Who or what is Satan ?

nozzferrahhtoo

I know quite a lot about Judaism, relative to what I know about many other religions. It still does not address what I am saying because, as you said, the after life concept is not that important in many ways. As the old joke about the two Rabbis that sat up all night conclusing there was no god, even there being a god is often not that important to them

To repeat, I was solely talking about religions that currently have the heaven and hell concept heavily ingrained in them. And I find myself often wondering what THOSE religions would be like were the hell and Satan aspect suddenly removed. Would one, for example, get a few of the 33000+ Christian variants in the world who would happily go into a hut "10 commandments of God sect" style and joyfully off themselves and their children in order to get to this paradise after life sooner? One can but wonder really as it is an experiment I have not heard being run in real time.

One can certainly imagine, were one to let ones imagination run wild, the village witch doctor or seer or whoever selling the idea of a wonderful paradise of an after life and then suddenly thinking "Oh crap, loads of these people are offing themselves to get there.... I better now invent a further place people go to if they do that" and, for obvious reasons, that new meme getting Selected better than the original one.

I think we can safely say that the more divorced a world view is from reality......... and the lack of ANY substantiation from this theist cohort that ANY of this is true really does suggest such a divide from reality.............the more likely one is to observe unforseen consequences of perpetuating it en masse, and the more likely it is the people who came up with this crap are to find themselves having to modify it and invent further new layers of complexity to mediate for those consequences.

oldrnwisr

La Fenetre wrote: »

No you misunderstand my question, I know the etymology of the name Satan. I'm wondering where you got the idea that in the passage you quoted about Balaam, the use of the word adversary, must mean that it's actually referring to Satan as you claimed.

OK, I'll try to clarify for you.

It is important before we begin to separate the Old Testament idea of Satan from the New Testament view of Satan. To do this, just as in my last post I refer to the OT as satan and the NT one as Satan. This is because that the OT satan is a non-descript angel whereas the NT Satan is much more and is a much more fleshed out character and a specific entity.

The Satan that appears in the NT is not something that the writers of the various OT works in which satan is mentioned would recognise. The idea of a malevolent fallen angel, plotting his malicious schemes from the depths of hell with his army of demons like some comic book villain does not appear in the OT at all. So to answer your question concisely, no, the satan in Numbers does not refer to the same Satan that tempts Jesus in the NT, the one that Christians believe in. However it is the same satan who tests Job and Zechariah and influences David to take a census.

It's all quite complicated though really. You see in order to fully understand the references to satan in the OT you have to understand, among other things, the nuances of Hebrew, the social and political background of the Jewish people (particularly in the aftermath of the Babylonian captivity) and the difference between mythos and logos.

The word satan is used in the OT to refer to both human characters (e.g. 1 Kings 11:14, 1 Samuel 29:4) and angels. It is the angel references we will focus on here. There are four distinct references to an angel acting as a satan or adversary to a human character in the OT:

Job 1-2 (satan & Job)
Zechariah 3:1-2 (satan & Zechariah)
Numbers 22:22-33 (satan & Balaam)
1 Chronicles 21:1 (satan & David)

In all of these stories an angel of God acts as an adversary to a human character either with God's permission or under his direction. In two of these stories satan acts as a prosecuting attorney or Grand Inquisitor and is referred to in the story as ha-satan or the adversary. However, none of the stories are intended to be read as a literal interaction between an angel a human character.

In Job, God assembles his host of angels (referred to as ben elohim or sons of God) and tells them of Job who is a God-fearing man (not sure why God would want anyone to fear him). God then turns to satan and asks him "where have you come from." Satan replies that he has been "roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it." This is not an idle comment on the part of the writer but rather a play on the similarity between the satan and shût, the Hebrew word for roam. The intention of the author here is to portray satan as a wandering intelligence agent, something familiar to the Jews of the time as "the king's ear" (think Tyrion Lannister) an intelligence officer of the king who would roam the land looking for signs of disloyalty among the people.
The point of the Job narrative is to portray God as a beneficient but strict ruler, lavishly rewarding loyalty (giving Job twice as much as he had before when he passes the test) and punishing disloyalty. The satan character is just a plot device to make the message of the story familiar to the reader.

