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actions. 489 It appears, however, that the basis of all of this argumentation lies rather inthe assertion that “Lord B. has of his own accord laboured through thick and thin toexculpate the character of Lucifer or Satan, from the imputations of Scripture”. Likethe Eclectic Review’s claim that “Byron disbelieves the whole Scripture narrative”,this claim depends upon a literal reading of the entire Bible as a single, unifieddiscourse. Byron’s prefatory comment does not contradict the whole Bible: itvalidates the Genesis account, but contradicts Revelation 12:9 and 20:2, the onlyverses which explicitly identify the serpent with Satan. In essence, the issue is thevery narrow one of Biblical literalism: only if the entirety of the Bible is to be taken asabsolutely literal does Revelation need to be thus read back into Genesis. Thisposition was thoroughly disputed by devout Christians in Byron’s day, just as it isnow, but these conservative reviewers are simply eliding the variance of opinion. Thepoet, demonstrating a consciousness of the heterogeneity of belief which theconservative reviewers chose to ignore, is recorded by Kennedy as discoursing uponthe stories in the Old Testament, which many who call themselves Christiansreject. [...] the history of the creation and the fall is, by many doctors of theChurch, believed to be a mythos, or at least an allegory. 490The contemporary reviewers were apparently attempting to proclaim their own viewas the only one, in the essentially political act of propagating a monological discourseand writing divergence out of existence. 491 In the process, they failed to read the textwith due care.Returning to the claims of the characters, when Cain bemoans his fate as a result ofthe forbidden fruit, Lucifer replies, “They have deceived thee; thou shalt live”(1.1.109). This exchange is a paraphrase of that between Eve and the Serpent: when489 British Critic, 2nd series, XVII (May 1822), 520-40, RR, I, 310-20, pp.531-2.490 James Kennedy, Conversations on Religion, with Lord Byron and others (Philadelphia: Carey &Lee, 1833), p.81. Byron was correct: Origen and Augustine, for example, read the Genesis account inboth allegorical and literal ways.491 Schock’s peculiar assertion that “removing the figure of Satan from the temptation of Eve implicitlycauses the whole machinery of Fall, Atonement, and Redemption to collapse” (p.104) is simplyincorrect: the doctrines of the Fall, the Atonement, and the Redemption only require a human tocommit a sin, with no necessity for any tempter at all, let alone any specific tempter, hence theconsistent focus in the Bible upon human responsibility for the choice to sin. Q.v. Romans 3-5.304