The binding of a story

For whatever reason TheTorah.com is running the table on "the Akedah" lately - which indie gamers might know as the Binding of Isaac. A professor with a career all over the greater Germania holding the improbable name "Christoph Levin" is discussing its intertext, hoping to garner how the tale was coagulated. I think something be missing.

In 1997/8ish I stumbled onto an account that suspected the story was composed, at first, for offering one's first born to the Temple. In old Canaan that was often for sacrifice. Carthage - Tyre's colony - famously was big on this. In fact it may have been so big on this that the colony ended up not Tyrian at all: genetics and personal names show Barqi Graeco-Berbers (like Hannibal), or various Sardinians and Sicels, or their own hinterland Libyco-Berbers. Back to Abraham, the story has Abraham and Isaac go up the mount and only Abraham return.

Meanwhile... where's Sarah? Genesis doesn't have her dying until after this event. Most Christians and Muslims hold Sarah as a type for Mary; Jews don't. In fact Genesis=Bereshit Rabba in some recensions has Sarah dying of a broken heart. Not so in the Gospel of John!

So if Levin is opening the Akedah to deeper excavation: verse 22:19 in blue is indeed a deep text, "zeroth" composition or first revision. But the black verses where ram is swapped in for Isaac have to come later and should not be black.