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  • From Anthropology & Sacrifice, Phillips Stevens Jr, Diversity of Sacrifice, 2016: Perhaps the oldest interpretation of sacrifice is as economic exchange, modeled directly on human society; just as human social relationships are both established and maintained by economic means, so too are human-supernatural relationships, and EB Tylor explained religious sacrifice in terms of economic motives. From classical times to the present, the economic cost of sacrifice has been an issue; it would seem that the wealthy have an edge on supernatural favor. Hesiod had stated that “one must sacrifice according to one’s means,” and this issue leads to discussions on sacred morality and the tolerance of the gods for substitutes and their appreciation of intention over substance, etc. Frazer’s fanciful theory of sacrifice posited that the earliest sacrifices were human beings, specifically priests, because they were closest to the gods; then animals replaced people, and as agriculture spread, plant products became the dominant sacrificial material. These observations were topics of discussion among several of the twentieth-century European scholars. Many supernatural beings are conceptualized as either kin or broadly ancestral to the people, and the most important of all kinship obligations, sharing, may be a primary motive for sacrifice. Perhaps the most common explanation is atonement for some transgression; this explanation is widely applicable, as many supernatural recipients of offerings are regarded as supervisors and monitors of human social behavior. The sacrifice is often something of which the recipient is known to be particularly fond, and sometimes, through the magical principle of similarity, it is meant to link directly to some aspect of the nature of its recipient—ie, a black bull for the god of night or the underworld. The concentration of power at the exact point of sacrifice on the altar is like that experienced by Moses after his personal meeting with God, and around the world people construct shrine objects imbued with power the sole purpose to enhance the power of the altar. Burkert had famously said that sacrifice “is the basic experience of the sacred,” and that experience happens on an altar. 
  • No matter what it is, the fullest meaning of the sacrifice is symboli,  and there is nothing more deeply symbolic than blood. We cannot overstate the universal power and ritual significance of blood as the essence of life. A full appreciation of the cross-cultural meaning of blood is essential for the fullest understanding of sacrifice; blood is often regarded as the property of the divine, whereas flesh is shared among the supplicants Blood is the all-purpose sacrificial liquid, satisfying to all supernatural agencies in all imaginable occasions, and it is readily available to individuals in all situations. This is a good place to confront the gorilla in the room, what jumps to most minds when the word “sacrifice” is heard: The sacrifice of a human being represents the ultimate offering to the supernatural, and the idea of it is very probably universal. It dominated early scholarship. Frazer fostered the assumptions of a wide distribution of human sacrifice in the early world; ethnological research, however, has revealed that, like cannibalism, human sacrifice existed mostly as allegation and was far less common than assumed, [although] much has been made of the Aztec case. The fact of sacrifice has been used by itself as diagnostic of many things, especially as part of a European understanding of “savagery” among “primitive” peoples—but really, it is meaningful only within its broader ritual context. It is always part of something much larger, and mustn’t be separated from that whole. Sacrifice represents the human effort to keep the natural cycle going, sending a rush of life energy into the cosmos. Whatever else it is, sacrifice is always a return of life to its source and the resultant regeneration of that source.
  • From When Abraham Murdered Isaac, Haviv Gur, Times of Israel, 2012: When he first came to believe he had discovered how the Biblical forefather Isaac died, Bible scholar Tzemah Yoreh says he went into mourning. “I literally sat shiva for him, for the forefather I had lost,” said Yoreh, who was then just 21. The Biblical story we have inherited is not the original story, Yoreh believes. Using a variation of a well-known approach to Biblical scholarship, he sees hints of a bloodier version of Isaac’s binding that he finds too convincing to ignore. In the earliest layer of the Biblical text, Yoreh believes, Isaac was not rescued by an angel at the last moment, but was in fact murdered by his father, Abraham, as a sacrifice to God. One eye-opening hint at what he believes is the original story lies in Genesis 22:22. Previously, in verse 8, Abraham and Isaac had walked up the mountain together. But in verse 22, only Abraham returns. That strange contradiction, Yoreh says, may be why a few ancient midrash also assumed Isaac had been killed. In one homily quoted by a revered 11th-century French rabbi and commentator, “Isaac’s ashes are said to be suitable for repentance, just like the ashes of an [animal] sacrifice.” “That’s a very weird midrash,” Yoreh says, “since Isaac is clearly alive in the next chapter. But that’s the way midrash works. It analyzes episodes without larger context. That’s why you can have midrash about Isaac dying, because it doesn’t have to notice that he’s alive in the next chapter.” In verse 12, after staying Abraham’s knife-wielding hand in mid-air, the angel of god says, “I now know you fear god because you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” That phrase, “have not withheld your son,” could indicate Abraham was merely willing to sacrifice his son, OR that he actually did so, Yoreh says. One hint that it may have been the latter is contained in the names for god used in the story. The Biblical text calls the god who instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son “Elohim.” Only when the “angel ofgGod” leaps to Isaac’s rescue does God’s name suddenly change to the four-letter YHWH, a name Jews traditionally do not speak out loud. Elohim commands the sacrifice; YHWH stops it. But it is once again Elohim who approves of Abraham for having “not withheld your son from me.” These sorts of variations, rampant throughout the Bible, have led scholars to conclude that different names for god are used by different editors. Indeed, Isaac is never again mentioned in an Elohim verse. If you only read the parts that use the name Elohim, you don’t have to be a Bible scholar to see the story as one in which Isaac is killed in the sacrifice and disappears completely from the story. “Not that the YHWH portions make much of an effort to bring him back either,” Yoreh notes. Indeed, Isaac seems to fade into the background, with his life story recycled from Abraham’s life. In the earliest Biblical narrative, Yoreh believes Isaac died on the mountain. Far from setting an example in which god intervenes to end human sacrifice, Abraham is revealed as a man who can walk his own son to the altar and even wield the blade himself. 
