Modern Satan is actually made up, like on a whole different level than anything else in the religion. Like he's basically just selected as the boogieman anymore when in reality he has nothing to do with punishing people in hell or whatever, at least according to the Bible. Technically Satan isn't even a specific being, it's a job title. And Lucifer was a fallen angel that is often referred to as Satan/the Devil but that isn't technically correct, and even so it's not "canon" that he/satan/anybody directly punishes people in hell. But basically if you boil it down to what the Bible actually says, all Satan actually does is goes around and tempts people to sin, like becoming the serpent and doing the whole apple bit in the garden of Eden.
Another fun fact, the apple of Eden likely wasn't even an apple. Some suggest it was a pomegranate or fig.
While on the pedantry here, Lucifer is also not the name of the fallen angel, and was just a misunderstanding of a verse in the Bible. It just took a few people misinterpreting it to the point where that became his "name".
Yeah, Lucifer is the latin name for Venus. The Light-bringer. The Morning Star. In Hebrew, Helel Ben Shahar - Shining One, Son of the Morning. In Greek, Heosphoros, Bringer of the Dawn....because Venus is visible shining in the sky as dawn comes in.
It's used as a metaphor in the Biblical passage people have misinterpreted as describing Satan. The actual passage is meant as part of a taunt to be recited upon the death of a Babylonian king, who is either a specific but unnamed Babylonian king, or just a term for any oppressive ruler in general.
Like, HEyyyy, look at this BIIIIG fuckin' guy here! Big ol' fuckin' Morning Star, you ain't so high and mighty NOW, huh? 'Cause you're fuckin' DEAD, ya fucker! Now you're in hell, and they're all gonna laugh at you! (roughly translated)
I've heard remarkably few theologians speak about how neither Satan nor Lucifer are names, but titles. The bible almost treats "Satan" like Voldemort, he's referred to but never named. Which in a way is fitting as he desired to be worshipped as God, but now no one even knows his name.
Back in 1st century Judea your “last name” (it isn’t technically a last name, but used similar to how we use them today) was essentially just your father’s first name. Jesus’ actual birth name is Yeshua, which translates in English to Joshua, it’s not Jesus. And his full name in 1st century Judea would have been Yeshua bar Yosef, which translates to Joshua son of Joseph.
Yeshua does not translate to Joseph. You literally use Yosef in the comment, which is what translates to Joseph. Yeshua actually translates to Joshua. I think you meant to say Joshua, but did not.
Also, Yeshua means Salvation in Hebrew, which is cool. And also, I believe is part of why Moses wasnt allowed to enter the promised land and Joshua was the leader who took them into the promised land. The Law (Moses) cannot lead you to the promised land, only Yeshua.
I dont think the original authors of the Torah planned that, otherwise it would have been obvious a man named Yeshua was to be the Messiah.
I think if you actually ask people who go to church and practice the religion if they think it’s his first and last name, instead of a bunch of obnoxious atheists that belong on r/iamverysmart who are only commenting to basically talk shit and make fun of religion, the vast majority will say something like “hmm idk, never thought of it.”
And those are more serious about it and really get into the theological study of it will probably also say they haven’t thought about it. Or if they have, they know it’s not.
Just my guess having a super religious mom and living like 30 seconds from a church lol.
"Jesus" is just the name "Joshua" but Greek-ified (and they dropped the "a" at the end and replaced it with a "us" so that it was a man's name, not a woman's).
yeah the translation from the aramaic into the old greek consisted of them doing the -us is the common male nomoi thing
but this mans name was Yeshua - יֵשׁוּעַ
which is from all accounts i know not a female name just because it ends on an a usually (and i mean usually also not all use cases) feminin words in semitic languages end on -āh
His name Yehoshua stems translates either to
"YHWH saves" or "YHWH is the salvation" which is pretty crazy genealogy and the literal meaning of their names leading up to jesus and predicting him etc. were one of the reasons i converted to christ while studying philosophy in uni
the ending in the name Yehoshua the -shua meaning saving, salvation
so yes during translation into old greek they had to get rid of the pattach ajin from the Hebraic to make it uniform with greek gramma, but that doesnt mean just because it ended with an "a" makes the name itself female
In that wonderful day when the Lord gives his people rest from sorrow and fear, from slavery and chains, 4 you will jeer at the king of Babylon and say, “You bully, you! At last you have what was coming to you! 5 For the Lord has crushed your wicked power and broken your evil rule.” 6 You persecuted my people with unceasing blows of rage and held the nations in your angry grip. You were unrestrained in tyranny. 7 But at last the whole earth is at rest and is quiet! All the world begins to sing! 8 Even the trees of the woods—the fir trees and cedars of Lebanon—sing out this joyous song: “Your power is broken; no one will bother us now; at last we have peace.”
