One of my colleagues turned straight to chapter 9 in the book, the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, known in Jewish theology as the Akedah ('the binding of Isaac'). Where is the 'sense' in this chapter, a father asked to sacrifice 'your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac'? Non-sense is the easy answer. Easier yet is Immanuel Kant's solution: God never gave the command, and Abraham should have known that God would never ask such a thing of him. Søren Kierkegaard ma