Fallen is a thought-provoking -person narrative film that begins and ends with the voice of the film’s narrator and protagonist, Azazel. The movie, which is based on his personal story, opens with an intriguing self-introduction that snares the audience’s attention from the outset: “I want to tell you about the time I almost died.” As the movie proceeds, Azazel reveals that he is responsible for killings, as well as the false indictment and subsequent suicide of a detective named John Hobbes. Azazel himself is described as an “evil spirit of the wilderness.” Where Genesis 1 and John 1 narrate all thigs to have been created by God, Genesis 3:15 explicitly mentions an enmity between humans and the serpent. (Revelation 20:2 also mentions this snake.) Dr. Stephen Ray argues “God is the causal effect of everything” and that “if God didn’t create Azazel, there would be no evil.” This paper will reflect on some of the various perspectives of the powers of the evil spirts and explore to what…
WORLD CONNECTION QUESTION: How does the competition between good and evil in East of Eden relate to good and evil in the world we live in today?…
In the Judeo and the creation stories there are many similarities but are not the same. In the Judeo story there is a man and a woman named Adam and Eve, in the creation story there is a man and woman that are married. Both of these stories are about how the earth was made. In each of these stories one of the women makes mistakes that end up costing them. Adam and Eve ate the fruit off of the forbidden tree, the woman from the other story wanted roots from the tree that was not to be hurt. When they both disobeyed the rules they were punished. Eve had to feel the pain of childbirth, the wife had to live alone and make the earth she had animals sacrifice their life for her. She was named skywoman. She became pregnant with a baby girl. Her…
Analyzing god-animal relationships, the distinct differences between ancient Hebrew and Babylonian beliefs concerning the fluidity of creation become clearly evident. While there are certainly not enough texts surveyed in this paper to demonstrate any sense of causation, there does appear to be, within the context of analyzing Genesis and Gilgamesh, a positive correlation between the date-of-authorship and the rigidity of the hierarchy of creation. Thus, more recently composed texts, such as Genesis 1, present a better-defined hierarchy in which God is superior to mankind, and mankind is superior to animals. So, whereas the God presented in Genesis 2 as walking and talking in the Garden of Eden is considerably anthropomorphized, the God presented in Genesis 1 exhibits no signs of corporeality or other such traits. Yet even the anthropomorphized God of Genesis 2 is dwarfed in comparison to the gods portrayed in the Epic of…
What does Genesis 1-11 Teach Regarding the Natural World, Human Identity, Human Relationships, and Civilization?…
Similarly, in Revelation 12 we see this mesh between a snake and dragon. “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.” (Rev. 12:9) This is reminiscent of the serpent in the Garden of Eden who led the world astray when he deceived Adam and Eve. In his commentary on Revelation, Beale confirms this, saying “The dragon is now described as the serpent of old, that is, the serpent of Gen. 3:1, 14.” (Beale 430) Stefanovic agrees with Beale, saying “he is the ancient serpent. This is the allusion to Genesis 3, where through the serpent Satan deceived Adam and Eve, thus bringing sin on the earth.” (Stefanovic 395) In his essay on the dragon of Revelation, Benton points out a verse from Isaiah that meshes the dragon and the ancient serpent together. “In that day the Lord will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, with His fierce and great and mighty sword, even Leviathan the twisted serpent; and He will kill the dragon who lives in the sea.” (Isaiah 27:1) This sums up the major beliefs about the interchangeability of the dragons and serpents. The Leviathan is a serpent and a dragon from the sea. Both the Judeo-Christian culture and the surrounding countries viewed dragons and serpents as the same or similar mythological…
In both texts humans are co-creators. In Genesis 2 God’s creation revolves around men. He is finding a suitable helper so man can not be lonely, and in doing so creates all the creatures. Then he even ends up using man to create, his suitor, a woman. God uses the rib of man, thus portraying this idea of man being a co-creator. The process is similar to the atmosphere, the constant changing is to help humans thrive. Humans have power in both cases, being fully capable of destroying the atmosphere. Which has been evident over the course of history with humans near destruction of the ozone layer, similar to that of Adam and Eve. When they inevitably end up messing up and ruining their situation. Humans role as co-creator leaves them with the ability to destroy as well, thus leading to more evolution and…
The story of Adam and Eve is one of the most culturally important and known stories in the Bible regarding the origin of mankind. It’s generally followed by Judeo-Christians but is also grasped by other religious views, though many tend to overlook minor key details that may alter the whole interpretation. First, God created a man named Adam to primarily tend to the garden he planted in Eden. There were many trees in the garden that happened to contain two special types of trees. God allowed Adam to eat from any tree he wished, except from one specific tree. Then, God created a woman to accompany Adam who automatically became his wife. The woman came across a serpent she claimed to have deceived her. In actuality, the serpent simply told her a fact that is later proven correct with the help of her temptation. After Adam and the woman both consumed fruit from the forbidden tree, they realized that they were naked and tried to hide from God. God came to find that Adam and the woman ate from the forbidden tree because they suddenly were full of knowledge. God punished the serpent, Adam, and the woman for their disobedience. He then banished them not as another punishment but to help them avoid temptation again. Within the controversial context of the story lie theoretical themes that can be analyzed by existentialism and the Post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory of eros, thanatos, and the Oedipal Conflict. The story can be viewed using the Oedipal Conflict as God plays the role of both the mother and father figure while Adam and Eve play the role of the rebellious children. Along with this conflict, the characters of the story demonstrate existentialism qualities and carry out actions that they are either eros or thanatos.…
