I find Job’s presentation of the “Accuser” as somehow authentic AND unrelated to any of the Persian-style angel scenarios.
Hey Jonathan.
I’m reading Job 1 and 2 over again, and I notice there seems to be (at least on the face of it) an internal contradiction.
Verse 11 says, “But forth YOUR hand now (this is Satan talking to God), and He will curse you to your face.” … then immediately in the next verse it says, “And the Lord said, Behold all that he has is in YOUR power; only upon himself do not touch.” …
Italics and bold for emphasis. So at first Satan is saying it’s God’s doing, then in the very next sentence, God is giving all that Job has IN Satan’s HANDS.
So I’m not sure how to resolve this issue which seems to give contrary information.
The same thing happens again in chapter 2, starting with verse 5, “But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.”
Then God says, “Behold he is in YOUR hand; but save his life.” … then proceeds to say, “So went Satan from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with terrible boils form head to toe.”
So who is doing all this damage too Job? Is it Satan or God? Well by way of analogy it’s not really an “either-or” question.
Consider this … a six-year-old girl makes the statement, “God made my baby brother.” Then a scientist responds to her, “No he didn’t! Your parents did!” Which is one is right? Well their both right … God is ultimately responsible for her baby brother, and her parents did conceive her baby brother, too. Both parties were involved.
In another instance, in Genesis 1, on Day 1, it says that God separated the Light from the Darkness and called one Day and the other Night. Yet on Day 4, it says that God made the Sun and Moon to divide the light from the darkness … so who is doing the dividing? Is it the luminaries or God?
Both would be correct. God is ultimately responsible for everything, though he may use secondary causes, he’s the one pulling all the strings.
This is an excellent question, Jonathan, and really deserves a whole other thread. Through out the entirety of the Bible, God is the sole entity responsible for the good things and the bad things that happen in this world … he uses his creation and nature to bless and to curse.
God allows some entity (whether divine or just a human opponent) to do harm to Job. Unless I’m misunderstanding the verses I’ve quoted … which is possible since they seem to be contrary to one another.
Yes Job is a good example of proximate cause (Satan), versus ultimate cause (God). But the ultimate cause is still God.
Mazrocon, you and Jonathan have obviously studied the book of Job more thoroughly than I have. After a few attempts, I found so much contradiction in Job and so little to support Jesus’ claim to be the only Son of God, that I gave up trying. I don’t believe I am alone in this decision: For me, Job undoes much of the support provided by the OT prophets. I would rather believe that we humans are too close to the problem of Purpose in this Universe to mentally grasp what is truly Good and what is truly Evil. Even after studying the life of Jesus, as presented to us in the Gospels, it is still not totally clear–or else Christian Faith would have swept over the entire globe.
A God who loves humans so much that he would empty himself to become one of us, and suffer a painful death for us–that is almost too good to be true! Much of the OT–certainly not Job–really does anything to prepare me for that Good News.
Al Leo
I fancy turning that last statement on its head. You could also say that the message of Christ is “too good to be untrue”. It is too beautiful to be merely made-up by human conjectures. Or as Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 2:9-10:
However, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
Paul paraphrased Isaiah 64:4.
Precisely, Casper. When I switch from “doing science”, where I use my Science Spectacles, to “doing philosophy/religion”, I don my Scripture Spectacles. These make the passages from Paul, like the one you quoted, pretty clear and helpful. But that ‘switch’ does not seem to work for reading Job, or Noah, for that matter. Those books stay out of focus.
Al Leo
If anyone is interested in an argument for how this could be a description of illicit sexual relations between humans and non-human hominids, you can check out my article in PSCF: Davidson, G. (2015) Genetics, the Nephilim, and the Historicity of Adam, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 67(1):24-34. Note: this article is not trying to argue that this IS what happened - just exploring possibilities.
Can this be accessed on line, perhaps. I hope so.
Al Leo
What is interesting about the sacrifice of Jesus is that it actually has Phoenician underpinnings, which influenced Greek culture … and ESPECIALLY the sense of duty bound up in ROMAN culture!
The Romans referred to self-sacrifice as “devotio”…
A ROMAN EXAMPLE:
“The most famous devotio in Roman history is probably that of the consul Publius Decius Mus, who was fighting a battle against a formidable coalition of Samnites and Gauls at Sentinum in 295 BCE. According to Livy,note[Livy, History of Rome since its Foundation 10.17ff.] he dedicated himself to the gods of the Underworld and rode, on horseback, to his enemies, who killed him. The wrath of the gods now was upon the Gauls, who were soundly defeated, after which it was easy to break Samnite resistance too.”
