Book review: But Where Is the Lamb? by James Goodman

The sixty-second book I read in 2016 was But Where Is the Lamb?: Imagining the Story of Abraham and Isaac by James Goodman.  It's kind of an odd book.  Ostensibly, it's an analysis of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac from Genesis, but Goodman opens the narrative by anachronistically assuming that the originator of the story knew he was writing for publication, knew he was filling in a gap in the already-circulating Abraham stories, wrote the story of the (near) sacrifice of Isaac, was dissatisfied with it, and was dismayed to find out that the story had already gone to print before he could tinker with it. I suppose it's an interesting conceit, but the author fills two chapters with a concept that is not only speculative but verifiably untrue.

From there, Goodman goes on to examine different readings, interpretations, and/or spins that have been put on the story from the intertestamental period (Jubilees and Philo of Alexandria) through the Holocaust (the sacrificing of innumerable Isaacs) to the present day.  The overarching consensus is that Abraham, as written, is the bad guy of the story for not choosing his child over his God.