Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 14: The Evil One

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

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The Evil One
Up to this point, every example of “Satan” I’ve given has not been an image of evil, but rather has been a servant of God playing the role of sifter, who seems to have become a bit overzealous in his rigid application of the law.  So how did the Accuser become associated with evil itself?

The answer is really quite simple, if you think about it.  Recall how in the Old Testament examples of Job and Zechariah, Satan filled a role similar to a District Attorney, a CIA agent, or a State Prosecutor.  And then recall the examples throughout history where men in similar positions have become overzealous and overstepped their bounds - Viola Liuzzo was gunned down during the Civil Rights movement by an FBI informant, the FBI tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. and had used illegal wiretaps to do so, anti-Vietnam-War groups were infiltrated by the FBI and incited into violence by them, J. Edgar Hoover kept blackmail files on presidents in order to secure his job, and we could go on and on about the dubious activities of groups like the FBI and CIA, which served this investigative/prosecuting function, as did the Accuser of Job who was modelled after the “King’s ear” functionaries of Persia.  Over and over again throughout history we see the trustworthy intelligence gatherer / prosecutor becoming overzealous and justifying the means through the end goal. 

You may have noticed that up to now, "the Satan" has also been inextricably linked with religion.  You might think of it like this - "the Accuser" functions very much like an auto-immune disease.  When the human body develops an auto-immune disease, the immune system becomes overactive and attacks the body itself - basically, the body is killing itself because it has become so worried about invasion of foreign substances that it attacks everything.  And as we've seen time and time again throughout history that overzealous religion often does the exact same thing.

That's right, kids - Satan loves Metal!

On a more personal note along these lines, one of the first reasons I began to question my culture was music.  I grew up in a culture that told me that music which was not “Christian” was evil.  Unless, of course, it was old (Classical and Jazz were ok, but once you started getting past the '60’s there was good and bad - anything past '75 was probably evil).  And I’ve often thought of how parents, who went through the same struggles to express themselves through their contemporary music without being hassled by the authorities go on to do the very same thing to their own children!  How is it that no generation ever seems to learn the lesson that constraining their children in this way only encourages them to break out from under their authorities more?!  When authority becomes overbearing, the result is the opposite of what is desired!

The Cultural Influences
Another key to understanding how Satan became evil is to understand Israel’s neighbors - the cultures that surrounded the Jews and influenced their thinking.  When you trace the history of conquering cultures, one of the interesting things you will find is that often, the gods of the conquered would start to be incorporated into the religions of the conquerors - at first, as lesser gods.  But if the conquered people were not subservient, these gods would start to become evil within the lore - one culture's gods became the conquering culture's demons!  It's almost a way of subversively striking out at the culture you despise through coded message.  And if you’ve been wondering how Satan’s imagery developed - even though there are absolutely no physical descriptions of this character within the Bible - you can see how this plays out.  Satan’s appearance seems to be a mish-mash of characteristics from the gods of other, rival cultures.  We’ve already explored how the Zoroastrian concepts of Angra Mainyu contributed, but one can also find similarities to the following:

• Humbaba - a Mesopotamian god from the Epic of Gilgamesh, who is described as a giant monster
• Mot - Canaanite demon and god of the underworld
• Habayu - Canaanite god who has horns and a tail, and is associated with the cult of the dead
• Set - an Egyptian god, the demon of death and evil as well as disorder, violence and foreigners; his physical description includes dark red skin and a forked tongue or tail
• Hades - Greek god of the underworld who possesses a helmet that makes him invisible, so that he can lurk about unseen (see 1 Pet. 5:8)

Not Satan - Pan

And when you examine pretty much any underworld god, you will find similarities to the descriptions people have used for Satan.  One of the stranger examples of this phenomenon of stealing characteristics from other gods is Pan - Pan was not an underworld god, but rather a god of nature.  And yet, Satan seems to have inherited his cloven hooves, goat legs, and horns, as well as his mischievous nature, perhaps.

Additionally, Miguel De La Torre and Albert Hernandez write in "The Quest for the Historical Satan" of how one of the names of Satan, Beelzebug, "is believed by scholars to be a corruption of the name Baal Zebul, or literally "lord of the flies," who was believed to cause or cure illnesses across ancient Mesopotamia (note that the Hebrew Bible recounts the story of King Ahaziah of Israel who attempts to consult the oracles of the god Baal Zebub from the city of Ekron: 2 Kgs 1:2). In short, early Christians regarded all other gods as being in fact demons in league with the prince of lies, Satan."

