Did Jesus call the Old Testament God the Devil, a Murderer and the Father of Lies?

[Pat Mustard]

Clearly the text is trying to say their father is the devil .....

but ... it's interesting, ... very interesting if you have your literary "radar" turned on.
This text obviously reflects a MUCH LATER (highly developed) theology and cultural viewpoint.
The words are "placed in the mouth of Jesus" but clearly he would never say these things to Jewish contemporaries.
It's a *later* view of Jesus talking in a later voice.

Jews at the time didn't really have a concept of the devil. Look at the old testament, Satan was the angel who did yhwh's dirty work, not his adversary (the jews at least realise that having an unbeatable enemy would put the crimp in the plausibility of an all powerful being). They also didn't have a concept of an eternal soul, for them paradise was pretty much the same as for the Babylonians who they stole the idea off of, a perfect garden where there was no evil and everybody co-existed peacefully under the direct supervision of their gods (or after the jews returned from Babylon, their god).

Much of the later christian retconning was to try and fit the jumble of conflicting beliefs from the various sects and the beliefs picked up when trying to sell their religion to the Greeks into the framework they had decided to graft their new cult onto in order to legitimise it. Hence why most of the new testament shows a deep and abiding misunderstanding of jewish theology.