Please feel free to prove me wrong if I'm underestimating you.
I always understood the crucification as an overt callback to Abraham and Isaac, and Abraham and Isaac as really only incidentally about the blood sacrifice elements: Abraham isn't just being asked to spill blood, or to just sacrifice the life of his child, even, but his sole heir and one last shot at the legacy that God had promised him (he is very old at this point, even by Biblical lifespan-dilation standards). It always read more to me like a test in Abraham's faith in God's ability and faithfulness to keep his end of that bargain than anything particularly significant about the symbology of blood, per se. God, quite frankly, comes across as jerking Abraham around about his offspring great deal throughout his life leading up to this, and giving Abraham every reason to balk at this demand. Tying back to the animal sacrifices themselves, this is an element you're missing above: the faithful were asked not simply to spill blood, but make a sacrifice in terms of their own well-being in the process. The sacrifice Abraham was asked to make is pretty plain, and even the animal sacrifices were supposed to be the best cuts of the best livestock; it was never simply about the symbology of the blood, but about symbolically and literally deferring some of your personal well-being and prosperity to a higher power. Circumcision has a similar basis, although the sacrifice at heart there is considerably more symbolic than with animal offerings.
As to your other point, about where the rules come from, and why God is bound by them, there's a pretty simple answer: whatever other significance Christians heaped on the crucification after the story was constructed, it was primarily a call back to Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac, and specifically meant to be framed as a fulfillment of the terms of that covenant. The rules were God's, yes, but they were also Abraham's and his decedents', just as the conditions of any agreement between two people proceeds from, and binds each of them jointly. For God to change the conditions after the fact would have amounted to reneging on that entire promise, and further would have rendered Abraham's display of faith in God's faithfulness to that promise both unjustified and hollow. The notion is that God plays by the same rules that Abraham had to not because He particularly has to, but because He agreed to in advance, and His other promises to The People were premised on that agreement.
no subject
I always understood the crucification as an overt callback to Abraham and Isaac, and Abraham and Isaac as really only incidentally about the blood sacrifice elements: Abraham isn't just being asked to spill blood, or to just sacrifice the life of his child, even, but his sole heir and one last shot at the legacy that God had promised him (he is very old at this point, even by Biblical lifespan-dilation standards). It always read more to me like a test in Abraham's faith in God's ability and faithfulness to keep his end of that bargain than anything particularly significant about the symbology of blood, per se. God, quite frankly, comes across as jerking Abraham around about his offspring great deal throughout his life leading up to this, and giving Abraham every reason to balk at this demand. Tying back to the animal sacrifices themselves, this is an element you're missing above: the faithful were asked not simply to spill blood, but make a sacrifice in terms of their own well-being in the process. The sacrifice Abraham was asked to make is pretty plain, and even the animal sacrifices were supposed to be the best cuts of the best livestock; it was never simply about the symbology of the blood, but about symbolically and literally deferring some of your personal well-being and prosperity to a higher power. Circumcision has a similar basis, although the sacrifice at heart there is considerably more symbolic than with animal offerings.
As to your other point, about where the rules come from, and why God is bound by them, there's a pretty simple answer: whatever other significance Christians heaped on the crucification after the story was constructed, it was primarily a call back to Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac, and specifically meant to be framed as a fulfillment of the terms of that covenant. The rules were God's, yes, but they were also Abraham's and his decedents', just as the conditions of any agreement between two people proceeds from, and binds each of them jointly. For God to change the conditions after the fact would have amounted to reneging on that entire promise, and further would have rendered Abraham's display of faith in God's faithfulness to that promise both unjustified and hollow. The notion is that God plays by the same rules that Abraham had to not because He particularly has to, but because He agreed to in advance, and His other promises to The People were premised on that agreement.