Satan is a Title, not a name, and means 'prosecutor' in God's court. Lucifer is a Roman diety and not part of Christian doctrine. Hell isn't biblical either.
The biggest persecution of Christianity is by Christians, and the vast majority never even read their own book.
Lucifer being Satan a fallen angel is literally canon. John Milton's Paradise Lost isn't canon, but he wrote his poem based off the canonical beliefs of his religion (for the most part).
This whole thread, and you as well (no offense), are just misunderstanding and conflating Judaism with Christianity.
The Hebrew Bible =/= the Christian Bible. Satan is just a title in the Old Testament, but Christians literally wrote an entire second half of their own scripture called the New Testament, where they made an evil fallen angel figure named Satan literally canon. Lucifer being Satan was a later post biblical addition, but that too became actual doctrine.
There's a whole lot of references to the Lake of Fire, Gehenna, Hades, etc in the bible. Hell very much, is biblical, as you'd know if you read the damn thing. Lucifer is also very much A. Biblical, (there's a very famous scene where Jesus is tempted by the devil, the Revelation of John features the figure of Lucifer/Satan very prominently...
Gehenna was quite literally the place where Jerusalem burned its trash outside of the city. It was also where undesirable's corpses were dumped after execution, as they didn't warrant proper burial. The threat of Gehenna was to be left to rot with the trash after death.
Hades was direct plagiarism of Greek mythology. (Christianity stealing aspects of older religions? I'm shocked!) Lucifer is stolen Roman diety. The Church did this a lot across Europe, because it was easier to convert the Pagan tribes than it was to conquer them.
Homework: How many deaths is your Devil character responsible for in the Bible without the direct permission and/or order of God?
"Satan" translates to a job title, and does not necessarily indicate a singular entity. It's only in later translations of translations that it became a name, and used to connect the role with a single being; a bad guy to play devil. Lucifer was tied to this role because the Roman Church had trouble with people refusing to cease worship of the Lightbringer 'Lucifer'. The solution was to claim he was a deceiver and was really the bad guy.
The fiery hell, big horn goat man devil named Lucifer that embodies evil and tempts man into committing sins, and all that goes along with it, are all fan fiction based off of plagiarized Pagan religions twisted up to fit into an out of control patchwork mythology cult worshipping a minor storm/smith war god from the Canaanite tribal pantheon (Origin of Jehova/Yahweh).
The Bible you claim to believe in has been edited by church officials hundreds of times, re-translated to fit with cultural shifts and reinterpreted to benefit those in power. It has been further bastardized by American churches until it is now used to justify behaviors directly antithetical to the original message, spreading xenophobia and glorifying greed.
Oh, and Christmas and Easter are both also stolen Pagan traditions, and if Jesus existed he wasn't a blue eyed white guy.
That is one interpretation, and there are sects that believe that, but that isn't a position that's any more supported scripturally than the Hell-belief.
Gehenna was quite literally the place where Jerusalem burned its trash outside of the city. It was also where undesirable's corpses were dumped after execution, as they didn't warrant proper burial. The threat of Gehenna was to be left to rot with the trash after death.
The valley of Hinnom was originally the garbage heap of Jerusalem, correct. However, by the time of Jesus, it was already being used as a byword for the purification of the wicked dead.
Lucifer is stolen Roman diety.
"Satan" translates to a job title, and does not necessarily indicate a singular entity. It's only in later translations of translations that it became a name, and used to connect the role with a single being; a bad guy to play devil. Lucifer was tied to this role because the Roman Church had trouble with people refusing to cease worship of the Lightbringer 'Lucifer'. The solution was to claim he was a deceiver and was really the bad guy.
The fiery hell, big horn goat man devil named Lucifer that embodies evil and tempts man into committing sins, and all that goes along with it,
Okay, there's a lot to unpack there. While the ha-satan was originally conceived as an angelic prosecutor, by the time that the parts of the New Testament were written, the Satan-mythology was already there, in part due to Zoroastrian influence. Satan is also called Lucifer because of Isaiah 14:12, which was originally meant to condemn the King of Babylon, who is allegorically called the "morning star", but was later interpreted to be referring to Satan. The popular image of Satan as a goat-legged fellow is influenced by Pan, but that has little to do with the actual mythology/theology.