In Zechariah, Chapter 3 opens with this exchange:

"Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. 2 The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”

Again, here, we see satan portrayed as a prosecuting attorney and again being on the losing side. However, the political upheaval which was occurring at the time when this passage was written (c. 550-500 BCE) sheds some light on the passage above. In the wake of the Babylonian captivity thousands of Jews who had been captured returned to Palestine from exile. Many of these Jews were educated and some of them were, or at least had been, influential. However, they didn't exactly get a warm welcome. Those who had remained in Palestine were suspicious of the returnees and suspected them of trying to usurp power on behalf of the King of Persia. The passage above is to give voice to the disaffected and portray the returning Jews in a negative light by associating them with the same satan character employed in Job.

As time moves on the use of the satan character becomes an established character used as a metaphor for conflict or division. In 1 Chronicles, written almost 200 years after Job and Zechariah, it had become used to portray division in Israel. Around 1000 BCE, David ordered a census for the purposes of instituting taxation. This was a wildly unpopular move and sparked mass conflict in Israel. This is reflected in the story in the argument between David and Joab. However, since the story was written almost 650 years after the events in question, it is presented in a revisionist manner and the author of Chronicles lets David off the hook by portraying satan as the true influence behind the census.

Finally, in Numbers 22 satan acts as an adversary to Balaam, causing Balaam's donkey to swerve off the road in an attempt to dissuade Balaam from taking an unwise path.

In all of the stories above satan is an agent of God and although by some parties in the stories might be seen as malicious, he can't really be objectively viewed as such. However, the real aim of these stories is not to portray a literal fallen angel but rather to convey a deeper political, historical or theological message using an antagonistic character. The satan of the OT is much more like Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor to God's Jesus than say the NT version which is more like Satan as Wiley Coyote to Jesus' road runner.

ScumLord

So satan is a Christian misinterpretation of the Jewish religion, and the Jewish people probably stole the idea from the babylonians.

oldrnwisr

ScumLord wrote: »

So satan is a Christian misinterpretation of the Jewish religion, and the Jewish people probably stole the idea from the babylonians.

Something like that. The Jews themselves evolved the idea over time with a significant step change in the view of satan occurring during the intertestamental period. During this time the influence of Hellenistic thought on Judaism caused a revision in Jewish soteriological beliefs. The "death is the end" idea prevalent in the OT got iteratively reworked in books like The Book of Enoch and The Assumption of Moses until you ended up with the Christian view of the afterlife that exists today.
Given that the Abrahamic religions are syncretic at their core, the tendency was to try and incorporate these new beliefs into their ad-hoc theological framework. Just like in physics, the new information can either be rationalised into the existing framework or it breaks and a wildly different understanding emerges.

As for the Jews and the Babylonians, the Jews always had a tendency to rip off other cultures and denigrate them. This is why the Ugaritic deity Ba'al Zabul or Lord of the Heavens becomes Beelzebub or Lord of the Flies in Judaism.

La Fenetre

oldrnwisr wrote: »

OK, I'll try to clarify for you.[...]

Good job Jesus came along to correct many misconceptions the Jews had about the old testament.

robindch

Mod: La Fenetre - you may not be aware of it, but A+A is a discussion forum where people discuss things. A bit of back and forth. Mixed in with a bit of friendly banter. But at its core, a discussion.

Asking a question, then sticking your fingers into your ears when somebody takes the time to answer it properly it is not only unhelpful and anti-social, but is likely to earn you a card or a ban if you do it again.

oldrnwisr

La Fenetre wrote: »

Good job Jesus came along to correct many misconceptions the Jews had about the old testament.

What misconceptions? How exactly did Jesus correct any misconceptions of the Jews?

Bandana boy

The modern day Devil or Satan was a tool of the early Christian conquerors to supress other religions.

There is a great book by Peter Stanford which traces the history of the Devil his many incarnations and changes over time.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Devil-Biography-Peter-Stanford/dp/0099465566

Brindor

Apparently, Ha Satan itself literally means "The Accuser."
Maybe he should invest into a career in prosecution these days.

The Randy Riverbeast

La Fenetre wrote: »

Good job Jesus came along to correct many misconceptions the Jews had about the old testament.

Unfortunately he forgot to leave a note on which bits still apply and which don't. Currently the method of what suits sticks, what doesn't is gone is a bit confusing as nobody appears to agree on which is which.