  • From The Devil & The Jews, Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg, 1943: What would seem to be the earliest instances of the blood libel charge occurs in a story that in 1096, a monk was abducted from a monastery and sold to jews who “crucified him in celebration of the Passover.” However, this report comes from a 13th century account. The first “ritual murder” [myths] had nothing to do with Passover, or indeed with any Jewish festival. Let us listen to a contemporary chronicler describing the fate of the very first boy martyr, William of Norwich, who disappeared in 1144: “The Jews of Norwich bought a Christian child before Easter and tortured him with all the tortures wherewith our lord was tortured, and on Long Friday hanged him on a rood in hatred of our lord, and afterwards buried him.” Not a very plausible story, but it was based on the statement of a Jewish convert, one Theobald of Canterbury, who obligingly came forward with the explanation that the Jews were required to sacrifice a Christian child annually at Easter; the choice of place was made, according to him, by a yearly conference of rabbis. His tale evidently did not command much credence at the time, for no Jews were tried or punished for the alleged crime, and indeed, there was no evidence that a murder had been committed. Yet the mere statement of this convert led to the bringing of identical charges in 1168; and similar charges were made at Blois in 1171, at Bury St. Edmonds in 1181, at Saragossa in 1182, and at Winchester in 1192. Theobald’s fable of the Easter sacrifice did not hold up for long, but his story of the annual rabbinical conference enjoyed a much hardier career. It struck a responsive chord in the public fancy, for it spread rapidly through Europe and was often repeated in connection with supposed Jewish crimes of this sort. In time it was expanded to make room for a secret Jewish society whose function it was to kidnap and kill Christian children and distribute the blood to the major Jewish communities, at the bidding of the Council, whose permanent meeting place was ultimately fixed in Spain. All sorts of traitorous criminal acts were laid at the door of this mythical body. 
  • Sixteenth-century sources preserve a quite different plot based on the blood motif. “Nowadays,” runs the statement, “when the Jews, for fear of Christian justice, can no longer sacrifice humans, they have nevertheless found another way of offering up human blood, which they secure from surgeons; when they have put this in a glass vessel, and set it on burning coals, they conjure up by means of it demons, who do their bidding and answer all questions that are put to them, so long as the blood is kept boiling.” This became a typical bit of witch lore, and a woodcut published in 1575 depicts a Jew producing the devil from a vessel of blood obtained from a crucified child’s body. Sacrilegious usages were laid at the door of Jewish sorcerers as well as of heretics at the moment when the medieval heresies made their first open bid for popular support, and still more evidence of the similarity between the “demonic” Jew and the sorcerer/heretic/witch might be offered that in virtually every respect the “demonic” Jew whom we have in this book described was hardly distinguishable in the medieval mind from these Satanic and heretical enemies of Christendom; they are creatures of the devil, with whom they conclude secret pacts and whom they worship with obscene rites; offer sacrifices to demons; conduct secret meetings where they plot foul deeds against Christian society; and practice blasphemous ceremonies; they mock and despise the Christian faith and profane its sacred objects; they often wear a goat’s beard, and at their conventicles disguise themselves with goats’ head masks; their heads are adorned with horns, and their wives trail tails behind them; they suffer from secret ailments and deformities; they are cruel and rapacious; they buy or kidnap children and slaughter them in homage to Satan; they consume human flesh and blood; and they believe that the sacrifice of an innocent life will prolong their own lives.