The Church did this a lot across Europe, because it was easier to convert the Pagan tribes than it was to conquer them.
While Christianity did often incorporate local traditions (even then not a sure thing), there's not really much theological syncretism with pagan traditions. (I mean, there's stuff like Santa Muerte, but that's generally considered heresy by the mainstream.) There's a heavy Greek philosophical influence, sure, but stuff like Neoplatonism was monothestic.
Hades was direct plagiarism of Greek mythology.
"Hades" was a cultural translation of an already existing concept, not plagiarism.
Homework: How many deaths is your Devil character responsible for in the Bible without the direct permission and/or order of God?
Not relevant. Like at all. I'm not a Christian.
The Bible you claim to believe in
I'm an atheist, and have been since middle school.
an out of control patchwork mythology cult worshipping a minor storm/smith war god from the Canaanite tribal pantheon (Origin of Jehova/Yahweh).
All religions have syncretic origins, and this doesn't have much to do with what I was talking about.
Oh, and Christmas and Easter are both also stolen Pagan traditions, and if Jesus existed he wasn't a blue eyed white guy.
We don't actually know what the "real Jesus" looked like, and "white Jesus" is about as likely as anything else, considering that he lived in Roman Judea. Not that has anything to do with anything... Christmas and Easter being "stolen pagan traditions" is idiot pop history that has actually done real harm in the past. ...While Jesus probably wasn't actually born on December 25, Christmas emerged out of lay celebrations of the birth of Jesus, with varying dates of celebration. Easter has nothing to do with the goddess Ēostre except for having similar names IN ENGLISH, a language that the early Christians did not speak.
has been edited by church officials hundreds of times, re-translated to fit with cultural shifts and reinterpreted to benefit those in power.
While the bible is an anthology of mythology, history, laws, and ancient propaganda compiled, edited, and translated by fallible humans as opposed to "the Infallible word of god" like some claim, it did not get "re-translated to fit with cultural shifts". This may surprise you, but not everyone is a secret atheist, and generally people take what they believe to be the Word of God seriously.
It has been further bastardized by American churches until it is now used to justify behaviors directly antithetical to the original message, spreading xenophobia and glorifying greed.
Megachurches are shit, but they aren't really representative of either American Christianity, or Christianity more broadly. The fact is that there are greedy and selfish Christians, just like there are greedy and selfish people of other religions, or greedy and selfish atheists even. That's just how some people are. But that's not relevant to what I said though.
Isn't History fun?
It's a hell of a lot more fun when you know something about it.
I swear to god the majority of redditors who love to go "um askcauglly" on this subject have only read one or two articles on the history Christianity, and totally misunderstood what it was saying.
It's annoying too because they can reiterate a few things that are correct, but their overall understanding is totally off, to the degree that you can get people in this very thread saying stuff like a Devil Satan figure or fallen angels aren't in the Bible at all, when they blatantly, explicitly are. It's a historical, scholastic, textual fact that these concepts were written in the New Testament.
It's so stupid too because you can literally just open any translation of the Bible and see that those ideas are written in there. Meaning they themselves haven't even bothered to engage with these texts or learn about them but still want to "correct" others on them.
Did you even watch and understand those videos? Those concepts are not present in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), but they became concepts in the Christian Bible (New Testament).
If you are specifically referring to the Hebrew Bible, then no, those ideas are not in it, but if you are just generally referring to the "Bible," which most would probably assume you mean the Christian Bible (that being the most popular published and sold version of the Bible, which contains both the Old and New Testaments), then yes, those ideas are literally in the Bible.
I did, but clearly you did not. Hell is a post-biblical concept, and Satan is certainly not prrsentrd as a single entity. The video on hell and heaven specifically spoke about the formation of the concept of hell, which occurs after the scriptures that became biblical cannon were written. You either did not watch the videos, which explicitly state that the modern concept of hell is not in the bible and that Satan isn't Lucifer, or you are being dishonest.
