Whence the idea that Satan rules Hell?

We in Western culture are all familiar with the image of bad people going to Hell when they die, there to be eternally tormented by Satan and his minions. However, according to the Bible, Hell is a place created by God to punish Satan, along with his minions and bad people. It would seem difficult to describe Satan “ruling” Hell while he’s boiling in the lake of fire.

So where did this idea of Hell being a kingdom with the Devil on its throne come from? While the popular image fits with a dualistic mythology, it doesn’t match up with Biblical doctrine. Yet there are some who think that God’s in Heaven, Satan’s in Hell, and they’re engaged in a war as they attempt to tip the balance of good and evil on Earth.

Should I blame Machiavelli?

If there should be any blame other than the dualistic nature of many ancient religions, one could say that Zoroastrianism is to blame.

It’s easier to explain why bad things happen if you posit the existence of a strong force in the world actively working to promote evil. There are passages in the Bible (particularly Job’s persecution) from when Satan was a ‘prosecuting attorney’ that seem to support the idea that Satan is the chief instigator of that force.

It’s interesting to note how many depictions of Satan exist in our culture. Dante had him frozen in a lake of ice, his giant wings constantly beating but merely serving to keep his prison cold enough to contain him. At least he had a few snacks. Milton makes him an anarchist, or at least a rebel in the model of Washington and Thoreau. As Lucifer he’s a jilted lover who cannot accept that he’s no longer the center of God’s affections. In the story of Job he is a skeptic God is willing to listen to and humor, even if it means tormenting a loyal servant. In the modern folk mythology he ranges from being a sadistic and cynical tyrant looking to expand his power base to being the warden of a large and imaginatively-designed prison.

Dante. I meant to say Dante, not Machiavelli.

The bit re: Job is interesting. The way I’ve always heard it, and indeed the Bible seems to support the idea, is that Satan is actually living on Earth, not in some Hell somewhere. The book of Job describes Satan wandering to and fro across the Earth; the serpent lived in the Garden of Eden; Isaiah describes Lucifer falling from the sky to Earth (I’m speaking from the Christian perspective that Satan, the serpent, and Lucifer are all the same person). I don’t have the reference at hand, but Satan is called “the prince of this world” in there someplace. And yet, I even find the occasional Christian who believes that Satan rules Hell. “Shriek! Don’t listen to that band! They’re Satanic! Their music comes straight from Hell! Shriek!” (Hi Mom!)

Read “Origin of Satan” by Elaine Pagels. She answers you question in depth.

It’s rather that the Satan of Job is a completely different being that that of the NT. The Dualistic Satan of Christianity - the idea that any being, even an angel, is capable of threatening God - is contrary to Jewish theology. The OT Satan is a divine servent, just like every other angel, and his job is to challenge humanity, see if we’re functioning properly. God’s troubleshooter, if you will.

Since you’ve obviously read the book, why don’t you do us a favour and answer the question in brief?

An atrocious book.
I’ve often wondered if the Western concept of a devil talking in one ear and an angel talking into the other ear is a variation of the Islamic hadith of two angels behind us at all times, one recording good deeds and the one on the left side recording evil deeds.

If so then perhaps also the Islamic idea of Satan influenced Western culture. In Islam, Satan is Jinn, not angel, who refused to bow to Adam. God condems him but puts off the punishment when Satan says he will prove how unworthy man is.

Other hadith have:
Satan on a throne in the middle of the ocean. (Which corresponds to a biblical reference quoted in the book mentioned.)

It comes from the bible. Satan is referred to as having power, being a ruler, and having a kingdom more than once in the Bible. And im no historian either but i think the word Satan means that also.

It’s counter to Christian theology, too. Sure, Satan promises Jesus all sorts of things, but that doesn’t imply that he has the ability to keep those promises.

And the word “Satan” means “Adversary”.

Milton surely had a lot to do with cementing the idea into people’s minds, too.

I thought you might have meant Mani, who did a lot to bring Zoroastrian ideas about the conflicting powers of good and evil into Christianity.

Would you care to tell us why you think that? I have not read it, so I do not know, but Pagels is a very respected scholar.

The word Satan, in Hebrew, meant an adversary or opponent. The earliest reference using that word/name, is probably the Book of Job, (often held to be one of the oldest works in the bible), in which Satan is simply a member of God’s court, charged with testing humans for their fidelity to God. When God comments on Job’s blameless faith, Satan points out that since God has granted Job his every desire, Job has no reason to turn from God. God then grants Satan the power to remove all of Job’s family and possessions to see whether he will turn from God, which Job does not.

When the Septuagint, (the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible made in Egypt), was created between the third and second centuries B.C.E., the word satan was often translated to Greek as diabolus, or slanderer. I do not know what the beliefs of the Jewish diaspora in Egypt were that might have resulted in that translation.

