Islam and Christian – Muslim Relations,

Vol. 20, No. 3, 247– 256, July 2009

Incomplete without the Other: Isaac,

Ishmael and a Hermeneutic of Diversity

CLARE AMOS
Anglican Communion Office, London, UK

ABSTRACT The article begins by acknowledging the way that, in Islamic tradition (though not
necessarily in the Qur’an itself), the ‘sacrificed son’ of Abraham appears to be Ishmael. This
differs from the Bible, where the ‘sacrificed son’ is clearly Isaac. Yet a closer look at the Bible in
fact suggests that the stories of Isaac and Ishmael in Genesis are woven together through a
number of important literary connections which will be explored in some detail. This will lead to
a wider consideration of the themes of universality and particularity in the Abraham cycle. The
article seeks to argue that the very structure of the biblical narrative in Genesis challenges
readers to move beyond a ‘particularistic’ understanding of scripture, and finally to ask whether
the way that Isaac and Ishmael are ‘bound together’ has implications for Christian and Muslim
use of our respective scriptures, i.e., that we are ‘incomplete without the other’ and their
understanding of the story.

On the walls of the apartment where my husband and I lived in Beirut during the early
years of our married life, a picture used to hang. It was a painting printed on cloth
which we had bought in the sūq in Damascus. When people visited us they would normally
assume that it was a painting depicting the story in Genesis where Abraham almost sacri-
fices his son Isaac. No, we would say in response, it is not a painting of the sacrifice of
Isaac—but rather a depiction by a Muslim artist of the story of the sacrifice of Ishmael,
the other son of Abraham! Ever since then, the theme of the sacrifice of Abraham’s
son, and indeed the question as to which son is sacrificed, has intrigued me and it is
what has provided the basis for this article.
Within the Judeo-Christian scriptures, at first sight it seems clear: it is Isaac that is to be
sacrificed. Genesis 22 makes it clear. Isaac is explicitly named as the object of Abraham’s
sacrifice in verse 2. Later Jewish and Christian reflection on the story also clearly identifies
the sacrificed son as Isaac. However, as we shall see shortly, the situation is more complex
than it appears at first.
The qur’anic passage which refers to the sacrifice of Abraham’s son comes in
Q 37.99 – 111. The relevant text reads (according to the translation of M. A. S. Abdel
Haleem):

Correspondence Address: Clare Amos, Anglican Communion Office, St Andrew’s House, 16 Tavistock Crescent,
London W11 1AP, UK; E-mail: clare.amos@anglicancommunion.org

0959-6410 Print/1469-9311 Online/09/030247-10 # 2009 University of Birmingham

DOI: 10.1080/09596410902982885
248 C. Amos

He said, ‘I will go to my Lord: He is sure to guide me. Lord, grant me a righteous

son,’ so We gave him the good news that he would have a patient son. When the boy
was old enough to work with his father, Abraham said, ‘My son, I have seen myself
sacrificing you in a dream. What do you think?’ He said, ‘Father, do as you are com-
manded and, God willing, you will find me steadfast.’ When they had both submitted
to God, and he had laid his son down on the side of his face, We called out to him,
‘Abraham, you have fulfilled the dream.’ This is how We reward those who do
good—it was a test to prove [their true characters]—We ransomed his son by a
momentous sacrifice, and We let him be praised by succeeding generations:
‘Peace be upon Abraham!’ This is how We reward those who do good: truly he
was one of Our faithful servants.

