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[idea23]

1 Chronicles 21:1 and 2 Samuel 24:1 speak on the same event and say that Satan is God. Before you give me any credit for finding that, I'm not the one who saw it, I came across a very heavy and philosophical book earlier on today, and I read through the first chapter, and one of the many points made in that chapter was that Satan is God according to the bible. The main subject in the book so far is rhetoric, and the book claims that philosophy and rhetoric rules all of reality. It was a very interesting first 21 pages, and now I'm on chapter 2. But before I continue reading it, I just wanted to see what other philosophers thought who discuss the bible, because I've never seen thoughts like what I just read today, and truthfully, I think that this "Pyron" has such a high thinking ability, that he is the Antichrist who was warned about. So can fellow philosophers read the first 21 pages and tell me what you think, do you think that this is the big show-down at the end of time? Here is the link...

https://www.docdroid.net/kprXM3Z/x.pdf

[Fooloso4]

Have you read 1 Chronicles 21:1 and 2 Samuel 24:1? Neither says that Satan is God. The term ‘satan’ means adversary. The Hebrew ha-satan means the (ha) satan, in which case it refers to a specific entity that stands in opposition, but without the ‘ha’ it simply refers to whoever or whatever stands against someone or something. In this case some unnamed adversary (satan) moves David to oppose Israel. An adversary can oppose God, or, as in this case, support God and oppose those who have done wrong. The term itself, as it was used, carries no sense of evil or wrongdoing.

[ThomasHobbes]

Job is worth a look at.

Satan is just God's 'servant'. They have a bet on the outcome of utterly ruining Job's family and life, until he is a wretched lump on a rubbish heap.

In my view both God and his servant Satan are equally evil for destroying Job.

[ThomasHobbes]

2 Samuel 24
24:1 And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.

1 Chronicles 21
21:1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

Being the same event would imply that God in this instance was being satan against David.

[ThomasHobbes]

I'm not a student of Hebrew, but I am given to understand that Jews do not really have Hell and the Devil in the same way as Christianity, and there is no doubt that the 'serpent' from Eden is not related to other mentions of Satan.
The Christian understanding of this concept is filtered through poor translations of the OT and indigenous concepts of evil via Germanic/Celtic/Greek (ad inf) myths.

[Belindi]

Job is worth a look at.

Satan is just God's 'servant'. They have a bet on the outcome of utterly ruining Job's family and life, until he is a wretched lump on a rubbish heap.

In my view both God and his servant Satan are equally evil for destroying Job.

That is interesting. I view the troubles of Job as examples of those inexplicable nasty tricks that the gods play on us all. Consequently I view God as the personification of order and justice in the world despite that we cannot see it. Job got that message from the whirlwind which is the trickster made visible for those of us who like symbols.

[ThomasHobbes]

Job is worth a look at.

Satan is just God's 'servant'. They have a bet on the outcome of utterly ruining Job's family and life, until he is a wretched lump on a rubbish heap.

In my view both God and his servant Satan are equally evil for destroying Job.

That is interesting. I view the troubles of Job as examples of those inexplicable nasty tricks that the gods play on us all. Consequently I view God as the personification of order and justice in the world despite that we cannot see it. Job got that message from the whirlwind which is the trickster made visible for those of us who like symbols.

Yet Christians like to blame the devil for Job's woes, when it is utterly clear that God is the architect of his problems.
So far from God being the personification of order, he in fact is also the trickster. Omni- this that and the other also means being omni-evil.

[3uGH7D4MLj]

I'm reading about Goethe's Faust, and he uses Job's prologue in heaven for his prologue to Faust, or sort of inverts it. The Job story has supported reams of commentary, millenniums of controversy, but yeah, God doesn't come off very well -- to us moderns anyway.

This happens a lot in the Hebrew scriptures. You end up with a sort of anthropological question about a culture that would worship this kind of hairy dude. I don't think Job was written by the "J" writer, it may be a late addition to the canon.

I love these heaven scenes. Anyone remember Shaw's heaven in Man and Superman? To tell the whole truth I'm writing a little Faust puppet show for lamplight theater in the backyard and the Devil is an important character so I've been reading about him. It's true, our lovely horned and tailed devil is hard to find in the old scriptures -- such a sporty puppet. Hmm, come to think, I seem to be skipping the heaven scene in my little play altogether.

Sorry I've gone so far afield -- now I'm thinking about a play of Shaw's Heaven.

[Mark1955]

...the book claims that philosophy and rhetoric rules all of reality.

Since your link isn't working I can't comment on the book, but if we accept that philosophy is how we think and thus includes how we perceive then I could see an argument that reality, being only our conception of whatever reality might be is ruled by philosophy. Since we philosophise using words, whether thought, written or spoken then by extension rhetoric rules philosophy since we exchange our philosophical thoughts in rhetorical form. If you hold that there is a 'true reality' that exists, even if we cannot accurately perceive it, then we have no evidence that this is ruled by rhetoric and philosophy in fact I rather suspect some people might claim it to be ruled by the 'Laws of Physics'.

I'm unsure what this has to do with the two very similar biblical chapters you quote and since I don't regard the book you quote from as holy, I don't really care.

[Fooloso4]

We are told in the book of Job that God’s sons come to him and with them an adversary (1:6). What is not clear is whether the adversary is one of the sons of God. It is often assumed that he is God’s adversary but this by no means clear.

