Okay, I have searched for the answer to this question on several websites and I am sure it hasn’t been answered here so far.
On the websites I checked I have read several completely different points of view, but from what I understood, 2 things were always the same:
Satan was a rank, not a person.
Lucifer(latin) comes from Phosphorous(greek), and means the Light-bearer/Lightbringer
Now, what I did not understand was what the rank of Satan meant. Some websites claimed that he was completely evil(which is strange, considering its just a title. Maybe the “then current holder of the rank of Satan” was evil?) and an adversary of God, but was also called a messenger of God. I do not understand how one could possibly be a messenger and servant and still be an adversary. Could anyone tell me what exactly the rank of Satan meant? And just to make sure, was(or is) Satan the Devil?
About Lucifer. I read that he might be a mistranslation in the King James Version of the Bible which was supposed to mean Light-bearer, which was actually a reference to Jesus Christ. Both were called Light-bearer and Day-Star/Morning Star. It was also said that he was one of the cherubim, who was so perfect that God chose him to watch over his throne, but he fell from grace because of his vanity. Could someone maybe tell me who he really was, or if he was just a mistranslation? Some sites even claimed he was human.
Oh, and while I am asking about characters in the Bible anyway, who is or was the false prophet? (I have heard that name once in a while, but could not find him in the online version of the Bible I checked)
I admit that I only read the bible about 3 times and I don’t know which version I read. Most of the information here is from websites and books I have read on the topic, but because of the different points of view, I still don’t know which of them are true. It would be really nice if anyone could help me with this.
Ok, I am not an expert here but I’ll give you my 2cents.
God made Lucifer to be his adversary in the sense that it was lucifers job to see the other side of things. God has an idea and bounces it off Lucifer to hear what he thinks. one of the archaic definitions of satan was/is “adversary” iirc there is even a line in one of the old texts where God has to play the role of satan for some reason or another.
so its not really a title as much as a word that has changed meanings with the passage of time.
and you can forget about finding any info on this from any of the modern bibles in use, your gonna have to dig.
“Satan” is, more or less, Hebrew for “adversary.” First appearing as a stock character in Hebrew folk tales (rather like the wicked stepmother in German folktales), the adversary always provided a struggle for the protagonist. In religious tales, the adversary was an evil figure who either tempted or persecuted the righteous. In some of these stories, the adversary took on the name Satan, and was an evil spirit directly opposed to God. There’s not really very much of Satan in the Bible.
Lucifer is the latin translation of the Greek “heosphoros,” which is a translation of the Hebrew “heleyl,” which can be literally translated “shining one.” This phrase means, literally, the planet Venus when it appears as a morning star. It has absolutely nothing to do with Satan – or didn’t, until the authors of the King James Bible misunderstood St. Jerome’s poor translation of the Hebrew texts. Add that to the thoroughly nonsatanic context in Isaiah of the fall of a king of Babylon (named or called Heleyl), and you get the story of Satan=Lucifer=fallen angel.
However, even in Christian tradition, “Lucifer” is the high state from which the Devil has fallen, and (according to the Catholic Encyclopedia) not a given name at all.
“Satan” means “accuser”. Some people have written it as Satan-el which would mean “Accuser of God” or a position like a court prosecuter. Note that most of the other traditional Hebraic names for angels end in -el (“of God”) and are descriptive of Divine attributes (“Strength of God”, “Beauty of God”, “Medicine of God”, etc).
As far as I know, Satan was always considered to be an individual and not just a position. Not any more than any of the other named angels was just as position. Lucifer is not Satan, but rather a term used for the king of Babylon in the book of Isaiah.
What Satan’s old post may have been is a little unclear. Some sources say he is a fallen cherubim, but he’s also said to have been the highest of angels which is the choir of the seraphim. In either event, he turns against God at some point and over some issue which is never made clear and gets a third of the Host to join them. 2 against 1 odds aren’t very good though, and the remaining Host, led by Michael casts Satan out.
“Satan” means “adversary” as has been pointed out above. It did not always have the connotation of the Devil as we understand it today.
“Lucifer” as such, is not in the Bible. There is a reference to the “Morning Star” in Isaiah, and Revelation actually calls Jesus the “Morning Star.”