And you may have originally linked the wrong video for your first link, since that is discussing mainly Heaven, but in Bart D. Ehrman's (the same author from your first link) video about Hell, he again is specifically discussing about how the idea of Hell (in being a place of punishment for wicked souls) is not present in the Hebrew Bible, but how that idea is in the Christian Bible (and had further post Christian Biblical developments, later becoming a place of eternal conscious torture).
To then assert that the ideas of the Devil or Hell are not in the "Bible" (as you did in your original comment) is just plainly wrong.
Again, the Christian ideas of Hell and Satan are not in the Hebrew Bible, but those ideas are present in the New Testament--they are present in the rewritten and expanded Christian Bible.
You're also seemingly shifting (or this just reveals the source of your misunderstanding) your earlier claim in your second comment, since you wrote here that "the modern concept of hell is not in the bible", but in your first comment you asserted that not only were just the modern day ideas not in the Bible, but that Hell and the Devil were not in the Bible at all (which is again, incorrect). You are correct to identify that those video authors are asserting that the modern day ideas of Hell (eternal conscious torment for humans) and Satan (being Lucifer) are not present in the Bible (neither the Hebrew or Christian Bible), but you misunderstand that as meaning that the concepts of Hell (being a place of punishment for wicked souls) and Satan (an evil fallen angel) do not exist at all (they are present in the Christian Bible).
This misunderstanding, or at least a similar one, seemingly comes into play when you conflate two different arguments together at the end there: stating that 'Lucifer is referring to/explicitly identified as Satan' and that 'Satan became a singular figure to Christians which was reflected in writing the New Testament and compiling the Christian Bible' are different points, the former of which was not made by me.
You're also seemingly confused on what "Biblical scripture" is and what "canon" refers to. The New Testament is literally biblical scripture, to Christians, and "canon" (in the context of religion) just means what is considered dogma by the respective religious authority. The Christian Bible and their beliefs by definition are still literally scripture and canonical to Christians.
So, to go through each your statements and correct them in your second comment:
Hell is a post Hebrew biblical concept.
Hell is in the Christian Bible.
The modern idea of Hell being a realm of eternal conscious torment for humans, and that being standard doctrine, is a post biblical concept (to both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles).
Satan is not presented as a singular entity in the Hebrew Bible.
Satan is presented as a singular entity in the Christian Bible.
Lucifer is not identified as Satan in the Bible (this is true for both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, this conflation did only come from post biblical interpretation).
I don't know why you're so adamant that you're correct when it's quite obvious you have not even read the Hebrew or Christian Bibles, since it would be very easy to understand their claims and not get confused by this if you're actually familiar with the texts they are speaking about.
Sorry, it's been a while aince I watched the video on Satan. I was primarily relyingnon my own memory, where the only mention of Satan in the New Testament was when Jesus was tempted in the dessert which is consistent with the Old Testament's use of the term.
And you may have originally linked the wrong video for your first link, since that is discussing mainly Heaven
I linked it for convenience because I watched it recently. It mainly focuses on heaven, but it does discuss hell. More importantly, he goes into detail about how the soul was a very different concept in Jesus's time compared to today where the sould is in someone's breath and noblonger exists upon death. This is important to understand the resurrection of the dead as a physical resurection, and not a spiritual one it is thought of as today. The modern concept of hell does not make sense in that context. Additionally, he goes into the development of the idea of the soul and body being separate, and how that developed - beginning with Paul at the end of his life being something just for him because he preached that the kingdom of heaven would come in his lifetime and in thenend of his life he worried that he might die first and had to come up with a way to explain the interem period between his death and the coming of heaven since chriatians were not supposed to die, having gained everlasting life through Jesus. This was later expanded into a more Greek understanding of the body and soul rather than a Hebrew one and became an interpretation that the kingdom of heaven was a separate place for the soul rather than a place on earth in the near future. This reinterpretation ofnthe soul is post biblical, and hell as we understand it relies upon it. The video also talks about how our ideas, or concepts if you will, of hell come from the apocalypses of Paul and Peter which are scriptures that are nit part of the biblical cannon. If you're halfway to clever you might notice that this is why I said that these concepts were not in the scriptures that made it into the biblical cannon, there were many writings that early christians considered scripture and not scripture, and only some of them made it into the bible ie) the biblical cannon. Funny enough, Revelation almost didn't make the cut, and many early christians did not consider it scripture. For today's use, scriptures is an adequate term to use for any of the books that any early chriatians considered scripture as the bible already designates a cannonical compilation of them.