  • From BLACK RELIGION AND `BLACK MAGIC’: PREJUDICE AND PROJECTION IN IMAGES OF AFRICAN-DERIVED RELIGIONS, Joseph M. Murphy, Journal of Religion, 1990: Writers and filmmakers who have little direct experience of black religions have portrayed them as `black magic’, wild and violent expressions of human malevolence. The very name `voodoo’ in the popular mind is a kind of generic term for `black magic’ and all of us in the field wage a barely successful struggle for our students to see voodoo as religion. Nearly every description of `savage’ communities encountered by Europeans into the nineteenth century included reports of incest, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. I do not mean to say that these things never happen but rather ask why people wish to see these acts as characteristic only of other “kinds” of people? These elements of `voodoography’ are crystallized nearly one hundred years later in the work of English diplomat Spenser St John, who in 1889 devoted over 70 pages of his 390-page portrait of Haiti to the subject of ‘Voodoo Worship and Cannibalism.’ . He writes of the adoration of serpents, and details a story told by a French priest at a dinner party in which the priest attended a ceremony with a sacrifice of a “goat without horns.” This is a human sacrifice, and St John divides the voodoo community into those who are satisfied with only the flesh and blood of animals and those that require the offering of the human “scapegoat.” To corroborate the French priest’s account, St John relies on an anonymous American journalist who also witnessed “hideous practices” and human sacrifice: Terrified, they fled from the scene, alive to tell their account in the New York World. The 1987 film The Believers  represents Voodoo and Santeria as an African cult of human sacrifice secretly permeating New York City, which has just imported the most potent high priest directly from Africa to empower its schemes. “Good” santeros practice what the movie portrays as well-meaning but ineffectual rites of protection. In movies like “Angel Heart,” black magic triumphs, while in films like “The Believers” the struggle must go on; in each case the hero is white and his security and very self-identity are threatened by black religion, black magic, and black identity.
  • From Red Nails, Robert E. Howard, Weird Tales, 1936: Conan glared down at the man on the iron rack. “What the devil are you doing on that thing?” Incoherent sounds issued from behind the gag and Conan tore it away, evoking a bellow of fear from the captive; “Be careful, for Set’s sake!” begged Olmec. “What for?” demanded Conan. “Do you think I care what happens to you? But I’m in a hurry. Where’s Valeria?” “Loose me!” urged Olmec, “I will tell you all! Tascela took her from me. I’ve never been anything but a puppet in Tascela’s hands. It’s worse than you think. Tascela is old—centuries old. She renews her life and her youth by the sacrifice of beautiful young women. That’s one thing that has reduced the clan to its present state. She will draw the essence of Valeria’s life into her own body, and bloom with fresh vigor and beauty.” “Are the doors locked?” asked Conan, thumbing his sword edge. “Aye! But I know a way to get in. Only Tascela and I know, and she thinks me helpless and you slain. Free me and I swear I will help you rescue Valeria. Without my help you cannot win. But when we have slain that witch, you and Valeria shall go free without harm.” Conan stooped and cut the ropes that held the prince, and Olmec rose, shaking his head like a bull and muttering imprecations. Standing shoulder to shoulder the two men presented a formidable picture of primitive power. “Lead on,” demanded Conan. “And keep ahead of me. I don’t trust you any farther than I can throw a bull by the tail.” Olmec hurried down one of the several stairs that wound down from the tower, and when they had descended a few feet, this stair changed into a narrow corridor that wound on for some distance. It ceased at a steep flight of steps leading downward. There Olmec paused. Up from below, muffled, but unmistakable, welled a woman’s scream, edged with fright, fury and shame. And Conan recognized Valeria’s voice!
  • […] Conan rose, blinking blood and dust out of his eyes. He was in the great throne room. A curious black altar stood before the throne-dais. Ranged about it, seven black candles sent up oozing spirals of thick green smoke, disturbingly scented. On the altar lay Valeria, stark naked, her white flesh gleaming in shocking contrast to the glistening ebon stone. She lay at full length, her arms stretched out above her head to their fullest extent. On the ivory throne, Tascela lolled. Bronze bowls of incense rolled their spirals about her; the wisps of smoke curled about her naked limbs. All eyes were glued on the altar and the white figure there; the crash of a thunderbolt could hardly have broken the spell, yet it was only a low cry that shattered the fixity of the scene and brought all whirling about—a low cry, yet one to make the hair stand up stiffly on the scalp. Framed in the door was a man with a tangle of white hair and a matted white beard. His skin was not like that of a normal human: There was a suggestion of scaliness about it, as if the owner had dwelt long under conditions almost antithetical to those under which human life ordinarily thrives. And there was nothing at all human about the eyes that blazed from the tangle of white hair. “Tolkemec!” whispered Tascela, livid, while the others crouched in speechless horror. “No myth, then! You have dwelt for twelve years in darkness among the bones of the dead! I see now why [the others] did not return from the catacombs—and never will return. But why have you waited so long to strike? Were you seeking something in the pits? Some secret weapon you knew was hidden there? And have you found it at last?” Hideous laughter was Tolkemec’s only reply, as he bounded into the room, for in the lean hand of Tolkemec now waved a curious jade-hued wand, on the end of which glowed a knob of crimson shaped like a pomegranate, and a beam of crimson fire lanced from it. Valeria rolled from the altar on the other side and started for the opposite wall on all fours, for hell had burst loose in the throneroom. Tolkemec was coming forward, his weird eyes ablaze, but he hesitated at the gleam of the knife in Conan’s hand. Back and forth they weaved, and the red flames leaped, searing Conan’s flank even as he hurled the knife. Old Tolkemec went down, truly slain at last. Tascela sprang—not toward Conan, but toward the wand where it shimmered like a live thing on the floor. But as she leaped, so did Valeria, with a dagger snatched from a dead man, and the blade impaled the princess between her breasts. Tascela screamed once and fell dead, and Valeria spurned the body with her heel as it fell. “I had to do that much, for my own self-respect!” panted Valeria.