Paul Carus writes in "The History of the Devil" of how using Satan to explain away similarities between Christianity and other religions actually masked the history of our religion:

The early Christians belonged exclusively to the lower walks of life, and the earliest Church authorities, with few exceptions, were by no means cultured or highly educated persons. Some Christian writers were quite talented men; but few of the Church fathers can be said to have enjoyed more than a mediocre education. Platonic philosophy, for instance, did not enter into Christian minds directly, but only through the channels of Philo’s books. Thus it is natural that Christians were lacking both in knowledge as to the origin of many of their rites and also in critique, and when they were confronted with the same practices and conceptions among non-Christians, they were puzzled and found no other explanation for such remarkable coincidences, than the guiles of Satan. Even the most peculiarly Christian sacrament, the Lord’s Supper, was, according to the testimony of Justin Martyr, celebrated by the Persians in the same way as by the Christians; and Justin is ingenuous enough to attribute this coincidence without the slightest hesitation to the influence of evil spirits. Tertullian is also aware of many similarities between Church institutions and the pagan modes of Mithras worship, which observation prompted him to declare that “Satan imitates the sacraments of God.” The Devil appears to have been very cunning in those days, for if he had not daring spies in heaven, he must himself have anticipated the Lord’s plans; for the pagan institutions spoken of as Satanic imitations, such as the Persian haoma sacrifice, the eating of consecrated cakes in commemoration of the dead for the sake of obtaining life immortal are older than Christianity.

The Chaos Monsters
Of particular importance is the idea of the “Chaos Monster” which plays out in many of Israel’s surrounding cultures.  And even the idea of Satan’s physical appearance being a mish-mash of characteristics of other gods plays into this concept, as the gods of chaos were always a mixtures of parts from animals and possibly human parts whom spread chaos and destruction wherever they went. 
 

Leviathan

And an observant reader can find traces of the Chaos Monsters all throughout the Bible.  Job mentions sea monsters (Job 7:12), Leviathan (Job 3:8 and 41:1-34), and even turns Rahab into a chaotic goddess of the sea (see Job 26:12-13).  In addition to these appearances in Job, these creatures make appearances in the Psalms as well - sea monsters and Leviathan show up in Psalm 74:13-14, and Psalm 89:9-10 also depicts Rahab as a chaotic goddess of the sea.  In the prophets, Isaiah 27:1 depicts Leviathan as a serpent/sea dragon, Isaiah 30:7 seems to use Rahab as a representation for the nation of Egypt, in Isaiah 51:9-10 it seems that Rahab may be a dragon as well, and in Ezekiel 29:3-5 it is the Pharaoh of Egypt who is pictured as a monster within the rivers.

The Old Testament scriptures do not seem to have a problem with utilizing the gods of surrounding nations and depicting them as enemies to Yahweh either.  The Psalmist writes (Psalm 82:1-8) “You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High.  Nevertheless you will die like men and fall like any one of the princes.”  The ancient Jews would also depict the gods as a council with Yahweh as the Most High (see Exodus 15:11, Psalm 89:5-10, Psalm 95:3, and Isaiah 24:21).  Even in Genesis, we find the ancient myth of the Nephilim, who were half-god half-man (see Genesis 6:1-4).

The interesting factor in this study is that prior to this point, we have mostly examined cases where Satan was an overzealous authority figure who applied the law with a rigid inflexibility.  But with the information that he is also an agent of chaos, it seems that the voice of the Accuser may speak the loudest at the extremes of both ends of the spectrum - chaotic lawlessness, and rigid, inflexible authority.  The Accuser can be both a voice of those who benefit from the application of the law as well as a voice of those who have been harmed by its application.

In “The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots”, authors T.J. Mobley and Gregory Wray write, in regards to the chaos theme and Satan:

This is Satan at his most attractive, because sometimes chaos works like a balm on chafed wrists bound by the laws and customs of community and order.
It is Satan as chaos monster that appeals to alienated groups who adopt satanic imagery. Bikers, Goths, heavy metalists: for them satanic emblems function as markers of contrariness, emblems of anarchy, and of their identity as agents of chaos. This may also be the stylish Satan of the Romantic poets and artists of the late eighteenth century, who saw the Devil as a champion of political and artistic freedom, a figure who reappears two centuries later as Mick Jagger’s “man of wealth and taste.”

The irony is that the Satan championed by the counter-culture is only powerful when he is juxtaposed with religious orthodoxy and mainstream values. The occult needs a (mainstream) cult, the magus needs the priest. The grimoires of Neo-Pagans are dangerous and fashionable only if they are opposed by the grammars of traditional faith. Every diabolic symbol is a twisted version, the evil twin, of some orthodox sibling. The pentagram is a reorientation of the Star of David, 666 is an unstable derivative of 777, the Satanic Black Mass is a Eucharist without the poetic transubstantiation of symbolism (actual blood instead of wine, sexual intercourse instead of spiritual communion).  To this extent, then, the faithful should take heart. The Satanists need them just as much as the traditionally religious need their Devil.

We are going to take another break at this point, and in my next post, we will examine how the gods became angels and demons.

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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?