this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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I love how early in the bible, Satan's role is actually to be the contrarian to God's designs. Doesn't actually commit any evil unless given permission by God to do so. Is kinda treated like one of the angels rather than the fallen one.
In the original Hebrew, Satan as he appears in Job is "the Accuser", and fills the role of a prosecutor. He isn't "the Devil", as he is generally thought of in Western culture today.
In Hinduism Yama is the God of death and a punisher. The lord of hell who punishes sinners.
Yeah and Christians always put him and Hades in the evil corner when they're writing stories based on myths. Even Anubis gets the villain treatment by people who really can't be trusted with other cultural mythos.
It really makes me wonder if the Germanic/Norse Hel was actually villainous, given how spotty our actual knowledge of their myth cycle was. It's certainly a convenient name for her to have, but it's also more than possible "Hell" came before "Hel" entirely organically instead of being evidence of Christian revisionism.
Eh, it's all reused pagan deities anyway.
That's like, post-Justinian Christianity, Book of Job predates Christianity entirely
It's reused pagan deities through the whole history of abrahamism.
At some point the abrahamic god is a pagan deity
Exactly.
No I mean you're drawing a distinction between "pagan deities" and the Abrahamic God as if there is any difference, as if "pagan" beliefs were somehow more original or pure
I mean, paganism is a christian concept.
Is Satan even in the Bible, I know they took like 5 different entities and made it into 1 guy over the years, but if I remember right the whole story of his rebellion and fall is not even in the Bible, it's just fanfic.
It's all confusing cause it's derived from Judaism which originally had many gods, with Yahweh being Dionysus essentially
No, YHWH goes back to El (probably). Or at least partially. There's multiple inflluences for the more central characters
I remember somewhere on Wiki about a deity sitting with his wife on a mountaintop providing water to the area, long before the local people split into israeli and others. Someone knows where?