  • From Human Sacrifice and Propaganda in Popular Media: Jason Tatlock, Journal of Popular Culture & Pedagogy, 2019: Human sacrifice has long fascinated audiences and spectators, many of whom have been enticed by morbid curiosity to become peripheral participants. A pro-colonial and pro-Christian view is propagated by Mel Gibson’s film Apocalypto, in which the main character, Jaguar Paw, is captured early in the film and taken to a Mayan city where a sacrificial scene occurs that is very reminiscent of the Aztec human sacrifices performed to rejuvenate the sun. Jaguar Paw escapes the sacrificial and blood-thirsty Mayans and is pursued back to his home, where his salvation comes at a beach upon which Europeans are coming ashore and the Mayans are too shocked to continue pursuing their prey. So because of the interference of the Europeans. The film represents Mayan culture as particularly bloodthirsty, with the implication that such brutality was a significant factor leading to the civilization’s end. In The Wicker Man, a police officer named Sergeant Howie has a faith infused with colonial aspirations for the Scottish island to which he is assigned to fall under mainland authority. When Howie is sacrificed by the islanders, he spends his final moments preaching, singing, and praying The victim’s adherence to a high-church-like Christianity can be regarded as strengthening the view that the film purposefully presents parallels between the islanders’ mystical understanding of Howie’s body and blood as a sacrifice on their behalf, and his faith in Jesus’ atoning death”. 2013’s The Purge demonstrates cultural divides and propagandistic aims reflected in popular expressions of human sacrifice, but in ways dissimilar to the other films, a story about maintaining law and order through social hostilities. Sacrificial imagery is steeped in ethnocentric conceptualizations that characterize the “other” as complicit in immoral, irreligious, or brutal, and for imperialistic enterprises, human sacrifice inhabits the category of practices that deserve foreign intervention and validate conquest. From the standpoint of propaganda, human sacrifice can be used to advance political goals, as well as to promote ethnocentric ideals and to further religious agendas.
  •  From Satanic Panic, Jeffrey Victor, 1993: In the spring of 1988, rumors about a dangerous Satanic cult spread throughout the rural areas of western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and eastern Ohio. The rumor stories made claims about secret ritual meetings, the killing of cats, dogs, and other animals, and the drinking of animal blood, and they predicted the imminent kidnapping and sacrifice of a blond, blue-eyed virgin. The stories focussed upon specific, local circumstances from town to town, yet they carried remarkably similar symbolic content. Many parents held their children home from school out of fear that they might be kidnapped by “‘the cult,” as they called the threat. Absences from elementary school were three to four times greater than average, according to school attendance records. Over one hundred cars showed up at a wooded park, rumored to be a Satanic cult ritual meeting site, where they were stopped by police barricades awaiting them. Some of the cars had weapons in them, such as guns, knives, and clubs. At another location rumored to be a “cult” meeting site, an unused factory warehouse, about $4,000 damage was done to the musical equipment belonging to bands which practiced there and to the interior walls of the building. Several teenagers rumored to be members of the supposed “cult,” perhaps because of their countercultural appearance, were victims of anonymous death threats and other types of telephone harassment. Groups with baseball bats were seen wandering around in the downtown area during the evening hours. 
  • Many of the kidnapping stories take the form of predictions, but others claim that such crimes have already taken place secretly and have been concealed from public knowledge by the police and newspapers. Interestingly, about 40 percent of these kidnapping stories specifically mention blond, blue-eyed children or virgins. Why do these particular kidnapping stories feature a blond, blue-eyed virgin, rather than, for example, a dark-haired, dark-eyed victim, or perhaps a sexually promiscuous girl? The answer lies in the symbolism: In European cultures, the blond virgin has been a symbol of innocence, purity, and rare beauty in folklore stories and in folk ballads. At a deeper level, the blond virgin is a symbol for people’s cherished ideals. Stories about the kidnapping and murder of a blond virgin are metaphors for attacks upon our most cherished traditional values. Such attacks arise only from the opposite of innocence and purity, from that which is most “‘evil.”’ These rumors are parables about evil forces in our society. The rumor metaphor bespeaks this collective complaint: “Our most cherished values are in danger from mysterious forces of evil.” Now it can be understood why the Satanic cult rumors were meaningful and relevant to so many people. Their hidden meaning coveys the complaint that the moral order of our society is being threatened, and we are losing faith in our institutions and authorities to deal with the threat. it seems to me that these stories about Satanism, which circulate in rumors, claims, and allegations, are no trivial matter. I believe that they are “omens” of deep-seated problems in American society. Much like nightmares, they have something important to tell us.