In this qur’anic text, the son of Abraham who is to be sacrificed is not specifically named.
It seems to be ambiguous. We can note, however, that immediately after the reference to
the sacrifice and the immediate submission of Abraham and his son, there is a reference to
Abraham being given the good news of Isaac (Q 37.11– 113: ‘We gave Abraham the good
news of Isaac—a prophet and a righteous man—and blessed him and Isaac too’). Does this
suggest that the incident in the previous verses should also be related to Isaac, or does it
rather imply that Isaac is now being introduced to us for the first time, following on from
an episode which concerned Abraham’s other son? Although it is not clear from within the
Qur’an itself, it is certainly true that the majority of later Islamic exegesis has understood
the sacrifice as referring to Ishmael.1
To return to Genesis—but not straightaway to Genesis 22—though he may not feature
in Genesis 22, Ishmael does appear at a number of other points within Genesis: in quite
long narratives in Genesis 16 and 21, in a genealogy in Genesis 25, and more briefly in
Genesis 17. There are also references to his descendants in Genesis 28 and 37. It is
in fact arguable that within what is called the Abraham cycle, by which I mean Genesis
12 –25, there is at least as much interest in Ishmael as there is in Isaac. We need to
begin by looking at Genesis 16 and 21.
Genesis 16 explains the circumstances of the birth of Ishmael: he was born to Hagar,
Abraham and Sarah’s Egyptian slave-girl, because Sarah, who was infertile, offered
Hagar to Abraham in order, as Genesis literally puts it, that she might be ‘built up’
through her.2 In Genesis 21, we hear how, after the eventual birth of Isaac to Sarah,
Hagar and Ishmael are expelled by Abraham and Sarah into the desert, where they are
in danger of dying of thirst and are eventually rescued by the angel of the Lord who
points out to them a spring.
In recent years, there has been considerable interest among biblical scholars in the
literary patterns that underlie the construction of biblical books, or sections of books.
A particular pattern that is used extensively by biblical writers is known as the chiastic
pattern, named after the Greek letter x (chi), in which the beginning and end of a book
or section ‘match’, and the pattern gradually folds in on itself moving towards the
middle of the book/section—which is thus given a position of particular importance.
Within Genesis, it has been widely suggested that the section of the book that deals
with Abraham is constructed on a chiastic basis. If so, it is fascinating to explore what
might be its middle—and therefore the key centre of the section. Below is the chiastic
structural analysis offered by John Goldingay (1998), based on earlier work by Jonathan
Magonet (1992, pp. 23 – 32):
 Incomplete without the Other 249

A1 12a The call (lek leka). Blessing promised

B1 12b Abraham in Egypt. Wife-sister motif. 13 Controversy over livestock.
C1 13– 14 Lot in danger. Sodom.
D1 15 Covenant
E 16 Hagar and Ishmael
D2 17 Covenant
C2 18– 19 Lot in danger. Sodom.
B2 20 Abraham in Gerar. Wife-sister motif; 21b Controversy over livestock.
[21a Birth of Isaac/Hagar and Ishmael.]
A2 22 The call (lek leka). Blessing confirmed.

If we adopt this analysis we discover that, surprisingly, the mid point of the Abraham
cycle seems to be chapter 16, the account of the birth of Ishmael. Magonet describes it
as a ‘false climax’, placed there deliberately to mislead the reader, but Goldingay chal-
lenges that description, and argues that the section is constructed in this way to emphasize
that, within it, Isaac and Ishmael are being required to share centre stage. Whatever destiny
might have intended, as the story of Abraham is actually played out within the narrative,
even though Ishmael may be ultimately outside the covenant (as Genesis 17.21 implies),
he must be allowed his place alongside Isaac, the favoured brother, and cannot be pushed
out of the tale.
Such an observation is reinforced by the narrative in Genesis 21, both in terms of its
place within the overall saga of Abraham, and through its specific content. Previous gene-
rations of scholars considered Genesis 21 as a sort of doublet of Genesis 16: both passages,
for example, climax in a meeting with the divine which is centred on a well. Alongside
other apparent doublets in Genesis 12– 25, it was regarded as evidence for the existence
of multiple sources within Genesis.3 Much contemporary scholarship would challenge
that interpretation and argue that, whatever the original provenance of Genesis 21, its
place within the Abraham cycle is not as a result of an incompetent editor allowing a
doublet to appear, but is because it carries forward in important ways the story of
Ishmael and his mother Hagar, to whom we have been introduced in Genesis 16.
Notice, for example, that in Genesis 16, we are told that Abraham ‘listened to the voice
of’ his wife Sarah (16.2) and followed her suggestion in taking Hagar as a substitute. In
Genesis, whenever a character ‘listens to the voice of’ someone other than God, there is
normally trouble ahead. That is certainly true here. But it is telling that the same
expression is deliberately picked up in Genesis 21: when Abraham hesitates over
Sarah’s suggestion to expel Hagar and Ishmael, the literal translation of the Hebrew has
him told by God to ‘listen to the voice of’ Sarah again (21.12). The seeds that Abraham
had sowed earlier are now to be harvested. One hearing leads inexorably on to another.
Reading the two stories together offers a sharp reminder that our actions have unavoidable
consequences. John Goldingay (1998) also suggests that the fact that there are two stories
about Hagar and Ishmael is important: it embeds these two people fully in this biblical
saga, in which others, such as Lot, Isaac and also Abraham himself have two linked
stories associated with them.
But it is equally remarkable to notice the close parallels between what happens to
Ishmael in chapter 21 and Isaac’s experiences in chapter 22. There are many verbal
links between the two accounts: it seems clear that the biblical writer wants us to read
the experiences of the two brothers in the light of each other. For example, in both
250 C. Amos