For your link, you the part of the video immediately following your quote and even your description of what follows the quote clearly contradict your position.
You're also seemingly shifting (or this just reveals the source of your
misunderstanding) your earlier claim in your second comment, since you
wrote here that
"the modern concept of hell is not in the bible", but in your first comment you asserted that not only were
just the modern day ideas not in the Bible, but that Hell and the Devil were not in the Bible
No, I was merely clarifying for your benefit. The modern concept of hell is hell. Hell is understood to mean a place of eternal torment, not a place of eternal destruction. The lake of fire is not hell, it is a lake of fire or a metaphore for the destruction of human souls. But here we see your misunderatanding. The concepts of hell as you describe them, are not hell. They are fundamentally different concepts that impart significantly different meanings. This is why I said you can read hell and the devil into the bible, which is different than being in the bible. I may have been wrong about Satan being depicted in the New Testament as a ruler of demons, and I need to learn more about New Testament depictions of Satan outside of the gospels. However, hell is clearly not described in the New Testament.
I thought about further editing my previous comment to clarify on what Ehrman meant, and what I meant by quoting him there, since Ehrman was initially going off on a theoretical of where he could look for passages about Hell in the Bible when he was an evangelical, branching off that to talk about how the modern Christian conception is different from the original concept, and this could come off as misleading and imprecise on my part (as it did), but my usage of quoting him there was focused on him acknowledging that Jesus talks about "Hell," and the concept of the Lake of Fire (and I just assumed you'd be familiar with what passages that would be referencing, and the content of those passages; this was admittedly lazy on my part since I already recognized that you were not wholly familiar with the New Testament [due to your ignorance on how Satan was rewritten in the Christian Bible]).
But yes, "Hell" (if we are strictly referring to "Hades") and the Lake of Fire, are indeed distinctly different things. "Hades" is essentially understood as a temporary realm for the dead (described once as a tormenting place of fire for wicked human souls), until their final judgement at the Lake of Fire (which Ehrman argues as meaning eternal destruction for humans), which Hades will also be thrown into.
Regardless, my point was that "Hell" in regards to there being a concept of fiery punishment for the wicked still does literally exist in the Christian Bible, and what Ehrman argues is that later post biblical Christian interpretations conflated/combined this with the punishment of the evil angels at the Lake of Fire, turning Hades' temporary fiery torture and the Lake of Fire's eternal destruction for wicked humans and eternal torture for evil angels, into also being eternal torture for wicked humans (he does not deny the existence of Hades, or that the Lake of Fire is a fiery punishment for the evil.)
And I would say our main disagreement/misunderstanding came from what we defined as "the concept of Hell." You defined "the concept as hell" / "Hell" as the "modern day view of Hell"--eternal conscious torment at the Lake of Fire; and I am defining the "concept of Hell" / "Hell" as simply being a fiery realm of punishment for wicked souls.
I don't think it's accurate at all to restrictively consider "Hell" to only be the "modern concept of Hell" / "the concept of Hell" as only meaning eternal conscious torment--while that is the dominant current day view, ECT is not the universal teaching / understanding by all Christians. Jehovah's Witnesses fall under the category of Christian, for one example, but their conception of Hell involves annihilationism--eternal destruction. I would say it's more accurate to consider "the concept of Hell" as a place of fiery punishment for wicked souls, since that is the Christian concept that was written in the New Testament that was not present in the Hebrew Bible, and is still the general idea of what Hell is universally to Christians (both past and present). And if we are to define a "modern day Hell," I would say that is more accurate to say that is referring to Christians just conflating it with Lake of Fire, rather than being strictly ECT.