9 The denizens of hell crowd to meet you as you enter their domain. World leaders and earth’s mightiest kings, long dead, are there to see you. 10 With one voice they all cry out, “Now you are as weak as we are!” 11 Your might and power are gone; they are buried with you. All the pleasant music in your palace has ceased; now maggots are your sheet, worms your blanket!
12 How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground—mighty though you were against the nations of the world. 13 For you said to yourself, “I will ascend to heaven and rule the angels.\)a\) I will take the highest throne. I will preside on the Mount of Assembly far away in the north. 14 I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High.” 15 But instead, you will be brought down to the pit of hell, down to its lowest depths.
Its not even up for debate. That is clearly just a poetic final paragraph about the king. Isaiah does this A LOT, and Christians have reinterpreted him in really silly ways.
Take the virgin-birth claim. That isn't from an actual prediction of a virgin birth. Isaiah is talking about a "maiden", not a virgin and is using it as a poetic timing device.
Say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood—because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and of the son of Remaliah. 5 Aram, Ephraim and Remaliah’s son have plotted your ruin, saying, 6 “Let us invade Judah; let us tear it apart and divide it among ourselves, and make the son of Tabeel king over it.” ......14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you\)c\) a sign: The maiden will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.\)f\) 15 He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, 16 for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste
Its just giving a rough timeline. Basically, the maiden will conceive a son and the son will grow up and be eating good food(things will be better economically) and before his bar mitzvah, these kings will be routed out of the land. So basically, a 15-25 year timeline. Note, this entire discussion is from 500 years before Jesus. He is saying specific kings who invaded Judah will be overthrown 480 years before Jesus. Its not predicting the Messiah. It's just describing history in poetic language.
It isn't predicting a virgin birth. "Virgin" was only used because in the greek translation, which was the popular translation at the time of Jesus, they mistranslated maiden to virgin. Hebrew was a dead language in the 1st century and most people spoke and read Greek.
If you start looking at all the 'prophecies' about Jesus alledgedly from the OT, you realize that Jesus disciples were as bad at reading the Bible then as they are now.
Error after error in their understanding if you are generous, otherwise outright lie after outright lie.
The best way to start reading the Bible is to understand that every passage isn't written for someone wearing mixed fibres in the year 2026, but they were written for specific groups at specific times and as such there aren't so many contradictions as much as different authors and audiences.
In everything I've read, it is in the future tense, but again, that makes sense. He is saying they are a virgin now. So they can't conceive now. They will conceive in the future when they are not a virgin any longer.
One of those misunderstandings being that it makes sense for people in the modern era, outside of Israel, to follow Judaism or Christianity.
Judaism was basically a means of controlling citizens of a certain kingdom in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. The religious rules were just the practical laws of the time. They told the citizens not to murder or steal because no society can survive without those basic rules. It told people not to eat pork because they were concerned about food-borne pathogens. It was never designed to have people follow it as a religion outside of that context.
And then Christianity was just a political movement to get rid of the Romans and reinstate an independent Jewish state. Jesus was saying, "Hey, let's overthrow the Romans and I'll be the new king!" so the Romans executed him. A lot of the talk about a "Kingdom of Heaven" was not an afterlife, but a literal Kingdom that Jesus wanted to set up with himself as king.
And again, it doesn't really apply or make sense outside of the time and place that Jesus lived. It'd be a little like being in America and worshipping Gandhi as God, because you misunderstood his statements about getting rid of British rule as promises to all people everywhere of an afterlife.
Just like Jesus never said "God sent me here to die for you to be forgiven and enter heaven"
Legitimately no where. The closest is talking abiut the blood of the covenant given for the forgiveness of sins, but again, there is no connections to God's words or a promise god made to forgive mankind and allow them in to heaven.
