September 2026 Book Review
James Goodman. But Where Is the Lamb? Imagining the Story of Abraham and Isaac. New York: Schocken Books, 2013.
Reviewed by Rich Robinson
This book, now thirteen years old, just came to my attention, appropriately enough in time for the Days of Awe. Unusually, Goodman teaches both history and creative writing at the Rutgers University-Newark School of Arts and Science in New Jersey, USA. His dual expertise shows to great effect here. The author inserts himself into the book throughout, making it personal and inviting the reader’s own responses.
But Where Is the Lamb? is an exploration of the many, many understandings of the Akedah from ancient midrash to medieval Christian and Islamic interpretations to modern reflections in Kierkegaard, Bob Dylan, Israeli poetry, feminist writings and much more—including the visual arts. Did I say there were many understandings of the Akedah? No wonder, for that story from Genesis 22 has mystified readers and generated a myriad of interpretations over the centuries.
And what a range of interpretations it is! Some have thought that Abraham resisted performing God’s command to sacrifice Isaac. Others believed that he really wanted to go through with the deed, even begging God that he might proceed. Some turned their attention to Isaac, opinions divided on whether Isaac resisted or also welcomed it, or whether Isaac really died or was spared. And others bring Sarah into the story too, though she is not present in the biblical account.
Those who are oriented more to the visual media than to text will get to hear about a competition in bronze relief in the fifteenth century, with Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi as the finalists. Ghiberti’s scene is ambiguous, with Abraham even backing off from Isaac even as the knife is lifted. Brunelleschi’s also showed ambiguity, but of a different kind. Ghiberti won the competition, perhaps due less to his interpretation of the Akedah than to the fact that his bronze weighed less than Brunelleschi’s at a time when bronze cost ten time more than marble, so says Goodman. So it may be that economics won out over artistry. For a Jewish take on this competition, fully illustrated, see Jacob Wisse, “The Binding of Isaac in the Hands of Two Florentine Christian Artists,” in Mosaic Magazine. (Goodman also has a section of illustrations.)
Of course, one reason for the flood of interpretive views is that Scripture doesn’t tell us what Abraham thought, or how Isaac felt, or much else that we might want to know about. One of the functions of midrash is to fill in the gaps in biblical stories, to have them make more sense than they might otherwise seem to.
But as Jonathan Silver, the editor of Mosaic, writes:
Whether it is the case of competing interpretations of the same moment in Zionist history or two psychological interpretations of the same biblical drama [the Akedah], or else, the two interpretations of an adversary’s deployment of anti-Jewish propaganda, these competing ways of seeing cannot be reconciled. Nor am I suggesting that no final truth [sic]; … one Abraham is truer to the text than the other. But the endurance of competing interpretations is evidence of something more sobering, which is how easily our judgment, even at its most careful, can fail to reach the truth that is there.
After absorbing the plethora of views surrounding the Akedah, this is a salient reminder that they cannot all be true, though many today would be quick to say that there is no final truth, or to admit that thinking about truth gives them a headache, or to say that is doesn’t matter since it is a story meant to provoke us to thought; or to simply throw up their hands as Pilate once did when he asked, “What is truth?” Or better, in scare quotes, “What is ‘truth’?”
It is likely that the story in Genesis 22 continues a theme throughout Genesis, namely, the roadblocks that get put up that seemingly stand in the way of God’s fulfilling his promises to Abraham of a great nation, many descendants, and blessing for the world. It is also likely that John 3:16 in the New Testament alludes to another father offering another son as Abraham offered Isaac. It is helpful here to google Marc Chagall’s painting The Sacrifice of Isaac and see what he has done with the story.
Questions about the Akedah will always remain. This book is a one-stop survey of what Jews, Christians, Muslims, modern philosophers, poets and artists have made of it. Highly recommended.