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The temptation of Christ. Revelations. The Garden of Eden. Job. There are plenty of teachings about how demons are evil and dangerous as well. 1 and 2 Peter, fo

The temptation of Christ. Revelations. The Garden of Eden. Job. There are plenty of teachings about how demons are evil and dangerous as well. 1 and 2 Peter, for instance.

taeric 9y ago
Garden of Eden? At no point is that good versus evil, is it? They disobey and are cast out. Job? Everything done to him is with God's will. If anything, this would sway the other way. Good literally willed the killing of his family, and he accepts that. More to the point, where are the bad guys? There is a general sense of good, but evil is less present than "not good."
- goatlover 9y ago
  > Garden of Eden? At no point is that good versus evil, is it? It's about eating the forbidden fruit which would give them knowledge of good and evil, similar to Pandora's box. Why the snake was in the garden and allowed to tempt them is not specified in the story.
  - taeric 9y ago
    The knowledge of good and evil is a far cry from the confrontation between good and evil.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      The "Pandora's Box" was the introduction of the first sin, the first human evil, which had far-reaching consequences that Ian Malcolm would snicker and rant about. The Christian narrative starts with this and climaxes with the crucifixion of God himself. I'm honestly confused how people can think the Bible, as a corpus, doesn't have good vs evil and God vs the devil all through it.
      - taeric 9y ago
        This doesn't seem to contradict my question. Unleashing evil as something we have to live with is not confronting evil.
        humanrebar 9y ago
        The story is evil confronting good. It's a tragedy of evil ruining paradise. The knowledge of good and evil could have been supernaturally imparted, but it could just be describing the experience resulting from doing evil.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > At no point is that good versus evil, is it? The serpent is the embodiment of the devil and talks humans into their first sin. > Job? Everything done to him is with God's will. God mostly pulls back and lets the devil have his way to prove the devil wrong. The devil had some philosophical argument about man's love for God being purely utilitarian... that Job loves God like a cat with a full food dish loves its master. The story was about evil putting good to an empirical test. So, in that sense, it's certainly about good vs. evil. You're mostly arguing with the text's perception of good, which is common, but if the text is granted its own moral perspective, it's clearly about good vs. evil. > More to the point, where are the bad guys? In both cases the bad guy is literally Satan, which is why I chose those. There are plenty of other Biblical stories where the are evil characters and evil people groups, but I was responding to a question about the devil. And the temptation of Christ is as literally God vs the devil as you can get.
  - krapp 9y ago
    It's entirely possible that the "Satan" in Job is a different entity than the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and that neither is meant to also be Lucifer, the Devil. If you go by what the Genesis account says, the serpent in the Garden of Eden is just a snake that can talk.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      And if you go by A New Hope, Darth Vader murdered Luke's father. Context is important, too.
      - krapp 9y ago
        Context is important, but so is intent. Darth Vader did murder Luke's father in A New Hope. George Lucas didn't decide he was Luke's father and that the murdering was of the abstract "from a certain point of view" variety until he was making Empire Strikes Back. Which context is the valid one, that of the story actually described by the film, or what Lucas decided, later on, that it should have been? So, as with the Genesis account, I think it matters what the ancient Hebrews intended the serpent to symbolize. When people say the serpent represents "the devil," that concept tends to be overloaded with centuries of Christian history and Lucasian retconning to make what are disjoint parts seem like a coherent narrative. The curse that God places on the serpent is that he will strike at humanity's heel, and humanity will crush its head. Is that meant to symbolize the eternal enmity between humanity's divine and profane nature? Is it a political message, with the snake being a debased version of a Babylonian deity? A just-so story about why snakes bite people? Maybe it is the devil - but it's not the Christian devil.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> The temptation of Christ. Revelations. The Garden of Eden. Job. Job isn't God vs. the Devil (well, not in the sense of hostile conflict, at any rate) and, while its a popular interpretation to associate the serpent in Eden with the Devil, that's actually not in the text. The other two (especially Revelation) are valid points.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  God and Satan weren't punching each other in Job bur their conflict was the premise of the whole story. Even if you think the serpent was a proxy of Satan and not Satan himself, does it matter? Maybe you were making a narrower claim that God and Satan never physically punched each other. That is certainly true but narrow enough to be uninteresting.

