Perhaps the best -- or worst -- example of the confusion to be
found in noncanonical as well as canonical lore is the case of
Satan.  The Old Testament speaks of an adversary, *ha-satan*.
It is a term that stood for an office; it did not denote the
name of an angel.  To the Jews of Biblical times the adversary
was neither evil nor fallen (the Old Testament knows nothing
of fallen angels), but a servant of God in good standing, a
great angel, perhaps the greatest.  However, he is nowhere
named.  In Job he presents himself before the Lord in the company
of other unnamed "sons of God."  There is no question of his
being evil or apostate. 

----------------------------------------------------------------

{NOTE: The hassidic rabbi Yaakov Yitzhak of Pzysha, known as the 
 holy Yehudi (d. 1814), makes this clear when he declared that 
 "the virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate."  See 
 Martin Buber, _Tales of the Hasidim_, _Later Masters_, p. 231.  
 The fact that the adversary challenges God or questions Him does 
 not, *ipso facto*, make the adversary evil or an opponent of God 
 -- just as, when Abraham and Job "put God to the question," they 
 were not, on that account, regarded as evil men, or even as 
 presumptuous men.  See Harry M. Olinsky's _Ancient Israel_, p. 30.}  

-----------------------------------------------------------------

			  The one instance where *ha-satan*
is given as *satan* without the definite article (I Chronicles 21),
is now generally conceded to be a scribal oversight.  In a word,
the Old Testament did not name its angels, except in Daniel, a 
late, postexilic book.  There only two angels are named: Michael
and Gabriel (names, by the way, that owe their origin to Babylonian-
Chaldean sources).  In the New Testament, on the contrary, Satan
is unequivocably a person, so named.  Here he is no longer the
obedient servant of God, the "prime in splendour," but the castout
opponent and enemy of God, the Prince of Evil, the Devil incarnate.

The transformation of *ha-satan* in the Old Testament into Satan
in the New, and the conflicting notions that arose as a consequence,
are pointed up by Bernard J. Bamberger in his _Fallen Angels_:

	The classic expositions of the Jewish faith have
	implicitly or explicitly rejected the belief in
	rebel angels and in a Devil who is God's enemy....
	The Hebrew Bible itself, correctly interpreted, 
	leaves no room for a belief in a world of evil
	powers arrayed against the goodness of God....
	Historical Christianity, on the other hand, has
	consistently affirmed the continuing conflict
	between God and Satan.

This continuing conflict between God and Satan, one might add,
is little more than a recrudescence, with modifications, of
the dualistic system that Christianity (along with Jewish
sectarians of the post-Biblical era) inherited from Zoroastrianism, 

Equally difficult to deal with was the question whether (and how
many) other spirits in the celestial hierarchy were good or evil,
fallen or still upright, dwellers of Heaven or Hell.  This was
a specially baffling problem and left me wandering about in a
perpetual cloud of unknowing.  A case in point: In *Enoch* I, 6,
Remiel is metamorphosed into "one of the seven holy ones whom
God set over those who rise."  In Revelation 9, Abadon/Apollyon
is the "angel of the bottomless pit," suggesting an evil spirit
in the sense of a destroyer; but in Revelation 20, Abadon/Apollyon
is manifestly good and holy, for here he is said to have "laid
hold on the dragon, that old serpent, who is the devil and Satan,
and bound him a thousand years" (in _The Greater Key of Solomon_
Abaddon is "a name for God that Moses invoked to bring down the
blighting rain over Egypt"!).  Vondel, the Dutch Shakespeare 
(1587-1678), tells us in his _Lucifer_ that Apollyon was known
in Heaven, before he joined Satan, as the hierarch "of the snowy
wings."  To Bunyan in _Pilgrim's Progress_ Apollyon is an out-and-
out devil, *the* devil, just as he is secular writings generally.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

{NOTE: In Jewish lore, abaddon is a place -- sheol, the pit, or
the grave; nowhere is it the name of an angel or demon.  The term
is personified for the first time in Revelation and appears as
Abaddon (cap A).  St. John makes Abaddon synonymous with Apollyon
and declares it to be the Greek form of the same angel.  The
Confraternity edition of the New Testament adds here 
(Apocalypse 9:11): "in Latin he has the name Exterminans."  On 
the other hand, _The Magus_, which offers a number of portraits
of the archfiends in color, splits Abaddon and Apollyon into two
separate and distinct "vessels of iniquity," showing Abaddon
with tawny hair and Roman nose, Apollyon with russet beard and
hooked beak.}

