3 ms·

> 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

> 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.

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.