Child sacrifice thumb|Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac. From a 14th-century English Missal Francesca Stavrakopoulou said that it is possible that the story "contains traces of a tradition in which Abraham does sacrifice Isaac".It may be that the biblical story contains traces of a tradition in which Abraham does sacrifice Isaac, for in Genesis 22:19 Abraham appears to return from the mountain without Isaac. Stavrakopoulou, F. (2004). King Manasseh and child sacrifice: Biblical distortions of historical realities, pp. 193–194. R. E. Friedman said that in the original E story, Abraham may have carried out the sacrifice of Isaac, but that later repugnance at the idea of a human sacrifice led the redactor of JE to add the lines in which a ram is substituted for Isaac.Friedman, R.E. (2003). The Bible With Sources Revealed, p. 65. Likewise, Terence Fretheim wrote that "the text bears no specific mark of being a polemic against child sacrifice".Terence E. Fretheim, in Marcia J. Bunge, Terence E. Fretheim, Beverly Roberts Gaventa (eds.), The Child in the Bible, p. 20 Wojciech Kosior also said that the genealogical snippet (Genesis 22:20–24) contain a hint to an alternative reading where Abraham sacrificed Isaac, since there would be no reason to list all these descendants of Abraham's brother.
Child sacrifice thumb|Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac. From a 14th-century English Missal Francesca Stavrakopoulou said that it is possible that the story "contains traces of a tradition in which Abraham does sacrifice Isaac".It may be that the biblical story contains traces of a tradition in which Abraham does sacrifice Isaac, for in Genesis 22:19 Abraham appears to return from the mountain without Isaac. Stavrakopoulou, F. (2004). King Manasseh and child sacrifice: Biblical distortions of historical realities, pp. 193–194. R. E. Friedman said that in the original E story, Abraham may have carried out the sacrifice of Isaac, but that later repugnance at the idea of a human sacrifice led the redactor of JE to add the lines in which a ram is substituted for Isaac.Friedman, R.E. (2003). The Bible With Sources Revealed, p. 65. Likewise, Terence Fretheim wrote that "the text bears no specific mark of being a polemic against child sacrifice".Terence E. Fretheim in Marcia J. Bunge, Terence E. Fretheim, Beverly Roberts Gaventa (eds.), The Child in the Bible, p. 20 Wojciech Kosior also said that the genealogical snippet (Genesis 22:20–24) contain a hint to an alternative reading where Abraham sacrificed Isaac, since there would be no reason to list all these descendants of Abraham's brother.