“Hello, Satan. I believe it’s time to go.”

ENG 233
Response 4
2 November 2010

“Hello, Satan. I believe it’s time to go.”*

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*. “Me and the Devil Blues” by Robert Johnson
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    One of the most confounding characters in the literary narratives of the Bible is that of Satan in the Book of Job, and perhaps the most common—and incorrect—assumption about the character is that this character is synonymous with that of the devil as depicted in the New Testament. When working with only English translations of the text, the two characters could easily be confused. But the texts involved were not written in English, and, indeed, most often English version of the Bible are translations of translations and not chronicled from source materials.

    In Hebrew, the character who appears in the Book of Job is ha-satan, “the Adversary,” from the verb satan, meaning “obstruct” or “oppose.” This titular character is named as such 10 times in the first two chapters of Job. It is only one of three books in the Hebrew Bible where the character is so named (the other two being 1 Chronicles and Zechariah).

    In the New Testament, the name is repeatedly used in connection with “the devil”—“The great dragon, the primeval serpent, known as the devil or Satan, who had led all the world astray” (Rev. 12:9)—and most frequently appears (9 times) in the Book of Revelation. But in the texts written in Greek, the word used to describe the character is diabolos, meaning “slanderer.” A fascinating connection between word and scene appears in Revelation: diabolos stems from the verb diaballein, which means “to hurl across/through,” and these words connect to the scene where “the devil, who led them astray, was hurled into the lake of fire and sulphur” (Rev. 20:10).

    The Adversary’s appearance in Job takes on a more complex and deeper level of potential when disassociated from the diabolical connections the title has in the New Testament. For instance, in his first appearance, it is stated that “one day when the sons of God came to attend on Yahweh, among them came Satan” (Job 1:6). This puts him as one of several characters attending to God, but given prominence by being described by titled name. When, in Job 1:7, God asks Satan where he has been, Satan replies “prowling about on earth … roaming around there,” a phrasing used again in 2:2. Satan then could be seen as an agent of God, prowling around the earth looking for those who might be tempted towards maliciousness and reporting his findings to God. Rather than acting in a contrary manner, this is a being who works in conjunction with God’s will and purposes. The two characters argue over Satan’s reporting about Job, and God is annoyed that Satan keeps mentioning that Job is a candidate for temptation even though, as God asserts, “‘[Job] persists in his integrity still; you achieved nothing by provoking me to ruin him’” (2:3).

    But God allows the ruining of Job, even as Job maintains his faith in the Lord, weathering all temptations Satan lays in toils and snares, and Job praises God throughout his days. But all actions from Satan are given authority and allowance by God. Satan works n agency to god, not a diabolical evil being. He is not, as is repeatedly stated in the New Testament, the Devil; at best, merely the Devil’s Advocate.




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The Cost of Speaking to the Dead

ENG 233
Response 3
19 October 2010

The Cost of Speaking to the Dead

    When Saul feels himself abandoned by God, he resorts to consulting a necromancer in order to gain information he feels he needs to survive or win the upcoming battle with the Philistines. There are multiple aspects of irony involved in this including Saul’s previous actions as a ruler and a repeated tenant of Mosaic Law.

    Long before Saul faced this particular problem, Moses stood on Mt. Sinai and listened to Yahweh list off an incredible amount of specifically detailed to rather generally interpreted laws that would govern the people in their own lands. Included in this ad nausem list was “You will not allow a sorceress to live” (Ex. 22:17). Nothing further was mentioned by God to Moses about exactly what sort of traits, actions, and characteristics were to be included in defining a sorceress (other than, by the nominative noun, being female).

    So, when generations later, it is stated in 1 Samuel 28:3 that “Saul … expelled the necromancers and wizards from the country,” it might come as a surprise to some readers that Saul himself consulted with just such a character. He first “consulted Yahweh, but Yahweh gave him no answer” (1 Sam. 28:6), so Saul—apparently lacking no advisor in the spanning gulf between prayer and necromancy—commanded of his servants to “‘Find a necromancer for me,” (which, much like the Law of Moses stated, implied such practitioners were inherently female; making it all the easier for upstanding religious men-folk to despise them) “so that I can go and consult her.’” The response comes surprisingly quick from his servants: “‘There is a necromancer at En-Dor’” (1 Sam. 28:7).

