101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

Myths of the Founders 157
In the E source, Sarah laughed after the child was born and said,“God hath made
me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me” (Gen. 21:6).
Each of the three sources talks about the birth of Isaac in the context of laughter,
but each from a different perspective. In P, God had no problem with Abraham laughing
after hearing the news. In J, God became angry when Sarah laughs at the same
news. In E, the laughter occurred after the child’s birth. J sees the reaction as bad, P
sees it as harmless, and E sees it as positive. Why so many views over what should be
a rather simple story?
Consider this additional piece of information. In the previous myth, we saw that
the story of Dinah incorporated the Greek myth of Danaus and Aegyptus into the
patriarchal history. When Danaus fled to Argos, he replaced a king named Gelanor,
which is Greek for“laughter.” (Isaac’s Greek name is Gelanos.) In Genesis, Jacob, the
Danaus character, replaced Isaac, the“laughter”character, as leader of the Hebrew people.
This suggests that Isaac was not the original name of Abraham’s son.
Another indication that“He Laughed” would not have been Isaac’s original name
can be seen from the fact that on at least two occasions “Fear of Isaac” appears as an
alternative name for the God of Israel (Gen. 31:42, 53). How awe-inspiring can it be
to have a god named“Fear of He Laughed”?
If Isaac wasn’t the original name, what might it have been? One clue might be
Isaac’s relationship to the other members of his family. Earlier, we saw that his sons,
Jacob and Esau, corresponded to Horus and Set, brothers of Osiris, and that his wife,
Rebekah, corresponded to Isis, wife of Osiris. This would indicate the Isaac corresponded
to Osiris, and had a name that suggested that relationship.
In Egypt, Osiris ruled the underworld, bestowing eternal life. We saw earlier in the
discussion of The Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden (see Myth #20) that the biblical
editors sought to discredit the theology associated with Osiris. When the story of
Danaus entered the corpus, it provided one of the early Israelite storytellers the opportunity
to change the name of Abraham’s son to that of the king replaced by
Danaus/Jacob. The authors of the sources, also being storytellers, offered their own
rationales for how the name Isaac came to be, and the biblical redactors retained all
three versions.