The Akedah Servant Complex

This book traces the convergence of two biblical texts, Akedah (Genesis 22) and the Fourth Servant Song (Isaiah 53) in early Jewish and Christian writings. The passages share verbal and conceptual resonances, including the suffering of a righteous individual, divine complicity in an unjust death, unresisting compliance, notions of cultic sacrifice, exaltation and reward. Given their intertextual links, the two passages have been associated together in some ancient texts, within contexts of suffering righteousness and sacrifice. This book labels the apparent convergence of the primary texts as the Akedah Servant complex, and it develops a dialogic intertextual approach to determine the presence of the complex in selected passages: Stage I/ pre-70CE Jewish writings; Stage II/ New Testament; Stage III /post-70CE (rabbinic and patristic) texts. This study indicates that the linking of Isaiah 53 and Genesis 22 is a long-standing tradition which resulted in shaping an early Christian model of atonement.