Thread:AustinDR/@comment-24859393-20160628022511/@comment-24859393-20160628174049

Who's Ulf? And here's what he said which....I don't agree with because I'm sure it is clearly stated he WAS the serpent but here: He doesn't qualify. Let's get a few things straight. 1) The Devil is not the Serpent. That's a later interpretation but there's literally nothing in the Bible or the apocrypha to indicate that he is. Certain Protestant sects have decreed that the Devil is the Serpent, but that's nowhere in the actual text. In fact it's pretty explicitly not the case in the text given that God punishes the Serpent by making it act like a snake.2) The Devil doesn't do anything to Job. He suggests to God that God torment Job and God goes along with it to prove a point to the Devil. All the crimes are on God, not the Devil. The Devil doesn't have a single crime to his name there.3) The Fall isn't in the Bible. There's nothing in the entirety of the book to indicate the Devil is a Fallen Angel. For most of the book he's not even a villain. Throughout the Old Testament and even much of the New, he's simple God's appointed prosecutor and tempter, there to point out human failings to his boss, and test them on behalf of his boss. It's not until Revelations that he's suddenly treated as the Big Bad, and even then, there's no suggestion he's an angel. He's always "the great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns", whose origins remain undisclosed at any point. Moreover, even there, all his crimes are committed with God's permission. God releases the dragon from Hell in order to torment the world, then punishes him afterwards for doing exactly what God wanted him to do. The dragon has no agency because even when he's treated as the main villain it's made clear that he is only able to do what he does because God, for whatever screwed up, sadistic reasons, allows him to do so. So again, no. First off, he's going off of a later interpretation, which I'm not sure is the one I am talking about. Second of all, how can he be so sure the Devil is meant to be his prosecutor?