The History of the Bible Character The Devil

Post Reply New Topic

He’s a wiley one that old devil.

He shows up in Job and in the temptation of Jesus.

That's about it.

Past that:
- The serpent in the garden of Eden is simply spoken of as a crafty creature.
- Isaiah 14 about the King of Tyre needs an incredible amount of stretch to get out of it what people seem to get.
- The Book of Revelations seems suggestive but isn't precise in naming that exact figure in many places.

The whole story of 'Lucifer rebelling against heaven and taking 1/3 of the angels' isn't biblical.

More obnoxious:
- The overcomers of Thyatira are given the gift of the Morning Star.
- At the end of the Book of Revelations Jesus is the bright and morning star.


I think the best explanation for this is the evolving history of Satan, much like there's an evolving history of God. God drifted from a regional deity who protected the Jews at the cost of being their only deity over to being something akin to Plotinus's 'the good' - ie. a universal deity. Good vs. evil seems largely informed by Zoroastrianism.

Someone whose read more on Zorastrianism might be able to correct me but they idea seems to be two roughly equal deities, one of good and one of evil, are in contest.

What makes the tale of Lucifer's fall particularly interesting, and I think this is what inspires Luciferians to have a Promethian take on him, is that the story goes he was not only the most dazzling and powerful angel ever created but he was good at just about everything. The strange thing about that story - that's not a servant, that's a child or heir and it's meant to leave the nest, otherwise you've made a mistake in over-equipping a servant and if we're to take the idea that God is in any way wise or rational then we have to assume that's not a mistake. The top sphere of the Qliphoth, Thaumiel, is seen as the 'contending forces'. I think an equally plausible creation myth sets itself up like this - that Lucifer was built to hold up the other end of duality, fired out from pleroma or whatever else you'd call it like a rocket, functions like the Greek hekatonkhieres (100 headed, 100 handed ones) who are on the edge of space, or the depths of Tartarus, 'building' reality, that he went out to whatever la grange point was decided on to set up the far end of duality, and as a result of his distance a photo-negative formed which was something close to the equal of his power but opposite in temperament. Such a being set up for such a task, ie. to survive in such an ugly place, had to be given such extreme and all-around powers.

All of that could just be fancy speculation, it probably is, but you see the point of how many different ways these things can logically be read and equally that their binding to 'evil' may every well be subject to the institution that's telling the story.