The Origins of Satan

this video is brought to you by nordvpn check the link in the description below for details about a special deal for the religion for breakfast audience i've always wondered what's the devil look like george clooney's character in the classic film oh brother where art thou knows a thing or two about demonology and the nature of satan well of course they're all manner of lesser emps and demons pete but the great satan himself is red and scaly with the bifurcated tail he carries the hay fork i'd say this is the old school stereotypical satan red scaly skin armed with a pitchfork popular especially in cartoons and even making a brief appearance in star trek the next generation this version of satan does not derive from the bible and it's not even particularly old relative to the span of jewish and christian history it seems to stem from a confusing mix of artistic traditions from the medieval and renaissance periods but in this video i'm not so much going to excavate the origins of this stereotypical portrayal of satan but more the concept of satan himself the christian concept that he is a fallen angel the ruler of demons the chief tempter to commit sin and on the scale of cosmic history the arch enemy of god now it's important to keep in mind that not even all christians agree on the concept of satan typically hinging on the question whether to view him as an actual entity or as a metaphor of evil and temptation for the christians that do consider satan to be an actual entity he is usually conceptualized as a fallen angel a created being who rebelled against god and now leads other fallen angels called demons we see this view of satan across most branches of christianity including the various orthodox denominations as well as an official catholic doctrine pope francis in particular references satan all the time specifically saying we should not think of the devil as a myth a representation a symbol a figure of speech or an idea this mistake would lead us to let down our guard protestants are split when it comes to attitudes about satan some denominations tend to interpret him metaphorically while evangelicals tend to view him as a real entity and for many pentecostal christians which scholars sometimes categorize under the umbrella of evangelicalism satan is a real active malevolent threat playing a significant role in ongoing demonic warfare of course i'm generalizing here at the denominational level remember religions are internally diverse even within a single denomination or a single church you'll find christians holding different opinions about satan survey data about belief in satan is sparse and some of it is contradictory but one barna survey from 2009 found that upwards to 40 of american christians strongly agreed that satan is not a living being but is a symbol of evil so disbelieving the reality of satan is by no means a fringe opinion but today we'll be examining the history of the concept that satan is a real fallen angel and the arch-nemesis of god as we'll see satan has a history and this concept evolved over time i'm gonna lead you down the path that rocks let's start with ancient israelite religion and the texts of the hebrew bible in the hebrew bible the notion of a singular supreme evil entity and opponent to god is completely absent the hebrew word satan does appear on a few occasions usually translated as adversary or accuser but in the earliest sections of the hebrew bible the noun simply refers to human adversaries for example in 1st samuel 29 4 the philistines refer to king david as a potential adversary using that same hebrew noun but in the later texts in the hebrew bible the concept seems to evolve into some sort of divine job title kind of like a prosecutor the most notable biblical reference to this divine prosecutor appears in the book of job in the opening chapters of job god presides over some sort of divine court or divine counsel of heavenly beings a being called the satan or the accuser is present as well but as i said the satan here is not so much a name as it is a job title the accuser appears as a sort of legal adversary in a divine court notably the hebrew here refers to this satan as the satan with a direct object marker suggesting that this is a particular recurring character this divine adversary tries to find job guilty of willing to give up his faith and sin against god the satan also appears in the book of zechariah as a divine prosecutor accusing the high priest joshua of some sort of crime the angel of yahweh basically plays the role of the defendant's lawyer notice that neither of these references mirror later christian conceptions of satan the adversary or the accuser in job is not a prince of demons he is not a fallen angel nor is he an absolutely evil antagonist of god he actually seems to be part of god's divine counsel but it's significant that both of these mentions appear in literature composed during or after the babylonian exile for those of you that know your ancient israelite history the babylonians sacked jerusalem in 586 bce and carried into exile many of the elites from the kingdom of judah when the achaemenid persian empire defeated the babylonians the achaemenids allowed them to return to judea nothing before the babylonian exile comes close to the christian concept of satan no fallen angels that rules other fallen angels no specific enemy of god but scholars surmise that something must have happened during this period that sparked this conceptual evolution from lowercase s satan to the satan a specific recurring adversary and that something might have been zoroastrianism so for a period of two centuries from when the jews returned from the babylonian exile in 550 bce until alexander the