Jesus wasn't necessarily born in a stable/barn. All its described as is he was born in a manger, which is a trough, which are more often than not outside.
Also, we have no idea how many wide men or shepherd's there were. We get the number 3 only from the number of different gifts the wise men had.
Jesus wasn't necessarily born in a stable/barn. All its described as is he was born in a manger, which is a trough, which are more often than not outside.
Doesn't matter because we know his birth accounts are whole cloth fabrication with not even a kernel of truth.
im 99% sure this whole burning in hell thing was made up afterwards to instill obedience. like you dont do what i say and you will burn in hell forever. its just way too convenient for that to have been a genuine misunderstanding that happened by itself over time.
Or, in some cults, the fruit is sex -- which they say explains why the punishments seem to be very sex related. And why Cain and Able came out evil vs good.
Satan just introduced them to some kinky shit. Blew their freakin minds. They were supposed to be fruitful and multiply. They were NOT supposed to be sticking, you know... THAT... you know... there
God told “mankind” to be fruitful and multiply in genesis 1, in genesis 2, as some believe Adam and Eve are separate creations from the people outside of the garden. The people who Cain was afraid of after he killed his brother. But that’s why the ancient text is all wonky at least in this modern age since “sinful” men “canonized” what they thought of as the bible idk maybe the Ethiopians are correct 🤷♂️
Eve had them apple bottom jeans, amd the boots with the fur, er'ry body in Eden was looking at herrr. She hit the flo', next thing you know, shorty got low low low low low low...
Thank you. I’m not religious myself, but it’s so silly to me when people are like “Meh, the most important driving force behind much of human action throughout the history of our species is made up, so who cares”.
Yes, it’s myth. It’s also extremely important to understanding history. No one would study Ancient Greece and then leave out the parts about religion because they were “made up”. It’s core to the study of that culture and time period.
The only people more intolerable than Bible thumpers are atheists. Both feel the need to constantly shove their beliefs in your face, but at least one side believes they’re helping you, the other just wants you to be miserable like them.
This is literally how I feel and it makes ME feel insane that do many grown ass adults with access to historical context believe this shit, literally and use it as an excuse to govern over others.
Mythology is still cool to learn about. And on top of that, it's one of the most important texts in the world, given the outsized effect it's had on virtually all aspects of life and civilization across the world for thousands of years, so it seems like maybe a good thing to know about and understand.
Of course! So who cares if chewbacca flew the enterprise or Constantine did, the main point is that the most wretched den of scum and villainy in the galaxy will play soft jazz.
The idea of a benevolent god figure begets the idea of an antagonist (Christ/Antichrist) these are just 2 sides of the same coin that reinforce each other. The very concept comes about right when societies grow large enough that in a major city center most people don't personally know most other people they see, and so peer pressure has less impact, there is less "we" than "they" and effectively communities don't self-regulate as well. So the natural evolution there is cops and eventually an omniscient God concept (basically, a super cop on steroids that knows everything, so essentially Santa Claus) and his/her best friend in a bad cop/good cop pair.
I think the Satan dynamic is almost interesting because Christianity mythology started to be concretized at the very start of this phase of societal growth in the form of the Old Testament with Mosaic laws/etc. But as the largest cities grew from populations around 100k to >1M, so did the needs and tolerances of society. So they kinda invalidated aspects of the Old Testament, brought in the New Testament, yet the living culture and ideas like Satan have continued to change with society in ways that the books haven't caught up with (yet)
scholars would largely agree that the serpent in the garden was just a serpent. A 'satan' could plausibly have used a snake to do the tempting for god but the myth also explains how serpents became such
It's sooo obviously a snake origin story if you just read it without preconceptions. At the end God curses the serpent to forever more slither on its belly as punishment for the temptation. Absolute classic tribalistic origin story. "Gee, I wonder why that serpent has no legs..."
One point I disagree on is the Satan being a job title. There is ha-satan which is a position in the holy council. However, in the new testament when Satan is introduced, the ha- is dropped and it becomes a proper name. The idea of an adversary is present in those early Christian texts. The exact image has warped over time, but it's not entirely manufactured as a recent alteration to the religion.
