Welcome back to The Moral Vision, a comprehensive and ongoing gospel-study. If this is your first time here, you might take a peek at the "Introduction" and move forward from there. The Introduction can be found here.
Last week, we began a multi-part study of the origins of the modern conception of The Devil by studying some demons and devils that pre-dated Judaism (or were at least as old.) This week, that study continues from where we left off, as we look at The Devil in The Old Testament. We've taken this course of study because our narrative in The Gospel According to Matthew has Jesus currently out in the desert being tempted by Satan.
Belief in Satan is widespread in the modern United States. Understanding of where the idea of Satan comes from is not. Over time, we can remedy this with study. Let's get to it.
Understanding the Origin of Modern Common Conceptions of The Devil in Christianity
Part II
Devils and Satan in The Old Testament
In Part I, we met some demons that all had motifs in common with the "Satan" modern Christians believe in today. This gave us some literary context for Christ's encounter with Satan in the desert. However, if we stopped there, our literary context would be woefully incomplete. Of course, the most important context for Jesus, always, is the ancient Jewish context, so we must now peer through the Holy Scriptures of Judaism -The Tanakh, or "Old Testament,"- in search of Satan.
Modern believers in Satan believe that his first appearance is in Genesis, tempting Eve in The Garden of Eden. In fact, Genesis only mentions a "snake" or a "serpent," depending upon the translation, and not a fallen angel named "Satan." This occurs in Chapter 3, when Eve is having a talk with a snake in The Garden of Eden.
From Genesis, Chapter 3:
1 Now the snake was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the LORD God had made. He asked the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?”
2 The woman answered the snake: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;
3 it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, or else you will die.’”
4 But the snake said to the woman: “You certainly will not die!
5 God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.”
The snake is referred to as one among the several animal species existing in The Garden of Eden. It is not described as being a fallen angel. It is not described as being a demon, or as being possessed by a demon or The Devil. The snake that tempts Eve in Genesis simply is not the modern capital-S Satan.
The serpent in Genesis is not associated with Satan anywhere in The Old Testament. In fact, it is not associated with Satan anywhere in The New Testament. The first time we see them associated is in writings from the second-century AD.
Satan, in Hebrew, means "adversary" or "accuser." The word does occur a handful of times in The Old Testament as translated in The New American Bible, but the word is never used as a proper name anywhere in said text. It always occurs with "the" or, less frequently, with "a" preceding it.
The word occurs most frequently, in The Old Testament, in the first two chapters of The Book of Job. There "the satan" is described as one of a kind of council of divine beings. In Job, Chapter 1, God prys at "the satan," unprovoked:
8 The Lord said to the satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him, blameless and upright, fearing God and avoiding evil.”
The satan suggests that Job is only blameless and upright because he has a big loving family and land and livestock and abundance. The satan suggests that if these things were taken from Job, Job would curse God. God tells the satan to go wreak havoc on Job's life, but that he may not touch Job. The satan kills and destroys all that Job has, and waits to see him curse God. Job does not curse God, and Chapter 1 ends. Chapter 2 is a repeat of Chapter 1, only this time, God allows the satan to touch Job's flesh. Job becomes afflicted with a skin condition that sounds just unbearable.
7 So the satan went forth from the presence of the LORD and struck Job with severe boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
8 He took a potsherd to scrape himself, as he sat among the ashes.
Let the imagery sit with you for a moment. Job, sitting in the very ashes of his life, scrapes at the boils on his skin with the sharp edge of a shard of pottery. Brutal, eh? Yet God allows it from "the satan," about whom The Book of Job offers no biography.
Past this point, some of Job's friends enter the scene as a kind of suicide watch. They have some lengthy dialogues with him about life and the nature of suffering in relation to an omnibenevolent God. Satan does not re-enter the scene. So, to reiterate, the book of the Tanakh which contains the word "satan" most frequently is Job, and in The Book of Job we are given zero biographical information about this "adversary."
