Modern Satan is actually made up, like on a whole different level than anything else in the religion. Like he's basically just selected as the boogieman anymore when in reality he has nothing to do with punishing people in hell or whatever, at least according to the Bible. Technically Satan isn't even a specific being, it's a job title. And Lucifer was a fallen angel that is often referred to as Satan/the Devil but that isn't technically correct, and even so it's not "canon" that he/satan/anybody directly punishes people in hell. But basically if you boil it down to what the Bible actually says, all Satan actually does is goes around and tempts people to sin, like becoming the serpent and doing the whole apple bit in the garden of Eden.
Another fun fact, the apple of Eden likely wasn't even an apple. Some suggest it was a pomegranate or fig.
While on the pedantry here, Lucifer is also not the name of the fallen angel, and was just a misunderstanding of a verse in the Bible. It just took a few people misinterpreting it to the point where that became his "name".
Yeah, Lucifer is the latin name for Venus. The Light-bringer. The Morning Star. In Hebrew, Helel Ben Shahar - Shining One, Son of the Morning. In Greek, Heosphoros, Bringer of the Dawn....because Venus is visible shining in the sky as dawn comes in.
It's used as a metaphor in the Biblical passage people have misinterpreted as describing Satan. The actual passage is meant as part of a taunt to be recited upon the death of a Babylonian king, who is either a specific but unnamed Babylonian king, or just a term for any oppressive ruler in general.
Like, HEyyyy, look at this BIIIIG fuckin' guy here! Big ol' fuckin' Morning Star, you ain't so high and mighty NOW, huh? 'Cause you're fuckin' DEAD, ya fucker! Now you're in hell, and they're all gonna laugh at you! (roughly translated)
I've heard remarkably few theologians speak about how neither Satan nor Lucifer are names, but titles. The bible almost treats "Satan" like Voldemort, he's referred to but never named. Which in a way is fitting as he desired to be worshipped as God, but now no one even knows his name.
Back in 1st century Judea your “last name” (it isn’t technically a last name, but used similar to how we use them today) was essentially just your father’s first name. Jesus’ actual birth name is Yeshua, which translates in English to Joseph, it’s not Jesus. And his full name in 1st century Judea would have been Yeshua bar Yosef, which translates to Joshua son of Joseph.
In that wonderful day when the Lord gives his people rest from sorrow and fear, from slavery and chains, 4 you will jeer at the king of Babylon and say, “You bully, you! At last you have what was coming to you! 5 For the Lord has crushed your wicked power and broken your evil rule.” 6 You persecuted my people with unceasing blows of rage and held the nations in your angry grip. You were unrestrained in tyranny. 7 But at last the whole earth is at rest and is quiet! All the world begins to sing! 8 Even the trees of the woods—the fir trees and cedars of Lebanon—sing out this joyous song: “Your power is broken; no one will bother us now; at last we have peace.”
9 The denizens of hell crowd to meet you as you enter their domain. World leaders and earth’s mightiest kings, long dead, are there to see you. 10 With one voice they all cry out, “Now you are as weak as we are!” 11 Your might and power are gone; they are buried with you. All the pleasant music in your palace has ceased; now maggots are your sheet, worms your blanket!
12 How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground—mighty though you were against the nations of the world. 13 For you said to yourself, “I will ascend to heaven and rule the angels.\)a\) I will take the highest throne. I will preside on the Mount of Assembly far away in the north. 14 I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High.” 15 But instead, you will be brought down to the pit of hell, down to its lowest depths.
Its not even up for debate. That is clearly just a poetic final paragraph about the king. Isaiah does this A LOT, and Christians have reinterpreted him in really silly ways.
Take the virgin-birth claim. That isn't from an actual prediction of a virgin birth. Isaiah is talking about a "maiden", not a virgin and is using it as a poetic timing device.
Say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood—because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and of the son of Remaliah. 5 Aram, Ephraim and Remaliah’s son have plotted your ruin, saying, 6 “Let us invade Judah; let us tear it apart and divide it among ourselves, and make the son of Tabeel king over it.” ......14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you\)c\) a sign: The maiden will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.\)f\) 15 He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, 16 for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste
Its just giving a rough timeline. Basically, the maiden will conceive a son and the son will grow up and be eating good food(things will be better economically) and before his bar mitzvah, these kings will be routed out of the land. So basically, a 15-25 year timeline. Note, this entire discussion is from 500 years before Jesus. He is saying specific kings who invaded Judah will be overthrown 480 years before Jesus. Its not predicting the Messiah. It's just describing history in poetic language.