cases the story begins ‘early in the morning’ (21.14; 22.3), in both cases ‘seeing’ is a key
motif in the story, in both cases a bush or a thicket plays a part (21.15; 22.13), and in both
cases rescue comes through angelic intervention (21.17; 22.11), even though it is only after
the sacrifice of Isaac that the promise is reiterated. Perhaps it is also significant to note how
the theme of hearing weaves its way into both chapters. We have already mentioned how
Abraham had first heard the voice of Sarah, and then is told to hear it again. Yet in expel-
ling Ishmael and his mother, Abraham ultimately allows Ishmael to live up to the meaning
of his name, ‘God has heard’ (16.11), for then it is God who eventually hears the cries of
Hagar and her son and provides them with water (21.17). And, tellingly, the conclusion to
the story of the sacrifice of Isaac includes the comment by the angel of the Lord that
Abraham and his family will be blessed ‘because you have heard my voice’ (22.18), so
the sequence of stories that began with Abraham’s apparent mis-hearing is finally resolved
when God acknowledges that at last he has truly obeyed the divine voice. Given the way in
which Genesis 21 and 22 seem to link together the trials of the two brothers, Ishmael and
Isaac, and the fact that Genesis 22 is called the ‘sacrifice of Isaac’, it is not inappropriate to
think of Genesis 21 as being a sort of sacrifice of Ishmael, even though, in the Genesis
account, the reason for the sacrifice of Ishmael may be the desire for apparent family
harmony rather than a direct test from God. Indeed, some Jewish interpreters of the
story of the sacrifice of Isaac argue that the reason for God’s apparently monstrous
demand to Abraham to sacrifice his son is precisely because of Abraham’s earlier behav-
iour towards Ishmael and Hagar. Admittedly, this is very much a minority viewpoint, but
that it exists at all suggests that Genesis does indeed allow for some causal connection
between the fates of the two brothers.4
Such a link is eloquently expressed in a modern Hebrew poem, by the writer Shin
Shalom, which is now used as part of the Liturgy for New Year’s Day in the synagogues
of the Reformed Tradition in Great Britain. Part of it reads as follows—the poet is speak-
ing as through the mouth of Isaac:

Ishmael, my brother,
How long shall we fight each other?
My brother from times bygone,
My brother, Hagar’s son,
My brother, the wandering one.
One angel was sent to us both,
One angel watched over our growth—
There in the wilderness, death threatening through thirst,
I a sacrifice on the altar, Sarah’s first.
Ishmael, my brother, hear my plea:
It was the angel who tied thee to me . . .
Time is running out, put hatred to sleep.
Shoulder to shoulder, let’s water our sheep.

So far we have concentrated particularly on the place of Ishmael in the story, and the fact
that, though he is clearly the less favoured son, he is given an important place in the bib-
lical story of Abraham. This is reinforced by the way that this section of Genesis concludes
 Incomplete without the Other 251

