Satan In Eden

[white_raven23]

Yeah....you can really get a good idea just how much of the bible a given christian has actually read by assessing their beliefs about their religion. Christianity teaches a lot of shit that isn't even in the Bible, while conviniently glossing over and leaving out other stories.

 

Any time a christian claims or implies that Satan was either in, or influencing behaviors within the garden of Eden, I know I'm talking to someone who has embraced their Sunday School lessons instead of actually reading the Bible themselves. Nowhere in Genesis is it even implied that the snake is anything other than a snake.

 

And if you read a lot of creation myths, the language used all sounds the same. Much in the way of Rudyard Kipling's "Just So" stories. They are fables explaining "how things came to be". They really have nothing to do with real creation at all.

 

For example, this verse from Genesis 3:15 :

 

15 And I will put enmity

between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

he will crush your head,

and you will strike his heel."

 

Practically every christian I've ever spoken to claims this verse is about Jesus. But is it? The development of civilization owes it's existance to agriculture. If you've got a creation myth going in an agricultural community, what life threatening creature are you going to encounter most often when clearing land and working your crop fields? And the only real foot protection anyone has on is sandals?

Even the crushing of the snake's head is a very specific clue. A head that has been chopped off can still deliver a poisonous bite. A crushed head cannot.

 

The biggest clue this is a just so story, is that not only is the woman's offspring mentioned (that's the only part of the verse Christians want to focus on....squawking "Jeezus!"), but the SNAKE'S OFFSPRING is referenced as well. Obviously a snake is going to go on and create lots more snakes who will be in the fields munching crop eating mice and other pests, and the woman is going to go and create lots of sons who will be working the fields for food. It's the Christian who want this verse to ultimately be about an apocalyptic showdown at the end of time....but that's not what this verse SAYS.

 

This verse is about snake and man encounters. Sometimes the snake will get the man first, sometimes the man will get the snake first.

 

And my backup links (just in case christians want to squawk for proof for my suppositions):

 

http://www.inerrancyexposed.com/serpent.html

 

Quite to the contrary, in Gen 3:15, Yahweh God explains that the children of the snake will continue to attack the children of the woman!

 

"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your children and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel."

- Genesis 3:15

 

Clearly, a snake that had "offspring" cannot be a "unique" creature. To the contrary, Gen 3:15 clearly understands that the descendents of this first snake will continue to be an enemy of humankind, and that humans will in turn continue to try to kill snakes. The context of Gen 3:15 demonstrates that the snake () is just an ordinary snake, that has descendents just as Adam and Eve have descendents.

 

http://www.messiahtruth.com/gen315.html

 

Using strictly the Simple Reading (peshat in Hebrew) of Genesis 3:15, the following conclusions may be drawn:

 

Y The woman (Eve) is the female progenitor of mankind. [The Jewish Sages accept the notion that homo-sapiens existed before Adam & Eve, but that these were not endowed with the soul that G-d breathed into Adam’s nostrils which, in a sense, renders them as being sub-humans, or of the animal kingdom].

 

Y The enmity between snake and man, from mankind’s perspective, stems from the fact that in general, snakes are pests, even dangerous pests. From a snake’s perspective, it is an animal without the ability to reason and, thus, it acts on natural instincts – it must eat to survive, and its main job is to look for sustenance while protecting itself from predators.

 

Y The respective references to seed, i.e., offspring, point to mankind relative to Eve, and the family of snakes relative to the serpent.

 

This is not a messianic prophecy by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing in this verse refers explicitly to the Messiah other than in the generic sense, that the Messiah will be a human being who descended from Adam and Eve, i.e., someone of mankind. Other than that, this verse describes the general notion that people will have a dislike for snakes and hit them in the head, while snakes will bite people in their feet.

 

The application of the term (zar’ah), her seed, in Genesis 3:15 is to denote Eve’s generic descendants, i.e., humanity, since Adam and Eve are considered as the progenitors of all of us according to the account of Creation in Genesis. The incredible quantum leap of faith required in order to accept and believe the claim that Genesis 3:15 is a messianic prophecy, that the seed of Eve referred to therein can be distinctly and unambiguously identified as pointing at a specific individual, Jesus, is simply astonishing.

