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To: kosta50; annalex; Kolokotronis
If you think about it, deception is not a lie. Deception is a distorted, or "bent" truth. Rather than tell something completely untrue, satan uses distorted truth to deceive. So, he is not a prince of outright lies but a habitual bender of truth, or lukavi.

I think I have to disagree with you a couple of ways here. satan IS the prince of outright lies:

John 8:44 : You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

I see deception and lying as being different concepts, but not necessarily unrelated. A magician deceives us, yet since it is not to harm us, he is not "lying". However, when a conman does the same trick, he is deceiving AND lying. I believe satan does only the latter.

So, let's see if my theory holds water:

Luke 4:9-11 : 9 The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down from here. 10 For it is written:

" 'He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; 11 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"

Obviously, satan is purporting to quote Psalm 91:11-12, but he conveniently leaves out the crucial phrase "in all your ways" (at the end of 10). I contend that this is much more than a twisting of scripture, it is a full misquote because the error is so material. ... satan was attempting to apply God's promise to something that was against God's will. In my view, this VOIDS the entire passage as quoted by satan. Even though all of the other words, save the missing four, are identical, the meanings of the two different passages are night and day. My view is that satan's entire quote was fully a lie, not merely a bending of the truth.

8,901 posted on 06/24/2006 12:11:30 AM PDT by Forest Keeper
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To: Forest Keeper; annalex; Kolokotronis
A magician deceives us, yet since it is not to harm us, he is not "lying". However, when a conman does the same trick, he is deceiving AND lying. I believe satan does only the latter

There is a BIG difference here. The magician is not deceiving you. When we go to see a magician we know he will do things that will appear to us as something they are not, but we are willingly submitting to it, knowing that the magic is not truth, so we are really not deceived but amazed and even amused by our perceptions.

The Greek word in John 8:44 for the lier is related to the Greek word yseudoV (pseudos), which means "false." Something false becomes a lie only when it is presented as truth.

So, in the case of a magician, it is not a lie, but simply tricking our perceptions that does not lead us to believe the tricks are real. The devil, on the other hand, uses the same deceptive technique to present something false as truth.

Thus, the magician is not sly, but satan is. The magician tells us that he is a magician. Satan often appears as the angel of light.

As your example also shows in Luke 9:4-11, the devil uses elements of truth to deceive. The da Vinci Code uses elements of the bible and history to concoct a story that leads people to believe that our Lord was married and had children. By using elements of truth, the devil gives his deception an air of credibility.

An outright lie would be to say "there is no Sun." Or "The US is in South America." That's why I wrote "Rather than tell something completely untrue, satan uses distorted truth to deceive."

8,903 posted on 06/24/2006 5:21:41 AM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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