with a genealogy of Ishmael. It has long been noted that Genesis as a whole is structured
around a ten-fold use of the word toledot, a Hebrew word that means ‘genealogy’ or
‘history’ (2.4; 5.1; 6.9; 10.1; 11.10; 11.27; 25.12; 25.19; 36.1, 9; 37.2). However, the
fact that several of the instances of this word lead on to lists of the families of less favoured
sons, such as Ishmael and Esau, is intriguingly suggestive. Why did the writer of Genesis
expend such structural effort on apparent outsiders?
Perhaps Ishmael’s mother offers a partial answer. Biblical scholars, particularly those
working from a feminist or womanist perspective, have given Hagar considerable attention
in recent years. Very few, however, have noticed a crucial point, namely Hagar’s own
name. Names matter in Genesis: their meaning conveys something important about the
character or destiny of those named. That is certainly true in the Abraham saga. Although
Hagar’s name is nowhere directly ‘explained’ in the text, it seems highly likely that we are
intended to pick up the link between it and the Hebrew word ger, which is variously trans-
lated into English as ‘sojourner’, ‘resident alien’, and ‘migrant’; but whatever translation is
used, it conveys the idea of a person who is an ‘outsider’. In Hebrew, the expression ‘the
sojourner’ would be simply Ha-ger, identical in consonantal text and almost identical in
sound to Hagar’s name. And it is interesting to notice that the stories in Genesis about
Hagar come in close proximity to narratives in which Abraham and his family could be
described as people having the status of ger, either in the land of Canaan or later in
Egypt. For example, Genesis 15.13 notes threateningly in the context of the covenantal
promise to Abraham that, in spite of the promise, Abraham’s descendants would spend
400 years as gerim and slaves in Egypt. Genesis 20 and 21.25 – 34 deal with the kindness
shown to Abraham by Abimelech, king of Gerar,5 while Abraham was residing as a ger in
Abimelech’s territory. Elsewhere I have argued this in more detail than space allows in this
article (Amos, 2004, pp. 82 –90), but the point I draw from this is that, in the stories in
Genesis, Hagar is being viewed as an archetypal ger. One of the most fundamental prin-
ciples in Old Testament law codes demanded justice towards the ger—for example,
Exodus 22.21, which mandates clearly: ‘You shall not wrong or oppress a ger because
you were gerim in the land of Egypt.’ Yet that is exactly what Abraham and Sarah
seem to have done in the case of Hagar—first of all leading to her running away and
then actually forcing her out into the wilderness in a way that seemed designed to lead
to her death. So I am suggesting that we need to read the threat to Abraham in Genesis
15 with Abraham’s mistreatment of Hagar, and that the time Abraham’s family spent in
Egypt as gerim is intended to be seen as a punishment for Abraham’s mistreatment of
an Egyptian woman who had been in relation to them as a ger. Similarly, the honourable
treatment Abraham receives as a ger at the hand of the God-fearing Canaanite king
Abimelech (20.1– 18; 21.22 – 34) offers a powerful contrast to the less than satisfactory
way Abraham himself behaves towards Hagar. One way of interpreting this would be to
suggest that justice for the ger, such as Hagar, is actually being written into the fabric
of the covenant that God makes with Abraham, and indeed that Abraham’s own special
relationship can be voided, or at least damaged, by his attitude to those who constitute
his religious, social or ethnic other.
An article in an early issue of this journal engaged with issues very relevant to this
question. Entitled ‘Is Isaac without Ishmael complete? A nineteenth century debate re-
visited’ (Bennett, 1991), it is an exploration by Clinton Bennett of the thinking of a nine-
teenth-century Anglican priest, Charles Forster. Clinton Bennett (1991, p. 43) notes that
‘Christians have often felt handicapped by lack of a hermeneutical—particularly of a
252 C. Amos

biblical—key to assist and inform their understanding of Islam’. However, in response to