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Other examples, to cite a handful: Ariel, "earth's great Lord"
and an aide to Raphiel in the curing of disease, is at the same
time a rebel angel in charge of punishments in the lower world.
Kakabel, a high holy prince who exercises dominion over the
constellations, is in *Enoch* one of the apostates.  The angel
Usiel, Gabriel's lieutenant in the fighting on high, is 
designated a companion of the lustful luminaries who coupled
with mortal women; in Zoharic cabala he is the cortex (averse
demon) of Gog Sheklah, "disturber of all things."  Among the
rabbis the opinion is divided with regard to the 90,000 angels
of destruction.  Are they in the service of God or the Devil?
_Pirke Rabbi Eliezer_ inclines to the latter view.  In the
*Pirke* they are called "angels of Satan."

...

_Satan_ -- the Hebrew meaning of the word is "adversary."  In
Numbers 22:22 the angel of the Lord stands against Balaam
"for an adversary" (satan).  In other Old Testament books (Job,
I Chronicles, Psalms, Zechariah) the term likewise designates
an office; and the angel investing that office is not apostate
or fallen.  He becomes such starting in early New Testament
times and writings, when he emerges as Satan (capital S), the
prince of evil and enemy of God, and is characterized by such
titles as "prince of this world" (John 16:11) and "prince of
the power of air" (Ephesians 2:2).  When Peter was rebuked by
Jesus, he was called Satan (Luke 4:8).  Reading back into
Genesis, medieval writers like Peter Lombard (c. 1100-1160)
saw Satan in the guise of the serpent tempting Eve, although
other writers, like the 9th-century Bishop Agobard, held that
Satan tempted Eve *through* the serpent.  As Langton says in
_Satan, A Portrait_: 

	In the later Jewish literature, Satan and the
	serpent are either identified, or one is made
	the vehicle of the other.

Originally, Satan (as *ha-satan*) was a great angel, chief of
the seraphim, head of the order of virtues.  While seraphim
were usually pictured as 6-winged, Satan was shown as 12-winged.
Gregory the Great in his _Moralia_, after listing the 9 
hierarchic orders, pays this tribute to Satan:

	he wore all of them {all of the angels} as a
	garment, transcending all in glory and knowledge.

Talmud claims that Satan was created on the 6th day of Creation
(_Berashith Rabba_, 17).  Through a misreading of Isaiah 14:12,
he has been identified with Lucifer.  To Aquinas, Satan, as
"the first angel who sinned" is not a seraph but a cherub, the
argument being that "cherubim is {sic} derived from knowledge,
which is compatible with mortal sin; but seraphim is {sic}
derived from the heat of charity, which is incompatible with
mortal sin" (_Summa_ 1, 7th art., reply obj. 1).  In time,
according to Jerome, Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, Ambrosiaster,
and others, Satan will be reinstated in his "pristine splendor
and original rank."  This is also cabalistic doctrine.  In
secular lore, Satan figures in many works, notably Milton's
_Paradise Lost_, where he is chief of rebels and the "Arch
Angel ruin'd" (I, 593) and in _Paradise Regained_, where he is
the "Thief of Paradise" (IV, 604).  Also in Vondel's _Lucifer_;
in Dryden's _The State of Innocence_; and in Goethe's _Faust_
(where he is represented by Mephistopheles).  Other names for
Satan include Mastema, Beliar or Beliel, Duma, Gadreel, Azazel,
Sammael, angel of Edom.  In rabbinic lore he has a nickname
"the ugly one" (Ginzberg, _The Legends of the Jews_ V, 123). 
In _Midrash Tehillim_ Satan appears to David (when the latter
was out hunting) in the form of a gazelle.  Compare with
figure of Mutabilitie (as conceived by Spenser in "To Cantos 
of Mutabilitie" in _The Fairie Queene_, the Greek Titaness who
challenges Jove's sovereignty and who, like Satan, aspired to
and attempted "the empire of the Heaven's hight."
-------------------------------------------------

_A Dictionary of Angels Including the Fallen Angels_, by Gustav 
 Davidson, Free Press, 1967; pp. xv-xvii (intro.) and pp. 261-2.
________________________________________________________________

EOF