Watch it now, Wondrium. It seems inappropriate to Iblis that he should lower himself below something that was made of clay since he was made of fire.
Furthermore, another picture, another dimension, of evil here: Iblis does not, per se, act; Iblis refuses to act. He does not bow down. These show a couple of different dimensions of evil in Islamic accounts that are worth noting.
First of all, the paradoxical dimension of it: Evil is clearly something that is done by people, but it can also be seen as something that happens to them.
Many people who have done evil acts often report their deeds as effectively things they had to do; compelled to do. Effectively, then, action of this sort looks ambivalently like it was done, but also like it happened without an agent.
In the Islamic tradition, Satan himself is only ambiguously a personal agent. But at other times, Iblis, the satanic energies, seems more like an impersonal force; a power in the cosmos that humans experience as preying on their weakness and seducing them. Learn more about the origins of Evil. Questions of responsibility are enormously complicated here, but they seem inescapable in these traditions.
That evil is both personal and impersonal at once; intimate to you, something you do, and also something that you watch yourself doing, something that happens outside of you. The view that Evil is immanent to human beings is known to the Islamic tradition.
It is expressed, for instance, in the above-related saying of the Prophet, that the Devil flows in humans as does their blood. Another possibility is to see Adam as a tragic character.
Although he is aware of the danger, and takes extreme measures against it, it is exactly these measures which draw him ever closer to his enemy—or rather, his enemy ever closer to him: he is destined to be evil. When he cuts the child into four and hangs him on four different trees, this refers to the four directions: North, South, East and West.
The trees high stand for the air, the sea for water, the burning incorporates fire, and when Adam and Eve consume the child he goes back to earth, from which humans were created Biblical etymology of Adam is adama —earth —the four elements.
This prevalence of the number four correlates with the significance of the quaternity as an archetype of totality, both in nature and the psyche, according to Jung.
However, the roots of the trees are in the ground, they are connected to the material earth, and symbolise the underworld and the demonic. This description therefore suggests the gradual deterioration of Adam, as he lets his anger and vengeance take him over. It is notable that the Jewish-Yemenite version differs from the Islamic versions both literary and popular in that it replaces the child figure, later slaughtered and eaten, by a sheep.
The Gentile butchers would secretly slaughter dogs and donkeys and sell them as meat of sheep and camels. When the poor among the Jews needed [meat] they would buy [this] meat for frying, thinking that it was of bulls or sheep, I saw it with my own eyes. And some of the Gentiles would steal the children of their friends and eat them, as one would tear a kid.
The Palestinian version was transmitted orally throughout the twentieth century. It was collected in and by two different writers, from diverse sources in various parts of the country, and quoted in a study of Palestinian folk literature in According to this version of the story, when Eve took the baby she was not aware of its true nature, and thus she unknowingly introduced evil into her house. Adam, on the other hand, recognised the nature of the baby right away.
When Adam committed an act of cannibalism to get rid of the baby, it was an act of total extermination of the child but, at the same time also of a total assimilation of it into the bodies of himself and Eve. From this perspective, the story in its Palestinian context could reflect a Palestinian view of the geo-political changes during the twentieth century in the area of Palestine and Israel and the Middle East in general.
The act of eating makes them go through a transformation that makes them realise their shame. As a punishment for their disobedience, God banishes them eternally from Paradise. Both Adam and his spouse eat of it, and go through an essential internal transformation, that makes them realise their shame. This causes an essential transformation within them, from which humanity will forever suffer. Eve is tempted, and both she and Adam eat something that is forbidden, acquired through wrong doing and causing an immediate and eternal transformation of essence.
The transformation through which they go is worse here, as is also reflected in the symbolic nature of what they consume.
Rather than a divine fruit a plant symbolising purity , it is the corpse of a murdered demonic creature flesh is equated with lust. However, the parallel is not complete, since Adam, who according to this interpretation parallels God as the law-giver , is also at the same time among the erring and the punished. Eve cooperates with him.
