..... What
with the season finale of the "
Lucifer" television show coming up, I thought that it might be interesting
to see how the Bible's version of Satan compares to what everybody
"knows" about what the Bible says about Satan. Satan is not really in
that much of the Bible when you read through it (something a
surprisingly small number of the book's biggest self-professed fans have
done). There are women in the Bible that get more "screen time" than
the Devil, and that's
really saying something.
.....By an astounding coincidence, Satan does not appear in the Bible until after the Babylonian exile, which exposed the Jewish upper classes to Persian ideas of the universe as a war between the forces of good and the forces of evil. (Wait! What about ... Shut up! I'll get to that.) Of course, one could always assume that this is a coincidence, or that Persian thought reminded the Jewish authors about ol' scratch. Allow me to look at The Devil through several layers, starting with the appearances of Satan through the Bible.
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| "Who do my copyright lawyers talk to?" |
.....In the 1980's Neil Gaiman wrote a brilliant series of comic
books - no, that's the wrong word, let's say "serialized graphic novel" -
The Sandman, in which one of the most compelling minor characters was
Lucifer. Yes, the one that you're thinking of. That character got his
own series written by Mike Carey, and that interpretation of Lucifer
(more or less) is back in a new series and a new television show on FOX.
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| Image not provided, They HAVE all the copyright lawyers. |
The First Pass: Satan
.....(Wait, why I am using "Satan" instead of "Lucifer"? I'll get to that.)
.....The first appearance of Satan is actually in one version of a story that appears twice. (The books of Samuel and Kings, and the books of Chronicles parallel each other, with Chronicles as a summation of Jewish history written after the exile.
.......King David took a census of Israel and Judah because that's a really sensible thing to do. How else are you going to know how many soldiers you could scratch up, or how you should tax each area? This idea really cheesed off the people, though, presumably through the idea that if the King
didn't really know the exact number of people, then maybe they could get by with less tax, or drafting fewer people. The book of Samuel, written before the Babylonian exile, explains David doing this
perfectly reasonable, that is, evil idea by have God push David into doing this, because Israel had pissed God off (1 Sam 24:1). Wow, people hate getting taxed.
.....After the exile, the idea of God directly setting David up for a fall seemed a little mean, so it was Satan who caused the census (1 Chron 21:1). If it were for some reason necessary to the reader to reconcile these two stories, one could look at the second story as Satan being God's tool for screwing David over. In this, Satan is God's agent.
.......Satan's next appearance is in the book of Job, a book that most
Christian and Jewish authorities (including the Jews who assembled the
Bible, given Job's location in the Writings and not the Histories)
consider to be a work of fiction exploring philosophical issues, a story
of unknown age with other material clearly written after the Exile.
Still, it shows the writer's view of Satan. In Job, Satan in introduced
as clearly just on of the "sons of God" (Job 1:6), mingling with the
others, reporting with others, presumably cashing the paycheck. Satan's
job is testing humans, and he fulfills this role by prosecuting Job
throughout the book.
..... In Zephaniah (everybody's favorite book of the Bible, so I know I don't have to give too much backstory), in a vision, Zephaniah speaks of the High Priest (probably standing in for the nation of Israel) with an angel speaking on Joshua's behalf, and Satan speaking against him.
..... This is also exactly the same role Satan plays in the Book of Matthew (chapter 4:1-11). In explaining why Jesus chose the ministry that he did, the author has Satan ask Jesus if Jesus wants to aim at improving his listeners or at moral regeneration, whether Jesus wanted to convince by signs or by preaching, whether Jesus thought of the Messiah in terms of war or peace. This is still consistent. Except for a mention in the Letter of Jude in which Satan again appears as a legal adversary, arguing over the fate of Moses' soul, this is the last appearance before the Book of Revelation. In all of these, Satan has a very clear role, and it is a clear role in God's bureaucracy: prosecuting attorney. Satan is clearly God's Hamilton Burger, with about the same success rate.
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| Good job; reference a TV show on from 1957-1966. Even you weren't alive for it. |
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| Hey, I was milking this gig 'til I died in '93. This will still seem old to the Millennials, though |
(Fine,
this should get me a generation closer. For the Millennials, the guy on the goofy reality show used to be a singer.)
..... Okay the Book of Revelation, Satan appears as a Dragon, possibly because of the influence of the Babylonian story of Tiamat ...
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| She has a surprising cultural staying power |
or that one of the writers whose work ended up in the Book of Revelation also did bitchin' van murals. Satan is promoted to leader of Team Not-God, but he only gets some minor league help, like Gog out of Ezekiel 38.
The Second Pass: Retconning the Devil
.....In the second creation story in Genesis, the serpent in the garden is nowhere (in Genesis) identified as the Devil; it is simply a talking snake, one of the Bible's two talking animals (the other talking animal is in Numbers 22:22-35). In fact, one of the points of the story was that this was how snakes lost their legs (and, apparently, their power of speech). Harsh, especially if you believe that this was actually Satan. It's a good thing for snacking purposes that Satan didn't disguise himself as a chicken
The Third Pass: Devils
.....The word "devil" comes from the Greek word meaning "slanderer", so it is kind of taking Satan as God's prosecuting attorney to its extreme. Some translations have Leviticus 17:7 refer to devils, when the straight-laced Yahvists order the Hebrews to stay the heck away from the Greek nature fertility gods (other translations translate what is here "devils" as "satyrs", as in Leviticus 17:7)
.....
The Fourth Pass: ... and the Rest
..... There are other figures, usually the names of the gods of other tribes, that appear in the Bible and have been used as synonymous with Satan. Leviticus 16:8 has a reference to Azazel, possibly an evil spirit in the wilderness that is the source of sin, and Belial (Deuteronomy 13:13, 2 Thessalonians 6:15), who appears to be a
pastiche of Antiochus IV, Pompey, and Herod the Great, and given a name
that means "not profitable".
References to Lucifer: 1, kinda
Where does the name "Lucifer" come from? This starts in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, which the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible titles as "Downfall of the King of Babylon":
3 When the Lord has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve, 4 you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon:
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| TL;DR You suck, Nebuchadnezzar! |
...
12 How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
13 You said in your heart,
“I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
on the heights of Zaphon;
14 I will ascend to the tops of the clouds,
I will make myself like the Most High.”
...
(more of the same)
...
22 I will rise up against them, says the Lord of hosts, and will cut off from Babylon name and remnant, offspring and posterity, says the Lord. 23 And
I will make it a possession of the hedgehog, and pools of water, and I
will sweep it with the broom of destruction, says the Lord of hosts.
.....(The full quotation can be found here. I left the last part in because "I will make it a possession of the hedgehog" apparently used to be some serious trash talking. The thought of what the Lord was going to do with the hedgehog, is a little off-putting) The name translated as "Day Star" is used as sarcastic ass-kissing of the Babylonian King, the way that Louis XIV was less ironically called "the Sun King". In Hebrew this name was "Helel (the shining one)", Venus as seen before sunrise, which was the Light-bringer. This is "Phosphoros in Greek, and "Lucifer" in Latin. This quite clear slamming of the king of Babylon became a discussion of a war in Heaven, with Lucifer as Satan. In an uttering unrelated anecdote, at the time this interpretation was added to these verses, the Hebrews world was dominated culturally by the Greeks, who had numerous myth cycles about wars in heaven against the titans and the giants.
.....This association of "Lucifer" with "Satan"is made explicit when Luke's Jesus describes the success of his seventy disciples' preaching mission as being so successful that it was like watching Satan fall from Heaven. So, this is the one reference to Lucifer in the Bible. Not really much room to complain about adding material to flesh out the character.