First Chronicles offers us another use of "satan." In 1 Chronicles 21:1, where the text recounts part of the story of the reign of King David, we read the following:
1 A satan rose up against Israel, and he incited David to take a census of Israel.
2 David therefore said to Joab and to the other generals of the army, “Go, number the Israelites from Beer-sheba to Dan, and report back to me that I may know their number.”
3 But Joab replied: “May the LORD increase his people a hundredfold! My lord king, are not all of them my lord’s subjects? Why does my lord seek to do this thing? Why should he bring guilt upon Israel?”
Again, this is not Satan with a capital-S like modern Christians believe in. This is "a satan," which means "adversary" or "accuser."
Interestingly, the parallel King David narrative in Second Samuel 24:1 replaces the satan inciting David with God himself. How could the same character be God in one instance of scripture and, in another, a satan? See for yourself, as in 2 Samuel Chapter 24:
1 The LORD’s anger against Israel flared again, and he incited David against them: “Go, take a census of Israel and Judah.”
2 The king therefore said to Joab and the leaders of the army who were with him, “Tour all the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba and register the people, that I may know their number.”
There are two more possible references to check out. First of all, Zechariah 3:1 and 3:2, which read as follows in The New American Bible:
1 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, while the adversary stood at his right side to accuse him.
2 And the angel of the LORD said to the adversary, “May the LORD rebuke you, O adversary; may the LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?”
The word that was translated to "the adversary" here was, again, the Hebrew "satan." Not the capital-S Satan that modern Christians believe in. This "adversary" is a kind of faceless prosecutor in the court of God. Zechariah offers no biography for the entity, and no other reason for us to link this "adversary" entity with the capital-S Satan.
The last bit of the old scriptures we'll note here is Psalms 109, where "the accuser" again makes an appearance. (Note that the King James Version takes a liberty here and uses the capital-S "Satan," which probably helped the notoriety of the capital-S Satan, but was not true to the original scripture, which meant, again, "accuser.")
This is the pertinent text from Psalms 109 as it appears in the more linguistically accurate New American Bible:
6 Appoint an evil one over him,
an accuser to stand at his right hand,
7 That he may be judged and found guilty,
that his plea may be in vain.
It is amazing to see this fact laid bare before us: there is no capital-S "Satan" in the Jewish Holy Scriptures.
This fact, it stands to reason, would surprise a great many of Satan's fervent believers today. What may be more interesting is the sudden appearance of a capital-S Satan in The New Testament, which seems to come out of nowhere. Next time, in part three of our study, we will dispel the sense that Satan's appearance in The New Testament is "out of nowhere" by identifying the origins of the New Testament Satan in the intertestamental period.
Now, let's get back to our gospel.
Matthew 4:5 through Matthew 4:6
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple,
6 and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written:
‘He will command his angels concerning you’
and ‘with their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.’”
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Today, the devil tempts Jesus to try to kill himself with a fatal leap off of the high-spot of the Second Temple, because, he says, "if you are truly the Son of God, angels would catch you before you hit the ground."
Recall that Jesus has not said that he is the Son of God, to our knowledge. These words are being put into Jesus' mouth. Satan references Psalms 91 erroneously here, and will do the same again in Luke.
It is somewhat unclear why Jesus would find suicide tempting in that moment, or, more to the point, why Jesus would take the time and considerable risk to satisfy the whim of The Devil's curiosity. This interchange really only makes sense in the context of a Gospel designed as a marketing tool. The third character in this interchange is the reader, for whom the conversation is being had.
I'll remind you that we are not taking the temptation in the desert as historical, except to acknowledge that Jesus went to the desert for an ascetic period of fasting during which it is possible he experienced altered states of consciousness due to exposure and lack of calories and water.
Next time, we will hear Christ's retort to this preposterous dare.
We'll leave it here for today. Join us next time, and please share this writing.
Love.
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