I didn’t say there wasn’t a Satan, I said there wasn’t a “Devil.” There’s a difference. The Satan of the Hebrew Bible is not an evil anti-God but a loyal servant. He’s an “adversary” in the service of God, not in defiant opposition. The concept of Satan as “the Devil,” is Christian, not Jewish, and is not found in the Hebrew Bible.
There is no indication in Genesis that the talking snake is meant to be read as anything other than a talking snake…an image squarely in the vein of the kinds of Mesopotamian creation myths the Genesis story was taken from. Later identification of the serpent as Satan is a result of anachronistic retrojection and reinterpretation, not authorial intent.
Ok, let’s get on the same page. Neither of us uses the term “devil”. My beliefs are contrary to 99.99% of all Christians alive today, so my perspective isn’t typical. I’m only referencing what’s specifically in Scripture.
Most “people” use devil, satan and lucifer interchangeably. Agreed and that has nothing to do with reality.
There is only one adversary. God created that being for a specific purpose.
You call satan a loyal servant, but I don’t believe that’s quite right according to Scripture. For that to be true, it would mean that satan has a will that can oppositionally choose to do something contrary to Gods’ Will and I categorically dispute that free will even exists. Nothing supercedes God’s Will. We have choices, but only those which God allows. Satan serves God, because it’s God’s Will that he should.
I’ve heard all the rhetoric re: Creation - mythical or historical and pagan Sumerian/Babylonian roots in relation to the origin of mankind.
I’ll just state for the record: I cannot prove that God exists, I can only prove what the Hebrew and Greek Testaments actually say. God’s existience and a metaphorical Creation account in Genesis aren’t my concern. God knows whether He exists. My interest is in exposing what the “church” is teaching in 2006 because it’s one heck of a fish story.
One other thing I should state is that I can’t prove Scripture to be true and I don’t need to.
If you reject Scripture, I accept that and there’s no need for further discussion. If you don’t then what you believe about Scripture is of interest to me. I’m not trying to prove Scripture is true, nobody can. I’m trying to show that what Christians believe today is almost entirely wrong “according” to Scripture.
Regarding the talking snake:
Genesis 3:
4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
YHWH can theoretically exist without being the author of anything.
Just understand that Strong’s is a concordance, not a lexicon. It’s basically just an index for how Greek words are translated in the KJV (which is a poor translation to beigin with, and is based on inferior Greek source material to boot). Using Strong’s as a means to elucidate KJV translational choices tends to be a bit of a circular exercise.
Because, as I said, eis indicates a direction of movement. It means “into,” or “towards.” En is the word for something in a fixed position. Unless the objects listed in the verse are supposed to be in motion (actively moving towards or into the ark) then the correct word for “located inside” is en. The word which indicate immediate vicinity would be peri.
Not sure what point you’re trying to make with this verse, but it’s worth noting that the snake was telling the truth here and that god had actually lied by telling them that the fruit would kill them.
Well, ya know, that calls for a mighty big assumption: that a god of some sort actually exists. Let’s wait until we get some definite proof of that before we start assuming there’s a message of any kind.
I’m in a dual role here, as both author of the Staff Report and Moderator of this forum.
First, as author of the Staff Report and as a poster: “Satan” of the Hebrew Bible means “adversary” with a small a, in the sense of a lawyer arguing a case. And it is prefixed by H- (meaning “the”) so it’s literally “the satan” as we would say “the District Attorney” or “the prosecuting attorney.”
Second, as moderator of this forum: this is a place for discussing Staff Reports. This thread is set on the Staff Report about the Ark of the Covenant. I apologize for not stopping by earlier, but this thread has got WAY the hell far afield [word play intentional.]
Discussions about the Truth of the bible, the existence of God, whether God lies, whether there is a hell… these are questions to which we do not have answers, and they belong in the forum called Great Debates. There are many (many!) threads about these topics in that forum.
So, I realize that I’m partly to blame for the side-tracking, so no harm, no foul. It’s almost impossible to stay focused when discussing biblical texts. But now: comments on the Ark report, fine, continue as you were. Other topics, start (or continue) threads in Great Debates forum.
Just a thought; is it possible that it’s saying the items are moving with the ark? I mean, that the ark itself is in motion, and the objects, being within it, are also moving?
Oy. Elvis may be around somewhere, but I don’t think Adam and Eve are. Not only did their sin bring them physical death, it also brought about their spiritual death. The alternative to sin was eternal life.
Christ was slated to die before sin entered the world because it’s part of God’s plan for Salvation. Their sin was no accident.
It’s a thought, Revenant. As with most of the bible, there’s the plain meaning of the text. And then there’s centuries of interpretation, alternate construction, multiple translations, and added layers of meaning.
So, it was not their fault, right? And all subsequent sinners are not to blame either, right? So those souls consigned to Hell were so directed before they were born. Nothing I do can change my fate. If I am not of God’s chosen it is through no fault of my own, but simply part of His Grand Plan.
In the first place, you are assuming that God wrote them word-for-word – in which case, how, pray, do you explain 1 Cor. 7:12?
In the second place, the Torah and Septuagint cannot both be flawless, as they often contradict one another. I suspect, in fact, that you may not even know what the two words mean. The Torah is the Hebrew name for the five parts of the Hebrew Bible traditionally known as the “Five books of Moses” – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Septuagint, on the other hand, is a Greek translation of the entire Old Testament, including some passages and entire books that were subsequently repudiated by the Jews, and later by Protestants. In other words, the Septuagint is a Greek version of the Old Testament plus what Protestants traditionally call “The Apocrypha”.
That’s abundantly clear. Among other things, the King James Bible is written in Early Modern English, not in Middle English, not in Old English, and certainly not in Proto-Germanic or Proto-Indo-European, which is how far you need to go backward in time before “hell” ceases to mean “hell”.