History AlternativeCharacterInterpretation / ReligionAndMythology

** In the Book of Job, God lets {{Satan}} destroy Job's possessions and wipe out his family (though Satan leaves Job's nagging wife alive to torment him further) and then give him some really painful disease to maximize his suffering, all as part of a ''bet'' with Satan. Job's friends turn up to mourn all his losses with him, and then start tormenting him by insisting he must have done something to deserve all this suffering and he needs to repent. Job pleads his innocence and curses the day he was born, but holds out hope that if he can just plead his case to God personally, that should clear up any misunderstandings. God turns up and pulls the OmniscientMoralityLicense on Job, refusing to answer any of Job's questions and declaring him unfit to critique his Creator's decisions. When Job agrees to stop asking questions about these things beyond his understanding, God then turns to his ''accusers'' and declares "You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has." He then makes them beg Job's pardon and help him out and restores Job's fortunes. One question this raises: does God mean Job's pleas of innocence with his friends and desire to bring his case before God were right, or that he was right to shut up and stop asking God any more questions, or both? Various critics also differ on what exactly this book tells us about God's personality, and what moral lessons we should draw from it, if any. Elihu's explanation for Job's sufferings (which may be meant to be the correct one, see his own entry below) implies that God agreeing to Satan's bet was a BatmanGambit to save Job. Job had started developing an unhealthy sense of his own importance and self-righteousness; the suffering God allowed him to suffer caused him to start demanding explanations from God; when Elihu and God himself call him out on his arrogance he repents and is saved from damnation and Satan's longer term clutches.

** One defense, at least grounded in certain reformist sects of Judaism, is that Ancient Hebrew is a very allusive language with slippage between literal and metaphoric meaning (i.e. a given passage can be simultaneously literal and metaphorical, and true meaning is to be derived from perceiving both at the same time) and that this subtlety lost value in the translation from Hebrew to ancient Greek (the Septuagint was translated during the Ptolemaic era). According to this, we are not supposed to interpret the God of the Old Testament as a personal deity, but merely a personification of the laws of nature and the universe, given human characteristics as a result of limitations of language. The argument for this is God stating to Abraham that "I am that I am" (possible translation of YHWH), meaning that God simply "is" (existence, universe, the air we breathe and so on). As such, God punishing Pharoah with the death of firstborn children is merely the outcome of a disease that affects the highborn and spares the Israelites, who as a result of their survival of this and many travails should consider themselves a "chosen people" (as is clear in the name Is-ra-el, He-Who-Fights-God, bestowed on Jacob after he apparently wrestled an angel (literal) or resolved existential questions within himself (metaphorical). In this view, applying a character interpretation to God makes as much as sense as asking the "Meaning of Life" and hence justifies the existence of Literature/TheTalmud.

** One interpretation of Genesis is that the first man Adam was split into male and female halves, neither having primacy (rather than thinking of Adam as "first" and Eve as "second" and thus God was ''not'' forgetful, nor was the same story told twice).

** Questions of God's identity have been around [[OlderThanTheyThink pretty much as long as there have been Christians]]. Notably the 1st-to-2nd century heretic Marcion of Sinope dedicated most of his career to proving the Old Testament/Traditional Jewish God and the New Testament God to whom Jesus testified were two different gods. The Old Testament God specifically claims to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: His chosen people are the Israelites. Hence, salvation is possible only for them in the Old Testament, for his original Covenant was with the Hebrews. Then comes God of the New Testament: the old Covenant gives way to Jesus and a new Covenant, opening the possibility of salvation to all.

** Of course, morality has always varied from culture to culture throughout history, and nobody can ever satisfy everybody. To some people (e.g. the true believers among the ancient Hebrews) everything God did in the Old Testament likely seemed perfectly reasonable, but ValuesDissonance has always affected our views of previous cultures and assuredly always will. Then too, these differences of opinion could make anyone from a previous culture seem like an UnreliableNarrator to us, since he'd be describing whatever God does in a way that makes sense to ''himself'', not necessarily us.
* Elihu, from the book of Job. He speaks up towards the end after Job's friends give up, offering Job the longest attempt at an explanation for his sufferings. Strangely, God doesn't explicitly include him when he's telling off Job's friends for speaking falsely, and God's own words when he turns up seem to follow on naturally from what Elihu has been saying. So is Elihu just another old windbag blaming Job for his problems, or is he giving the right answer which God is then endorsing?

** Were they the only righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah? Were they merely the least degenerate? Lot's offer to sacrifice his daughters to the rape gang to protect his guests doesn't exactly strike most of us these days as a very "righteous" thing to do, though (in all fairness) he was just about completely out of options by that point.

** To be fair to Lot's daughters, they were being pragmatic, not lustful. They were cut off from Abraham's family (possibly not even aware he was still around), afraid to go back to Zoar (probably because the people there were hostile to them), and just about any other male roaming through the devastation of their former civilization who caught them alone without a man to defend them would likely just rape and murder them or (at best) make them his sex slaves and thereby end their family line for good. Once they had sons and those sons had grown up a bit, they presumably were able to go out under those sons' protection to get the boys some wives to carry on the family's line, but Lot's daughters couldn't count on anyone else to protect them until then once their father was gone.