 

Within the realm of Jewish theology, this verse could certainly be understood to include the Messiah at some point "down the road" since, according to the teachings of the Hebrew Bible, he is expected to be a flesh and blood human being, a descendant of King David, and, thus, a descendant of Adam and Eve as well. But this is in no way a unique identification and pointer to the Messiah, to that specific individual whose coming is foretold in the Hebrew Bible.

 

In short, Christianity is a religion based very strongly on extrapolation. It is NOT it's own religion. At least Judaism can be pretty clearly shown as having an ancient pagan background. While Christianity is itself a strawman.

 

And the evidence that this is the undercurrent of truth can be seen in how history shows Christianity treating its parent religion and its followers. Christianity built itself on the persecution of other belief systems to establish its legitimacy.

 

And this is supposed to be the True Path?

[RHEMtron]

[ RHEM!!!! No!!!!! No!!!!! No!!!!! Surprising me because of my previous held belief, as I had assumed it was the devil too! No... I DO give you the utmost credibility!

 

Actually... it's great, IMO, to see a guy who recognizes and appreciates romance! What a rare and wonderful attribute! Maybe you don't want to share your secret with the guys, so you can keep all the beautiful ladies for yourself! :wink: Or then again, maybe you're collecting these ladies as you go...

 

I think that what you are saying is part of the mythology/allegory in that Eve did die... and Adam willingly went in to death to save her, saving her through his character Jesus, who is coming back to marry her... which is all of us collectively as one body, manifesting heaven on earth as our honeymoon.

 

hahaha i know i know. just teasing ya. but like i said in the other thread, there's only one woman for me!! we're getting married soon... ive know her since we were in 1st grade! if we were in the garden, i'd do the same thing adam did...

 

grrrrrr... im VERY familiar with that one white_raven. it always bugs me when people refer Gen 3:15 as a prophecy for jesus. i actually had a debate with a pastor last week about it. there is no solid proof in the OT or NT that implies it is a prophecy. it's all mental gymnastics. i think my analysis of adam being a romantic has more reason and logic than the analysis of Gen 3:15.

[Taphophilia]

Just as the Flintstones are a shameless adaptation of The Honeymooners, the Old Testament is an adaptation of older Sumerian mythology. The Garden of Eden story is derived from Ninhursag's (the mother goddess) garden.

The serpent always represents spiritual wisdom, life and healing. The first symbols of serpents were attributed to Enki (who is also known as a trickster god) and then Ninhursag. However, the story of the serpent becoming an evil symbol began with the wars between Enki and his brother, Enlil. These conflicts began at birth and had to do with birthright to the royal throne of the Nibiruan civilization in which their father, Anu, was the leader and father to Enki and Enlil. This story later was reflected in Cain and Abel, and all the stories throughout the Bible of brothers competing for power, favoritism and inheritance. Enlil's anger with Enki caused him to twist the truth around to make the serpent evil, which later became what you know as the story in the Bible.

[white_raven23]

 

How ironic. The paths we've taken, the knowledge we've gained...... to escape religion meant for many of us...to become experts on it.

 

Funny isn't it?

[Fweethawt]

Yeah...

 

And we're goin' to hell for it, too!

 

[Guest Devil's Due]

Poor serpent!

 

Actually, to get all floofy-symbolic about the whole mess, serpents and dragons were long held as symbols of wisdom (after all, with that shedding business, they had to know a thing or two, right?). The serpent gave Eve the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Wisdom . . . knowledge.

 

In other words, whether the serpent was supposed to be the devil or not, he still said, "There's really no need for all this running around starkers with wild animals, you know. Have some fruit and put on some skivvies, at least."

 

I've seen it argued that the serpent did represent Lucifer, because the Fall can easily be interpreted as an allegory of Prometheus, who suffered Zeus's wrath to bring the fire of knowledge to the cold, ignorant people.

 

So really stretching, Lucifer might've used the serpent as a mouthpiece, which is why Lucifer still has hands an such. This also brings into play the Eve/bestiality issue. I've seen another theory that the serpent seduced Eve as part of his "Free Knowledge" deal, which fits since Lucifer and Satan rule the carnal. We already know through the story of Lilith that Adam was a lousy lay and that when she was exiled to Nod, she chose to copulate with demons rather than return to the garden as god ordered. So the demons must have been really good, or her only basis for comparison was worse than we imagine. (I mean, my goodness! I know god totally forgot to include a copy of the Kama Sutra in the garden!)