    The irony of this brief tale is told clearly within it when the necromancer herself asks the disguised ruler, “‘[Y]ou know what Saul has done, how he has outlawed necromancers … from the country; why are you setting a trap ... to have me killed?’” Saul then violates at least a second of the Mosaic Laws when he places his own word as that of God’s and offers a divinely-instituted promise (something beyond his his power) in telling the necromancer, “‘As Yahweh lives … no blame shall attach to you for this business’” (1 Sam. 28:9-10).

    What follows is the summoning of Samuel by the necromancer, a stern lecture from the ghost to Saul about over-stepping the boundaries of his kingship and religion, and the slaughtering of a fatted calf to pay for the consultation of black arts. The necromancer feasted on roasted meat while Saul had a main course of bitter ironic poisoning followed by an apéritif of just desserts.


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The Möebius Metaphor of the Forbidden Fruit

ENG 233
Response 1
31 August 2010

The Möebius Metaphor of the Forbidden Fruit

    In literary semiotics, a metaphor is simply a symbol set meant to represent another symbol set.  With the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden (NJB Gen. 2-3), we could then understand this to be a kind of tautological metaphor; that is, the forbidden fruit represents what the text of Genesis claims it to be: that which springs from knowing and understanding.

    The fruit was forbidden to Adam before Eve was created when “Yahweh God gave ... this command: ‘of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat; for, the day you eat of that, you are doomed to die’” (2:16-17).  Once Eve was created to live with Adam in the garden, the temptation to taste of such a forbidden fruit proved too great, and it took little enticement by a serpent: “God knows ... the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods,” (3:5), to convince Eve to eat it.  She found the fruit to be “pleasing to the eye, and ... enticing for the wisdom that it could give.”  She didn’t seem to hesitate in gobbling it and then taking some to Adam.  The difference in their view of the world from before and after their snack can be seen in Genesis 2:25 and 3:7—“both of them were naked ... but they felt no shame before each other,” then “both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked”—which illustrates the basic dilemma of interpreting for what this fruit is actually a metaphor.

    If the metaphor is indeed self-referential, then it becomes a symbol set for all that is unknown and mysterious; all that we as a species have yet to know and learn.  Once we taste of the fruit, once we accept the knowledge and wisdom offered, we cannot ever unlearn it.  In the creation myth of Genesis, it is never claimed that the Lord God, nor Yahweh, is omnipotent (if he were, why then would it be clearly stated in 3:9, “Yahweh God called to the man. ‘Where are you?’ he asked,” displaying evidence that Yahweh God did not, in fact, know where Adam was hiding).  But Yahweh God is shown to be a jealous overbearing creator who wishes to keep certain privileges and responsibilities from that which he has created—as seen by the laundry list of curses he places upon serpent, Eve, and Adam in 3:14-24, banishing the human couple from their garden paradise and condemning all humans from that point on.  This is a vindictive act which reads as the revenge of a scorned lover, not a compassionate and forgiving deity.

    This symbol set of the fruit and the tree can bee seen to represent that knowledge and understanding is set in the midst of everything else at the disposal of the two humans in the garden yet, they are told not to touch it under penalty of death.  Yet such death becomes metaphoric as well since once they did eat it, neither they nor the serpent actually died from the fruit itself.  Under their own initiative, or under the sway of a wily serpent—who has, presumably, already tasted of the fruit and so Knows and Understands what it is—the humans to “become like one of us” (3:22), meaning, despite the plural reference, the Yahweh God.  They eat the fruit and metaphorically Know what their Creator knows.  Not only is there something else beyond their ken, but now that they know there are things they don’t know, they can never be satisfied with ignorance again.

    The Garden of Eden is a school.  The fruit is education.  That is the metaphor.  And once we taste of that metaphor, we can spit out that knowledge but we can never again forget the taste of something beyond our range of understanding.



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