--> And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever; Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

** Of course, there is plnty of debate as to who Jesus even ''was'' in Christianity - this is a field called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christology Christology]]. Most churches (Catholics + Eastern Orthodox + most Protestants) believe that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, sharing the same nature as God and thus being God. Other churches hold to different opinions, such as a belief that Jesus was a creation and not God (held by Jehovah's Witnesses and Unitarians), or that Jesus was one and the same with the Father (held by Modalists). This is just debates about his divinity - there are further divisions within Trinitarianism as to how he could be both God and Man (for more on that see [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcedonian_Christianity Chalcedonian]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miaphysitism Miaphysite]], and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorianism Nestorian]] views).

** As a [[{{UsefulNotes/Deism}} Deist]], UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson believed Jesus was an ordinary human and that all the miracles and stuff were added to the story later to make it more exciting or something. Nevertheless [[JesusWasWayCool admiring him]], he proceeded to publish what's generally known as the "Jefferson Bible", which is basically the New Testament with all the miracles and other supernatural events cut out.

** What did Paul even teach about faith and the law? The dominant Christian view is that he taught Christians are not obliged to follow the laws of the Old Testament and that they were replaced by a New one. While many in the aformentioned Hebrew Roots movement reject Paul, many ''more'' in that movement claim that Paul didn't teach the Old Law was gone at all and that he ''supports'' their view. To add to this, within traditional Christianity there are divisions - did he teach salvation by faith alone (like the Protestants claim) or did he teach there was something more (like the Catholics and Orthodox claim). And even within ''[[SerialEscalation that]]'', many Protestants disagree about his teaching - see [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Perspective_on_Paul the "New Perspectice on Paul"]].

** Similar to the above the IncorruptiblePurePureness Baldur characterization and his death through Loki's trickery (see above for the possible Christian distortion of the interpretation of Loki) has been compared to Jesus's portrayal in the gospels. So those who believe the written sources we have are all HijackedByJesus point to the version which makes Baldur come off as less flawless as perhaps closer to the "original". But of course mythological beliefs (especially those transmitted orally) evolve and there is not enough evidence to dismiss either version as "inauthentic".

* Who is the wife of Odin? Frigg, or Freyja? The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frigg_and_Freyja_common_origin_hypothesis Frigg and Freyja hypothesis]] suggests that they have a common origin, and thus the figure that became "Freyja" or "Frigg" was one in the same. What also doesn't help things is that several source(s) of Norse Mythology refer to the two interchangeably, but whether or not this is due to errata in translation ''or'' an earlier name that could have been translated either way is, of course, up for debate. Whatever the case is, portraying Freyja ''or'' Frigg as Odin's wife would technically be correct.

** One defense, at least grounded in certain reformist sects of Judaism, is that Ancient Hebrew is a very allusive language with slippage between literal and metaphoric meaning (i.e. a given passage can be simultaneously literal and metaphorical, and true meaning is to be derived from percieving both at the same time) and that this subtlety lost value in the translation from Hebrew to ancient Greek (the Septuagint was translated during the Ptolemaic era). According to this, we are not supposed to interpret the God of the Old Testament as a personal deity, but merely a personification of the laws of nature and the universe, given human characteristics as a result of limitations of language. The argument for this is God stating to Abraham that "I am that I am" (possible translation of YHWH), meaning that God simply "is" (existence, universe, the air we breathe and so on). As such, God punishing Pharoah with the death of firstborn children is merely the outcome of a disease that affects the highborn and spares the Israelites, who as a result of their survival of this and many travails should consider themselves a "chosen people" (as is clear in the name Is-ra-el, He-Who-Fights-God, bestowed on Jacob after he apparently wrestled an angel (literal) or resolved existential questions within himself (metaphorical). In this view, applying a character interpretation to God makes as much as sense as asking the "Meaning of Life" and hence justifies the existence of Literature/TheTalmud.
** One of the issues with alternate character interpretation is whether or not humans have the right to judge God's actions, which is ironic given that Jesus (whom many consider HIS human incarnation) was famous for answering questions. Those who believe that take a more literal approach, citing the first action a human ever took of her own volition: The eating of the fruit. God explicitly states that humans ''have'' became like Him in one sense: knowing good and evil. Some interpret this to mean that God is just as beholden to human morals as man is to God's, just we don't have as much firepower to back it up. Complicating this, is the first action undertaken by Adam and Eve after tasting the fruit, is putting on clothes when before they were happy naked and comfortable with their sexuality with God's approval, which casts a different light on what is implied by "original sin" as one could see it as God's disapproval of people feeling they need to be ashamed and cover themselves in his garden, and it is the ''awareness of shame'' that is the true sin rather than the actions itself, i.e. God was a hippie peacenik who envisioned Paradise as a free-love nudist colony and regarded humans as SellOut for RefusingParadise and putting on clothes and going out in the world to find a "real" job. And why did God put the tree in the Garden of Eden in the first place? Was He following some [[EldritchAbomination ineffable plan, the mere attempt to comprehend which would destroy our puny minds]]? A [[GodIsEvil petty tyrant]] looking for an excuse to torture us? A genuinely compassionate being, foiled by an adversary? A [[TricksterMentor loving parent]], tricking us into developing our free will and responsibility? Maybe God was just demonstrating that divine sovereignty includes the power to allow some things and put others off limits, like a land-lord renting out the house but not the garage? Could it perhaps just be God's way of demonstrating that for mankind to love Him truly (by keeping His commands), we have to be given the option ''not'' to?