It isn't predicting a virgin birth. "Virgin" was only used because in the greek translation, which was the popular translation at the time of Jesus, they mistranslated maiden to virgin. Hebrew was a dead language in the 1st century and most people spoke and read Greek.
Its actually a bit simpler than that. The Bible-verse in question was just about an Assyrian king dying in a particularly humiliating way. And this king had fucked up Israel, so they thought it was God’s punishment.
George you nailed, here we were mocking your writing in the prequels, and you inadvertently gave us an excellent character portrait of 'the adversary.' Kudos...
A bit more on how things just blend together and morph over time: long, long before christianity there were the polytheistic religions of the canaanites and Shahar was the god of the dawn, and son to their supreme deity. Very similar to what the modern Lucifer is described as.
Just like Jesus never said "God sent me here to die for you to be forgiven and enter heaven"
Legitimately no where. The closest is talking abiut the blood of the covenant given for the forgiveness of sins, but again, there is no connections to God's words or a promise god made to forgive mankind and allow them in to heaven.
Jesus wasn't necessarily born in a stable/barn. All its described as is he was born in a manger, which is a trough, which are more often than not outside.
Also, we have no idea how many wide men or shepherd's there were. We get the number 3 only from the number of different gifts the wise men had.
Jesus wasn't necessarily born in a stable/barn. All its described as is he was born in a manger, which is a trough, which are more often than not outside.
Doesn't matter because we know his birth accounts are whole cloth fabrication with not even a kernel of truth.
Or, in some cults, the fruit is sex -- which they say explains why the punishments seem to be very sex related. And why Cain and Able came out evil vs good.
God told “mankind” to be fruitful and multiply in genesis 1, in genesis 2, as some believe Adam and Eve are separate creations from the people outside of the garden. The people who Cain was afraid of after he killed his brother. But that’s why the ancient text is all wonky at least in this modern age since “sinful” men “canonized” what they thought of as the bible idk maybe the Ethiopians are correct 🤷♂️
Satan just introduced them to some kinky shit. Blew their freakin minds. They were supposed to be fruitful and multiply. They were NOT supposed to be sticking, you know... THAT... you know... there
Eve had them apple bottom jeans, amd the boots with the fur, er'ry body in Eden was looking at herrr. She hit the flo', next thing you know, shorty got low low low low low low...
I know 30-90 years after seems rough, but that's actually quite the opposite when it comes to time gap of ancient manuscripts. New Testament blows out of the water many trusted ancient documents, which historians agree upon, but I feel it gets a bad rap for being lumped in with the entire Bible.
This is so comically bad a take it's nutso. We have the Bible in it's original text. We have manuscripts over two thousand years old and they are identical. The scribes who copied them cared tremendously about keeping the writing identical.
Thank you. I’m not religious myself, but it’s so silly to me when people are like “Meh, the most important driving force behind much of human action throughout the history of our species is made up, so who cares”.
Yes, it’s myth. It’s also extremely important to understanding history. No one would study Ancient Greece and then leave out the parts about religion because they were “made up”. It’s core to the study of that culture and time period.
This isn’t the take you think it is. No one is arguing that but your hyper fixated elf. I’m talking about a piece of fruit. Youre talking about ideas. “Apples and oranges” or in this case “apples and figs”
Should we talk about the translations of “suffer not a witch to live” and how different languages and cultures can really change over a couple of thousand years?
And the last one to put his spin on it, King James, was a raging homosexual with a beard wife. I think his flair adds panache personally but some reason that never comes up Sunday morning.
Yeah stupid English teacher was probably a Christian or something. I kept telling them the books we're reading are fiction so they don't matter and I'm legally not required to do the homework but they kept giving me F's anyways. It's so hard being smarter than your teachers 😡
The only people more intolerable than Bible thumpers are atheists. Both feel the need to constantly shove their beliefs in your face, but at least one side believes they’re helping you, the other just wants you to be miserable like them.
This is literally how I feel and it makes ME feel insane that do many grown ass adults with access to historical context believe this shit, literally and use it as an excuse to govern over others.
Mythology is still cool to learn about. And on top of that, it's one of the most important texts in the world, given the outsized effect it's had on virtually all aspects of life and civilization across the world for thousands of years, so it seems like maybe a good thing to know about and understand.