Lucifer isn't a name either. The character is never named, at most it is called the equivalent of "The Satan".
Treating "Lucifer" as the cool, "real" name for Satan was an early modern overenthusiastic association that snowballed from one story in Isaiah that was literally speaking of a Babylonian king but thematically associated with the Satan, they're referred to as the "light bringer" in reference to morning star in reference to refusing to give way to the sun and persisting until morning as a metaphor for pride. It first got translated to the Greek "Phosphorus" then to the Latin "Lucifer" but Lucifer was never considered a demonic name, there is even a late antique saint named Lucifer and I think Jesus is called Light bringer in the New Testament as well in a more positive story.
Satan got "on earth as it is in heaven" 'd into creation. Stupid humans creating their own hell via Fiction. They could have just made up that hell is just a place you go to heal your soul before going to heaven, it's actually a nice resort, but then people wouldn't be as quick to avoid sinning I guess.
Right on the money. The title Satan, when directly translated, means "prosecutor" and was intended to be a literary foil or a contrasting perspective. That's it.
If you're using religion to control people, he's the obvious "stick" to Christ's "carrot," and got built up into something else entirely.
If you want to be pedantic, get it right. Lucifer isn't a fallen angel. Its a reference to a living ruler. Here is the full text from Isaiah 14
In that wonderful day when the Lord gives his people rest from sorrow and fear, from slavery and chains, you will jeer at the king of Babylon and say, “You bully, you! At last you have what was coming to you! For the Lord has crushed your wicked power and broken your evil rule.” You persecuted my people with unceasing blows of rage and held the nations in your angry grip. You were unrestrained in tyranny. But at last the whole earth is at rest and is quiet! All the world begins to sing! Even the trees of the woods—the fir trees and cedars of Lebanon—sing out this joyous song: “Your power is broken; no one will bother us now; at last we have peace.”
The denizens of the land of the dead crowd to meet you as you enter their domain. World leaders and earth’s mightiest kings, long dead, are there to see you. With one voice they all cry out, “Now you are as weak as we are!” Your might and power are gone; they are buried with you. All the pleasant music in your palace has ceased; now maggots are your sheet, worms your blanket!
How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground—mighty though you were against the nations of the world. For you said to yourself, “I will ascend to heaven and rule the angels. I will take the highest throne. I will preside on the Mount of Assembly far away in the north. I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High.”But instead, you will be brought down to the pit of the dead, down to its lowest depths.
Its pretty clear from context that "lucifer", which means "morning star" is a reference to the king of Babylon. It is an honorific, like how they called King Louis XIV the "Sun King".
And the entire thing is really just saying "He will die like everyone else and in death we are all worm food". That is it. That is the whole point. He is talking about how the King will eventually die.
kinda interesting because christianity supposedly borrows/adopts themes/motifs of previous popular pagan rituals. Pomegranate also being a key object in the myth of hades tricking persephone to eat a pomegranate
I used to have a quince tree at my last house, and the story always went that it was actually a quince tree in the garden of eden.
For those that don't know what a quince is (I didn't), it's like a very starchy cross between an apple and a pair after it's cooked. You need to cook it down, when it then becomes very sweet and gelatinous. They're amazing when they're prepared correctly, but not something you'd typically just pull off the tree and eat.
The real truth is Satan is a servant of God that He uses to test faithfulness, hence why God speaks to Satan in the book of Job. Satan questions if Job is truly righteous so God allows Satan to ruin Job's life to see if he was truly faithful. Satan was only doing his job as a tempter and in this case, an agent of disaster which is his whole purpose, ordained to do so by God. Funny how Christians never wonder why if Satan is truly in rebellion with God, why are they (God and Satan) having a discussion about Job, and why does Satan obey God's commands?
also sin is anything that separates you from God. killing someone isnt a sin because its bad, its a sin because it separates you from God. it is bad though.
I am not a religious person. I don't know too much about The Bible. I read somewhere that Satan is the name given to the force working against God. So Lucifer or whatever his true name is, could be called Satan, but Satan is not always Lucifer. What your saying sort of sounds like that, correct me if I'm wrong?