this apparent need, Charles Forster sought to find within the Bible itself a positive appreci-
ation of Islam, particularly focusing on the promise made to Ishmael in Genesis 17.20.
Forster’s theology had a strong focus on eschatology, and he argued that, in this instance,
the Bible is actually predicting the rise of Islam, and that Islam bore ‘spiritual fruit’ as the
heir to the biblical promise made to Ishmael. As Forster puts it: ‘Although Islam was “sub-
ordinate” to the everlasting covenant fulfilled in Christ, it yet possesses its own “lesser
fruits” which discover themselves in a religion of belief, a fervour of zeal and a sincerity
of devotion which might . . . put to shame the majority of the Christian world.’ In essence
Forster held that Islam was a sort of praeparatio evangelica. Such a view would, of course,
not be fully acceptable to Muslims, but in the intellectual and spiritual climate of nine-
teenth-century Britain, Forster’s views were perceived as extraordinarily radical. They
were heavily mocked and criticized by Forster’s fellow Christians. Bennett’s article
notes, for example, that one critic described them as ‘approaching the verge of blasphemy’
(Bennett, 1991, p. 51).
Such views have, however, made quite a comeback in some Christian circles in the last
quarter-century, through the development of what is sometimes called an Abrahamic
ecumenism. This could briefly be described as a paradigm for engagement between
Judaism, Christianity and Islam that focuses on those who worship the one God who
made promises to Abraham, which were carried forward physically by Abraham’s two
sons as a result of the promises made to each of them and then also by those who, accord-
ing to New Testament writers, such as Paul, became children of Abraham according to the
Spirit.6
Recently, however, some sensitive Christian voices have pointed out that such ‘Abra-
hamic ecumene’ has a certain theological naiveté. For example, Tarek Mitri comments
in an article written in 2000:

Islam is placed in the Christian history of salvation under the sign of Ishmael rather
than Abraham. A ‘mystery of Ishmael’ grounds itself in a text of the Old Testament
that has no respondent in the rest of the Hebrew Bible, let alone in the New Testa-
ment. In this way, the Abrahamic heritage is not inclusive, inter-communal or ecu-
menical but an object of an unequal distributive sharing. Christian Abrahamism [sic]
pretends to reconcile but it turns into a denigration of Islamic integrity and univers-
alism. (Mitri, 2000)

Thomas Naumann, the author of the expression ‘theological naiveté’, again writing in
2000, also offers a note of caution:

While the Hebrew Bible has preserved the Ishmael traditions, placed the promises
given to him next to Abraham, and woven the story of the one into the other, it
does not assimilate the two covenants. There is no easy way of theological inte-
gration. The religious other, symbolised by Ishmael, is entrusted to God’s caring
love, yet he remains the other, the stranger, alien and frightening. (Burkert-Engel,
2008, p. 134, referring to Naumann, 2000)

However, is there a way forward—without falling into the trap of ‘theological

naiveté’—of drawing on the Genesis narratives about Ishmael as part of a constructive
 Incomplete without the Other 253

engagement between the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam? Though I am interested in

the importance of the figure of Ishmael in Islamic thinking, I certainly would not
choose to begin from Forster’s premise that ‘the Bible contains the blue-print of all
history’ (Bennett, 1991, p. 43). I am not, therefore, seeking to suggest that the stories
about Ishmael in Genesis predict the rise of Islam, or that they offer a hermeneutical
key for Christian thinking about Islam per se. Forster’s work focused particularly on the
apparent covenant made with Ishmael depicted in Genesis 17.19 – 20; I read the comments
of Mitri and Naumann quoted above as suggesting they also focus primarily on this
passage, or at least that this passage provides them with their starting point. (Mitri’s
comment refers to ‘a text of the Old Testament’ without specifying the text to which he
refers, but the tenor of his comment leads me to assume that this is the text he means.)
However, my own starting-point would be rather different. It would be linked to the
account of Ishmael’s birth in Genesis 16 and the narrative of Ishmael’s near-death in
Genesis 21, and would seek to set the importance of these stories in relation to the
wider narrative of Genesis as a whole.
A rather delicious and tongue-in-cheek comment by the Latin American feminist
scholar Elsa Tamez offers a throwaway clue: writing about Hagar she says, ‘Hagar is
the woman who complicated the history of salvation’ (quoted by Goldingay, 1998).
That, it seems to me, is the essential importance of Hagar and her son Ishmael. I link
this to the remark of Thomas Naumann quoted above that Genesis does not offer ‘an
easy way of theological integration. The religious other, symbolised by Ishmael, is
entrusted to God’s caring love, yet he remains the other, the stranger, alien and frighten-
ing.’ Naumann seems to understand this thrust in negative terms (or at least partly so).
However, I wonder whether the Judeo – Christian tradition needs rather to be positive
about such ‘otherness’ of Ishmael—not primarily for the sake of the ‘other’, but even
more fundamentally because we discover thereby something fundamental about our
own faith tradition. We should not seek to tame the ‘wild ass of a man’ (16.12)
Ishmael; instead we need to allow him to tantalize us. One of the most fascinating disco-
veries I made when working on my commentary on Genesis is that the language of the last
line of Ishmael’s birth oracle in 16.11 – 12 is ambiguous. The expression ‘al-pene in the
Hebrew could be translated to mean that ‘he [Ishmael] shall live at odds with all his
kin’ (as the majority of translations offer). However, it could also be translated as ‘he
[Ishmael] shall live alongside all his kin’ (as a few translations suggest). I would want
to suggest that the meaning of the text here may be irresolvable—that deliberate ambiguity
may have been written into the oracle.
It seems to me that one of the features of text-based religions, such as both Christianity
and Islam, and of course Judaism as well, is that there is a natural tendency for text to lead
to particularity—‘our specific history of salvation’. Perhaps it is intrinsic to the process of
writing—the inevitable identification between the writer and his or her handiwork;
perhaps it is linked to the theologies of revelation that text-based religions bring with
them. We naturally want to identify ourselves with the insider, the carrier of the revelation,
even if, as in the case of Christians relating to the Abraham traditions, we have to ‘spirit-
ualize’ the figure of Abraham in order to do so. And yet the story of Hagar and
Ishmael in Genesis disturbs and unsettles both the text itself and also the readers of
Genesis from any such easy complacency. Genesis—indeed the Bible as a whole—is a
book where, on occasion, the scandal of particularity can feel truly scandalous.7 Yet
Hagar and Ishmael are salutary reminders that God will not be bound by any human
254 C. Amos