He can foresee their actions, and their punishment comes from him. Indeed, in the story about Cain as the son of Eve and Satan, Satan is described as riding the snake, or himself being the snake, during the act. Two such stories are well known in the Biblical context. Abraham obeys the divine command. However, at the very last moment God stops him from killing Isaac and Abraham sacrifices a ram instead.
The sheep of the Jewish-Yemenite version of the story also connotes with the ram of Genesis He thus prepared his son to be slaughtered. When God appeared to him and told him that the dream had been fulfilled, Abraham made a big sacrifice to God in place of his son according to the commentators, this was a ram or a goat. In both texts, both situations are possible. Another case of a father initiating the sacrifice of his son is that of God and Jesus.
Both stories speak of spiritual entities, if one might say so, who give their son to a woman to take care of. In both narratives the son is sacrificed by his father and killed by human beings.
The sacrificed son is eaten by humans—the son of God by the disciples, during the Last Supper, 62 and during the ceremony of communion the bread and the wine of the communion are called the body and the blood of Christ 63 ever since to remember Jesus ; and the son of the Devil is eaten by Adam and Eve, in their final meal before their essence is transformed.
In both cases the son dies and is resurrected by his father, who foretells both the death and the resurrection. Whereas the son of God dies, and after three days is resurrected 64 and lives eternally with humans 65 or in heaven, 66 the son of the Devil dies three times. He is then resurrected and lives eternally within humans, on earth.
Finally, in both cases the sacrifice of the son has a tremendous influence on human fate. However, whereas the sacrificial death of the son of God redeems humanity from original sin, the sacrificial death of the son of the Devil reconstructs the original sin, and curses humanity. That said, the story presents an ambiguous stance in this matter, and gives no clear answer to the question which it presents. Several reasons can be suggested for this. The circulation of this story might also be related to the question of its origin.
This, as well as its compliance with most criteria and characteristics of a folk tale, implies that it might have originated as a folk tale. One should keep in mind, however, that the folk tale versions of the story seem less controversial. Therefore, the question of its origin remains uncertain. That the story has remained alive for over a thousand years at least since the tenth century c.
At the same time, each time it is told, the story is interpreted anew, in accordance with the specific context and circumstances of its narration.
This deserves further research. Munabbih b. Yemenite narrator of Persian origin and author-transmitter from South Arabia. Wahb was considered a great authority of Biblical traditions, although it seems that he was probably born a Muslim.
XI, pp. Richmond, U. Hanauer, Folklore of the Holy Lands , p. A German translation of this story appears in Schwili, pp. The sources for this material are believed to have been converted Jews, or Muslims who had contacts with Jews and Christian in the pre-Islamic period. Wahb b. Munabbih is one of the notable names among such transmitters. IV, pp.
Munabbih , which argues that evil stems from human beings or from Satan, whereas God only creates good; and humans choose between good and evil. VI, pp. Heller [A. The motifs that are shared by the two stories are the step mother; the killing, chopping and eating of the child; the tree; the fire; salty water here: tears, rather than the sea ; and the resurrection of the child.
By the thirteen Epic Laws he wished to characterise all folk narratives. The laws remain effectual to these days, although some of them have not been found always applicable for folk narratives outside Western Europe and the Semitic tradition.
The text under consideration, however, seems to fit well with most of them. From among the different versions of the Palestinian folk tale I chose to quote this one, since the one collected by Hanauer in which is almost identical to this version, although the two versions were collected by different writers and from different people , was collected in English.
I would like to thank Dr. Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman for drawing my attention to the famine of in Yemen, and to the relevant sources. In the meantime, he seduces humanity away from the way of God.
Chesnutt M. Hanauer, Folklore of the Holy Lands. Heller B. XI Holon [Israel], Blokonim , on June 5th [Hebrew]. Khoury R. XI 34 Kugel J. Lurya Shmuel b. Others are a mutant combination of human and wolf. But all are The Inquisition was a powerful office set up within the Catholic Church to root out and punish heresy throughout Europe and the Americas.
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