  • From The Church of Satan, Michael Aquino, 2013: Satanists of the Dennis Wheatley type are presumed to have a penchant for Human Sacrifice, so Anton addressed the notion of sacrifice in general and of human sacrifice in particular. At its most elemental level, sacrifice implies the giving up of something precious to oneself in return for some other benefit. Humans being selfish creatures, it’s always been preferable to give something precious to others in order to obtain the expected benefit instead. In the past this may have taken the form of ritual murder, but civilization has succeeded in refining it to the scale of modern international wars with little trouble. And so Anton’s first prescription was simply that one should not destroy an animal or human being to avenge or appease self-generated insecurities. If a sacrifice is deemed necessary for a magical ritual, sacrifice should be a true one involving the magician himself. Less to be thought that he was advocating suicide, anton Houston to point out that a true Satanist, no subconscious hatred toward himself, would have no reason to seek self-destruction. What about the destruction of others, per the law of the Jungle? After all, the Satanic Bible seems to say that Vengeance was not only acceptable but admirable. For the fledgling Satanist, he recommended a ritual exercise in the passing of divine judgment by the symbolic destruction of individuals determined to deserve it. The idea was that the magician, forced to confront a mock reality of his wishes, would become increasingly more objective and attain a truly Divine perspective of judging the conduct of others. Again and again a Satanist begins their magical careers reciting long lists of curse victims but gradually decides they were being rather excessive in their condemnations. Finally they would become extremely discriminating in wishing any harm at all on others, realizing that clashes between human beings occur for many reasons besides unwarranted personal hatred. The most advanced Satanist included almost no curses at all. This is a law of the Jungle in its higher sense, as perhaps Kipling meant to express when he wrote his Jungle Books.
  • From Satanic Temple threatens to sue Netflix over goat god statue, CBC Radio, 2018: The Satanic Temple is threatening legal action against Netflix for the use of a Baphomet statue strikingly similar to theirs in the new series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The Temple’s co-founder and spokesperson Lucien Greaves tweeted Sunday that their monument design is copyrighted and that the show “appropriated” it. The new show, which premiered this month and stars Kiernan Shipka as a young Sabrina the Teenage Witch, has been well-received by audiences and critics so far, beyond this dispute. When a Twitter user suggested that the show’s use of the icon could be considered free publicity, Greaves replied, “Having one’s central icon associated with human sacrifice in an evil patriarchal cult is hardly good exposure and hardly a frivolous complaint. The show’s creators did not utilize a generic Sabbatic goat that is commonly used in many occult circles, such as the image created by Eliphas Levi, but instead created one easily identifiable with  TST’s statue,” Greaves tells Rolling Stone. Given the show’s utilization of the Baphomet statue to represent an evil cannibalistic cult, TST would have denied its use to the show creators, he says. The Satanic Temple has been at the center of high profile legal battles and controversies in the past, such as creating After School Satan Clubs to protest the presence of Evangelical afterschool programs at public schools. The Satanic Temple is not to be confused with the Church of Satan, founded in 1966; the two organizations have publicly feuded and denounced each other. Sources at Netflix declined to comment on their use of the Baphomet image, noting that no official claim has been filed as of this time. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/satanic-temple-suing-netflix-sabrina-statue-design-750868/ 
  • From Rosemary’s Baby: The Satanic Temple and Abortion, Heidi Beedle, Colorado Times Recorder, 2023: While conservative Christians have been quick to label many things “Satanic” or “demonic” — LGBTQ people, furries, rock and roll music, dungeons and dragons — they have consistently accused abortion advocates of working under the influence of the devil. For example, during his run for the Republican nomination for a Colorado congressional seat last year, Tim Reichert came under scrutiny for his past statements comparing abortion to human sacrifice. “Every abortion is a human sacrifice,” Reichert said in a 2021 acceptance speech for an award from Catholic Charities of Denver. “Every abortion feeds the demonic and thereby contributes directly to the demise of the church, the demise of America, and the demise of the West.” During a 2022, presentation at Colorado Christian University, anti-abortion activist Seth Gruber invoked the story Moloch, a Canaanite deity associated in biblical sources with the practice of child sacrifice, during a presentation that also compared transgender people to the Christian heresy of gnosticism. Last Thursday, the Satanic Temple announced the launch of a Satanic Abortion Clinic to provide medical abortion medication through the mail. The conservative response has been predictable: “The fact that the Satanic Temple plans to set up a n abortion clinic in New Mexico speaks volumes about who is really behind the abortion agenda,” Elisa Martinez, founder of New Mexico Alliance for Life, told LifeNews, an anti-abortion news blog. “Their willingness to flaunt the practice of ending innocent human life as a ritualistic sacrifice shows how New Mexico public officials have cooperated with this evil. Former members of TST’s St. Louis congregation note TST’s legal advocacy is not always effective, and others have criticized TST’s fundraising around abortion-related causes, especially in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision. Despite the controversy, TST will continue to engage in advocacy. “All we can really do is affirm who we are and who we aren’t,” says spokesperson Chalice Blythe. “Our actions are a reflection of our deeply held values. Those values do not include things like child sacrifice or anything like that. We understand people’s fears, but that fear and that discomfort cannot stop us from seeking justice.” https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2023/02/rosemarys-baby-the-satanic-temple-and-abortion/51771/ 

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The post Episode 195 – Satanic Sacrifices appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

SHOW LINKS

• From Genesis 2-3, King James Version: And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree; the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord God commanded, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. tNow the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, The woman whom thou gavest me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. Unto the woman he said, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Unto Adam he said, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And the Lord God said, man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and live forever. So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

• The Bible and the ancient Near East, Gordon & rendsburg, revised 1998 Ed: Man is intelligent because he ate magic fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, gaining knowledge that up to that time had been a monopoly of divinity. It is interesting to note that the knowledge imparted by the fruit of this tree is the “knowledge of good and evil,” a much misunderstood phrase. The antonyms “good and evil” represent “everything.” The same expression in inverted order occurs in Egyptian, where “evil-good” means everything, and from Greek literature we may cite the words of Telemachus, “I know all things, the good and the evil”. The only reason that readers of the Bible have failed to grasp the proper understanding of “the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil” is that the traditional interpretation is so deeply entrenched. Thus man obtained universal knowledge and to that extent shares with god a divine prerogative. Mankind was driven out of paradise because God saw that man could not be trusted to obey His will and to refrain from eating the fruit of another tree in the Garden of Eden that would give man immortality. God decided that man should not obtain immortality lest he become like the gods. Accordingly, if we examine the story in Genesis objectively, we see that, while many elements go into making up the whole picture, it is not so much an account of the “Fall of Man” but rather of the rise of man halfway to divinity. He obtained one of the two prerogatives or characteristics of the gods: intelligence; but he was checked by God from obtaining immortality, which would have made him quite divine. 

