Peter Brewer
PHI 349
Prof. Struckmeyer
The Process Satan
The Devil is a character commonly seen in the folklore and pop culture of the modern world. More often than not, he’s depicted as a conniving imp – crowned with horns, bearing a pitchfork, and flashing that sinister grin sandwiched between a curly black mustache and a pointed goatee. In other portrayals, such as in the film The Devil’s Advocate, Satan is displayed as a clever Machiavellian clad in suit and tie. If you randomly questioned the general population about this Devil persona’s origins, most would likely point to the Bible as the source. However, could they tell you when the Devil first makes his appearance? They might think hard, trying to remember on which of the seven days of the primordial week God said “Let there be Satan!” and it was so. Tracing the Devil’s roots is not so simple. Throughout the books of the Old and New Testaments, and through influence from sources other than the Bible, the individual known as Satan was spawned progressively.
Many Christians (and others as well) believe that the Devil’s first cameo on the stage of human existence occurred in Genesis 3, where he is manifested as “the serpent.” However, the author of Genesis does not indicate that this wily little beast is in any way supernatural. The story narrates how the serpent coaxed Eve into biting the forbidden fruit and thus sealed his own and humanity’s fate when God discovered what had happened. There is no mention of the serpent holding any higher status than that of a reptile now doomed to transport himself without limbs. The symbol of the serpent, however, is often associated with the Devil in mythology (Russell 68). Also, Paul appears to be referring to the serpent of Genesis when he writes in Romans 16:20 that “. . . the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.”
The proper title “Satan” does not appear in the Old Testament until Chronicles 21:1, where it is written: “Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to number Israel.” What is most interesting about this passage (aside from the debut of Satan) is that the event it describes was written of earlier in 2nd Samuel 24:1. Samuel’s account differs in that instead of Satan imploring David to take the census it was Yahweh himself. Isaac Asimov reveals that this inconsistency is due to the fact that in the Chronicler’s time it would be considered blasphemy to suppose God would justify punishing Israel through an evil act that he caused (408).
This initial appearance of Satan shows that his persona may have been created to represent Yahweh’s dark side, or shadow. Russell tells us that, “In pre-exilic Hebrew religion Yahweh made all that was in heaven and earth, both of good and of evil. The Devil did not exist. The Hebrew concept of the Devil developed gradually, arising from certain tensions within the concept of Yahweh” (174). Carl Jung would agree, as he posited that Satan (or “the Accuser”) was a psychological manifestation of Yahweh’s doubt (Mitchell XI). He concluded this in his analysis of the book of Job, in which Satan acts as a member of the heavenly court who merely tests God’s surety of Job’s faith.
The concept of God and Satan having some sort of oneness sounds odd and even sacrilegious to many people. After all, aren’t the two eternal enemies? Is not Satan the ruler of Hell, and God the king of Heaven? Many cannot accept that good and evil come from the same source (despite Yahweh’s proclamation in Isaiah 45:7, “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the LORD, who do all these things”). So what caused Western thought to split good and evil into separate forces that emanate from separate supernatural beings?
The greatest influence contributing to the Jewish (and later Christian) splicing of God and Satan into separate entities was the Persian culture (Asimov 409). The Persian prophet Zarathushtra conceived the first religion whose foundations rested upon the notion of dualism. Zoroastrianism includes in its dogma the principle of absolute evil, which is personified by Ahriman. This is the original Devil (Russell 98-99). Judaism and Christianity adopted the idea of separate beings representing good and evil, but not to the extreme that Zoroastrianism did. While the Zoroastrian incarnations of good (Ahura-Mazda) and evil (Ahriman) are completely independent of each other, Judeo-Christian tradition holds to the idea that the Evil One (Satan) is a subordinate creation of the omnipotent, ever-righteous Yahweh (Asimov 410).
Due to this switch from early Hebrew monism to dualism in later Jewish and Christian thought, mythology which explained Satan’s origins and parting from God began to arise. Jesus tells us in the New Testament that he “. . . saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven” (Luke 10:18). In the time period that Jesus said this, the Jews had a fully developed myth which held that Satan was the leader of the “fallen angels” – a posse who had refused to bow to Adam as was God’s wish. These dissenting spirits were booted out of Heaven into the realm of Hell. This legend may have been influenced by Greek mythology, in which Titans (such as Prometheus) are damned to the underworld due to their defiance against the gods (Asimov 540). It is also very likely influenced by a misinterpretation of Isaiah 14:12-25, in which the “bright morning star” falls down into the recesses of earth due to his hubris (Russell 195-196). This explains where the name Lucifer came from. Lucifer is the Latin name for the star which is seen in the dawn and then disappears in the daylight (we know it now to be the planet Venus). As a result of translation, Lucifer is now commonly understood as Satan’s proper name before his descent into Hell.
Despite Satan’s existence and character arising gradually throughout the Bible, there is little doubt today as to what he represents. As seen in the Genesis myth and in Matthew 4, it is understood that one of Satan’s predominant roles is that of a tempter. Some believe that the Devil literally places temptations in front of us while others think of him more as a symbol of the forces which lures us to give in to evil. Either way, it is evident that temptation is not to be ignored. Lucifer, tempted by pride, loses his standing in Heaven. Eve and Adam, tempted by lust for knowledge, eat of the fruit and thus lose their home in Paradise. For the modern soul, temptations are often more subtle but no less consequential than in times past. Everyday we live knowing that we are capable of directing our tomorrows, yet we often choose to ignore the responsibility of freedom and instead give in to hedonistic distractions, material possessions, tranquilizing everydayness, or numbing despair.
Bibliography
Asimov, Isaac. Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: Volume One: The Old Testament. Garden City,
New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1968
Mitchell, Stephen. The Book of JOB. New York: Harper Perennial – A Division of
Harper Collins Publishers, 1987.
Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977.