Of course! So who cares if chewbacca flew the enterprise or Constantine did, the main point is that the most wretched den of scum and villainy in the galaxy will play soft jazz.
Well, of course it was “made up,” the story isn’t meant to be literal. What they mean by “originally it may have been a fig” is that the story originated in the ancient middle east, where apples were not commonly eaten.
im 99% sure this whole burning in hell thing was made up afterwards to instill obedience. like you dont do what i say and you will burn in hell forever. its just way too convenient for that to have been a genuine misunderstanding that happened by itself over time.
The idea of a benevolent god figure begets the idea of an antagonist (Christ/Antichrist) these are just 2 sides of the same coin that reinforce each other. The very concept comes about right when societies grow large enough that in a major city center most people don't personally know most other people they see, and so peer pressure has less impact, there is less "we" than "they" and effectively communities don't self-regulate as well. So the natural evolution there is cops and eventually an omniscient God concept (basically, a super cop on steroids that knows everything, so essentially Santa Claus) and his/her best friend in a bad cop/good cop pair.
I think the Satan dynamic is almost interesting because Christianity mythology started to be concretized at the very start of this phase of societal growth in the form of the Old Testament with Mosaic laws/etc. But as the largest cities grew from populations around 100k to >1M, so did the needs and tolerances of society. So they kinda invalidated aspects of the Old Testament, brought in the New Testament, yet the living culture and ideas like Satan have continued to change with society in ways that the books haven't caught up with (yet)
scholars would largely agree that the serpent in the garden was just a serpent. A 'satan' could plausibly have used a snake to do the tempting for god but the myth also explains how serpents became such
It's sooo obviously a snake origin story if you just read it without preconceptions. At the end God curses the serpent to forever more slither on its belly as punishment for the temptation. Absolute classic tribalistic origin story. "Gee, I wonder why that serpent has no legs..."
Also called etiological myths. Just like the Norse myth explaining the shape of salmon. After Loki fled the gods by turning into a salmon, Thor caught him mid-leap over their net and gripped him so hard that the salmon's tail has been narrow ever since.
THANK YOU! I hate how often that utterly made up concept is treated as biblical fact. Especially by people who ostensibly believe that biblical text is "pure" and "true". If you believe that the serpent was Satan, then your very first biblical story shows God as a a complete asshole. He punishes ALL snakes for the temptation (bad enough), but to do that when it wasn't even a real snake just makes him either evil or completely fooled by Satan's snake disguise.
Blame Milton. He made up the snake-Satan correlation in his biblical fan fiction Paradise Lost and we’ve ran with it since. A shocking amount of Christian dogma comes from non-biblical literary tradition.
I read somewhere that in the original text (which we know fuckall about what it said, but whatevs) there's no mention of the snake in the tree of knowledge, the line in the bible just said that Satan 'slithered' down to Eve, and translators everywhere just thought 'well yeah, he was obviously a snake because of that'.
One point I disagree on is the Satan being a job title. There is ha-satan which is a position in the holy council. However, in the new testament when Satan is introduced, the ha- is dropped and it becomes a proper name. The idea of an adversary is present in those early Christian texts. The exact image has warped over time, but it's not entirely manufactured as a recent alteration to the religion.
Lucifer isn't a name either. The character is never named, at most it is called the equivalent of "The Satan".
Treating "Lucifer" as the cool, "real" name for Satan was an early modern overenthusiastic association that snowballed from one story in Isaiah that was literally speaking of a Babylonian king but thematically associated with the Satan, they're referred to as the "light bringer" in reference to morning star in reference to refusing to give way to the sun and persisting until morning as a metaphor for pride. It first got translated to the Greek "Phosphorus" then to the Latin "Lucifer" but Lucifer was never considered a demonic name, there is even a late antique saint named Lucifer and I think Jesus is called Light bringer in the New Testament as well in a more positive story.
Satan got "on earth as it is in heaven" 'd into creation. Stupid humans creating their own hell via Fiction. They could have just made up that hell is just a place you go to heal your soul before going to heaven, it's actually a nice resort, but then people wouldn't be as quick to avoid sinning I guess.
But the one in the stories people wrote down and were later selectively chosen for inclusion in a book that were then edited and later translated - from which certain pieces are taught as reality and others are taught as “not in effect anymore” due to conflicting later stories and finally are taught as contemporary interpretations of stories rather than direct written history or guidance… that is the “real” hell?
