Judge Holden in "Blood Meridian"

Yesterday in class, we discussed quite a bit on how Judge Holden could be seen as the Devil in a biblical sense. I originally was going to write my influence paper concerning this topic but decided to take a more artistic route. With that being said- I found a couple of excerpts that demonstrate this pretty well. One of the 10 commandments is "Thou shall not kill." In society, the killing of children is seen as even more of a sin than killing an adult; this could be because it is taking something from the world that still holds complete innocence, even when reading the book, the murdering of the young children and babies was more disturbing than the killing of the women and other adults ( they both were awful but I am hoping you see my point). The judge on page 164, "..in the morning the judge was dandling it on one knee while the men saddled their horses. Toadvine saw him with the child as he passed with te saddle but when he came back ten minutes later leading his horse the child was dead and the judge had scalped it." The judge devoured everything he seeked before him. It did not matter the age, or level of innocence. Not only did he kill this child, but he gave the child hope and a sense of comfort before hand- build trust to only use it to his benefit. From the Bible, 1 Peter chapter 5 verse 8 it says, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."
To go further on whether or not the kid is evil because of his "taste for mindless violence," I do not think he was always evil but instead became more corrupted during the process of the story. Yes, he did get into drunken fights and beat bartenders, but he did not mindlessly kill or get the "high" from it like the judge did. I think after being submergered into that lifestyle he became worse. The judge says something along the lines of "the smallest crumb can devour us." Now, he is probably not talking about the kid and his taste for violence, but I think it draws a good point. The kid is young, he is still in the process of finding who he is and trying to understand the world - most everyone does at that age; while in this time of his life he is introduced into killing and slaughter. He sees it, he does it, and that could have lead to what became of him.