A GREEK EXAMPLE:
“Although devotio is an Italian ritual, the idea that a soldier could die for his comrades is also attested in Greek legends. In the first place, there’s the story of the Athenian king Codrus.note[Lycurgus, Against Leocrates, 84-87.] Euripides tells how the Theban crown prince Menoeceus sacrificed himself during the siege by the Seven against Thebes.note[Euripides, Phoenician Women 911ff; cf. Pausanias, Guide to Greece, 9.25.1.] That self-sacrifice was also a reality at the battlefield, is proved by the seer mentioned by Xenophon.note[Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.4.18-19.] Perhaps the famous oracle given to Leonidas before the Battle of Thermopylae, that Sparta would either be sacked or regret the death of its king, can be interpreted in this fashion.”
http://www.livius.org/articles/concept/devotio/
CARTHAGINIAN EXAMPLE:
"The oldest story of the battle of Himera is told by the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The Carthaginian commander built up a large army and navy in the far west of Sicily and started to besiege Himera. Theron, however, held out and Gelon was able to defeat the Carthaginians decisively, probably (but this is not told by Herodotus) because Hamilcar, who expected Greek reinforcements, allowed Greek troops to enter his camp, and discovered too late that they were his enemies.
Herodotus adds:
Hamilcar remained in the camp and made sacrifices to get good omens of success, offering whole bodies of victims upon a great pyre. When he saw that there was a rout of his own army, he […] threw himself into the fire, and thus he was burnt up and disappeared. […] The Carthaginians offer sacrifices to him now, and also they made memorials of him then in all the cities of their colonies, and the greatest in Carthage itself.note[Herodotus, Histories 7.167, tr. G. C. Macaulay.] "
“The final part of this statement is probably based on a misunderstanding, because the Carthaginians are not otherwise known as sacrificing to dead heroes.”
The conclusion in the last sentence above is actually erroneous. The foundation myth of the Phoenicians includes the story of the human Melqart (translation: “King of the City”) who threw himself into a sacred fire in order to force two floating islands to become the permanent realm of Tyre. In the process, the human sacrifice was elevated to God-hood… which is how the latter-day kings of Tyre explained how they were descended from a God - - not by a God fraternizing with a mortal woman … but by normal means of mortal kinship - - followed by the elevation of their ancestor to divine status by self-sacrifice.
Hamilcar was following this same example. But his death FAILED to lead to victory. Ironically, Carthage celebrated annually Hamilcar’s self-imposed sacrifice that divinized him.
Jesus, in his act of sacrifice, seems to seamlessly blend Phoenician, Hebrew and even Roman sensibilities into a grand and amazing event of global consequences!
As I remember, it was the great storyteller C. S. Lewis who argued that the appearance of elements of the Gospel in cultures all over the globe reflects the fact that there is something “innate” about it. He connected it with the (broken) Image of God in every person which tends to cling onto “gospel-like truths”. Humanity’s thirst is lessened only by the Gospel (Jesus, the source of living water), but second-best are those things that are similar to it.
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Thanks a lot, Gregg. I have been looking for this kind of material since joining BioLogos. It was reassuring to me that someone of your background and expertise had published something so similar to the presentation I had made to the Adult Confirmation classes in our Catholic parish. Although not sticking as strictly to the sola scriptura ideal as do Evangelicals, our current Catholic Catechism clearly states the dogma that all humans are descended from a single couple who passed onto us Original Sin. So I wrestled with the same problem you did: How to present a reasonable scenario (not proof!!) that would be in agreement with modern scientific observations involving evolution and genetics.
I surely could have used your article and the references it contains while I was preparing my presentation. I relied heavily on several sources that I do not see in your references, and you may like to look into them (if you have not already done so). They are: 1) The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond who was the first to postulate that modern humans appeared in a Great Leap Forward; (2) Becoming Human, by Ian Tattersall; and (3) Masters of the Planet, also by Tattersall.
My solution (?) to the problem of the sudden acquisition of an immortal soul (& coincidentally a conscience) by our “first parents” relies heavily on the ‘truth’ of the GLF scenario where the ‘over-designed’ hominid brain (thru exaptation) was somehow ‘programmed’ (though an as yet unknown epigenetic mechanism) to perform as Mind. Perhaps you would like to scan some of the evidence I present to make a case much like you did in the ORL article. If so, it can be accessed as: http://www.albertleo.com/scireligion.pdf
I would greatly appreciate your comments.
