Or so you would like to believe. There is no contradiction between the OT and the NT.
The New Testament includes ideas not found in the Old Testament and you are assuming those ideas are in the Old Testament as well but they are not. If you only go back and read the Old Testament without assuming New Testament theology, you'd see those ideas are not actually in there.
Any time a good angel would appear in the OT, they were referred to as an "angel of the Lord" or an "angel of God." If all the angels were on God's side, wouldn't you think this a little redundant?
Yeah, you are right it is redundant but so are the phrases 'Lord God' or the 'God is Lord' or the 'Lord is God' and yet you find it all over the Old Testament. The Old Testament contains lots of redundancy. That's the way it's written.
You're interpreting the verse the way that is most convenient for you. I believe in the Bible as a whole, completely inspired by God. Until you can prove to me that the NT interpretation is wrong, you can't accomplish your goal of showing the supposed inconsistencies between the OT and NT regarding the devil.
You are assuming that the OT and NT make a whole because you read the NT first and then assume NT when you read the OT. Those ideas are not actually in there. You are not getting your ideas from the text, you reading your ideas into the text.
Also, I find it pretty revealing that those devote Jews of Jesus' time, who knew the scriptures better than any of us, took Satan's and his demon's existence as evil spirits as a given. The only real debate was between the Pharisees who believed in spirits and the afterlife and the Sadducees who did not.
I never said there were no evil spirits. The book of Daniel mentions evil spirits. But evil spirits are not quite the same thing in the Old Testament that they are in the new. Rabbinical Judaism had already had another mythology in place surrounding evil spirits.
Too bad this isn't how the Bible explains itself. Leave the interpretations to those of us who actually believe in this text.
The NT interprets the Old Testament in such a way that it sees a devil in the text. The OT doesn't interpret itself this way. If you read the OT by itself without including NT ideas and let the OT interpret itself, you will see that there is no mention of a devil anywhere in the entire Old Testament.
The snake was the devil. The devil tempted Adam and Eve the same way he tempted the angels of Heaven.
I know that the New Testament says that. I am not arguing against that. I'll even show you the verse:
Revelation 12:9
New International Version (NIV)
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
New International Version (NIV)
2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.
But try finding a passage in the Old Testament that identifies the serpent as the devil. You can't because it's not in there.
Furthermore, when God punished the snake, he said that he would put enmity between Eve's offspring and hers.
There are numerous ways to interpret this, none of which necessitate that the serpent is the devil. Actually, a common belief in Rabbinical Judaism is that the serpent is Lillith, Adam's first wife, created from the ground just as himself.
Genesis 3:15 - "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.”
I know that Christians interpret this to mean that he is referring to Jesus. I think it might be seen as a reference to the Messiah in Judaism as well. But that interpretation does not necessitate that the serpent be the devil. It could mean that humankind eventually gets control of his animal urges but it gives him a lot of trouble in the process. And this is accurate to the flow of history.
Your interpretation does not work here.
I think you are wrong. Explain how it doesn't work.
This is not the offspring of ourselves and our own "animal nature." This one offspring of Eve is Jesus, and the serpent's offspring are those who belong to Satan.
I am already aware that that is the NT. I'm not disputing that. I'm suggesting that you try backing up this belief using OT verses and sources. You can't do it because it's not there.
No offense, but I trust the interpretations of the Jews over your interpretation. The Jews believed that the serpent was Satan.
There is no one standard interpretation to anything in Judaism. There is a saying when you get two Jews together you get six opinions. But there sometimes are common opinions and a common, but not universal opinion is that the serpent was Lillith.
As for the Serpent being a satan, some might call the serpent that but when they do, they are not saying the serpent was a fallen angel. The word satan in Hebrew means adversary. It is not a proper name. So to say that the serpent is satan is only to say that the serpent was an adversary and that is all. In the OT, satan was any adversary, not just God's bulldog angel.
You're forgetting the most important part: the why. Why does God send evil on His own people? Because He likes to torture them, or to destroy their faith? No. God's intentions are for good. Satan's intentions, however, are quite different.
I'm not really arguing God's intentions here. My argument is there is no devil in the Old Testament and God's intention are beside the point to that.
But since you brought is up, I do agree that God intends good to those that love him and keep his commandments. But God also intends evil against those that don't. In Exodus, it was God that hardened Pharaoh's heart, not some devil.
No, you are using the common Christian bias. Your interpretation of the angel as being the devil is by no means universal.
You're interpreting it for your own purposes.
No, I'm going with the Rabbinical Jewish interpretation. The
Satan and God were never best buddies.
Never suggested they were. I suggested that the particular angel that the text refers to as the adversary in this story is in the employ of God and there is nothing in the text to suggest otherwise. If that is not the case, post the verse that shows that God and this angel were having a problem with each other.