None of that story about Lucifer being cast out of heaven is from the Bible. There are some earlier Persian parallels, but that whole Beautiful-angel-that-wouldn’t-bow-to-man thing owes more to Milton’s Paradise Lost than anything else.
There is no one “False Prophet.” Jesus issued sort of a general warning to beware of false prophets but he did not specify any in particular.
In Judaic belief, Satan is not evil. He is a servant of G-d like all other angels (no Milton-esque “fall”), and his job is to act as the “prosecuting attorney” in the heavenly court - in other words, to prove that a person is not righteous. He performs this function by tempting people to sin. Giving into Satan’s temptations is evil, but Satan’s just doing his job.
The reference to the “Morning Star” in Isaiah, which is apparently the source for those who identify the name with Satan is actually, in Judaic belief, a reference to Nebucadnezzar.
There have been a number of false prophets in the Bible. They are most prominent in the book of Jeremiah, where they are constantly confounding Jeremiah’s attempts to admonish the people for their sins. (They pretty much tell the people that everything will be OK, and the people preferred to listen to them than to Jeremiah’s true prophecies of repent-or-suffer.) There is also an attempt to defame Nehemiah (in the book of that name) by accusing him of having hired people to prophesy falsely that he is to be named King of the Jews.
Or for a humorous look at Satan as a job description, read “For Love Of Evil” by Piers Anthony. Or better, read his whole “Incarnations of Immortality” series. Very fun read.
“The human who becomes the incarnation of evil, Satan, is troubled by the nature of good versus evil and decides to end it all in a death duel with God.”
A slightly off-topic question but appropriate to ask here: I’ve been reading Vertigo’s Lucifer where it’s mentioned that the angel’s pre-Fall name was Samael. Did the author of the comic book base that on any extant mythology, or just make it up? (His stuff usually has some basis in existing myth, is why I’m asking.)
I always liked Niel Gaiman’s version about Lucifer, although I don’t know where he got his mythology.
Simplistically (in this mythos), Lucifer was the Captain of the Host of Heaven, and led a rebellion against God in the Beginning and Fell when he failed and became the Devil in Hell.
I’d be interested where Gaiman got this version of the mythos of Satan/Lucifer, since he seems to do alot of research for his stories.
:Lucifer" means “light bearer”, and in Hebrew is (according to Robert Graves’ book Hebrew Myths) “Helel ben Shahar”, meaning “The Shining One the son of Dawn”. Now the Greek name Phaethon also means The Shining One, and he, too, as the son of Dawn. Since both stories are about ones who fell from Heaven, and probably because of obercofidence or pride, I strongly suspect they influenced each other, if not being the same story originally. (In other words, I suspect that the story of Lucifer was originally much more like the story of Phaethon than like the later Christian story of Satan’s fall).
The usual interpretation for both Phaethon and for Lucifer is that they represent Phosphoros, the Morning Star (Venus). I have proposed, however, that the myth of Phaethon was really inspired by the phenomenon of the Sundog. For full details, see the current issue of Weatherwise magazine, where you can find an article on this: http://www.weatherwise.org/tocs.html
The article is “Everey Dog has its day”, written under my real name Stephen R. Wilk
Well, Satan’s war against the Host in Heaven is pretty well documented in Revelation. Big multi-headed dragon, fights Michael and the angels, tail sweeps a third of the stars from the sky, etc and so forth. I don’t believe it explicitly states that Satan was ever a “good guy turned bad” or whatnot though.
That’s really from the Midrash. Remember, as myself and others have said, “Satan” in Hebrew isn’t a proper noun - it’s a job description. The Satan’s actual name is, in fact, (according to Jewish tradition) Samael.
Wow, thanks. I was actually familar with “Satan” as job title, but didn’t realize that the associated angel had a traditional name. If I might ask, if Satan-el means “accuser of G-d”, what does Samael mean, or is it the same?
I think it’s safe to say that about most of the Bible. Point being that when someone mentions the war in Heaven today, they can base it on something beyond comic book adaptions of Paradise Lost
If your point was that much of the Christian ‘beliefs’ on angels don’t agree with Jewish lore on angels, point taken and I’d have agreed with you regardless. If the question is whether or not the Bible says anything about Satan being cast down from heaven, indeed it does. Whether or not you want to believe it’s an actual description of actual celestial events or if it’s just an allegory for something else is up to you and your personal faith.