In the various intertestamental works, (those Jewish and, later, early Christian writings), that influenced religious beliefs, but never made it into the scriptural canon of either the Jews or the Christians), the figure variously identified as Satan or the “diabolos” is depicted as a leader of rebelling angels who has his own powerful “kingdom” set up against God.
These intertestamental works provided much of the mythology that informed the early Christian comments about “the devil” (one translation of the Greek diabolos), hell, and related topics that are not found in either the Christian or Hebrew Scriptures. These works included several Books of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the Book of Jubilees, and others.
(Kanicbird’s claim about the sacrifice of Isaac comes from the Book of Jubilees, in which the demon Mastema, (meaning Hostility) plays the same role that Satan does in Job, persuading God to order the sacrifice as a test. In the Book of Jubilees, several acts from the Hebrew Scriptures in which God behaves violently are re-written to have Mastema either commit the act or persuade God to do so. While Mastema is a demon, (perhaps sired by a fallen angel on a human woman), he acts in accordance with God’s will in the way that Satan does throughout Hebrew Scripture. However, having taken the role of the “bad guy,” in later works his actions are attributed to evil.)

As Christian beliefs were written down and then expanded upon in commentaries, there was a certain amount of effort put into reconciling different passages and showing that separate metaphors referred to the same things. Following, not Hebrew Scriptures, but the intertestamental works, the letters of Paul refer to Satan on several occasions, not as God’s prosecutor, but as an enemy of God, and the 1st Letter of Peter refers to “the devil” (diabolos) in the same way. In Revelation, 12:9 and 20:2, the dragon is explicitly called the “devil” (diabolos) and Satan. Thus any references to anyone “testing,” serpentine, or deceitful were collected together to “mean” the same thing, thus bringing together the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the tester of Job, (since the Christians were using diabolos/slanderer from the Septuagint rather than Satan/opponent from the Hebrew Scriptures), the ruler of the fallen angels, and the ruler of Hell. Lucifer is simply the Latin word for “light bearer” and translates the phrase “son of the dawn” from Isaiah 14:12. When Christian writers began to collect all the various “bad” beings whom God would overthrow, Lucifer got picked up and tossed into the mix.

I haven’t read Dante and little of Milton. I have read the Screwtape Letters. I found it quite amusing and am afraid many things are that way, ‘‘important books’’, the influence of a Christian women, field workers contempt for academics, etc. I also remember the references to ''our Father below. Now in order to make his book work, C. S. Lewis may well have knowingly used common images of Satan rather than Biblically accurate ones.

I don’t remember extensive references in the Bible to either Satan or Hell. He clearly is about in the world, but with Hell being the underworld, it would also be his dominion. Hell is the city dump where trash is burned and not a pleasant place otherwise, but most important, cut off from God. As I age and fall into the hands of the medical profession more and more, I feel those that talk excessively about their body functions will get to spend eternity listening to others talk about their fat, old, dysfunctional bodies. I hope my reticence and faith allows me to go where I get a new body.

Just a heads-up - this thread is a zombie (I started it six years ago). I don’t think Will Repair is still around to respond to you (at least I don’t recall seeing the name any time recently).

Hmmm… Zombie Satan thread…

I’ll just put in a word for Wayne Barlowe’s Barlowe’s Inferno and God’s Demon, both heavily influenced by Dante’s vision of Hell. The first is a picture book, a travelogue of the underworld, while the second is a novel about a senior demon carrying out an insurrection against Satan in order to be restored to Heaven. They’re surprisingly spiritual, uplifting books, I thought.

“Hel” is the Norse land of the dead, located beneath the roots of the world tree, Yggdrasil. Some have portrayed it as a land of eternal cold. Our concept of Hell and Satan is multi-cultural, and not very biblical.

I think the Israelites picked up a lot of foreign ideas in Babylon.

Well, there is even a notion that Judaism only came to be during the Babylonian Captivity.

That said, however, while both Persia and Egypt were centers of Jewish theological scholarship for many years in ways that Judaea never was, that point still does not indicate why the word “adversary” would be translated as “slanderer.”
Mainstream Judaism, (probably sticking closer to the Hebrew version of Scripture), never lost the notion that Satan was God’s servant while Christianity, using the Septuagint, changed Satan into an enemy of God. The intertestamental works, (frequently called Apocrypha), arose from the Jewish community, although written in Greek, but following the Jewish Rebellion of 67 - 70 and the destruction of the Temple, Judaism became much more conservative and those Apocryphal works were never considered to be Scripture.
Unfortunately, that still leaves unexplained that particular translation choice.

There is no duality, it’s a different viewpoint of the same thing. It is like being in a oppressive country where everyone is taught to show love for the government leaders. The government controls the information and education and the people just don’t know how evil the government is - this is the satanic kingdom.

In the NT God through Jesus reveals just how evil Satan has been to them, how Satan twisted the story so that God gets the blame, and how the people don’t need to live under the rules and commandments that Satan is enforcing on the people. Satan is totally consistant, just that his kingdom is threatened by the truth of God that was revealed.

The New Testament is seen as a further revelation of God beyond the Old. Can’t say where, but doesn’t one of the Gospels have Jesus referring to Satan as the father of lies? Fits well with slanderer. The commandments single out false witnesses.