From Elaine Pagels' "The Origin of Satan" -------------------------------------------- "In the Hebrew Bible, as in mainstream Judaism to this day, Satan never appears as Western Christendom has come to know him, as the leader of an "evil empire," an army of hostile spirits who make war on God and humankind alike. [NOTE: Many scholars have made this observation; for a recent discussion see Neil Forsyth, "The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 107: "In the collection of documents... known to Christians as the Old Testament, the word {Satan} never appears... as the of the adversary.... rather, when the satan appears in the Old Testament, he is a member of the heavenly court, albeit with unusual tasks." See also the article on *demon*, in "La Dictionnaire de Spiritualite 3 (Paris: Beauschesne, 1957), 142-6; H.A. Kelly, "Demonology and Diabolical Temptation," *Thought* 46 (1965): 165-70.] As he first appears in the Hebrew Bible, Satan is not necessarily evil, much less opposed to God. On the contrary, he appears in the book of Numbers and in Job as one of God's obedient servants -- a messenger, or *angel*, a word that translates the Hebrew term for messenger (*mal'ak*) into Greek (*angelos*). In Hebrew, the angels were often called "sons of God" (*bene 'elohim*), and were envisioned as the hierarchical ranks of a great army, or the staff of a royal court. In biblical sources the Hebrew term the *satan* describes an adversarial role. It is not the name of a particular character. Although Hebrew storytellers as early as the sixth century B.C.E. occasionally introduced a supernatural character whom they called the *satan*, what they meant was any one of the angels sent by God for the specific purpose of blocking or obstructing human activity. The root *stn* means "one who opposes, obstructs, or acts as adversary." (The Greek term *diabolos*, later translated "devil," literally means "one who throws something across one's path.") The *satan*'s presence in a story could help account for unexpected obstacles or reversals of fortune. Hebrew storytellers often attribute misfortunes to human sin. Some, however, also invoke this supernatural character, the *satan*, who, by God's own order or permission, blocks or opposes human plans and desires. But this messenger is not necessarily malevolent. God sens him, like the angel of death, to perform a specific task, although one that human beings may not appreciate; as the literary scholar Neil Forsyth says of the *satan*, "If the path is bad, an obstruction is good." Thus the *satan* may simply have been sent by the Lord to protect a person from worse harm. ... ...while Balaam's *satan* (Numbers 22:23-33) protects him from harm, Job's *satan* takes a more adversarial role. Here the Lord himself admits that the *satan* incited him to act *against* Job (2:3). ... Around the time Job was written (c. 550 B.C.E.), however, other biblical writers invoked the *satan* to account for division within Israel." ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Origin of Satan", by Elaine Pagels, Random House, 1995; pp. 39-41. ______________________________ EOF