desire for theological tidiness. Alongside ‘the scandal of particularity’, universality refuses
to be forgotten. I see this exemplified in a number of ways: in the position given to the birth
of Ishmael at the very centre of the cycle of stories about Abraham, in the interplay
between the accounts of the near-death of Ishmael and Isaac, both in terms of verbal simi-
larities and possible cause and effect, in that ambiguous line in Ishmael’s birth-oracle, and
in the place offered to the genealogy of Ishmael by the toledot structure of Genesis. Indeed,
I would want to suggest that the story of Isaac and Ishmael, and that of Jacob and Esau,
constitute the tip of an iceberg in relation to the entire book of Genesis. For they are
two of the most overt expressions of a motif which is ‘played’ throughout the entire
Book of Genesis, namely the question of the relationship between the one and the two,
the one and the other. The theme is written into the very fabric of creation. Indeed,
without it creation could never have come into being. It is fascinating to realize how sig-
nificant duality is in the structure of creation in Genesis 1.1 – 2.4, in which creation pro-
ceeds through a series of bifurcations. Light is divided from darkness, day from night,
heavens from earth, sea from land. When, in 1.26 – 27, it comes to the creation of human-
ity, the plurality of the divine voice at this point, followed by the comment that human
beings are created in the ‘image’ of God, could constitute a reminder that human beings
are only in the image of God insofar as they affirm the reality of plurality (for more on
this, see Amos, 2006). In other words duality, plurality, diversity and the importance of
the ‘other’, the different, the contrasting one, are essential components of this world as
God would have it be. Ultimately, it seems to suggest that, as a Jew or a Christian, I
cannot be the one I am called to be in relation to God unless I see a value in ‘others’ in
their otherness. It is only when we acknowledge the radical otherness of the other, and
yet our own responsibility towards that ‘other’, that we cease to make an idol of ourselves.
Without the ‘other’, I am in some ways incomplete, but if I seek to tame them in my terms,
I am still incomplete because I have not allowed them to be truly other. Is this the herme-
neutical importance of the story of Ishmael—not that it offers us the possible existence
of a covenant which allows him and his physical and spiritual descendants to be
incorporated in a neat Judeo-Christian schema. Instead it persists in reminding us that a
mature faith and theology of religions needs to allow space both to affirm other human
beings as our ‘brothers’, whose lives are interwoven with ours but who have the right to
remain ‘other’?
And in this challenge, Ishmael’s mother, Hagar, also has her part to play. The link
between her name and the status and treatment of the ger, ‘alien’, which is profoundly
embedded in this section of Genesis, reinforces the connection between the need for right-
ful honouring of ‘the other’ and the integrity and health of the covenantal relationship
between God and Abraham (and his heirs).
To return again finally to the story of the sacrifice of Isaac—or Ishmael—with which
this article began: a significant study on the sacrifice of Isaac by Dr Edward Kessler
(2004) is entitled Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians and the Sacrifice of Isaac. Dr
Kessler puns on the description of the sacrifice or ‘binding’ of Isaac to comment that
the interplay and mutual influence between Jewish and Christian interpretations of this
story actually helps to ‘bind together’ Christians and Jews. Is it possible that the links
between the stories of the near sacrifice of Isaac and Ishmael in the Judeo-Christian tra-
dition of Genesis, and the apparent ambiguity in the Qur’an and Islamic commentary as
to whether the intended victim was Isaac or Ishmael could help ‘bind together’ Christians
and Muslims?
 Incomplete without the Other 255

