ABSTRACT
Only one episode in the biblical account of the patriarch Abraham has attracted literary and artistic attention, namely the sacrifice of Isaac. From the very first verse the emphasis is on the setting of a test. In sum, though it appears soberly realistic and utterly devoid of any overt mythology, the story of the testing of Abraham can still justifiably called mythical in the profoundest sense of the term. It is thus unsurprising that medieval clerics set actors representing Abraham and Isaac on the stage. In Abraham, the father is at war with the believer, and in God himself. In his approach to the story of Abraham offering up his sacrifice, Laurence Housman sets out to rob it of its universality, to demythologize it, to use Bultman's term. In his Jacob, Pierre Emmanuel pushes Abraham into the background and lets Isaac speak making him the personification of the willing victim, the slave of God, a silent.