 

Then Eve saw the serpent, with his long lithe body and his smooth talk, and she said, "Well, maybe just this once."

 

Again, it's all symbolic, but it's really fun to see the pretty colors Christians turn when I discuss such issues with them.

 

("So, while Adam was waiting for Woman 2.0 to be issued, do you think he did it with any of the animals? No? Not even the sheep?")

 

LOL.

 

And this just occured to me, in a purely rhetorical fashion: if god made Eve from Adam's rib, does that mean that Adam was touching himself when he had sex with Eve? Was he really just masturbating?

[Astreja]

There's something a bit askew about the casting of Snake-as-Villain. Especially if the myth arose during the Mesopotamian agricultural revolution.

 

I mean, wouldn't you *want* snakes around to protect your fields from the rats and mice??

 

I think the demonization of Snake symbolizes the demonization of the mother-goddess by the ascendant patriarchy.

 

The same patriarchy that, in the words of Daniel Quinn (Ishmael) "locked up all the food" in order to consolidate power in the hands of a very few.

 

So the "message" of Genesis is actually "Your current poverty and hard labour is because you dared to pursue knowledge and worship the heathen snake-lady instead of doing what *we* told you to do."

[white_raven23]

I mean, wouldn't you *want* snakes around to protect your fields from the rats and mice??

 

 

That would make you the 'learned' man of the time. Usually the only time (even now) a person eve sees a snakes, it's a result of the snake being startled by the human's presence. They become defensive and bite-y. So they are NOT engaging in their normal behavior of eating crop damaging pests that moment.

 

So people of the time would likely notice a lot more human snake encounters in the fields, but much fewer encounters elsewhere.

 

The wise farmer of the time might see a snake, and overcome his superstitious fear long enough to watch the snake to try and find out why so many were in the fields and not elsewhere. His curiosity would lead him to the truth. And instead of killing every snake he sees, he'd leave them be. His crops might well do better as a result with fewer crop damagers encouraged to settle in and keep house in his snake infested field.

 

This would lead to him having the equivalent of an "industry secret" now that he can pass on to his sons. The kind of "secret" that eventually everyone in the industry would know, but would, by virtue of accident, still be a secret to others not involved in the fields themselves. So a lot of wives, merchants, and others not involved in the handling of the fields would know about farm-hands dying from snakebites and be highly fearful of snakes as a result.

 

I can make a scuba comparison here. People who don't do it may be shocked that anyone would want to, because the ocean is full of man-eating sharks. Those people haven't taken time to really learn about ocean ecology, so they imagine a scuba diver surrounded by hungry sharks every time they get into the water. Knowledgeable people would of course know better, and either enjoy the sport themselves, or be positively supportive of their friends who do.

[SkepticOfBible]

 

 

Ok, as I understand it The Lawid had kicked Lucifier's punk ass along with 1/3 of the other sexy as hell angels out of heaven.

 

Which wonderful bible verse mentions this story about Lucifer taking 1/3 of the angels?

[Taphophilia]

 

 

Ok, as I understand it The Lawid had kicked Lucifier's punk ass along with 1/3 of the other sexy as hell angels out of heaven.

 

Which wonderful bible verse mentions this story about Lucifer taking 1/3 of the angels?

 

I thought there was only ONE reference to Lucifer in the whole Bible. How do they build an entire core doctrine around someone who is mentioned ONE time in the Bible as being the Devil. If he was that important wouldn't there be a little more information?

 

Taph

[Guest Devil's Due]

 

I thought there was only ONE reference to Lucifer in the whole Bible. How do they build an entire core doctrine around someone who is mentioned ONE time in the Bible as being the Devil. If he was that important wouldn't there be a little more information?

 

Taph

 

You are correct! Once, and once only, "Oh, how art thou fallen, O Lucifer, Star of the Morning!"

 

And it had nothing to do with Lucifer in the sense of another name for the Devil!