• From The Knowledge of Good and Evil as the Knowledge, Nathan French: A range of commentators suggest that the primary interpretation should be toward a contextualized meaning of “beneficial” and the “harmful.” I will demonstrate that the principle of divine retribution, in relation to ‘some’ experiences of ‘good and bad/evil,’ assumes the divine agency of reward and punishment through blessing and cursing. Additionally, it will be shown that these texts reveal an interplay between human and divine retribution as indication of divinely sanctioned retribution through ‘blessing and cursing.’ Thus, the words that generally mean “knowledge of good and evil” in their target languages often appear within these literary contexts signifying the whole of the retributive process, from discrimination to response, the fruit of the knowledge of reward & punishment. It is the knowledge for administering reward and punishment that empowers humans to become judges with ultimate power, like Yahweh himself. The divine knowledge is forbidden since it is ultimate power for retribution. In this way, Yahweh’s reward and punishment serve as his tools for establishing a particular political and social order, a body politic. Knowledge of good and evil represents the advancement from childlike innocence to moral decision.

• From Loss of Immortality, Konrad Schmid, University of Teubingen, 2008: Especially within the Christian tradition, there is a widespread notion that the first human beings were created to be immortal, making physical death the bitter consequence of human sin. However, there are also some newer approaches that see death as a natural part of creation, while death only becomes a frightening and threatening element under the influence of sin. At first glance, the traditional notion of an original immortality which was lost after the fall would fit perfectly into the Paradise story: This would be just another element contrasting the situations before the fall and after. In addition, God’s threat “you shall surely die” would be narratively fulfilled. Humankind, after its fall, has to die. But upon further review, there are far too many problems for such a thesis. First, Gen 2:7 states: “YHWH God formed man from the dust of the ground.” “Dust” in the Hebrew Bible functions clearly as a metaphor for transience, for being mortal. Secondly, in the punishment sentences in Gen 3:14-19, there is only one instance where the topic of death is brought up. This verse does not claim that humankind from now on has to die in contrast to the situation before. Death is not mentioned among the elements of punishment themselves. In Gen 3:22 God says, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of lif, and eat, and live forever. “‘ This sentence apparently does not reckon with the possibility that the human beings could again become immortal after having lost their original immortality a short while earlier. Rather, the prohibition of the tree of life is now mandatory, because after the humans have gained knowledge, immortality is the main element which still very clearly distinguishes God and humans.

• The prevalent Christian interpretation which sees the primitive status of humankind as immortals is the result of an apocalyptic perspective on the paradise story which was historically alien to it. Genesis 3 is probably one of the most non-eschatological texts of the Bible, as is evident especially from its final verse: “[The Lord God] drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.” The angels with their sword stand for the conviction that paradise is lost forever. The Paradise story tries to explain how the present conditions of human life outside the paradise came about. lt is not interested in painting out  a model for eschatological expectations. The common Christian interpretation has thoroughly transformed this, as can be seen for example from a famous German hymn by Nicolaus Hermann which ends with the words: “Today, Christ unlocks the door to the beautiful paradise, the cherub no longer stands in front of it.” But in Genesis, there is no way back, never ever. The Bible obviously sees no problems in determining human life – as it was designed by the creator – as substantially limited. Genesis 2-3 seems to present the wish to become immortal as a real wish only for fallen humanity. Immortality as such does not seem to be theologically important.