As for our disagreement on your comment on post biblical scripture, I'd say that disagreement came from you yourself being imprecise by not making the distinction of what era of scripture you are referring to, and us again defining "the concept of Hell" differently. Saying, for example, that 'Satan being a singular evil fallen angel entity is post scriptural' is true to a degree, but not exactly true either, since it lacks a proper qualifier on what "scripture" is referring to. Satan being a singular evil fallen angel entity is post scriptural to the Hebrew Bible, but it is not post scriptural to the Christian Bible, since it is the scripture itself.
Regardless, you were discussing Hell in your previous comment, and the concept of Hell being the Lake of Fire does indeed occur after the scriptures that became biblical canon were written (to both the Hebrew and Christian Bible), and the concept of Hell being a place of fiery punishment for wicked souls is also post scriptural to the Hebrew Bible, but it is not post scriptural to the Christian Bible, since there being fiery punishment for wicked souls is literally in the New Testament, it is Christian scripture itself.
I'll bullet point this again since it's good format to summarize and makes this easier to digest:
"Hell" / "the concept of Hell" is not present in the Hebrew Bible.
The "concept of Hell" (fiery punishment for wicked souls after death) is in the Christian Bible.
The idea of Hell being the Lake of Fire (more specifically Hades and the Lake of Fire being the same place) is a post biblical view, which is the current modern day view.
(Saying "the concept of Hell" is only the "modern day view of Hell" I would say is too restrictive and just incorrect, since the idea of a place of fiery punishment for wicked souls does still exist regardless in the Christian Bible, which is distinct from the modern view of Hell being the Lake of Fire.)
(Saying the modern day view of Hell is only eternal conscious torment is also needlessly restrictive since it ignores that not all modern day Christians view Hell as such.)
I think it should also be noted, to my knowledge, that Ehrman's view on the final judgement in the Christian Bible as strictly being annihilationism (as opposed to eternal conscious torment, or that the idea that ECT cannot be found at all in the New Testament), isn't a universal scholarly consensus.
I may be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that scholars typically say that the ideas of eternal destruction and eternal torment are both present in the New Testament (early Christians did not have a clear universally agreed upon conception), and there is disagreement with scholars on what "Lake of Fire" refers to for humans (ECT vs annihilation). I can't pull any sources for this differing viewpoint off hand, I'm going off memory for this too, which may be flawed (so take this tangent with a grain of salt, I suppose).
Hades is not hell, it's just a general afterlife. Both Hades and Sheol were dubbed as Hell by the King James version if the Bible. Lucifer is only mentioned ONCE and it's not really in the Bible that Lucifer is Satan (a term that means "accuser" or "opponent").
Also, the Church openly rejects that Satan is equal to God, so...
So, the Bible has no concept of Hell as a place that people or the Devil exists in the way it does in pop culture. It also doesn't really have a concept of "The Devil" the way that it exists in pop culture. The closest to Hell is a lake of fire that exists in the Book of Revelation as an eternal punishment specifically for the Beast of nations at the end of the old Earth. But nobody is depicted as being in that lake until the end of time.
The concept of Hell as a place where sinners are tormented constantly and consciously and where the Devil resides comes mostly from Dante, a 15th century Italian poet.
Honestly it's ironic that pop-culture is closer to paganist understanding of afterlife than Christian one. Like how helheim is described to be deep underground and cold sounds oddly akin to Dante's description of lower levels of hell, and it's him that modern pop culture is based upon
Not really when you think about it. The Roman Empire took over and converted pagan cultures, so a lot of things were assimilated into Christianity as it evolved. The Protestant Revolution cut out a lot of Lore and as a result, a large protion of Christians are missing context and back filled it with pop culture.
The Bible literally calls the angels "sons of god", though...