great conquered the region in 323 bce judeans were under persian control in one form or another judea itself remained part of the achaemenid persian empire so scholars theorized that the exile judean elite must have come into contact with persian religious functionaries and develop new theologies in light of the new religious ideas that they were hearing from the persians specifically zoroastrian ideas zoroastrianism is a very ancient religion still practiced today that originated in ancient iran it teaches that the divine being ahura mazda is a perfectly good being locked in constant battle with a holy evil being named angra manu now there are a few problems trying to trace the influence of zoroastrianism and post-exile judaism scholars that are well-versed in both jewish apocalyptic texts and zoroastrian texts are vanishingly rare so there is not much research on this subject but generally speaking scholars of iranian religion like albert de jung argue that we do see clear evidence of zoroastrian influence in second temple period texts even though we should admit that this term influence here is simplistically covering up what was certainly an incredibly complex process of cultural exchange that took place over the course of centuries an obvious though superficial example of this influence is the demon osmodeus who appears in the book of tobit as a particularly wicked demon and the main antagonist to the story this name asmodeus seems to be etymologically linked to the zoroastrian being aish medeva a lieutenant of angra mainyu but we see more systematic influence in later jewish texts insofar as everybody seems to start theologizing about a cosmic struggle between good and evil specifically a struggle between a spiritual being of goodness versus a spiritual being of evil and texts that rhetorically link these beings to light and dark the clearest example of iranian influence appears in the dead sea scrolls these scrolls preserve a number of extra biblical texts that introduce a sort of two-spirits theology for example the text called the community rule one of the major texts in the dead sea scrolls corpus says that the god of israel created the spirits of light and darkness and founded every action upon them and established every deed upon their ways this angel of darkness is responsible for all evil and sin the community rule continues the angel of darkness leads all the children of righteousness astray all their sins iniquities wickedness and all their unlawful deeds are caused by his dominion the community rule and other dead sea scrolls refer to this malevolent spirit as belial an evil angel who leads an army of other evil angels so we're starting to see hints of our familiar character satan another text the war scroll describes a final battle between the sons of light and the sons of darkness the archangel michael leads the sons of light while the malevolent angel belial leads the sons of darkness so many scholars see this balance of light and dark michael and belial good and evil as clear evidence of zoroastrian influence among some jewish sectarian groups during the second temple period now some scholars go even further and specifically link these ideas to a zoroastrian sect called the zervanites who believed among other things that the two spirits ahara mazda and anger minou were children of a supreme entity or prime mover called zervan since the dead sea scrolls apparently believed that the god of israel still presided over these two spirits of light and dark but the dead sea scrolls are not alone in even earlier apocalyptic texts the concept of a singularly evil angelic character starts to come into focus especially in the text first enoch first enoch is a big expansion of a story in genesis chapter 6 about angelic beings called the children of god seducing human women who then give birth to the nephilim which may come from the hebrew verbal root to fall these were devious angels who taught humans all sorts of evil things like magic astrology and war the book of enoch has various names for a bad guy in chief leading these angels but it's not satan or belial the chief bad guy in the earliest section of enoch called the book of the watchers is confusingly called shemihanza or acael chamihaza is opposed by the archangel michael osiel is opposed by the archangel raphael but in another section the four archangels seem to associate shamihaza with aseal and suggest that god has given him authority in another section of first enoch the so-called dream vision the angels appear as stars and asael is the first to fall so here we're seeing the idea of evil angels literally falling from the heavens the word satan does appear in first enoch but it does not seem to be a specific name one section uses the word satans as a classification of fallen angel enoch says that he heard the voice of an archangel driving away the satans other verses use the word satan as a singular proper noun but scala's debate whether we should simply translate this as the adversary and not as a specific name this seems to be the case in the book of jubilees which is another apocalyptic text that expands on the book of genesis jubilees introduces the character masterma who is cast as the leader of demons and who is referred to as the satan though again there this is more of a title and not so much a proper name and seems to be closer to the character of the satan and job as a tester or accuser so to summarize an evil leader of fallen angels or evil spirits in general becomes a recurring character in second temple apocalyptic texts shemi haza aseal belial mastama the satan and it's out of this cultural context that the early jesus movement emerged so let's turn now through the new testament unlike the