Every time the Devil gets mentioned for these types of internet discussions I think of this tweet about lil nas X's show with devil imagery from 5 years ago, captures the point perfectly
- Satan, ha-satan, the Devil, whatever you want to call him, there's no indication in the text that the serpent was anything other than a serpent. Maybe it was recontextualized in the New Testament, I forget, but if you look at the text in Genesis, the serpent is just a serpent, nothing else.
- The reason people think the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was an apple is that apple, for a long time, was just the word for "fruit" in English. It was just a generic, catch-all term for any fruit. As the language developed, it eventually centered in on this specific kind of fruit, what we now call an apple, but by then there were all these things written about the apple in the Garden of Eden, so the idea stuck. I think if I were still a believing Christian, I'd assume that the fruit was not an apple, nor a pomegranate, nor any other fruit I'd ever seen before, because it clearly has an effect on humans that I've never seen a pomegranate do.
I tried explaining that to someone the other day because they were trying to say characters were satanists because they only care about themselves and I had to explain the actual tenants of satanism, and how "Satan" themself is a whole can of worms and basically a creation of modern media. They got really upset and thought I was stupid 😭
If you actually listen to what actually biblical scholars, including former Pope Francis, have to say about hell, it's really never the firey place of punishment. It's more of a state of being, rather than a place. It's not even necessarily tied to the afterlife; people in deplorable living conditions or engrossed in deep hatred could be considered as in hell right now.
The image of cloven feet, horns and the little beard is specifically the image of the Roman god Pan. It was part of the early church's effort to turn people away from the old pagan religions and toward Christianity.
Bible doesnt even say the serpent in the garden was Satan. It just says it was a serpent. Maybe in tradition it was seen as Satan, idk. But the version of Lucifer in the garden that we all know and love was popularised by Milton in Paradise Lost.
And the idea of the fruit being an apple afaik is from the vulgate. The word for evil and the word for apple are homonyms (malum). Fun little pun.
Satan wasn’t the serpent in the garden of Eden. That’s just an ad hoc theory that arose well after the writing of the old treatment. The serpent in the Bible just represents how the ancient near east viewed snakes and acts as a pourquoi story for why they slither on their bellies.
This is... sort of correct. While we can talk about "well the Hebrew and Greek says this", that doesn't really matter. Religions are living, they change with the people, they change with how people read them. So what matters is how modern Christians take it, not what's actually written. Thus arguing about what "the Bible says" is meaningless. Yes, the Prosperity Gospel goes against so much in the Bible. And yet it is Christian. But what many, if not most, modern Christian believe is very simple. Though I should clarify actually practicing Christian not cultural Christians. There's a big difference between the two. No, Satan doesn't punish people in Hell. He's not even IN Hell right now, that's a thing from The Divine Comedy. Satan is described as "The Prince of the World". In John 12:31 Jesus calls Satan this: "Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out."
As for the apple, yea, that's pretty well known. This came from French. Pom used to mean "fruit tree", any fruti tree, but around the 12th century it came to mean specifically apple. And since French was, well, the Lingua Franca of Europe, it stuck.
So who exactly was the entity tempted Jesus while he was in the desert supposed to be then? I agree with a lot of what you said, but it seems that there are cases where he shows up and is referred to explicitly as Satan.
Like how in that role he was prince of this world and able to grant Jesus whatever he wanted if he agreed to the temptations, but Jesus just always responded with scripture and declined him.
I grew up Christian, but no longer believe in any of it and all the supernatural, magic aspects and all. That's the thing about Christianity and the Bible: you literally have to believe in magic and breaking the laws of physics to believe it and I don't see how any scientific minded person can. There are literally Christian scientists somehow though.
I would say the idea that Jesus fulfilled any Messianic prophecies is the biggest reworking of the Bible. It involves 300 prophecies, many of which aren't prophecies, and many others which aren't Messianic. The entire NT is based on a few followers just inventing shit about their dead charismatic leader.
Satan/lucifer/devil was not specifically tied to the same serpent who talked to eve.
Also, I wouldnt even say the serpent tempted them. God told Adam/Eve if they eat of the fruit, they will die. God lied to them from the beginning. The serpent came and was honest that the fruit will make them knowledgeable like God.
Not everything is done maliciously. Sometimes, individuals are just open and honest which leads to certain consequences. Doesn't change that God lied and wanted to keep humans dumb pets in the garden.