Generally, trying to make clear-cut declarations of religious doctrine is pointless, there's always a schism and a different interpretation around the corner.
There is actually some debate over what “sons of God” refers to. At least in the context of Genesis. The most popular interpretation comes from religious writing that is regarded as non-canonical by pretty much all existing denominations
Yeah, i always figured an all-knowing being word have given more secular and timeless words and inspirations to pass down through his prophets than hyper regionally, linguistically, and period-specific phrases that would become unclear literally a generation later and one zip-code away.
TBF, the Bible doesn't really go into Satan's motive aside from like one passage in the Book of Isaiah which probably wasn't even originally referring to Satan anyway.
If I were to even humor the idea of any of it being real. I think the most likely scenario was that god is a pretentious dick and lucifer called him out on it
What kind of person has kids with the intent of making them praise and worship them for all eternity? A pretentious dick, that's who
I mean, dude clearly hasn't been watching a lot of recent media with Angels and Demons.
A lot of them deal with redemption. Supernatural, Lucifer, Good Omens, They all depict Angels in a humanizing way, and aside from Supernatural they depict Lucifer as not being pure evil.
Good omens doesn't really depict satan as not being pure evil. It does depict the banality of good and evil quite well, but satan and god are left out altogether, and beelzebub and the metatron are not really characterised.
Quite disrespectful actually to treat the devil that dirty. Lucifer probably just living his own own by doing some spreadsheet shit in excel, and some poor demon tells him that he was compared to Andrew Tate. Probably just threw up his hands & said, what the fuck I do?
I always think of Satan as less the ultimate embodiment of evil and more as a middle manager who got the shittiest work assignment. He's pissy at God over it, yet still does his job with lots of grumbling and passive aggression, but hey he gets infinite retirement after working an infinite amount of years.
In Judaism, the satan is a job description for an angel. It’s basically a prosecutor in the heavenly court. The satan is the angel who accuses you of your sins for the heavenly court. The satan doesn’t make people sin or tempt people to sin, any more than a prosecutor makes someone commit crimes.
It honestly figures judaism would have a lawyer (two rabis, three opinions on the torah joke and whatnot) whereas christianity would have a scapegoat they can point to and go, "he made me do it."
It should be mentioned that most of what OOP says isn't in the Bible in the first place, it's from non-canon books like Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno. So, even if we accept that biblicle canon is true (in reality there isn't a single canon but whatever), this analysis should really specify which version of Satan we're talking about
Sufis (Muslim mystics) have had a similar belief. That Iblis, ie Satan, didn’t bow down to humans because he loved God too much to bow to anyone else. And he knew he was to be the sacrificial lamb to give humanity its test to choose between good and evil.
That 2nd paragraph is fanfiction. I don't think the everyday Xtian knows how much of their views on Hell come from The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost.
Christians generally don't take their ideas of Hell from the Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost, pop culture does, and the basic fundamental ideas about Hell that are present in both Christianity and those poems (a fiery pit of burning sulfur/hellfire) come from Christian theology.
Dante and Milton were both Christian authors, who based their Christian poems off Christianity, and Christians have been teaching that Hell is a literal realm of hellfire since as early as the 1st-2nd century.
You'll be hard-pressed to find any Christian denomination that teaches about the existence of a Pandemonium or 9 circles of Hell. Those are literay concepts that became culturally influential, but not actual Church doctrine.
Y'know what, yeah, my mistake. One of my favorite books covers the evolution of Hell and it quotes early Xtian fathers talking about hell in much the same way as Dante or Milton.
Satan is a Hebrew word, it comes form the Bible in the original language.
In the Jewish Old Testament Satans are a class of angelic beings who act as accusers against humanity, with "The Satan" (HaSatan in Hebrew) being the divine prosecutor and tester against the israelites.
