235 views0 answers0 votes
267 views0 answers0 votes
232 views0 answers0 votes
107 views0 answers0 votes
193 views0 answers0 votes
105 views0 answers0 votes
109 views0 answers0 votes
101 views0 answers0 votes
229 views0 answers0 votes
Dr. Elaine Pagels, a Professor of Religion at Princeton University, wrote a book called The Origins of Satan. She wrote: “In the Hebrew Bible, as in mainstream Judaism to this day, Satan never appears as Western Christendom has come to know him, as the leader of an ‘evil empire,’ an army of hostile spirits who make war on God and humankind alike.” She further writes, “In biblical sources, the Hebrew term the satan describes an adversarial role. Although Hebrew storytellers as early as the sixth century B.C.E. occasionally introduced a supernatural character whom they called the satan, what they meant was any one of the angels sent by God for the specific purpose of blocking or obstructing human activity.” We know Creator has said that a literal “Satan” does not exist, but is rather more of a literary composite figure. We know the fallen Archangel Lucifer is often thought of as “Satan,” but if indeed they are synonymous, why wouldn’t Creator just say that Satan was simply another name for Lucifer? How much of the crucifixion narrative can be directly attributed to Lucifer himself? Or is he given too much credit and we need to look beyond Lucifer for the leaders of the ‘evil empire’ as Professor Pagels characterized the real adversary in the crucifixion narrative? What can Creator tell us?251 views0 answers0 votes
252 views0 answers0 votes
Dr. Pagels wrote, “The stark events of Jesus’ life and death cannot be understood, he (the Gospel of Mark author) suggests, apart from the clash of supernatural forces that Mark sees being played out on earth in Jesus’ lifetime. Mark intends to tell the story of Jesus in terms of its hidden, deeper dynamics – to tell it, so to speak, from God’s point of view. What happened Mark says, is this: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, after his baptism, was coming out of the water of the Jordon River when “he saw the heavens torn apart and the spirit descending like a dove on him” and heard a voice speaking to him from heaven. God’s power anointed Jesus to challenge the forces of evil that now dominate the world, and drove him into direct conflict with those forces.'” Following the baptism, the mysterious narrative describes him immediately being “driven” into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan. Given that Creator has said Satan is a composite figure only, what REALLY took place in the desert during those forty days? How would Creator today characterize the adversary that Jesus struggled with and against, and what was the nature of that struggle? What can Creator tell us?128 views0 answers0 votes
290 views0 answers0 votes