• From Adam & Eve & The Serpent, Elaine Pagels: In their arguments from Scripture, Jewish teachers often avoided speaking directly about sexual practices but engaged in heated discussions about Adam, Eve, and the serpent, and in this metaphorical way revealed what they thought about sexuality and about human nature in general. The Book of Jubilees, for example, written about 150 years before Jesus’ birth by a Palestinian Jew, retells the story of Adam and Eve to prove, among other things, that Jewish customs concerning childbirth and nakedness were not arbitrary or trivial but actually built into human nature from the beginning. As this author tells it, Adam entered Eden during the first week of creation, but Eve entered the garden only during the second week; this explains why a woman who gives birth to a male child remains ritually impure for one week, while she who bears a female remains impure for two weeks. The author goes on to recall that God made garments for Adam and Eve, and clothed them before expelling them from Paradise; this shows that Jews must “cover their shame, and not go naked, as the Gentiles do,” in public places like the baths and the gymnasia. Throughout subsequent generations, what Jews and Christians read into the creation accounts of Genesis came, for better and worse, to shape what later came to be called tradition. Meanwhile certain radical gnostics, railed against marriage and procreation and against the God who had created such impurities. This radical teacher dared to tell the story of Paradise from the serpent’s point of view, and depicted the serpent as a teacher of divine wisdom: ‘For the serpent was wiser than any of the animals that were in Paradise. . . . But the creator cursed the serpent, and called him devil. And he said, “Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing evil and good.’ What kind of God is this? First, he envied Adam that he should eat from the tree of knowledge. . . . And secondly he said, ‘Adam, where are you?’ So God does not have foreknowledge, since he did not know this from the beginning. And afterwards, he said, ‘Let us cast him [out] of this place lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever.’ Surely he has shown himself to be a malicious envier. And what kind of God is this? Great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know it.’” What church leader would not bridle at a critic who turned the Genesis account upside down?

• From Justin Martyr, Dialogues, Second Century: Then what is next said in the Psalm —’For trouble is near, for there is none to help me. Many calves have compassed me; fat bulls have beset me round. All my bones are poured out and dispersed like water,’— was likewise a prediction of the events which happened to Christ. For on that night when some of your [Roman] nation, who had been sent by the Pharisees and Scribes, and teachers, came upon Him from the Mount of Olives, surrounded Him. And the expression, ‘Fat bulls have beset me round,’ He spoke beforehand of those who acted similarly to the calves, when He was led before your teachers. And the expression, ‘For there is none to help,’ is also indicative of what took place. For there was not even a single man to assist Him as an innocent person. ‘They opened their mouth upon me like a roaring lion,’ designates him who was then king of the Jews, and was called Herod, a successor of the Herod who, when Christ was born, slew all the infants in Bethlehem born about the same time, because he imagined that among them He would assuredly be of whom the Magi from Arabia had spoken; Or He meant the devil by the lion roaring against Hi,: whom Moses calls the serpent, but in Job and Zechariah he is called Satan, and by Jesus is addressed as devil, showing that a compounded name was acquired by him from the deeds which he performed. For ‘Sata’ in the Jewish and Syrian tongue means apostate; and ‘Nas’ is the word from which he is called by interpretation the serpent. We may perceive that the Father wished His Son really to undergo such sufferings for our sakes, and may not say that He, being the Son of God, did not feel what was happening to Him and inflicted on Him. 

• From How the Serpent Became Satan, Shawna Dolansky, Biblical Archaeology Society, 2016: Introduced as “the most clever of all of the beasts of the field that YHWH God had made,” the serpent in the Garden of Eden is portrayed as just that: a serpent. Satan does not make an appearance in Genesis for the simple reason that when the story was written, the concept of the devil had not yet been invented. Explaining the serpent in the Garden of Eden as Satan would have been as foreign a concept to the ancient authors of the text as referring to Ezekiel’s vision as a UFO. In fact, while the word satan appears elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, it is never a proper name; since there is no devil in ancient Israel’s worldview, there can’t yet have been a proper name for such a creature. After the canon of the Hebrew Bible closed beliefs in angels, demons and a final apocalyptic battle arose in a divided and turbulent Jewish community. In light of this impending end, many turned to a renewed understanding of the beginning, and the Garden of Eden was re-read—and re-written—to reflect the changing ideas of a changed world. Satan became the proper name of the devil, a supernatural power now seen to oppose God as the leader of demons and the forces of evil; and the serpent in the Garden of Eden came to be identified with him. In 1 Enoch, the “angel” who “led Eve astray” and “showed the weapons of death to the children of men” was called Gadriel, not Satan. Around the same time, the Wisdom of Solomon taught that “through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who are on his side suffer it.” Though this may very well be the earliest reference to Eden’s serpent as the devil, in neither text, nor in any document we have until after the New Testament, is satan clearly understood as the serpent.

• Although the author of Revelation describes Satan as “the ancient serpent”, there is no clear link anywhere in the Bible between Satan and the serpent in the garden. The ancient Near Eastern combat myth motif, exemplified in the battle between Marduk and Tiamat, typically depicted the bad guy as a serpent. The characterization of Leviathan in Isaiah reflects such myths nicely: “On that day YHWH will punish With his hard and big and strong sword Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisted serpent, And he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.: So the reference in Revelation to Satan as “the ancient serpent” probably reflects mythical monsters like Leviathan rather than the creature in Eden. In the New Testament, Satan and his demons have the power to enter and possess people; this is what is said to have happened to Judas. When Paul re-tells the story of Adam and Eve, he places the blame on the humans and not on fallen angels or on the serpent or Satan; still, the conflation begged to be made, and it will seem natural for later Christian authors—Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus and Augustine, for example—to assume Satan’s association with Eden’s snake. Most famously, in the 17th century, John Milton elaborates Satan’s role in the Garden poetically, in great detail in Paradise Lost. But this connection is still not forged anywhere in the Bible.