!! Myth/KingArthur:

*** Satan is ''The'' Accuser as in [[BigBad our main enemy]]. He's actively antagonizing the human race and/or God. He's the UltimateEvil, who wants nothing more than to ruin us through [[TakeOverTheWorld conquest]], [[AGodAmI stealing our worship]], or getting us to do evil just [[ForTheEvulz so he can enjoy watching God punish us]] after he tattles on us for our sins. The reason he tempted Jesus is that he doesn't want humanity to have [[MessianicArchetype a savior]] to save us from him. This is the interpretation most Christians generally tend to believe.

* Odin, dear gods, Odin. He's portrayed as a BigGood in modern times, but this is... arguable... for a number of reasons: first off, one of his nicknames is Oathbreaker, meaning that he is FAMOUS for committing one of the biggest sins in Norse Myth, breaking his word. Further, Odin sacrificed his eye to gain wisdom, and allowed himself to be hung by his neck from the World Tree for nine days to gain knowledge of runes and magic. This means he is capable of making any sacrifice for power, regardless of cost (case in point, when Loki was bound, on Odin's orders, Loki's son was murdered and his guts were turned into iron chains to bind him. Which means Odin had an innocent person murdered so he could get back at Loki, who admittedly did kill Odin's son Baldr). Also, Valhalla: the only real condition that you have to meet to get in is to die fighting. It doesn't really matter which side you were on, or what kind of person you were, you just had to die in battle, although there was still a limit - murderers, adulterers and oath-breakers (the scum of the Earth as far as the Norse were concerned) were sent to Náströnd, the nastiest part of the underworld, regardless of how they died. If you were badass enough that no one could ever kill you and you died of old age or illness, then through no fault of your own you went to the cold, dreary and comparatively very boring Hel, although the Norse, as a people rich in reivers, pirates and warriors, had a very good chance of dying fighting, and would prefer to do so anyway. Odin wanted his paradise filled with the roughest, toughest, hardest bastards who ever lived, so that when Ragnarok came, he'd have an army of the best soldiers who ever died to fight for him - although in all fairness, he only got half of the honorable dead. The other went to Fólkvangr, where his wife Freya ruled.

** Jewish Interpretation: before the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve were static creatures unable to create things. They left because the garden, being perfect, was too small for them. they were subsequently given a broken world to fix together with God.

** Incidentally, the only extra-Biblical historical sources we have are Josephus (who rather disliked ''all'' Roman governers of Judea, including Pilate) who described him as "cruel and greedy" and the Jewish philosopher Philo who bitterly hated Pilate and described him as a vicious tyrant looking for any excuse (however flimsy) to crucify more Jews than necessary. One way to reconcile these accounts to the Gospel portrayals of him (as a fence-riding vacillating politician forced to convict and crucify Jesus under duress from the Sanhedrin) is to assume that Jesus simply ''looked'' so innocent in person that even with all these biases, Pilate was convinced of his innocence from the start.
** One common contention from skeptics is that the authors of the Gospels were whitewashing his character in order to demonize the unbelieving Jews (though ''every one'' of those authors was Jewish himself).

*** Satan is The ''Accuser'' as in [[AmoralAttorney a prosecutor]]. He's the ultimate SecretTestOfCharacter, trying to corrupt humans to ferret out the righteous from the wicked. The reason he tempted Jesus was that he was testing whether Jesus was really the incorruptible Son of God he was claiming to be. Some Messianic Jews tend to go with this interpretation, and other Jews often go with the claim that he was tempting Job for similar reasons. (He states right there in the text that surely Job will "curse God to [His] face" if he's allowed to take away everything good in Job's life and fill it with pain and misery, and Job ultimately passes the test by refusing to do so.)

* Literature/BabaYaga - depending on the work, she's either the most common WickedWitch who EatsBabies and lives on a house on chicken legs, flying on a mortar and pestle. Other times; she may be a crone... but is sought out for her wisdom or has guided lost souls. Some stories have her as capable of both, with her current actions based entirely on her whims.

* Both derive from an older indo-iranian religion system mirrored their pantheon: in India, there are the good Devas (gods) and the bad Ashuras (demons), in Zoroastrism, there are/is the good Ahura and the bad Devas/Dehas/Deshas. For example, Indra is a powerful God of rain in India and once was one of the God Lords (before Vishnu and Shiva grew more popular), while in ancient Zoroastrism Indra is an evil demon of drought and whirlwinds. It probably confused the Zoroastrians big time when they entered India.