21 March 2014

Jesus and Satan, same person? Not far-fetched after all

Several years ago, 1997 to be specific, I wrote a poem with a rather lengthy title (link below) at the end of which I suggested, after drawing a few comparisons from passages in the Bible referring to each of them separately, that perhaps Jesus and Satan were the same person.  It had nothing to do with Process Theology, about which I know very little except that it makes the same claim, as I found out later.

However, I just recently learned that such a comparison is not necessarily unheard of, at least not in the realm of Qabbalah, Jewish mysticism.

There are two words translated into English as “serpent” in the Tanakh/Old Testament:  Seraph, or “Fiery One”, and Nachash”, or “Shiny One”.  Yes, seraph as in singular of seraphim, the highest order of angels; it’s the same word.

The first scene in which the word Nachash appears is in the Garden of Eden, as the tempter of Eve while Adam is standing immediately by her side.  Here, he invites Eve to eat from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  In this case, “Knowledge of Good and Evil” does not mean being able to discern the difference between Right and Wrong or to see the line between the Light Side and the Dark Side, but is rather an idiom in Hebrew with the meaning “Infinite Knowledge”.  The counterpart of the Tree of Eternal Life.

Keep in mind that this whole story is an allegory, not a historical account.

Christianity identifies the Nachash of the Garden of Eden with Satan, aka the Devil.  Judaism does too, at least in a roundabout way, but with an entirely different outcome.

Remember, Judaism lacks the dualism of Christianity.  It does not have two sides, one light, one dark, one good, one evil, one ordered, one chaotic.  In Judaism, all things come from God and are of God.  Satan is not the nemesis of God and humanity, but is in fact God’s most loyal servant and humanity’s best friend.  In brief, his purpose is to test humans strength of character and thereby provide them with choice, making free will possible.  Satan does these things not in opposition to God but in obedience to him.

Another Nachash makes a significant appearance in the passage known in Judaism as Parashah Chukat, Numbers 19:1-22:1.  This includes the story of God sending fiery snakes (nachashim in the passage) to plague the Israelites after they complain about being hungry.  When Moses appeals, God has him make a bronze pole serpent (Nachash Bareach) to hold up before the whole nation when the seraphim attack, so that all those bitten who look at it will not die.

The Sefer Yetzirah, the earliest full Qabbalistic work (the Merkava, with which St. Paul was familiar if not adept, was earlier but not fully Qabbalistic) mentions the “Teli” around which the stars and everything in space revolves.  The rabbis identified the Teli with the Nachash Bareach.  A later Qabbalistic tract, the Bahir,  further equates the Teli to the Moshiach (Messiah), who is often called Nachash ha-Kodesh (Holy Serpent), which is the same entity as the Nachash Bareach.

Moshiach is the Hebrew word for the more commonly known, among Christians anyway, title of Christos, meaning “Anointed One”.

It is not too difficult to draw a line from the Nachash Bareach to the Nachash of Eden.  Gnosticism did, in fact, make that analogy, for its adherents saw the Nachash as the Redeemer.

Various midrashim equate the Nachash with the Tanakh figure called Leviathan and with the Shekinah, the Divine Presence in the world, the latter also identified in several places with the and the Moshiach (Messiah).

Credit for much of this info belongs to: http://www.ha-nachash.info/

See the poem to which I referred above, “Random Thoughts: the day after a really weird night that I spent at Kilroy's Coffeehouse, and no, I'm not on acid”, at: http://notesfromtheninthcircle.blogspot.com/2011/08/random-thoughts-day-after-really-weird.html

Or read it here:

I don't really care whether I go to heaven
Or whether I go to hell

I don't believe in that version of reality
Somehow I think the Otherside
If there is one, that is
Would blow the fucking minds
Of the purveyors of guilt and fear

But even if -- and that's a big IF
The truth does conform
To their mythological paranoid psychosexual fantasies
I'd rather burn with the righteous sinners
Than sing with the sanctimonious saints
At least the sinners are honest
About who they are
They're a whole lot more real
Than the ones who sit in judgement
Over the rest of us outside
Worrying about gossip
And what's "appropriate" and "polite"
Serving the capitalist Leviathan
And the conformist Behemoth
With the labor of their hearts and minds
Buying whatever the creeping meatball
Tells them they need
Eating vanilla food and having vanilla sex
Walking the line in the middle of the road
And getting their spirits squashed like a grape

Give me spice, give me pepper
Give me the odd, the strange, the wonderful
Give me the outrageous and offensive
Give me the culturally blasphemous
Give me the really weird
Give me cookies and cunnilingus
—oh wait....for me that's fellatio—
Give me true freedom and liberty
In all their anarchic, iconoclastic, orgiastic splendor

And speaking of hell
Since James Dobson is on such good terms
With the Almighty
Maybe he can tell me the answer
To a question that's just come to mind...

(And here, existing for a moment
In Never-Never-Land
We have to pretend
That heaven and hell are real)

This is my question:
Where does God send sinners who are masochists?
Certainly not to hell
Where await fire and brimstone
Assorted tortures and all manner of pain
The ultimate experience of S&M
An eternal orgasm stretching to infinity

And speaking of torture and pain
Brings to my mind the scourging,
The crowning with thorns,
And the crucifixion
Certainly Christians must all be sadists
Since seeing the crucified victim's agony
Brings them such orgasmic joy
As they torture themselves with
Autoerotic shame and mental emotional pain

Wouldn't it have been tacky
If the Big Boy himself had been a masochist
Bottom to Pilate's top?

And another thing…
If Jesus Christ really DID take all humanity's sins
Upon himself that day
(And good GOD....where would he fit THAT load)
Why do Christians these days
Give Satan such a bum rap
Laying all their sins
At his feet and at his door
How would you like to be the Devil
Hearing what they say?

A story in the Talmud teaches
That Satan is God's most loyal servant
Testing the faith of his children
By tempting them to sin
Courting ridicule, scorn, and outright hatred
And by offering them a choice
Making real their gift of free will
Like the prostitute hired by the king
To test his heir and find out his worth

No, it's not false witness that they fear
Coming from the "Father of Lies"
But rather that he'll tell the truth
So they would condemn the Accuser
Who holds up the mirror
Showing them their true selves

Come on, people, grow up
Take some fucking responsibility
Don't scapegoat another, even Auld Hornie
After all, the serpent in the Garden
Was the only one who told the truth

I remember a quote from Isaiah's Song
"He was despised and rejected by men
Wounded for our transgressions
And bruised for our iniquities"
And I get a way far out idea
About an intriguing possibility:
If good and evil are really the same thing
Created by God when he formed light and darkness
Since that quote could apply with equal truth
Though perhaps for different reasons
To Lucifer, son of the morning
Or to Jesus, bright morning star
Maybe, just maybe
They're the same person

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