Right on the money. The title Satan, when directly translated, means "prosecutor" and was intended to be a literary foil or a contrasting perspective. That's it.
If you're using religion to control people, he's the obvious "stick" to Christ's "carrot," and got built up into something else entirely.
If you want to be pedantic, get it right. Lucifer isn't a fallen angel. Its a reference to a living ruler. Here is the full text from Isaiah 14
In that wonderful day when the Lord gives his people rest from sorrow and fear, from slavery and chains, you will jeer at the king of Babylon and say, “You bully, you! At last you have what was coming to you! For the Lord has crushed your wicked power and broken your evil rule.” You persecuted my people with unceasing blows of rage and held the nations in your angry grip. You were unrestrained in tyranny. But at last the whole earth is at rest and is quiet! All the world begins to sing! Even the trees of the woods—the fir trees and cedars of Lebanon—sing out this joyous song: “Your power is broken; no one will bother us now; at last we have peace.”
The denizens of the land of the dead crowd to meet you as you enter their domain. World leaders and earth’s mightiest kings, long dead, are there to see you. With one voice they all cry out, “Now you are as weak as we are!” Your might and power are gone; they are buried with you. All the pleasant music in your palace has ceased; now maggots are your sheet, worms your blanket!
How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground—mighty though you were against the nations of the world. For you said to yourself, “I will ascend to heaven and rule the angels. I will take the highest throne. I will preside on the Mount of Assembly far away in the north. I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High.”But instead, you will be brought down to the pit of the dead, down to its lowest depths.
Its pretty clear from context that "lucifer", which means "morning star" is a reference to the king of Babylon. It is an honorific, like how they called King Louis XIV the "Sun King".
And the entire thing is really just saying "He will die like everyone else and in death we are all worm food". That is it. That is the whole point. He is talking about how the King will eventually die.
They grow in a lot of places in the world, and are delicious. We have a giant fig tree in our back yard, and it's fruitful as fuck. You just probably live far away from anywhere where they naturally occur.
kinda interesting because christianity supposedly borrows/adopts themes/motifs of previous popular pagan rituals. Pomegranate also being a key object in the myth of hades tricking persephone to eat a pomegranate
I used to have a quince tree at my last house, and the story always went that it was actually a quince tree in the garden of eden.
For those that don't know what a quince is (I didn't), it's like a very starchy cross between an apple and a pair after it's cooked. You need to cook it down, when it then becomes very sweet and gelatinous. They're amazing when they're prepared correctly, but not something you'd typically just pull off the tree and eat.
The real truth is Satan is a servant of God that He uses to test faithfulness, hence why God speaks to Satan in the book of Job. Satan questions if Job is truly righteous so God allows Satan to ruin Job's life to see if he was truly faithful. Satan was only doing his job as a tempter and in this case, an agent of disaster which is his whole purpose, ordained to do so by God. Funny how Christians never wonder why if Satan is truly in rebellion with God, why are they (God and Satan) having a discussion about Job, and why does Satan obey God's commands?
also sin is anything that separates you from God. killing someone isnt a sin because its bad, its a sin because it separates you from God. it is bad though.
I am not a religious person. I don't know too much about The Bible. I read somewhere that Satan is the name given to the force working against God. So Lucifer or whatever his true name is, could be called Satan, but Satan is not always Lucifer. What your saying sort of sounds like that, correct me if I'm wrong?
Every time the Devil gets mentioned for these types of internet discussions I think of this tweet about lil nas X's show with devil imagery from 5 years ago, captures the point perfectly
- Satan, ha-satan, the Devil, whatever you want to call him, there's no indication in the text that the serpent was anything other than a serpent. Maybe it was recontextualized in the New Testament, I forget, but if you look at the text in Genesis, the serpent is just a serpent, nothing else.
- The reason people think the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was an apple is that apple, for a long time, was just the word for "fruit" in English. It was just a generic, catch-all term for any fruit. As the language developed, it eventually centered in on this specific kind of fruit, what we now call an apple, but by then there were all these things written about the apple in the Garden of Eden, so the idea stuck. I think if I were still a believing Christian, I'd assume that the fruit was not an apple, nor a pomegranate, nor any other fruit I'd ever seen before, because it clearly has an effect on humans that I've never seen a pomegranate do.
