Jesus' sacrifice is Jewish, not pagan, in origin...part two

Round two of Conclusions:

1) The Palestinian Targum proves quite conclusively that already in the first century AD there existed a firm belief that the principal merit of the Akedah sprang from the virture of Isaac's self-offering...

2) ...the Akedah, although ritually incomplete, was indeed a true sacrifice and Israel's chief title to forgiveness and redemption. The purpose of other sacrifices, including the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, was to remind God of Isaac's perfect self-oblation and to invoke his merits.

3) ...in the ancient liturgy of Israel a powerful bond linked the Binding of Isaac with Passover and eschatological salvation.

Vermes then goes on, with scholarly support, to further the view that Paul's symbolic use of the Akedah is the bridge between "the genuinely Jewish teaching of atoning suffering" and "the non-Jewish concept of a Saviour who was both man and God." (p. 218)

Vermes notes that Paul follows a traditional Jewish pattern enabling him to "coordinate with the framework of a coherent synthesis the most profound and anomalous religious concept ever known to the human mind....For although he is undoubtedly the greatest theologian of the Redemption, he worked with inherited materials..." (p. 221)

Using the premise that the early chapters of Acts are from a Palestinian stratum more ancient than Paul's writings, he notes that Jesus is called "Servant of God" and ties this not to Psalm 2 but to Genesis 22. On this premise he poses the possibility that it was Jesus, not Paul, who introduces the Akedah motif into Christianity.

Finally, noting that the Passover lamb of John's Gospel is problematic in many respects because the Passover lamb is not an expiatory sacrifice, he notes that, for the Palestinian Jew, all lamb sacrifice hearkens back to the Akedah and its effects of "deliverance, forgiveness of sin and messianic salvation." (p. 225) Jesus is the new Isaac.

Vermes does qualify this by noting that the Christian doctrine of Redemption is not just a Christian version of the Akedah. He simply emphasizes that the essential role of the targumic representation of the Binding of Isaac in its development.

"Indeed," he notes, "without the help of Jewish exegesis it is impossible to perceive any Christian teaching in its true perspective." (p .227)