (October 1993): 52-56, 62. Brodsky, Harold. “Did Abraham Wage a Just War?” Jewish Bible Quarterly 31.3 (JulySeptember 2003): 167-174. Cohen, Jeffrey M. “Consequences of the Akedah.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 24.4 (OctoberDecember 1996): 241-246. Fokkelman, J.P. “Genesis.” The Literary Guide to the Bible. Eds., Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. Cambridge: Belknap, 1987. Frymer-Kensky, Tikvah. “Akedah: The View from the Bible.” Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holy Days. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ---. “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.” Reading the Women of the Bible. New York: Schocken Books, 2002. 5- Lewis – 20 Hepner, Gershon. “Abraham’s Incestuous Marriage with Sarah: A Violation of the Holiness Code.” Vestus Testamentum 53.2 (2003): 143-155. Hong, Joseph. “Problems in an Obscure Passage: Notes on Genesis 6.1-4.” The Bible Translator 40.2 (October 1989): 419-426. Rushkoff, Douglas. “Life in the Tube.” Futures 28.1 (1996): 87-90. Sirius, R.U. “Thou Shalt Realize the Bible Kicketh Ass.” 10 Zen Monkeys. 21 December 2006 <http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2006/12/21/bible-rushkoff-testament> 4 February 2007. Spiegel, Shalom. The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice, the Akedah. Judah Goldin, trans. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1993. Yaron, Shlomith. “Sperm Stealing: A Moral Crime by Three of David’s Ancestresses.” Bible Review 17.1 (February 2001): 34-38, 44.