Christian lore on Satan & demons & such is pretty well set in the popular mind-
Archangel Lucifer fell to become Satan, who then came as the Serpent to tempt our first parents. Lucifer’s fellow angelic rebels became the demons which can afflict & occasionally possess people.
However, Jewish lore is much more complex- there is ha’Satan, the Nakhash, the lilith, the shadim (goats/satyrs in KJV), Samael, the Watchers, the Nephilim, dybbuks, etc.
How are they all related? Does some Jewish lore include Heylel of Isaiah 14 & the “King of Tyre” in Ezekiel 28 as part of the diabolical entourage?
I read on one Orthodox site in which Satan was described almost as a robotic “tempting machine” designed to test humanity & will be deactivated in the Age-to-Come, but added cryptically, (paraphrase) “ha’Satan is not to be confused with the Nakhash (the Serpent) which had its own reasons for tempting Adam & Eve which will not be discussed here”. So what is the Nakhash? I recently found that the anti-Semitic “Identity” doctrine of the Serpent Seed actually had precedent in a Jewish (Talmudic or Zoharic perhaps?) legend that Eve bore Cain after being physically seduced by the Serpent. (Serpent-Seed Identity teachers usually consider the Serpent to be an evil pre-Adamic human of darker hue that they are.)
FriarTed:
That’s pretty much it. The angel Samael, who bears the title of “the Satan”, which in Hebrew means “the adversary” offers sinful temptations, and by doing so, acts in the role of “prosecutor” in the “Heavenly Court”.
My understanding about the snake has always been that the snake was Satan’s temporal-world vehicle for tempting Adam and Eve. I do not recall ever learning this mystical sense of “Ha-Nakhash” as a distinct entity, and certainly not that the snake was the father of Cain and Abel. In fact, Cain’s conception and birth is prefaced with the phrase “And Adam knew Eve his wife,” which would seem to be a clear indication that this is not the case.
That said, I am not knowledgeable in Kabbalah, so maybe this is some Kabbalistic concept I’m unfamiliar with.
Lilith and the shadim are destructive entities, but not particularly associated with the Satan. Satan might use them, as he does other agents of temptation, but they are not his underlings, as demons are to the Devil in Christian theology. Nephilim are completely unrelated - giants, the offspring of either angels (but not Samael) or extremely powerful human men by ordinary women, and dybbuks are unrelated as well…those are ghosts. And I’m not sure what you mean by “Watchers.” (The only Watchers I’m familiar with are the Marvel Comics characters)
All interpretations that I’ve seen of Ezekiel take the “King of Tyre” literally. Isaiah 14 is a poetic reference to Nebucadnezzar of Babylon.
Well, this isn’t exactly a mainstream Jewish site but it does give the cite for the Zoharic origin of the Serpent Seed teaching. The site seems to promote some kind of Gnostic Messianic Jewish mishmash which includes Jesus & Shabbatai Zevi in its mix.
http://www.donmeh-west.com/genseed.shtml
This site isn’t as thorough but it gives a Jewish rebuttal to the idea last Q on the page-
http://members.aol.com/LazerA/archive/esoterica.html
The Watchers I refer to are mentioned in the Book of Enoch- the fallen angels led by Semjaza who father the Nephilim. Sometimes they seem to be called Nephilim themselves.