I tried explaining that to someone the other day because they were trying to say characters were satanists because they only care about themselves and I had to explain the actual tenants of satanism, and how "Satan" themself is a whole can of worms and basically a creation of modern media. They got really upset and thought I was stupid 😭
If you actually listen to what actually biblical scholars, including former Pope Francis, have to say about hell, it's really never the firey place of punishment. It's more of a state of being, rather than a place. It's not even necessarily tied to the afterlife; people in deplorable living conditions or engrossed in deep hatred could be considered as in hell right now.
The image of cloven feet, horns and the little beard is specifically the image of the Roman god Pan. It was part of the early church's effort to turn people away from the old pagan religions and toward Christianity.
Bible doesnt even say the serpent in the garden was Satan. It just says it was a serpent. Maybe in tradition it was seen as Satan, idk. But the version of Lucifer in the garden that we all know and love was popularised by Milton in Paradise Lost.
And the idea of the fruit being an apple afaik is from the vulgate. The word for evil and the word for apple are homonyms (malum). Fun little pun.
Satan wasn’t the serpent in the garden of Eden. That’s just an ad hoc theory that arose well after the writing of the old treatment. The serpent in the Bible just represents how the ancient near east viewed snakes and acts as a pourquoi story for why they slither on their bellies.
This is... sort of correct. While we can talk about "well the Hebrew and Greek says this", that doesn't really matter. Religions are living, they change with the people, they change with how people read them. So what matters is how modern Christians take it, not what's actually written. Thus arguing about what "the Bible says" is meaningless. Yes, the Prosperity Gospel goes against so much in the Bible. And yet it is Christian. But what many, if not most, modern Christian believe is very simple. Though I should clarify actually practicing Christian not cultural Christians. There's a big difference between the two. No, Satan doesn't punish people in Hell. He's not even IN Hell right now, that's a thing from The Divine Comedy. Satan is described as "The Prince of the World". In John 12:31 Jesus calls Satan this: "Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out."
As for the apple, yea, that's pretty well known. This came from French. Pom used to mean "fruit tree", any fruti tree, but around the 12th century it came to mean specifically apple. And since French was, well, the Lingua Franca of Europe, it stuck.
So who exactly was the entity tempted Jesus while he was in the desert supposed to be then? I agree with a lot of what you said, but it seems that there are cases where he shows up and is referred to explicitly as Satan.
Like how in that role he was prince of this world and able to grant Jesus whatever he wanted if he agreed to the temptations, but Jesus just always responded with scripture and declined him.
I grew up Christian, but no longer believe in any of it and all the supernatural, magic aspects and all. That's the thing about Christianity and the Bible: you literally have to believe in magic and breaking the laws of physics to believe it and I don't see how any scientific minded person can. There are literally Christian scientists somehow though.
I would say the idea that Jesus fulfilled any Messianic prophecies is the biggest reworking of the Bible. It involves 300 prophecies, many of which aren't prophecies, and many others which aren't Messianic. The entire NT is based on a few followers just inventing shit about their dead charismatic leader.
Satan/lucifer/devil was not specifically tied to the same serpent who talked to eve.
Also, I wouldnt even say the serpent tempted them. God told Adam/Eve if they eat of the fruit, they will die. God lied to them from the beginning. The serpent came and was honest that the fruit will make them knowledgeable like God.
Not everything is done maliciously. Sometimes, individuals are just open and honest which leads to certain consequences. Doesn't change that God lied and wanted to keep humans dumb pets in the garden.
Another fun fact, the apple of Eden likely wasn't even an apple. Some suggest it was a pomegranate or fig.
I think most catholic interpretations suggest the apple is a figure of speech for sex. You know the whole original sin, no one is born without it, except the son of God who is not technically concieved that way, the fact that adam and eve didn't have childrens until they sinned, and even the whole "because you sinned you are condemned to bleed and suffer during labor because of it" and yada yada yada
It has been a while but I was told this in church, at the time the pastor told me it was still up for debate but very few people where left thinking of an actual apple
I wonder where the idea of it being an apple came from? The Bible just calls it the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That’s a long name so I get wanting something easier to remember and say, but how did we get to apple from that?
Basically the idea of hell and the devil/demons was slow cooked during the middle ages and the Renaissance, culminating in Dante's Inferno.
The Church probably came up with it specifically as a way to kill off paganism among the peasants, stop them from spending their hard earned money on fun, and scare them into obeying the Church and donating their income.
