Critical ingenuity may attempt to find a symbolic meaning in many of the details of the Jewish legend of the Fall, although, to use moderate language, they seem equally profane and repulsive. But this will surely be admitted by all, that the Rabbinic account of the fall of the Angels, as connected with fall of man, equally contrasts with the reverent reticence of the Old Testament narrative and the sublime teaching of the New Testament about sin and evil.
2. Satan, or Sammael, as the accuser of man. And clumsy, indeed, are his accusations. Thus the statement (Gen. xxii. 1) that God tempted Abraham' is, in Jewish legend, transformed (Sanh. 89 b) into a scene, where, in the great upper Sanhedrin (Ber. R. 56), Satan brings accusation against the Patriarch. [6456] All his previous piety had been merely interested; and now when, at the age of one hundred, God had given him a son, he had made a great feast and not offered aught to the Almighty. On this God is represented as answering, that Abraham was ready to sacrifice not only an animal but his own son; and this had been the occasion of the temptation of Abraham. That this legend is very ancient, indeed pre-Christian (a circumstance of considerable importance to the student of this history) appears from its occurrence, though in more general form, in the Book of Jubilees, ch. xvii. In Ber.R. 55 and in Tacchuma (ed. Warsh p. 29 a and b), the legend is connected with a dispute between Isaac and Ishmael as to their respective merits, when former declares himself ready to offer up his life unto God. In Tanchuma (u. s.) we are told that this was one of the great merits of man, to which the Almighty and pointed when the Angels made objection to his creation.
3. Satan, or Sammael, as the seducer of man. This statement in Baba B. 16 a which identifies Satan with the Yetser haRa, or evil impluse in man, must be regarded are a rationalistic attempt to gloss over the older teaching about Sammael, by representing him as a personification of the evil inclination within us. For, the Talmud not only distinguishes between a personal Satan without, and evil inclination within man, but expressly ascribes to God the creation of the Yetser haRa in man as he was before the Fall, the occurrence of two {hebrew} in the word {hebrew} (and He formed,' Gen. ii. 7) being supposed to indicate the existence of two impulses in us - the Yetser Tobh and the Yetser haRa (Ber. 61 a). And it is stated that this existence of evil in man's original nature was infinite comfort in the fear which would otherwise beset us in trouble (Ber. R. 14). More than this (as will presently be shown), the existence of this evil principle within us was declared to be absolutely necessary for the continuance of the world (Yoma 69 b, Sanh. 64 a)
Satan, or Sammael, is introduced as the seducer of man in all the great events of Israel's history. With varying legendary additions the story of Satan's attempts to prevent the obedience of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac is told in Sanh. 89 b, Ber. R. 56, and Tanchuma, p. 30 a and b. Yet there is nothing even astute, only a coarse realism, about the description of the clumsy attempts of Satan to turn Abraham from, or to hinder him in, his purpose; to influence Isaac; or to frighten Sarah. Nor are the other personages in the legend more successfully sketched. There is a want of all higher conception in the references to the Almighty, a painful amount of downright untruthfulness about Abraham, lamentable boastfulness and petty spite about Isaac, while the Sarah of the Jewish legend is rather a weak old Eastern woman than the mother in Israel. To hold perversions of the Old Testament by the side of the New Testament conception of the motives of lives of the heros of old, or the doctrinal inferences and teaching of the Rabbis by those of Christ and His Aspostles, were to compare darkness with light.