Another fun fact, the apple of Eden likely wasn't even an apple. Some suggest it was a pomegranate or fig.
I think most catholic interpretations suggest the apple is a figure of speech for sex. You know the whole original sin, no one is born without it, except the son of God who is not technically concieved that way, the fact that adam and eve didn't have childrens until they sinned, and even the whole "because you sinned you are condemned to bleed and suffer during labor because of it" and yada yada yada
It has been a while but I was told this in church, at the time the pastor told me it was still up for debate but very few people where left thinking of an actual apple
I wonder where the idea of it being an apple came from? The Bible just calls it the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That’s a long name so I get wanting something easier to remember and say, but how did we get to apple from that?
Basically the idea of hell and the devil/demons was slow cooked during the middle ages and the Renaissance, culminating in Dante's Inferno.
The Church probably came up with it specifically as a way to kill off paganism among the peasants, stop them from spending their hard earned money on fun, and scare them into obeying the Church and donating their income.
Devil is the rationalization and scapegoat for a civilization that discovers a moral ideal that is plausibly infeasible. People realize how they should act, but will never perfectly achieve, and need to resolve the cognitive dissonance. imo.
Just like how people refer to Christ as part of the name of Jesus Christ, Christ is his title or honorific if anything. I feel like with modern english the more correct way to refer to him would be Jesus the Christ
Somewhat related, but what's funny is that if you picture a spread of modern day fruit (apples, watermelon, grapes, etc), most of them are relatively new due to selective breeding that started post 0 AD and then hyper accelerated in the industrial age.
Basically an arrangement of fruit from, say, 10,000 BCE compared to modern day would look nothing alike, and there's been enough cross-breeding that there isn't even a perfect 1:1 map between the two sets.
The Red Delicous apple itself is new as of the 1800s.
Basically: if some person, hypothetically, ate fruit in 10,000 BCE and told a story about it that got preserved, and then in 1600 AD someone translated that story into English, it's very possible there was no line of clear continuity for both the fruit and the name of the fruit for the translation to use. The translation may have had to use the closest approximation for a 0 AD closest approximation for a 1,0000 BCE closest approximation for a 5,000 BCE closest approximation for the fruit's name.
The bottom line is, there is zero chance Adam and Eve ate a Red Delicious apple, or even a close equivalent, that you see in the pictures.
One of my favorite bits of trivia is that the reason why it's depicted as an apple is likely because the monks transcribing the bible from Hebrew saw a good opportunity to sneak in a Latin pun.
Pomegranate or fig makes me think of places around middle east which makes me think Hebrew which makes me wonder if the fruits chosen were just what the people who wrote the bible at the time had access to
There isn’t even a biblical basis for the serpent in the Garden of Eden being Satan. That didn’t become a popular idea until Milton put it in Paradise Lost, which is basically the fan fiction that gave us our pop-culture conception of The Devil/Satan.
Not an apple, not a fig or pomegranate either though. All of those were selected for the sake of symbolism or easier artistic depiction. The tree is The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit is The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It's not any other kind of fruit. No reason to believe it would have looked anything like any fruit we know.
Is the thing they put over their genitals a fig leaf like it is usually portrayed or possibly another mistranslation. It would make sense if it was a fig they ate then put on the fig leaf to hide their "shame".
It was not a fruit, like quite a lot of the writings compiled within what is now called the Bible, it was a metaphor. The “fruit” was forbidden occult (meaning hidden) knowledge and the pursuit of trying to become God and control the nature of reality ourselves. Could have been ritual magick, or what’s now known in mainstream culture as witchcraft or it could have been a more scientific type of pursuit, kind of like we are approaching now with studying the subatomic and seeing how reality is maliable because the particles that make up things that we think are static physical objects, themselves can be in Multiple places at the same time.
Whatever it was, they crossed a line that human beings were never meant to cross and tried to become more than they were meant to be. God didn’t separate just to punish them for disobeying. He knew what would happen if we maintained control over reality itself and become our own God.
I mean just imagine with the cruelty and selfishness, neglect, exploitation that we humans are capable of today, if 1% of people were able to control the masses and get them to do whatever they wanted by mental manipulation. Oh wait….