Short Essay on Angelology and Satanology This truth must first be established, Satan and God are not equal. God is omniscience, omnipresent, and omnipotent; Satan is not. The Bible is very clear that Satan is a created being, by God the creator. In the book of Ezekiel 28:15, Satan is described as a lesser being, “from the day that thou wast created,” showing his inequality with God. Religious Dualism is defined as, “two mutually hostile forces or beings in the world, the one being the source of all good, the other the source of all evil” (Elwell, 2001, p. 357). In more moderate circles it is referred to as “light and darkness”, or in the vein of Chinese thought, “yin and yang.” These all ascribe to the concept that, “the universe becomes the battleground for these two opposing forces” (Elwell, 2001, p. 357). This system of belief has no support or basis for its claims. The Bible, as our final authority on all things pertaining to God and Satan, shows us a very different view. Let’s address the claim that God and Satan are equals for a moment. Revelation 20:10 states that Satan will be judged by God, “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” To add more clarity, we see what God does to Satan during the judgment, “And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and…
The constant controversy throughout the novel stems from a more sinister evil within them, that brings to mind the story of Cain and Abel; the two sons of Adam and Eve, from the Book of Genesis…
Through his narrator in East of Eden, John Steinbeck says that there is only "one story in the world", that of good and evil (Steinbeck 412). The original story of good and evil can be traced back to the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, from which Steinbeck picked his title and formed many central characters around. In his novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck explores the constant collision between good and evil and forms a parallel between his story and that of Cain and Abel.…
Milton’s Paradise Lost is essentially the book of Genesis on steroids. Looking specifically at Book three and seven of Paradise Lost we will notice many descriptions and events that have been added to the book. The three most noticeable differences in Paradise Lost (book three and seven) compared to the book of Genesis in the Bible are: the devil’s use of Uriel to get to Earth, both the process of Jesus being asked to be the savior of the world and the dialogue between God and Jesus, and the use of the archangel Raphael to warn the oncoming temptation of Satan in book seven. All three of these are not mentioned in the Bible, and have been added by Milton to add excitement,…
Our choices come from out own opinions, but our opinons come from our parents, guardians and other people in society or just straight from within ourselves. When we area young are parents, guardains tell us and teach us what is wright and wrong. So when it is time for us to make a choice we remember what are parents had told us, and feel we must think the same as them so are choice refects upons them. But as we became older we choose what are own opinions will be, sometimes they are the same as out parents had told us, and have our own entirley differnent opinions and choices. Our opinions come from society or something we believe inside ourselves that never came out until then. Cal, felt since his mother was bad he must be bad. But Cal was not bad he ws good he jsut didnt know it. Abra had to bring out the good in Cal, and made him realize he didnt have to be like Cathy. In my family me and my parents have diffrent opinions on everything we don't agree much Our choices show what we really think and believe in.…
In the original Genesis story, Eve is portrayed as a woman who was solely tricked by Satan into doing his evil doings, although in Paradise Lost, Milton portrays Eve as a woman who wasn’t just manipulated by Satan, but allows the reader to see Eve’s disobedience through her independent thought.…
Long ago, the weather was just warm and the grass was just green. Every person on earth was happy the way they were, and the way everything was. God was always trying to bring new things into Earth, to complete its perfectness. One day God had this big feeling that he needed to create something for Earth and his people. But what could it be? Everything was already so perfect. So God asked and angel named Jack to go down to Earth and figure out what was missing. Jack went down and searched and searched, he disguised himself as a human and asked many children and adults, “If you could add something to our earth, what would it be?” everybody’s answers were the same. They all said that there was no needed change. Jack reported back to God and told him everything, but God still didn’t agree. He thought and thought of different ideas every day. One day, He caught a cold, and He couldn’t stop coughing or sneezing. Even when He had this cold, he still looked over Earth every single day and tried to improve it. But right when God was just about to give up and say the Earth was perfect enough, He let out the biggest strongest sneeze anyone could imagine. His sneeze was so powerful that it blew all the clouds onto the ground onto Earth and made them stay over top of the grass and cover every single thing on Earth in soft white stuff. When God seen this, He was appalled. He thought he ruined everything. But then a bright idea came into Angel Jack’s head. He said “Well since Earth has only warm weather and green grass, what if these clouds turn into cold soft ice and the weather becomes cold for half the year?” God thought this was a brilliant idea, so He did what Jack suggested. He turned the clouds and weather cold. He decided to call the clouds snow. He then told Jack to go check it out and see how the humans reacted. Jack once again went down to Earth and disguised himself. He asked all the children and adults what they thought of this…