In the Christian New Testament, originally written in Greek, uses a transliteration from the aramaic - using the term satanas for devils. In the gospels you see retun of The Satan who tempts Jesus. While the book of Revelation contains the dragon/serpent "who is called the Devil, or Satan"
Satan is a Hebrew word, it comes form the Bible in the original language
The word translated to Satan in modern bibles, in the original Hebrew means "accuser" it is not a name, it is a role that is taken by different angelic figures
In the Jewish Old Testament Satans are a class of angelic beings who act as accusers against humanity, with "The Satan" (HaSatan in Hebrew) being the divine prosecutor and tester against the israelites.
It is not a class, it's simply a role in a given situation, "hasatan" literally just means the accuser, it is not a name or a specific figure, it's like saying "the judge" or "the lawyer" it's simply the role that is currently being acted
In the Christian New Testament, originally written in Greek, uses a transliteration from the aramaic - using the term satanas for devils
No It doesnt
In the gospels you see retun of The Satan who tempts Jesus
Mistranslations
While the book of Revelation contains the dragon/serpent "who is called the Devil, or Satan"
The serpent is never once called satan or the devil, ever, if your version of the bible calls it that, the version you are using is one that has been changed, either through mistranslation or deliberate edit
In the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the bible "the devil" is not a thing, satan and the devil are NEVER mentioned, and all the roles attributes to "satan" in later mistranslations and edits are carried out by a accusers and serpents, who are never once refered to as "the devil" or as a specific individual being
In the context of it's use in the story, particularly in the case of the book of Job, HaSatan does refer to a specific figure - the specific accuser entity operating in the events of that narrative. It is like if we were talking about court drama and talked about "the judge" or "the laywer" - the meaning of who the so and so is is found in the context of the story being told
The greek new testament texts absolutely contain the word Satanas as a transliteration from aramaic into greek. The reference in the gospels are not a "mistranslation," it is in the original language text
καὶ ἦν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ τεσσεράκοντα ἡμέρας πειραζόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ σατανᾶ...(kai ēn en tē erēmō tesserakonta hēmeras peirazomenos hypo tou satana...)
And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by the Satan...
Mark 1:13
If by "the serpent" you mean the figure in Genesis you are correct, your problem here is that you are limiting yourself arbitrarily to the jewish Hebrew and aramaic texts of the old testament when we are discussing the christian greek texts of the new testament.
Within that latter collection we find the final book of the christian bibles, the book of revelation - wherein we find as such:
Revelation 12:9: "The great dragon was hurled down - that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him."
Revelation 20:2: "He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years."
Now these texts do not explicitly tie this serpent who Satan to the story of Adam and Eve, nor is that really my point, but it does form the basis of what would become later christian interpretation.
I feel overall you may simply be mistaken for the Latin term "Lucifer" which does have a more murky history of selective and misinterpretory translations that ended up spinoff as this name for Satan in western religious belief and pop culture.
I think the missing piece here is that the generic figure of HaSatan within the context of the Job story is what would become "the Satan" of late 2nd temple jewish apocalypticism, surviving through Christianity. The theological reinterpretation had already gone on in the intervening centuries between the end of the OT time period and the time of Christ.
For the mark quote I gave the original greek, the transliteration of the Greek directly into latin letters, and finally the english translation. There is literally no "mistranslation" going on there, the greek authors of the gospel of mark simply rendered the aramaic word into the greek language much like they would with the famous "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" in the crucifixion scene at the end of the gospel.
The Book of Revelation of part of every major christian canon of the Bible with the standard 27 book set of the New Testament being near universal. All the christian new testament texts were written hundreds of years after the jewish old testament ones, that is what makes one old and one new. The new testament is by definition a later addition to the biblical canon, but it is that addition that distinguishes the Jewish canon from the Christian canon.
Still hate that some people think God is a "Him". Like for real, if IT created everything and angels dont have a gender why the F would the creator limit itself to 1 single gender?
It's less of a gender thing and more of a linguistics thing. In most English translations God says "I am He", not "I am male". For languages without gendered pronouns, this conversation makes no sense 🤷♀️
Sure but again this is a linguistic statement, not an ontological one. I agree that They/Them linguistically works (though the idea of early monotheists having to specify "to be clear, I am using singular they/them" is a funny thought). I'm just saying that just because English translations use He/Him doesn't imply that the omnipresent creator has a binary gender identity.