• • From Commentary on the Bible, Matthew Henry, 1706: It is certain it was the devil that beguiled Eve. The devil and Satan is the old serpent, a malignant spirit, by creation an angel of light and an immediate attendant upon God’s throne, but by sin become an apostate from his first state and a rebel against God’s crown and dignity. Observe here: He does not discover his design at first, but puts a question which seemed innocent: “I hear a piece of news, pray is it true? has God forbidden you to eat of this tree?” Thus he would begin a discourse, and draw Eve into a parley. Those that would be safe have need to be suspicious, and shy of talking with the tempter. He quotes the command fallaciously, as if it were a prohibition, not only of that tree, but of all. God had said, Of every tree you may eat, except one. He, by aggravating the exception, endeavours to invalidate the concession: Hath God said, You shall not eat of every tree? The divine law cannot be reproached unless it be first misrepresented. He seems to speak it tauntingly, upbraiding the woman with her shyness of meddling with that tree; as if he had said, “You are so nice and cautious, and so very precise, because God has said, ‘You shall not eat.’ The devil, as he is a liar, so he is a scoffer, from the beginning: and the scoffers of the last days are his children. That which he aimed at in the first onset was to take off her sense of the obligation of the command. “Surely you are mistaken, it cannot be that God should tie you out from this tree; he would not do so unreasonable a thing.” See here, That it is the subtlety of Satan to blemish the reputation of the divine law as uncertain or unreasonable, and so to draw people to sin; and that it is therefore our wisdom to keep up a firm belief of, and a high respect for, the command of God. In answer to this question the woman gives him a plain and full account of the law they were under. It was her weakness to enter into discourse with the serpent. She might have perceived by his question that he had no good design.. But her curiosity, and perhaps her surprise, to hear a serpent speak, led her into further talk with him. Note, It is a dangerous thing to treat with a temptation, which ought at first to be rejected with disdain and abhorrence. The garrison that sounds a parley is not far from being surrendered. “You shall not die,” he says, so the word is, in direct contradiction to what God had said. Thus Satan endeavours to shake that which he cannot overthrow.
  • From the Book of Adam & Eve, Anonymous, Sixth Century: Then Adam said unto God, “Lord, Thou didst create us, and make us [fit] to be in the garden; and before I transgressed, Thou madest all beasts come to me, that I should name them. Thy grace was then on me; and I named every one according to Thy mind; and Thou madest them all subject unto me. But now, Lord God, that I have transgressed Thy commandment, all beasts will rise against me and will devour me, and Eve Thy handmaid; and will cut off our life from the face of the earth. I therefore beseech Thee, God, that, since Thou hast made us come out of the garden, and hast made us be in a strange land, Thou wilt not let the beasts hurt us.” When the Lord heard these words from Adam, He had pity on him, and felt that he had truly said that the beasts [of the field] would rise and devour him and Eve, because He, the Lord, was angry with them [two] on account of their transgression. Then God commanded the beasts, and the birds, and all that moves upon the earth, to come to Adam and to be familiar with him,† and not to trouble him and Eve; nor yet any of the good and righteous among their posterity. Then the beasts did obeisance to Adam, according to the commandment of God; except the serpent, against which God was wroth. It did not come to Adam. Then Adam and Eve came out at the mouth of the cave, and went towards the garden. But as they drew near to it, before the western gate, from which Satan came when he deceived Adam and Eve, they found the serpent that became Satan coming at the gate. And whereas aforetime [the serpent] was the most exalted of all beasts, now it was changed and become slippery, and the meanest of them all, and it crept on its breast and went on its belly. 

• When the accursed serpent saw Adam and Eve, it swelled its head, stood on its tail, and with eyes blood-red, did as if it would kill them. It made straight for Eve, and ran after her; while Adam standing by, wept because he had no stick in his hand wherewith to smite the serpent, and knew not how to put to death. But with a heart burning for Eve, Adam approached the serpent, and held it by the tail; when it turned towards him and said unto him:– “Adam, because of thee and of Eve, I am slippery, and go upon my belly.” Then by reason of its great strength, it threw down Adam and Eve and pressed upon them, as if it would kill them. But God sent an angel who threw the serpent away from them, and raised them up. Then the Word of God came to the serpent, and said unto it, “In the first instance I made thee glib, and made thee to go upon thy belly; but I did not deprive thee of speech. “Now, however, be thou dumb ; and speak no more, thou and thy race31 because in the first place, has the ruin My creatures happened through thee, and now thou wishest to kill them.”* Then the serpent was struck dumb, and spake no more. And a wind came to blow from heaven by command of God, that carried away the serpent from Adam and Eve, threw it on the sea shore, and it landed in India.

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The post Episode 188 – Satanists Read the Bible III (Year of the Serpent) appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.