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.
It works either way. You can start with the OT and then the NT, or you can start with the NT and then read the OT. Either way, you get the same message. Each is only a half of the whole. The NT completed the Bible. And unless you can find any real contradictions, I have no reason to believe otherwise.
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.
I'd like to know more about these supposed Rabbinical Judaistic myths. What do they say about where these demons came from? In the verse I provided, they came from God. We know that God cannot associate Himself with evil, so this means that they came from God in the sense that He created them, as He did all things.
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 NT uses the OT to make its case and to prove its authority, and it does a very good job of it. Conversely, the OT points toward the events that the NT would write about. Both halves of the Bible are two parts of the whole, so it's no wonder they fit together so perfectly.
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.
You mention Lilith and you're going to talk to
me about what's not found in the OT? If this is what Rabbinical Judaism teaches, this hurts their interpretation. Lilith never existed. The Bible says that God created man, then He created woman.
They're argument is that the first chapter of Genesis says that God created man and woman, and that the second chapter shows the creation of Eve. Why should we assume that Eve is a different woman from chapter one? By that same logic, shouldn't we assume that the first man in chapter one was a different person from the man created in chapter two?
There's nothing Biblical about Lilith. Allusions to Satan, on the other hand, are found throughout the whole OT, and its message is clear and consistent.
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.
This is a legalistic view of salvation, as if we could work to make ourselves worthy of God. We will never break our sin nature. This is why we needed the Messiah in the first place. Jesus came to destroy sin for us, knowing we could never do it on our own.
People are no better today than they were before. Like all generations, we look back at those "less civilized" than ourselves, and we judge them while forgetting our own weaknesses. If the people of Jesus' age could have seen how we'd turn out, they'd think the same about us.
People never change. Given the right circumstances, we're all capable of doing things we'd think we are beyond doing.
I think you are wrong. Explain how it doesn't work.
See above.
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.
If there is something in the OT to dispute my interpretations, then that hurts my interpretation. As it is, however, my interpretation is consistent with what the Bible teaches.
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.
If you believe in the OT, then you have to believe in Satan. You already mentioned Job, so unless Job should not be considered a book of the Bible, we must believe that Satan exists. And if Satan exists, he's probably been around longer than Job.
I find it hard to believe that "Satan" refers to just any adversary, since these adversaries have the ability to sway people's judgements (getting David to call for a census), and can stand along side angels, in the presence of God, to accuse God's followers (Zechariah 3).
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.
You're using an OT book, which mentions the existence of Satan (which it also seems to take as a given that everyone would know that), to prove that Satan doesn't exist?
One problem with that explanation. God doesn't send evil on the evil. Job didn't do anything wrong to earn God's wrath. Rather, it was just the opposite. God honored Job as being a one-in-a-million man, who was just and upright. Job's friends were convinced that Job must have done something to anger God, but Job knew this was not so.
Also, the Bible teaches that God is gracious to the unsaved, and He disciplines the righteous.
Matthew 5:45 -
... He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
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 adversary was not some nation that suddenly came into power, or else the Bible would have mentioned this. The Bible speaks of this person as an individual who came to David and caused him to take census. The rise of an enemy nation may have been a part in that decision, but it was not the cause.
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.
When God appears, it causes people to fall on their knees in realization that they are not worthy. When an angel appears, it causes people to fall in their knees in fear. What was different about this one person who had the gall to stand beside one of God's holy angels to accuse Joshua?
No man would do such a thing. The angel would have killed him on the spot. But a fallen angel, who stood beside Michael in power, would have the kind of power and influence to oppose the angel.
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.
Yes. Satan means "adversary," and Isaac means "laughter." Maybe Abraham never really had a son, but God just "birthed" laughter into him and his wife. And maybe God told Abraham to sacrifice laughter, but then changed his mind and made Abraham the father of many human virtues, and Abraham's children are anyone who laughs.
Most names have meanings. Mine means "victory." A name having a meaning doesn't disqualify a person's existence. And as proven in Job, Satan was not just a reference to one of the millions of possible adversaries, but he was a real spirit, and one who frequently looks to cause trouble (hence the name). The adversary and the devil are one and the same.
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.
They were kicked out because of the evil that was in them. They were no longer pure, as God was pure, and so they were forced to leave. There's no reason God would set a different standard for spirits. If you're evil, you're separate 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.
The word "separation" is not indicative of a literal gap in space. God does not occupy space. As you said, He lives everywhere. However, it is not just our awareness that "separates" us from God. God does not associate Himself with anything unclean. He treats evil ones as strangers whom He wants nothing to do with.
He is not blind to the evils of the world. As you say, He will judge all evil. But evil will never know God, and they will be eternally separate from Him.
How could God possibly be surrounded?
Surround = in the presence of
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.
If God punishes evil, then He will punish spirits as well as humans, including the evil spirits of the OT.
The text says nothing about the intentions of the angel in the story, only his actions.
I'm going to walk outside on an early Monday morning, and I'm going to honk my horn. Then all the neighborhood will wake up irritable and angry.
Why did I honk the horn?
The book of Job is very clear. Satan, who as you frequently identify as "the adversary," went to destroy everything in Job's life, including his health, with the expectation that Job would curse God. Why did he do it? So that Job would curse God.
BTW, if "Satan" means "adversary," then who is Satan the adversary of here? Is he adversary of God? You say no. Is he adversary of Job? Apparently not, because you say that Satan didn't have the intention of harming Job, or causing him to curse God. So who was Satan opposing, then?
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.
Problem: the angel in Job is the devil, and you say the OT doesn't mention that he exists?
Also, you keep ignoring this fact. The verse says that this figure was in Eden. Who was in Eden besides God, Adam, Eve, and the serpent? It says that they are an anointed cherubim, which is a rank of angel. Neither God, Adam, or Eve were angels, but the serpent is the one who wasn't believed to be a literal snake. It says that this person was cast from Heaven. God wasn't cast from Heaven. As you pointed out earlier, Adam and Eve were cast from the garden of Eden, not Heaven. What about the serpent?
Genesis 3:14 -
So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.”
How is this a curse? Don't all snakes crawl on their bellies already? The verse implies that the serpent was not always this way. Literally speaking, they say that snakes once used to have legs. I don't know if this is true, or if the snake simply has a skeletal structure similar to all animals that have skeletons, but most would agree that the serpent here was not a literal snake, and the writers had no knowledge of evolution.
What should we make of this, then? The snake was cursed to live on the earth. The snake, head, body, and tail, all touch the earth. It's similar to the curse of Satan, who was thrown out of Heaven to roam about on the earth.