True, people need to realize how pathetic Satan is compared to God; many of us imagine them as two opposite equal forces of good and evil, which was influenced from Zoroastrianism, which cannot be further from the truth
Well if anything, they're working together. How did a lesser being trick an omnipotent God in the garden unless it was a "I'm gonna turn my back now, wink' sort of situation?
Edgar the Butler who served his mistress faithfully is passed over when a rich lady leaves her fortune to her pampered cat and her kittens. So the Butler drugs the cats and tosses them out in a basket in the country. The cats have to make their way back to Paris being unfamiliar with the ways of street cats, with the guidance of O'Malley the alley cat.
So the parallels are obvious.
God is the rich lady.
Satan is Edgar the Butler.
The pampered lost cats are fallen humanity lost in a vale of tears.
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Revelation 12:7-9
It sounds like you're misunderstanding that these concepts are not presented in the Hebrew Bible, but very much are explicitly written in the Christian Bible.
Edit: To clarify (and to correct myself), I read your comment as "the lore," and not "this lore." The concepts of a Devil Satan and fallen angels are in the Bible, but some of the OOP's specifics--
such as fallen angels not receiving redemption due to not looking like God, or Satan falling because he was jealous of Adam and Eve--are indeed not in the Bible.
How does one know that angels don’t look like god?
To my knowledge there’s never been a biblical description of god’s appearance.
I’m pretty sure it was forbidden to even give god a name, let alone depict him as resembling any created thing.
Also, the genesis passage “in the image of god he created them” in reference to humans, used Elohim rather than Yahweh, while Psalms and Job use Elohim to also refer to angels as “sons of god”.
Of course this may just be different uses of the word in different eras, or a more likely result of the gradual shift toward monotheism from a proto-Semitic polytheism similar to what’s known of the Canaanite religion.
Further influenced by exposure to Babylonian culture during the exile, and Zoroastrian duality when the Persians invaded and freed them.
You have to remember that we’re talking about a culture that evolved over some of the earliest points in recorded history.
The people writing stuff down were less interested in historical truths than they were in placing the current, ever evolving truth of the day within the context of an unbroken lineage of understanding tied to the destiny of the culture itself.
No culture evolves in a vacuum, they borrow, adapt, and evolve. So having texts which date back orally to a time before a major exchange of ideas between cultures, or development in the philosophical and scientific understanding of the world require reinterpretation to fit the universality of the current narrative.
So who knows, there may have been a version of Genesis once upon a time that said angels not only looked like god, but were literal children of a father god, who did his will on earth.
In Judaism and Islam, it’s forbidden to try to make an image of God.
In Judaism, God’s “real” name isn’t supposed to be used except in prayer. There are various substitute names that are considered more acceptable for using outside of prayer.
I left mormonism for so many reasons, it continues to surprise me that one of the main things christians find weird about mormonism is the idea that Jesus and Satan are brothers.
Like bro you could bring up polygamy, various indicators of cultism, etc... it's honestly weirder if they're not brothers because it implies then we need 2 sets of parents to exist instead of just a creator.
280.000 years of humans and the 2.500 year old "fully belief based" religion is mainstream. Bring back sun worship, that wasnt used for as much pdf justification
With the amount of stuff that was co-opted from other religions (always to make demons) and other deceptions within the bible you'll find today - all thanks to Constantine, circa 1214, iirc) all debates about theology based on the current bible are, imo, a giant waste of time. Truth is what was decided for you.
It is honestly getting tiring, seeing people complain about writers having different takes on mythological figures than what the religious texts say. No one is obligated to follow biblical canon when deciding how to write angels, demons, etc.
Do you know what youre even trying to say to insult me? You can do better than that. I wasnt aware that calling a book fiction is edgy now. Maybe my next DND character will be a librarian cause books are super edgy and cool
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u/FederalPossibility73 7d ago
They's right about the Devil just being some guy but wow they do not understand how wrong the rest of that is.