Caravaggio - The Sacrifice of Isaac (1603) A bit later on, God was chatting with Abraham again.   “Fine boy you got there,” He said.   “A wonderful addition to your family and to the whole tribe.   Which is why I need to you take young Isaac up into the mountains and make him into a burnt offering to Me.” What parent hasn’t dreamed of this moment every now and then?   Abraham gathered up some kindling, his boy, two servants and a donkey.   They headed for the land of Moriah, which apparently had pretty lax child endangerment statutes, and in three days found a mountain suitable for burnt offerings of your own child.   Abraham told the servants to stay put with the donkey while he and Isaac went off to worship in private.   He made Isaac carry the wood for the burnt offering. “Why must I carry the wood, Father?” asked Isaac. “Difficult chores build character,” explained Abraham. “Oh.   Say, what’s our burnt offering going to be, anyway?   We di

Modern associations with chocolate are usually with joy, with celebrations (or with bad break-ups).  Chocolate has been known to Westerners for only 500 years, but it’s hard to imagine a world without it.  It’s also hard to imagine the stuff being prepared in any other way. Chocolate’s origins were quite different from the stuff we know today.  Starting with the cacao bean, the other base ingredient the Aztecs used was ground-up maize.  The word chocolate comes from the Aztec word xocolatl (/ʃo ko ˌlat əl/, or /sho-ko-LOT-ul/), meaning “bitter water”, since it was usually served in a liquefied form.  And bitter it was: the Aztecs seldom sweetened it.  Sometimes it was prepared with honey, but that was only one of the many recipes.  Others included vanilla, or chilis, or any number of spices.   Xocolatl was a luxury in ancient Mesoamerica.  Cacao beans were very valuable, and said to be a gift from the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl.  You could trade about 80 of the