Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name (it’s legion)
With the evil figure known generally as the Devil or the Evil One or the Adversary appearing in most religions, it’s not surprising that so many names are attributed to him. Originally identified as Lucifer, the morning star, brightest and best but also most forward and challenging of God’s angels, this name is still used to describe him, warped and contorted from its original meaning, which some people may not even know. Leading up to his Fall, he was called the Adversary, as neither the Persian nor the Hebrew writers seemed to have settled on an actual name for him. When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, around 287 - 247 BC, the Greek for the word Satan, “adversary” was
diabolus, meaning accuser or assailant, which in turn over time became Devil.
Belial was a name, as already mentioned, used in
The Secret Book of Enoch, and may have come from, or been translated to
Ba’al, the Hebrew word for lord.
Zebub means flies, and as flies were used for divining the future in Babylon,
Ba’al and
Zebub may have been joined, to make “lord of the flies”:
Beelzebub, another name for Satan that has survived down the ages. There are also names which some priests, monks, bishops and scholars have invented as names for the principle demon rulers of Hell, but many of which have been at one time or another ascribed to Satan, and have become linked with him to such an extent that they are more or less taken as being alternative names for him. Among these we have
Abaddon, the angel of the pit, the demon of despair;
Azazel, standard bearer of the armies of Hell;
Baphomet, who induces men and women to give in to their carnal desires, and who was said to have been worshipped by the Knights Templar (though this was probably just a trumped-up charge needed by King Philip in order to curb what he saw as the unacceptable power of this secret organisation);
Mephistopheles (sometimes shortened to
Mephisto), seems to have been invented by Goethe in
Faust; Behemoth, whom we’ve already mentioned;
Eurynmous, prince of death;
Mammon, god of avarice;
Moloch, a holdover from Babylonia; also
Nergal; Sammael, Angel of Death;
Ahriman, as we have seen, and many others.
New Devils for Old
Again perhaps surprisingly, given its heavy emphasis on revenge, punishment, violence and disasters such as the Great Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fall of Jericho and so on, the Devil does not really appear in the Old Testament much at all. He’s in Genesis as the serpent but that seems to be about it. It’s only when Jesus is born and reaches manhood that Satan puts in an appearance, as if he has been waiting for this messiah, this son of God who is going to take away the sins of the world and leave him and his cohorts out of work. So the New Testament is where Christians are really introduced to the idea of the Devil as a force in the world at large (beyond Eden, which has been left far behind) and warned about how he can corrupt men and steal souls, prevent God’s chosen getting to Heaven and basically balls the big guy’s plans up a treat.
When you’re living in a world where you’re constantly oppressed by, at a minimum, the Egyptians, Romans and Persians, it’s probably not hard to question your faith, and devout as they were, the Jews did not wish to blame God for their misfortunes (mostly, they would have seen them, probably, as trials, God testing their faith as he had Job), so the idea of an evil entity opposed to God came certainly appealed, and when they looked back to, as already mentioned, the writings of Zoroaster, there was a ready-made bad guy they could blame. So the idea of God and the Devil struggling eternally against each other, fighting over mortal souls became a running theme when the New Testament was written. Jesus casts out demons, denies Satan and even meets him in the desert. After his crucifixion and before his triumphant resurrection, he is said to have engaged in what the Bible calls “the Harrowing of Hell”, where he descended into Hell and organised a jailbreak for those souls there which he considered worthy of salvation. Finally, Satan is the “big boss” at the end of the Bible, when Revelations tell us of the coming confrontation between the forces of good and evil, Armageddon.
From the time of the New Testament - apocryphally after Jesus has lived and died - as Christians or readers of the Bible we’re constantly warned about the Devil, to be on the lookout for him, to be able to recognise him, to resist him and reject him.
'Be sober, be diligent; because your adversary, the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.' ( 1 Peter 5:8). St. Paul goes further:
'Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places' (Ephesians 6:12). As usual with many books, you have to wait till the end of the Bible for the good bits, when St. John in his
Apocalypse or
Revelations looks back to the story of the Fall from Zoroastrianism and the
Book of Enoch when he tells us
'And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world, he was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him.' (Revelation 12:9).
As ever, history (or in this case, doctrine) is written by the winners, so to speak, and it’s possibly unfair that we only have one side of the story. Of course, with all due respect to any practicing Christians reading this, I don’t personally believe this ever happened - if you do, that’s your business and I would never oppose your right to an opinion, especially on religious grounds - and am therefore treating this as mythology. But just to take off my atheist hat for a moment and assume it did, what is the only version we have of the story of Satan’s Fall? That of God, the victor in the Heavenly War, and his shall we say sycophants. We can’t of course ask Satan because (apart from the fact he doesn’t exist*) we’re told he’s the Father of Lies, so how could be trust anything he said? Also, the vanquished in any battle is bound to try to paint himself in the best light possible.
Nevertheless, you can construct a certain rationale for Satan’s rebellion, and perhaps expose the hypocrisy behind a supposedly all-forgiving God, in passages like
'How art thou fallen from Heaven, a Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, . . . for thou hast said in thine heart, "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God" (Isaiah 14:12-13), but it seems that if we are to really look into the story behind the Fall of Satan we need to check out this guy, an ancient theologian who lived in Alexandria, in Egypt, around the second century, and from whose writings most of of the idea behind this part of the Devil’s myth originates.
* As far as I'm concerned, that is.