From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!rocheste!sher Newsgroups: net.flame,net.religion Title: Re: Christians should quote more often from the old testament Article-I.D.: rocheste.666 Posted: Tue Feb 8 23:42:52 1983 Received: Fri Feb 11 08:53:07 1983 References: floyd.1165 To defend a fellow Jew, whatshisname (names are not my specialty) got the spirit right if not the details when he said that the devil is basically a christian idea. The devil was completely absent from my jewish education and apparantly he is largely absent from Jewish culture (that is the concept not the hypothetical being). I think the concept of the devil is not compatible with the Jewish concept of an all encompassing God. Evil roles are generally assigned to the angel of death or perhaps a deamon who tend to be limited to following the letter of the law of the torah. Identification of baal or the genesis serpent with a being which is basically nonexistent in our culture obviously does not occur in our philosophy. On another point the fact that baal was mentioned in the torah 87*10**17 times (exact figures are also a weakness) does not mean that the devil is mentioned in the torah. It is my teaching that baal is a false god who is essentially powerless (there being only one real god). The devil on the other hand has all sorts of power in Christianity. Some of the misconceptions involved in the current christian/jewish argument on the net result from the fact that in judaism the emphasis is placed on the five books of moses (the torah) primarily then on