 

From dear Wikipedia.org:

 

"In the Vulgate, an early-5th-century translation of the Bible into Latin by Jerome, Lucifer occurs in Isaiah 14:12-14 as a translation of the Greek word heosphorus ("dawn-bearer"), an epithet of Venus. The original Hebrew text of this verse was הילל בן שחר (heilel ben-schahar), meaning "Venus, son of the morning" or "Venus, the brilliant one", a poetic epithet of the king of Babylon, comparable to many other titles used by kings throughout history, such as Louis XIV of France being called Le Roi Soleil ("The Sun King"). In Isaiah, this title is specifically used, in a prophetic vision, to reference the king of Babylon's pride and to illustrate his eventual fate by referencing mythological accounts of the planet Venus:

 

14:4 And you shall bear this parable against the king of Babylon, and you shall say, "How has the dominator ceased, has ceased the haughty one!

14:10 All of them shall speak up and say to you, 'Have you too become weak like us? Have you become like us?'

14:11 Your pride has been lowered into Gehinnom, the stirring of your psalteries. Maggots are spread under you, and worms cover you.

14:12 How have you fallen from heaven, Lucifer, the morning star? You have been cut down to earth, You who cast lots on nations.

(Isaiah, Judaica Press Tanakh)

The Jewish Encyclopedia reports that "it is obvious that the prophet in attributing to the Babylonian king boastful pride, followed by a fall, borrowed the idea from a popular legend connected with the morning star".[1] However, this metaphorical "falling from the heavens" was later misinterpreted as a literal fall from heaven when the passage's original meaning was made opaque by retranslations and eventually forgotten.

 

Later Jewish tradition, influenced by Babylonian mythology acquired during the Babylonian captivity, elaborates on the fall of the angels under the leadership of Samhazai ("the heaven-seizer") and Azael (Enoch, book vi.6f). Another legend, in the midrash, represents the repentant Samhazai suspended star-like between heaven and earth instead of being hurled down to Sheol.

 

The Helel-Lucifer (i.e. Venus) myth was later transferred to Satan, as evidenced by the 1st-century pseudepigraphical text Vita Adae et Evae (12), where the Adversary gives Adam an account of his early career,[2] and the Slavonic Book of Enoch (xxix. 4, xxxi. 4), where Satan-Sataniel (Samael?) is also described as a former archangel. Because he contrived "to make his throne higher than the clouds over the earth and resemble 'My power' on high", Satan-Sataniel was hurled down, with his hosts of angels, to fly in the air continually above the abyss."

 

And now you know!

[Amanda]

 

 

Devil's Due, thanks for that information!

 

I didn't think Lucifer and Satan were to be the same entity. Lucifer, I've been told, means in latin... the one who holds the light. There is a compelling Luciferion theory, that Lucifer is meant to be the precursor to the end Jesus. The part I found interesting is this...

 

Isa 14:12 -

King of Babylon, bright morning star, you have fallen from heaven! In the past you conquered nations, but now you have been thrown to the ground.

 

***Babylon was also known as 'confusion'... and speculation of this mythology says that this 'king' of confusion fell down before the making of man, deteriorated into dust, and then mankind was made with some of that same dust. That is, we have some of that same vanity in us... thinking that we are better than another. This is supposedly what caused us to eat the forbidden fruit, judgement to condemnation.

 

Hence, we must overcome this vanity to partake of the tree of life, judgement to victory.

 

I think the character of Jesus, contributed the keys to overturning the condemnation by principles to judge for victory for all.****

 

2Pe 1:19 -

So we are even more confident of the message proclaimed by the prophets. You will do well to pay attention to it, because it is like a lamp shining in a dark place until the Day dawns and the light of the morning star shines in your hearts.

 

Re 2:26 - (said by Jesus)

To those who win the victory, who continue to the end to do what I want, I will give the same authority that I received from my Father: I will give them authority over the nations, to rule them with an iron rod and to break them to pieces like clay pots. I will also give them the morning star.

 

Re 22:16 -

"I, Jesus, have sent my angel to announce these things to you in the churches. I am descended from the family of David; I am the bright morning star."

 

I think, the Jesus here is EVERYONE, overcomers, that forms his collective body. Once we all come to an understanding that we avoid condemning, and bring understanding with solutions.

 

My point here... Lucifer was never meant to be Satan, IMO.