dead sea scrolls the name belial is rare in the new testament the apostle paul mentions belial to refer to the evil antithesis to christ but generally speaking the new testament refers to the chief adversary of god by the word satan or by the greek word diablos which is a direct translation of the hebrew word satan and also the origin of english words diabolic and devil satan in the new testament continues in his role as a prosecutor or tester of some sort so for example when he tests jesus in the desert but he also tempts people to sin like when he tempts judas iscaria to betray jesus other early christians also apparently attributed to satan the power to cause illness and death and he is often referred to as the archon or ruler of the demons but as we've seen from throughout this video all of these attributions derive not from the hebrew bible but from the same theological streams of thought that we see in first enochs asael the dead sea scrolls belial and the book of jubilees mastama historically christians interpret stories in the hebrew bible through the lens of this new testament version of satan like the idea that the snake that tempted adam and eve in the garden of eden must be satan or that an oracle condemning the babylonian king in the book of isaiah refers to the origins of satan himself the prophet laments how you are fallen from heaven o daystar son of dawn this word daystar or morningstar which is a reference to the planet venus was translated as the word lucifer in the latin vulgate translations of the bible and it became a name for satan but the prophet here is referring to an earthly ruler my aim in this video was not to debunk christian theology my aim in this video was instead to challenge us to think historically i was a history major back in college before my foray into religious studies and i was taught the five c's of historical thinking a method for how we as students of history should approach events concepts or people in the past the five c's are change over time context causality complexity and contingency change over time is not complicated it's a reminder that even if a name like satan appears in a sixth century text like job and a first century ce document like the gospel of matthew we should check ourselves remind ourselves that things change over time the concept of satan in these two documents are separated by half a millennium and almost certainly changed during those two time periods the second c is context which reminds us that concepts like satan evolved within an interrelated network of societal cultural and political influences in the case of satan he seems to have evolved in the context of the achaemenid persian empire and later the hellenized empire of alexander the great so we should look to the conditions of these two historical and cultural contexts when analyzing satan then we have causality and complexity figuring out causality is difficult because as the historians thomas andrews and flannery burke write scientists can repeat experiments again and again to figure out cause and effect but for historians the past has already happened we can't really repeat our experiments to figure out what caused what effect we can argue that zoroastrianism influenced the evolution of satan but we can't really pin down the precise cause and effect who was the first zoroastrian priest to sit down with an exiled israelite and debate about the nature of good and evil we don't have access to that sort of data so in order to figure out causality we need to rely on logic and probability rooted in the study of primary source documents but then there is complexity complexity is a reminder that everything has multiple factors it would be way too simplistic to say zoroastrianism caused the concept of satan because reality is always messier and more complicated than that and finally contingency probably the most difficult concept in the 5c framework to argue that history is contingent is to claim that every historical outcome depends upon a number of prior conditions this is a reminder that everything is connected the babylonians conquered the kingdom of judah then they carried them into exile then the achaemenids conquered the babylonians and then they allowed the judeans to return it is a string of contingent events stemming from prior conditions and changing any one of those prior conditions might have led to a completely different future contingency is a corrective for the historical fallacy of teleology the notion that history is headed toward a predetermined destination it was very in vogue in the early 20th century for historians to write teleological histories of christianity that the modern brand of christianity that we know was destined to prevail as a new religion over the old paganism of the roman empire when in reality if we were to change one condition or another in this string of contingent events maybe a completely different sect of christianity would have prevailed like the sect of christianity that interpreted the snake in the garden of eden as the good guy so when we approach any concept in any religion remember to apply the 5c framework to help us think historically about religion thanks again to nordvpn for supporting this episode if you'd like to protect your data from other malevolent entities then nordvpn is a great tool a vpn or a virtual private network is a service that protects 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Channel: ReligionForBreakfast

Views: 2,792,462

Keywords: Satan, who is Satan, origins of Satan, Belial, Beelzebub, 1 Enoch, Book of Enoch, Dead Sea Scrolls, Job, The Satan, The adversary, ha-satan, ha satan, History of Satan

Id: 5sYhbtk8jJc

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021