Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Chris W. Lee on John 8:44 in light of Genesis 2:17 and Related Issues

  

Jesus’ description of the devil (διαβολος) as “a liar and the father of lies” in John 8:44 could possibly be an indirect allusion to Gen 3:4, and perhaps reflects a line of understanding in the NT that identifies the serpent as the devil who told the very “first” lie in human history. In Gen 3:4, the serpent explicitly denies God’s death warning (Gen 2:17): “you will surely not die” (‎לֹֽא־מ֖וֹת תְּמֻתֽוּן). Such an understanding, holding the devil responsible for the introduction of death to humanity, is also found in Wis 2:23-24, and therefore this is not unprecedented: “For God made man as incorruptible/immortality . . . but by the envy of the devil (διαβολος), death came into the world.” . . . If we take John 8:44 as a possible allusion to the Genesis incident, then Jesus’ view of the devil as a “liar” further reflects his and/or his contemporary’s understanding of the serpent’s retort in Gen 3:4 as a “lie” in contrast to God’s command, which by logic must have been understood as a true statement. In the Genesis narrative, however, it appears that it is actually the prediction of the serpent that turned out to be true: “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Gen 3:5-7). . . . According to this view, them, the divine command, “on the day you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die” (Gen 2:17) must have been fulfilled in a certain way (regardless of the nature of the death) in order for it to be true. Perhaps Paul’s description of Satan as one who “disguises himself as an angel of light” in 2 Cor 11:14 is an indication of his acknowledgment of a similar understanding. Cf. also Rev 12:9; 20:2, the author of Revelation describes Satan in these verses as ο οφις ο αρχαιος (“ancient serpent”). Such a line of interpretation, which assumes the serpent’s retort in Gen 3:4 to be a lie, will logically lead to the understanding that God was right, that Adam and Eve indeed died, either spiritually or in the sense that they became mortal. Paul’s promise to the Roman church in Rom 16:20 that “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” echoes one of God’s punishments directed at the serpent in Gen 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” Paul’s description of Satan in this verse echoing the language in Gen 3:15 is a likely indication of Paul’s identification and association of the serpent with Satan, which fits with Jesus’ description of the devil as a “father of lies.” The likelihood that Paul is considering the garden narrative is supported by the previous verse (Rom 6:19), where another implicit allusion to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is found in Paul’s exhortation to the church “to be wise with respect to the good and pure with respect to evil” (v. 19). See also Hebrews 6:8 for an NT allusion to the agricultural aspect of God’s punishment of Adam in Gen 3:18. The author of the Hebrews describes a land that yields “thorns and thistles” as a “curse.” (Chris W. Lee, Death Warning in the Garden of Eden [Forschungen zum Alten Testament. 2. Reihe 115; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020], 149-50 n. 37)