Wrong. This was not some adversary holding David at gunpoint, forcing him to take a census.
First, I didn't say anything at all about any gunpoint. You are reading that into my words all on your own.
What this means is that an enemy nation was waxing in power forcing David to take a look at his own resources so that he could properly defend against possible coming invasion.
This was the angel Satan,
Here, satan is not identified as an angel.
Most Christian bibles even include something in the footnotes that says that Satan in this verse means adversary. Satan is the Hebrew word for adversary. It's a direct translation. It's not a proper name, it doesn't even necessitate a theological usage. Anything that is an adversary, you refer to it as satan when you are speaking Hebrew. And Hebrew is the original language that these stories were original told in and translated from.
influencing David to make the decision. The text does not support your interpretation.
My interpretation is that the word Satan means adversary. The difference between my interpretation and your own is that you are reading a lot more into the word Satan than I am. If the text doesn't support my interpretation, it doesn't support yours either because my interpretation is included in yours.
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. The LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, Satan! The LORD, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”
Satan is an angel. There is nothing in this text to prove otherwise or to offer your interpretation any credibility.
My interpretation of the text is that the word satan here means adversary and as such my interpretation is exactly correct because this text was translated from Hebrew where the word satan is used and satan is the Hebrew word for adversary.
You are assuming that the word Satan means everything here that it does in the New Testament. But there is nothing in this text to support that the text means the word satan in the same way it does in the New Testament because the adversary is not identified as an angel.
Here's an idea. Try reading the Old Testament and every time you come across the word Satan, instead of assuming the devil, read the word to just mean adversary. And then see how often the text actually identifies the adversary as a fallen angel.
In the entire Old Testament, the only time that the specific adversary in the story is identified as an angel is in the book of Job and there is no indication anywhere in the story that the angel has fallen our of God's favor.
Also:
1 Samuel 16:14 - Now the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.
Who and what is this evil spirit? Another angel?
Maybe. I don't know. I would have to do a study on it. But this isn't an either/or situation. Just because we only know of one answer doesn't mean that there is only one answer and there nothing in the text identifying the evil spirits as either fallen angels or specific fallen angels.
There's one problem you're going to have to explain. How could God be associated with something that is evil?
Because God is the author of and creator of evil as well as good.
Didn't God kick Adam and Eve out of Heaven because of the evil in them?
No, they were never in Heaven. They were in the Garden of Eden. God did kick them out of Eden because they had eaten of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil and so had to leave the garden of Eden.
I'm not a literalist. I believe that when A&E ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it opened there eyes to there own animal nature and to the fact that were going to die.
I'm not sure how many interpretations there are to the text in Rabbinical Judaism but there are many and this is but one.
Isn't it our sin that separates us from God?
No. God is everywhere all the time. When you sin, God is the one that carries out the evil consequences against you for your sin.
The only separation between us and God is in awareness.
How, then, could God possibly surround Himself with evil spirits?
How could God possibly be surrounded?
Answer: He doesn't. God uses the demons for His own purposes, but they are no more acquainted than the most evil of people, of whom God is their judge. Satan and his angels are not God's friends, but they will be cast into the lake of fire, along with every other evil spirit of the earth.
That is all New Testament. I'm not arguing that Christianity and New Testament theology teaches that. I know it does. What I am saying is that is NOT in the Old Testament.
Use your common sense. It's not that hard.
When you say, "Use your common sense," what you really mean, "Just assume the Christian interpretation of this text." And you are right, it's not that hard. But that doesn't make it correct.
Satan was wandering, God helped him out. How did God help him by suggesting Job? Because Satan needed someone to bother.
None of that is in the text. You are assuming things that are not there.
He clearly wants it, otherwise he wouldn't try it. He said that he would do this so that Job would curse God. If this was not his intention, then he would have spoken of how God would bless Job through the torture he'd receive.
The text says nothing about the intentions of the angel in the story, only his actions.
Yes. It's poetic. That means you can ignore all the parts that don't fit into your own interpretation.
You're assuming that this isn't the devil. If you don't assume it isn't, it's there. Garden of Eden, Cherubim, cast from Heaven. This is not a man.
No, it's the other way around. It's only there if you assume it. If you start off in the book of genesis and build your theology based upon only what is given in the text, the idea of a fallen angel who becomes a devil never develops. That idea is not introduced until you reached the New Testament.
If you read from Genesis all the way up to the end of the last Old Testament book and do not continue into the New Testament, there idea that an angel challenged God and was cast out of heaven never develops. It's only after the idea is established in the New Testament that the Old Testament texts look like it has a devil in it. That is because the New Testament idea was established by taking Old Testament texts and saying: see here? The bad guy in the story is really an evil fallen angel. But all that is still in the New Testament. The old Testament itself never identifies a fallen angel who is the devil.
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