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Originally Posted by Animus27
Some thoughts upon the delicate subject of Theodicy. Or something like that. 
Satan is a function of God. In Job, ha-satan, 'the adversary' is a member of the Lord's divine council and plays, well... devil's advocate 
It's only in the New Testament and some apocrypha, that satan becomes a Satan in the proper, and turns into a more duelistic figure. Some scholars have suggested it might be due to Jewish contact to Zoroastrianism during the Achaemenid Empire's overrule. Asking God to deliver oneself from temptation makes sense, when one remembers scenes of God testing people through the Scriptures, effectively 'tempting' them on several occasions; tempting choices that tend to lead to 'evil' results.
As for the originality of the Lord's Prayer - it's ideas are expressed all throughout the Hebrew Bible, but it's only recorded as we know it through the lips of Jesus, making it a Christian prayer, pretty much. |
Anumus27, What I said is not what I believe.
The book by Manly P. Hall,
Masonic Hermetic Qabbalistic & Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, has a beautiful allegory about Adam and the Serpent, the Adversary. Adam banished from the Garden of Eden represents man philosophically exiled from the sphere of Truth. After many attempts to enter into his Father's house which he was always prevented from doing by a cherubim, finally heard a voice saying "He who is aware, IS! Behold!" and he finds himself in a radiant place, "in the midst of which stands a tree with flasing jewels for fruit and entwined about its trunk a flaming, winged serpent crowned with a diadem of stars. It was the serpent who had spoken."
Adam asked the creature who he was.
"I," the serpent answers, "am Satan who was stoned; I am the Adversary--the Lord who is against you, ...I have led you into temptation...I am the guardian of the Tree of Knowledge and I have sworn that none whom I can lead astray shall partake of its fruits."
Adam replies that he will no longer tempted by the serpent "There is no happiness, no peace, no good, no future in the doctrines of selfhishness, hate" etc.
And the serpent answers: "Behold, O Adam, the nature of thy Adversary!"
The serpent disappears and in its place stands an angel with scarlet wings that spread from one corner of the heavens to the other. It says:
"I am the Lord who is against thee and thus accomplishes thy salvation," ... Thou hast hated me, but through the ages yet to be thou shalt bless me, for...I have turned thee against the illusion of worldliness...I have awakened in thy soul the immortality of which I myself partake..."