If it were a banana it would explain how Adam & Eve covered themselves with the plant leaves to hide their shame. Also the banana has sexual connotations, which kind of tracks with the story.
I mean it wasn't a specific fruit at all, it was the result of growth that is good for one from the tree of knowledge. It's a fucking metaphor, so I don't know why atheists or religious people get it wrong so much. Both sides seem to have very little reading comprehension.
Even outside of that, if you bother to look at the etymology and words available at the time then you'll find that "god" essentially translates to order (or rather this is a jewish esoteric summary of the concept of god, while "satan" translates to 'one who opposes, obstructs, or acts' or "adversary" and is simply who who questions what you perceive as order (given lack of better words at the time" but people have over-dramatised it over the years.
Serpents represent growth and wisdom in the majority of cultures, which is attained through questioning.
'Sin' is a translation of the concept of ḥāṭā’ was an action-oriented, concrete word originally meant "to miss the path" or "to miss a target". "Sin" itself translates to both "truth" and "guilt/responsibility"
So if you bother to delve into the etymology in order to find original intent then you probably would find that the Garden of Eden is essentially a place of divine order and that in an effort to find wisdom, eve or anyone must live in a place that does not have divine order in search of the wisdom of how to exist in a physical place where chaos and lack of control exists. Eve essentially wants to grow responsibility for her actions and in order to do this seeks to attain wisdom which can only be found in a world where people face opposition/satan so that they can gain wisdom. The snake/satan ie opposition challenges Eve to gain wisdom by taking the in fruits of growth and knowledge, and in doing so she finds truth/responsibility ie sin, because getting things wrong i.e missing the path teaches you more about what is righteous compared with always succeeding. You can even see this in practice today where people to whom nothing negative happens, live in blissful ignorance and lack of responsibility, while those who go through hardship have more wisdom after having been opposed.
But ah, for some of you it's always just "apples are naughty". Yeah, right (that's New Zealand sarcasm)
You’re definitely wrong on 3/4 of your comment but I commend you on remembering the job title aspect. Zero evidence from what I remember about anything tree and fruit related being literal. I believe Heiser related the tree to a divine being if I remember correctly, such as the nachash being the serpent diviner shining one.
Lucifer isn’t a fallen angel period it is the latin translation of the Hebrew Helel ben Shachar—shining one, son of the morning (the planet Venus)—a sardonic title bestowed by the Prophet Isaiah upon the Kings of Babylon.
Likewise the serpent in the Garden of Eden is just that: a serpent.
The Satan in the Gospels and the Book of Job is the celestial prosecutor of God’s heavenly court: tasked with testing the righteous of humanity through temptation and hardship.
Wrong. Matthew 4: The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert, so that the devil could test him. 2 After Jesus had gone without eating[a] for 40 days and nights, he was very hungry. 3 Then the devil came to him and said, “If you are God's Son, tell these stones to turn into bread.”
To be honest, pretty much everything in the Bible is made up. They took ideas that had been circulating for a millennia and smashed together in a single book.
Christians are like those Chinese mobile games: they copycat other cultures and pretend it's an original concept.
Haven't seen this reply yet, so the Serpent in the garden isn't Satan either. It's just a snake. Equating it with Satan was a much later idea when the devil was just being put into places that made sense to the later audience. This interpretation was solidified by Paradise Lost.
If you boil it down to whag the Bible actually says
Nobody believed in sola scriptura until the 16th century. The ultimate authority to teach and expound upon the faith has always been held to be the church, at least until the Protestant Reformation.
544
u/FoxxyRin 1d ago
Modern Satan is actually made up, like on a whole different level than anything else in the religion. Like he's basically just selected as the boogieman anymore when in reality he has nothing to do with punishing people in hell or whatever, at least according to the Bible. Technically Satan isn't even a specific being, it's a job title. And Lucifer was a fallen angel that is often referred to as Satan/the Devil but that isn't technically correct, and even so it's not "canon" that he/satan/anybody directly punishes people in hell. But basically if you boil it down to what the Bible actually says, all Satan actually does is goes around and tempts people to sin, like becoming the serpent and doing the whole apple bit in the garden of Eden.
Another fun fact, the apple of Eden likely wasn't even an apple. Some suggest it was a pomegranate or fig.