Devil is the rationalization and scapegoat for a civilization that discovers a moral ideal that is plausibly infeasible. People realize how they should act, but will never perfectly achieve, and need to resolve the cognitive dissonance. imo.
Just like how people refer to Christ as part of the name of Jesus Christ, Christ is his title or honorific if anything. I feel like with modern english the more correct way to refer to him would be Jesus the Christ
Somewhat related, but what's funny is that if you picture a spread of modern day fruit (apples, watermelon, grapes, etc), most of them are relatively new due to selective breeding that started post 0 AD and then hyper accelerated in the industrial age.
Basically an arrangement of fruit from, say, 10,000 BCE compared to modern day would look nothing alike, and there's been enough cross-breeding that there isn't even a perfect 1:1 map between the two sets.
The Red Delicous apple itself is new as of the 1800s.
Basically: if some person, hypothetically, ate fruit in 10,000 BCE and told a story about it that got preserved, and then in 1600 AD someone translated that story into English, it's very possible there was no line of clear continuity for both the fruit and the name of the fruit for the translation to use. The translation may have had to use the closest approximation for a 0 AD closest approximation for a 1,0000 BCE closest approximation for a 5,000 BCE closest approximation for the fruit's name.
The bottom line is, there is zero chance Adam and Eve ate a Red Delicious apple, or even a close equivalent, that you see in the pictures.
One of my favorite bits of trivia is that the reason why it's depicted as an apple is likely because the monks transcribing the bible from Hebrew saw a good opportunity to sneak in a Latin pun.
Pomegranate or fig makes me think of places around middle east which makes me think Hebrew which makes me wonder if the fruits chosen were just what the people who wrote the bible at the time had access to
There isn’t even a biblical basis for the serpent in the Garden of Eden being Satan. That didn’t become a popular idea until Milton put it in Paradise Lost, which is basically the fan fiction that gave us our pop-culture conception of The Devil/Satan.
Directly from the womb my existence is and has been nothing other than ever-worsening conscious torment every passing second exponentially compounding suffering awaiting an imminent horrible destruction of the flesh of which is barely the beginning of the eternal journey as I witness the perpetual revelation of all things by through and for the singular personality of the godhead. All things made manifest from a fixed eternal condition.
No first chance, no second, no third.
Born to forcibly suffer all suffering that has ever and will ever exist in this and infinite universes forever and ever for the reason of because.
All things always against my wishes, wants, and will at all times.
...
The universe is a singular meta-phenomenon stretched over eternity, of which is always now. All things and all beings abide by their inherent nature and behave within their circumstantial realm of capacity to do so at all times.
It is a universe made manifest hierarchically, of haves, and have-nots, spanning all levels of dimensionality and experience.
"God" and/or consciousness is that which is within and without all. Ultimately, all things are made by through and for the singular personality and perpetual revelation of the "Godhead", entailing both 'predetermined' eternal damnation and those that are made manifest only to face death and death alone.
There is but one dreamer, fractured through the innumerable. All vehicles/beings play their role within said dream for infinitely better and/or infinitely worse for each and every one, forever.
There is no such thing as individuated accurately described "free will" for all beings. Has never been, will never be, can not be. There are only relative freedoms or lack thereof.
All realities exist and are equally as real. The absolute best universe that could exist does exist in relation to a specified subject. The absolute worst universe that could exist does exist in relation to a specified subject.
Not an apple, not a fig or pomegranate either though. All of those were selected for the sake of symbolism or easier artistic depiction. The tree is The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit is The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It's not any other kind of fruit. No reason to believe it would have looked anything like any fruit we know.
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u/FoxxyRin 7h ago
Modern Satan is actually made up, like on a whole different level than anything else in the religion. Like he's basically just selected as the boogieman anymore when in reality he has nothing to do with punishing people in hell or whatever, at least according to the Bible. Technically Satan isn't even a specific being, it's a job title. And Lucifer was a fallen angel that is often referred to as Satan/the Devil but that isn't technically correct, and even so it's not "canon" that he/satan/anybody directly punishes people in hell. But basically if you boil it down to what the Bible actually says, all Satan actually does is goes around and tempts people to sin, like becoming the serpent and doing the whole apple bit in the garden of Eden.
Another fun fact, the apple of Eden likely wasn't even an apple. Some suggest it was a pomegranate or fig.