Thanks to modern media, our idea of "Satan" and "Lucifer" are one and the same. But there's a big difference between the two... and the devil's in the details.
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00:00Thanks to modern media, our idea of Satan and Lucifer are one and the same, but there's
00:05a big difference between the two, and the devils in the details.
00:09In the popular imagination, the devil is all over the Old Testament. Most infamously, he
00:13tempts Adam and Eve to sin through the snake in the Garden of Eden, and he challenges the
00:17Lord in the Book of Job. But, in fact, there is no devil or any devil-like thing in the
00:22Old Testament. The word Satan appears throughout the books in the original Hebrew, but it's
00:26a title, not a name.
00:28The title Satan translates from Hebrew as adversary or accuser. The term hasatan is
00:33used to describe several figures in the Old Testament. It literally means the adversary.
00:39Hasatan is how the angel of the Lord that appears before Balaam in Numbers 22 is described.
00:43The Satan of Job is an accuser, an angel who chastises man before God and presents tests
00:48in accordance with God's expressed wishes. Zechariah 3 sees the Lord rebuking Satan before
00:53the high priest Joshua in Zechariah's visions. But even here, hasatan is used, implying that
00:59it is yet another adversary playing a prosecutorial role.
01:03These adversarial Satans worked on God's behalf, not against him. Within Judaism, the idea
01:08of the devil as the great evil of creation was developed in the Talmud and the tradition
01:12of Kabbalah. This Satan as we commonly think of him appears in the Talmud, though he's
01:17sometimes conflated with other supernatural figures. And the Kabbalistic texts describe
01:21the demon realm and the magical means to fight its denizens. These writings brought
01:25the Jewish conception of the devil closer to the Christian image.
01:29There's a common interpretation that the first and last books of the Bible are connected
01:33by the representation of the devil. The snake who tempts Eve with a forbidden fruit is seen
01:37as Satan come among the innocent in the Garden of Eden, and the seven-headed red dragon of
01:41Revelation 12 is a representation of the devil in a vision. But the snake is never actually
01:46called the devil, Satan, Lucifer, or anything close to that. It's just the serpent, albeit
01:52a talking one, and it's punished for its part in man's downfall by the loss of its legs.
01:57Oh, that went down like a lead balloon.
02:04The notion of a malevolent evil being in opposition to God wasn't yet part of the Abrahamic tradition
02:09when Genesis was written. That came in later centuries, with the rise of Jewish apocalyptic
02:14literature that carried into the early Christian period. As the idea of a cosmic struggle for
02:18good and evil took root, Genesis was reinterpreted in that light, though the serpent may not
02:23have been read as the devil for some time after the books of the New Testament were
02:27written.
02:28Revelation never ties its many-headed dragon with the serpent of Genesis. Other serpents
02:32and dragons mentioned in the Bible, such as the Leviathan of Isaiah, represent human enemies
02:36of Israel rather than supernatural ones, and fit comfortably in the family of climactic
02:41battles that paint one side as a dragon or serpent. Revelation would fit into this family,
02:46too. But the silver-tongued tempter of the Garden of Eden stands apart.
02:50The devil is often described as a fallen angel cast out from heaven for rebellion against
02:55God. As evidence for this interpretation of the devil, some Christians point to two books
02:59of the Old Testament, Isaiah and Ezekiel. Satan doesn't appear in either book as such,
03:04both are prophetical works concerned with threats to the kingdom of Judea. But Isaiah
03:0814, 12-17, and Ezekiel 28, 14-18 are taken to describe the fall of Satan. The relevant
03:14passage in Isaiah begins,
03:16"'How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast
03:21out to the earth, you who once laid low the nations.'"
03:24While the passage in Ezekiel begins,
03:26"'You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were blameless
03:31in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.'"
03:34"'I am the first angel, loved once above all others. A perfect love.'"
03:40But neither passage is explicitly stated to be about the devil, and there's good reason
03:45to think neither is. Isaiah 14 was long thought to be about Satan, and is the biblical source
03:50for the name Lucifer, the Latin translation of the Hebrew hēlēl, or Shining One.
03:55But while the traditional interpretation remains, scholarship from the past 200 years has favored
03:59seeing Isaiah as a challenge to the king of Babylon and Babylonian exile. And Ezekiel
04:0428 likely refers to Epaul II, king of Tyre, though it's held to have a double meaning.
04:10So where did this whole fallen angel idea come from? Mainly, John Milton's 17th century
04:15work Paradise Lost. Milton likely used Isaiah and Ezekiel as his inspiration, but it was
04:20his epic poem that really put Satan in the mainstream.
04:23The temptation of Christ in the wilderness by Satan is relatively consistent across the
04:27Gospels. It is notable that Mark, probably the oldest of the four books, gives only a
04:32token mention of the incident. John, probably the last Gospel written, doesn't include the
04:36temptation at all. In between are Matthew and Luke, which are largely in agreement with
04:40what happened. The devil came to Jesus in the wilderness and offered three temptations,
04:45and each time was rebuked by Jesus with a quote from Scripture.
04:48Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
04:55Other than the order the temptations appear in, Matthew and Luke line up in their accounts
04:59of the temptation. But the temptation story, and the two books as wholes, were aimed at
05:03different audiences. Matthew was primarily aimed at Jewish readers, and the temptations
05:08and responses are ordered in a way that naturally works its way toward the central notion of
05:12the Old Testament — that there is only one Lord God. Luke was more for Gentiles, and
05:17the reordered temptations may reflect his focus on Jesus undoing the sins and temptations
05:21of all humanity. So, in a sense, it's the same Satan, but the audiences interpreted
05:25the passage very differently.
05:28There's a fundamental problem with the idea of the devil — that an all-powerful, all-loving
05:31God should allow such a malevolent being to exist, and that said being should be able
05:36to tempt and torment mankind at every turn. Does the very concept of the devil make sense
05:41then in the Bible? There is a school of thought within Judaism that regards the Christian
05:45idea of Satan as the great evil to be blasphemous. It must be, it is argued, because otherwise
05:50God's hand would not be behind all things good or bad. In other words, how can God allow
05:55a devil to exist?
05:57To answer the question, writers have gone through the Bible and reinterpreted many of
06:00the contentious passages, the view being that the devil is the great enemy of man, constantly
06:05tempting us, but still a created being who is defeated by the sacrifice of Jesus. They
06:10also lean into the view of Satan as a fallen angel, originally created good but rebellious
06:14through an act of free will. Why he's allowed to keep rebelling even after the crucifixion
06:18has been explained as a showcase for the glory of God, or something that is only temporary
06:23for earthly existence. Whether that's a satisfying answer is another matter. As Christians say,
06:28God works in mysterious ways.