Acknowledgements
This article is based on a paper originally presented at the conference Text and Interpret-
ation: the Bases for Christian – Muslim Engagement, held in Birmingham, June 2008. This
was the first in the Shi‘a Muslim – Christian Hermeneutics Dialogue Series, 2008 – 2010,
that is organized between the University of Birmingham, the Iranian Institute of Philos-
ophy, Monash University, Australia, Shahid Beheshti University, Iran, and the University
of Waikato, New Zealand. The overall title of the series is Text, Tradition and Identity:
Issues of Interpretation in Christian – Muslim Engagement. I am grateful to Professor
David Thomas for his assistance with this article and the presentation on which it was
based, and in particular for drawing to my attention the book and article by Clinton
Bennett (Bennett, 1993 and 1991) in which he discusses the work of Charles Forster.

Notes
1. Firestone (1990) provides lists (pp.170– 178) of which traditional Muslim exegetes favoured Isaac and
which Ishmael. Firestone comments that the tally is actually quite close, with 133 traditional authorities
favouring Ishmael and 100 favouring Isaac (p. 135). A clear pattern emerges of earlier exegetes preferring
Isaac and later exegetes naming Ishmael.
2. It is interesting to note how Hagar happened to be in the entourage of Abraham and Sarah. According to
Genesis 12.10–20, Abraham and Sarah went to Egypt to escape from a famine in Canaan. Out of fear,
Abraham pretended that Sarah was his sister, and Sarah was taken into Pharaoh’s harem. According to
the narrative of Genesis, God then ‘punished’ Pharaoh by sending a plague on the Egyptians, as the
result of which Sarah’s true status became clear. At this point, Pharaoh expelled Abraham and Sarah
from his land—but loaded them with gifts (including male and female slaves). Although it is not
stated, we can assume that the narrator intends us to think that it was this ambiguous situation that
brought Hagar into Abraham’s possession—as the result of a series of events founded upon a lie. But
it also means that the roots of the ‘Hagar/Ishmael’ motif stem right back to the beginning of the biblical
narrative about Abraham.
3. Perhaps the most often quoted example of a doublet, or indeed a triplet, is the attempt by first Abraham,
and then his son Isaac, to pass their respective wives off as their sisters (Genesis 12.10–20; 20.1– 18;
26.1–11).
4. Zakovitch suggests (1991, p. 29) that there is a ‘measure for measure’ relationship between the fates of the
two brothers.
5. It seems likely, both in Genesis 20 and in Genesis 26, when Gerar reappears, that the similarity in sound of
this place-name to the word ger is being deliberately exploited.
6. Barbara Burkert-Engel (2008) offers a brief but not uncritical survey of such ‘Abrahamic ecumene’.
7. Or at least the way that Genesis has traditionally been used and interpreted, particularly in relation to the
current political situation in the Middle East. A Christian Palestinian friend of mine, who at the time lived
in the West Bank town of Ramallah, was once told by a Western tourist that if she was a ‘real Christian’
she would have emigrated from the land, because she would have known that ‘God had given the territory
to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’. I would argue that a ‘deeper’ reading of Genesis actually
challenges such superficial views.

References
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