And Jehovah saith unto the Adversary, `Whence comest thou?' And the Adversary answereth Jehovah and saith, `From going to and fro in the land, and from walking up and down on it.' (1:7)

Any of us might encounter the adversary as he goes to and fro in the land. God points Job out to him, but it is possible that he may have encountered him at some time on his own. Would God have protected Job if that had happened? I see no evidence that he enjoyed protective status that was rescinded in this case.

In other words, we might read this as a tale of what might happen to anyone who encounters the adversary, or to eliminate the language of personification, adversity. Why does evil happen to some and not others? We are given no satisfactory answer. What we are told is that righteousness is not a shield against harm and that, since Job was blameless, what happens to us is not our fault.

Job struggles to rectify what happens with justice and cannot. He comes to see this not as a divine defect, however, but a human limit. Life does not conform to human reason.

Job says:

Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10)

Both what is good and what is evil come from God, who created the world. We find this in Isaiah as well:

Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things. (Isaiah 45:7)

Other translations translate the Hebrew term ‘rah’, which is the same term used for the tree of knowledge of good and evil or good and bad, as woe, calamity, doom, disaster. This is not a battle between the forces of good and evil, or God and Satan, or God and the Devil, or God who is Satan.

[ThomasHobbes]

Job 1:6 King James Version (KJV)
6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.

Why so coy?

[Fooloso4]

TH:

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.

Why so coy?

The “desedimentation” of terms is standard hermeneutical practice. There is nothing coy about it.

In my opinion, if we are to understand a text we need to understand the meaning of words as they were used, not as they developed historically. The Christian ‘Satan’ means something quite different than the Hebrew ‘ha-satan’. While some translations, such as the King James you quoted, use ‘Satan’, others such as Young’s Literal translation use ‘Adversary’, the Orthodox Jewish Bible uses the transliterate ‘Hasatan’, the New Revised Standard Edition uses ‘Satan’ with a footnote “or the Accuser”.

[3uGH7D4MLj]

The main subject in the book so far is rhetoric, and the book claims that philosophy and rhetoric rules all of reality.

What's the book title?

This quote is like saying that ornithology rules birds. (from Barnett Newman's comment about art criticism/artists)

In other words, we might read this as a tale of what might happen to anyone who encounters the adversary, or to eliminate the language of personification, adversity. Why does evil happen to some and not others? We are given no satisfactory answer. What we are told is that righteousness is not a shield against harm and that, since Job was blameless, what happens to us is not our fault.

I do like your analysis. But the way the story is presented seems like a contest between God and the Adversary, a betting game. Without rereading, the claim is that Job is only faithful because God blesses him, take that away and see what you get. God says ok we'll see, take everything away but don't kill him. Pretty harsh.

To me it's a myth, memorable because of its inscrutability. But I can see (like the Akedah -- Abraham and Isaac) that some may judge the Almighty as uncaring.

[Fooloso4]

3uGH7D4MLj:

But the way the story is presented seems like a contest between God and the Adversary, a betting game. Without rereading, the claim is that Job is only faithful because God blesses him, take that away and see what you get. God says ok we'll see, take everything away but don't kill him. Pretty harsh.

That is the way I read it as well, until recently. There are two points that suggest to me that there is more to it. The first is the image of the adversary going here and there. The second has to do with whether Job was being protected. The adversary asks:

Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? (1:10)

He continues:

Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. (1:10)

What is the hedge? Is the hedge the fact that he has not suffered or is it that he has not suffered because he is protected? When God says:

Behold, all that he has is in your power (1:12)

Is God lifting his protection from Job or is he simply stating the fact that no one is immune to pain and suffering?

If Job was protected and God grants the adversary the power to inflict suffering on Job then God is complicit, allowing Job to suffer in order to see who is right about Job’s righteousness. But to be blessed is not to be protected. As Job asks:

Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10)

Ecclesiastes says:

There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless. (8:14)

Righteousness does not confer protection or reward. It is not a hedge. That is not the way the world works. We may ask why God does not protect the righteous. This is a form of the problem of evil, but it is a problem without a solution. Things happen as they do.

Adversity is everywhere. I think it is wrong to assume that the story is telling us it struck Job because of a bet. But I have changed my mind on this before and might find good reason to do so again.

[3uGH7D4MLj]

Righteousness does not confer protection or reward. It is not a hedge. That is not the way the world works. We may ask why God does not protect the righteous. This is a form of the problem of evil, but it is a problem without a solution. Things happen as they do.

Adversity is everywhere. I think it is wrong to assume that the story is telling us it struck Job because of a bet. But I have changed my mind on this before and might find good reason to do so again.

Well ok if you want a modern anodyne lesson from the story, or a sunday-school homily, but the story of Job is a full bore Hellenic parable with the Gods in complete control of the lives of humans.

Was God protecting Job? Maybe, maybe not, the disinterested observer may say yes, probably, the way the story is laid out. Doesn't matter. The point may be that God does not cause humanity blessing or adversity, but how does the story put that across?

"The Accuser" a God of some sort, gets to wreak havoc on Job's life (kills his children, etc., etc.) with God's permission. And, whether God had initially blessed Job or not, afterwards He rewards Job with seven times the wealth he had in the first place (if I'm remembering right). Pretty clear divine intervention.

I can only come back to questions about, and fascination with, the culture that canonized these wild stories. Job's wife gets the best line: Curse God and die! :)