The temptation of Christ. Revelations. The Garden of Eden. Job. There are plenty of teachings about how demons are evil and dangerous as well. 1 and 2 Peter, for instance.

taeric 9y ago

Garden of Eden? At no point is that good versus evil, is it? They disobey and are cast out. Job? Everything done to him is with God's will. If anything, this would sway the other way. Good literally willed the killing of his family, and he accepts that. More to the point, where are the bad guys? There is a general sense of good, but evil is less present than "not good."

goatlover 9y ago
> Garden of Eden? At no point is that good versus evil, is it? It's about eating the forbidden fruit which would give them knowledge of good and evil, similar to Pandora's box. Why the snake was in the garden and allowed to tempt them is not specified in the story.
- taeric 9y ago
  The knowledge of good and evil is a far cry from the confrontation between good and evil.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    The "Pandora's Box" was the introduction of the first sin, the first human evil, which had far-reaching consequences that Ian Malcolm would snicker and rant about. The Christian narrative starts with this and climaxes with the crucifixion of God himself. I'm honestly confused how people can think the Bible, as a corpus, doesn't have good vs evil and God vs the devil all through it.
    - taeric 9y ago
      This doesn't seem to contradict my question. Unleashing evil as something we have to live with is not confronting evil.
      - humanrebar 9y ago
        The story is evil confronting good. It's a tragedy of evil ruining paradise. The knowledge of good and evil could have been supernaturally imparted, but it could just be describing the experience resulting from doing evil.
humanrebar 9y ago
> At no point is that good versus evil, is it? The serpent is the embodiment of the devil and talks humans into their first sin. > Job? Everything done to him is with God's will. God mostly pulls back and lets the devil have his way to prove the devil wrong. The devil had some philosophical argument about man's love for God being purely utilitarian... that Job loves God like a cat with a full food dish loves its master. The story was about evil putting good to an empirical test. So, in that sense, it's certainly about good vs. evil. You're mostly arguing with the text's perception of good, which is common, but if the text is granted its own moral perspective, it's clearly about good vs. evil. > More to the point, where are the bad guys? In both cases the bad guy is literally Satan, which is why I chose those. There are plenty of other Biblical stories where the are evil characters and evil people groups, but I was responding to a question about the devil. And the temptation of Christ is as literally God vs the devil as you can get.
- krapp 9y ago
  It's entirely possible that the "Satan" in Job is a different entity than the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and that neither is meant to also be Lucifer, the Devil. If you go by what the Genesis account says, the serpent in the Garden of Eden is just a snake that can talk.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    And if you go by A New Hope, Darth Vader murdered Luke's father. Context is important, too.
    - krapp 9y ago
      Context is important, but so is intent. Darth Vader did murder Luke's father in A New Hope. George Lucas didn't decide he was Luke's father and that the murdering was of the abstract "from a certain point of view" variety until he was making Empire Strikes Back. Which context is the valid one, that of the story actually described by the film, or what Lucas decided, later on, that it should have been? So, as with the Genesis account, I think it matters what the ancient Hebrews intended the serpent to symbolize. When people say the serpent represents "the devil," that concept tends to be overloaded with centuries of Christian history and Lucasian retconning to make what are disjoint parts seem like a coherent narrative. The curse that God places on the serpent is that he will strike at humanity's heel, and humanity will crush its head. Is that meant to symbolize the eternal enmity between humanity's divine and profane nature? Is it a political message, with the snake being a debased version of a Babylonian deity? A just-so story about why snakes bite people? Maybe it is the devil - but it's not the Christian devil.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> The temptation of Christ. Revelations. The Garden of Eden. Job. Job isn't God vs. the Devil (well, not in the sense of hostile conflict, at any rate) and, while its a popular interpretation to associate the serpent in Eden with the Devil, that's actually not in the text. The other two (especially Revelation) are valid points.

humanrebar 9y ago
God and Satan weren't punching each other in Job bur their conflict was the premise of the whole story. Even if you think the serpent was a proxy of Satan and not Satan himself, does it matter? Maybe you were making a narrower claim that God and Satan never physically punched each other. That is certainly true but narrow enough to be uninteresting.