Growing up Christian, I was taught the Christmas story from a young age. And, in part thanks to the years my family spent attending an evangelical church, I believed that story, and the other events recounted by the Bible, were literally true for much of my childhood. The Virgin Birth, Jesus’s miracles, the Resurrection — I took all of these to be accurate descriptions of real historical events.

At some point, I moved away from the church and this literal-minded interpretation of the biblical texts. But, though I hesitate to identify as a Christian today, the Gospels and other elements of the Scriptures have kept a certain hold on me.

Early in graduate school, I read with fascination Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. The work is in large part a meditation on the story, from the Book of Genesis, of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac. The basics of the tale were familiar to me from my churchgoing days: God promises Abraham a son with his wife, Sarah, who ends up giving birth to Isaac at an old age; Isaac is supposed to inherit God’s pledge to Abraham that his descendants will inherit the land of Canaan.