Al Leo
You would also enjoy this book, Al. Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle by Henri Blocher. He discusses a wide range of views of original sin.
The author’s introduction:
“We live in a world shot through with evil. The twentieth century has witnessed suffering and human cruelty on a scale never before imagined. Yet, paradoxically, in recent years the doctrine of original sin has suffered neglect and ridicule. In this philosophically sophisticated treatment of the biblical evidence for original sin, Henri Blocher offers a robust response. Interacting with the best theological thinking on the subject, this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume shows that while the nature of original sin is a mystery―even a riddle―only belief in it makes sense of evil and wrongdoing. After a general survey of the biblical evidence, Blocher moves on to discuss the two key texts. First, he considers the relation of the Eden story of Genesis 2 and 3 to modern scientific, literary and theological thinking. Then, he offers a new and groundbreaking interpretation of Romans 5, where Paul discusses Christ and Adam. From this exegetical foundation, he goes on to show how the doctrine of original sin makes sense of the paradoxes of human existence. In the final chapter, he discusses the intellectual difficulties that some feel remain with the doctrine itself. Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles.”
Anything that suggests that sinners could not have been immortal by accessing the Tree of Life is non-biblical.
Sinners, plus the Tree of Life, equals immortality. God tells us so. So, Original Sin is not a state of metaphysics… it is about knowledge plain and simple… and it has no spiritual connection with death. It has a mechanical connection with death - - it lead to God putting an angel with a weapon in place to block humans access to the Tree of Life.
[quote=“gbrooks9, post:35, topic:5575”]
So, Original Sin is not a state of metaphysics… it is about knowledge plain and simple… and it has no spiritual connection with death. It has a mechanical connection with death - - it lead to God putting an angel with a weapon in place to block humans access to the Tree of Life.
[/quote]
@Jay313
Thanks, Jay, for recommending this book. With a ‘one click’ its already on its way to me. From the sentence quoted from the Introduction you sent, I expect that Blocher and I are on completely different pages when it comes to “making sense of the paradoxes of human existence”. But that’s OK. I enjoy reading opposing views, if they are well presented. But no amount of allegorical license will ever convince me that the vision of God sending a weapon-bearing angel to prevent access to the Tree of Life can impart any Truth to people living today. I’ll withhold judgement until I read the entire book.
Al Leo
Whoops!! Now I see that the sentence I quoted relating to God’s angel is NOT part of the introduction to Blocher’s book.
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Haha. We have to wait for George’s book for that!
Edit: See also the discussion of original sin in the Eastern v Western Views on Truth thread.
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I find the most interesting fact about the many previous comments on this topic is that none of them addresses the story of Sodom, which is clearly an echo narrative to the Flood tale. In both cases, there is concern about sexual relations between angels and humans, and this leads to complementary (water/fire) destruction in both cases. Furthermore, both stories end with incestuous human sex which serves to put the origins of the Israelite’s nearby western Semitic enemies in a negative light while explaining their similarities. It is my opinion that both tales are intended to act as proscriptions against the Israelites copying the fertility sexual rituals/practices of their neighboring groups where priests had sex with priestesses, and indeed, were openly joined by ordinary citizens. Since priests were viewed as earthly spiritual representatives of Baal or other gods, they were in effect serving the same role as angels. Both stories thus show Yahweh as strongly opposing the crossing of the barrier separating heavenly beings from earthly beings for sexual purposes, whether heterosexual or homosexual.
Since the enemy tribes mentioned at the end of both narratives reflect early monarchic times, the author of the Sodom narrative was probably J, placing Gen. 6 in the J version of the Flood story. Since Gen. 6 has the distinct appearance of folklore, this would also favor early authorship in lieu of post-exilic times.
It is possible to develop the above proposition to a much greater depth. However, my purpose here is simply to raise it as a potential alternate explanation for the ‘promiscuous angels’
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I don’t personally think so, because I think it is much more recent history.
Christy, I can appreciate your skepticism that such a legend (of miscegenation sapiens/neanderthalis ) could be passed down orally for, perhaps, 30K yrs. , but it is the kind of “juicy gossip” that takes on a life of its own. And, early on, those carrying a large percentage of Neanderthal genes would have a noticeably different appearance, possibly giving rise to the term, Nephilim. Besides, any other explanation of “promiscuous angels” that relies on disembodied spirits inducing a parthenogenic pregnancy in a Homo sapiens female, and that, to me, seems even more dubious.