Satan

["o,o"]

Thanks so this satan'el is different from Satan (the one in the ot?)?

There are different variations, satariel (1 Enoch / Ethiopic Enoch, sataniel (2 Enoch / Slavonic Enoch), and satanel. The connection between this name and The Satan (Ha-shatan) of the Hebrew scriptures is unclear. This name is but one of many of the leaders of angels mentioned who rebelled against God.

Book of Enoch, Chapter VI

And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.' And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And these are the names of their leaders: Sêmîazâz, their leader, Arâkîba, Râmêêl, Kôkabîêl, Tâmîêl, Râmîêl, Dânêl, Êzêqêêl, Barâqîjâl, Asâêl, Armârôs, Batârêl, Anânêl, Zaqîêl, Samsâpêêl, Satarêl, Tûrêl, Jômjâêl, Sariêl. These are their chiefs of tens.

Slavonic Enoch Chapter 31:8-10

The devil is the evil spirit of the lower places, as a fugitive he made Sotona (9) from the heavens as his name was Satanail, thus he became different from the angels, but his nature did not change his intelligence as far as his understanding of righteous and sinful things.

There are other variations on the story. Whether the author meant the reader to associate Saterel with Satan is not at all clear. In both of these Books of Enoch these

Remember, Jesus himself also talked about Satan "I saw satan fall like lightning out of heaven", not Satan'el.

Yes, which means that Satan was in heaven, where he appears in both Job and Zachariah. Jesus sees Satan descend to Earth, not hell. The Satan of the Christian Gospels is God's special agent on Earth, as he is in the Hebrew scriptures. He goes back and forth between heaven and earth to report to God on what he sees and obtain permission from God to test different human beings. This Satan is not a rebellious angel at all but a special heavenly being who uses evil to test human beings, as in Job.

It was only later that the rebellious Satanel of Enoch replaced the obedient Satan of the Bible in the mind of Christians.

The OT does make him look like an agent, but the NT makes look like the main enemy.

I would have to disagree with your summary. The Christian scriptures likewise portray Satan as God's evaluator of human beings. Consider the Lord's Prayer. God is asked not to lead us into temptation. This would suggest it is God who leads us into temptation, which would be the task of Satan.

I would also suggest that Paul reports a similar vision of how God works through Satan. In Second Corinthians Paul tells of Paul receiving great visions from God but that God does not wish Paul to get too self-important.

2 Cr 12:7

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

So I would say that it was God who sent the visions to Paul and God who sent Satan to torment Paul to balance out the two.

What about his other popular believed name, Lucifer? Is Lucifer/Satan the enemy of man and God? Is this OT-Satan/Lucifer the same NT -Satan/Lucifer?

I would only note that the Hebrew word in question from Isaiah is "heylel", which means more ore less "shiner" which refers to the morning star, that is to say, the planet venus. Lucifer is just the Latin word for the morning star.

Vulgate

"quomodo cecidisti de caelo lucifer qui mane oriebaris corruisti in terram qui vulnerabas gentes"

I understand that in Job, satan is more like an agent or some kind of lawyer like entity.. however, i've always viewed the book of Job to be literature, just a story with a purpose of teaching a moral and Godly message. Not a literate book of divine things about God.

I will say that the same image of Satan as an investigator and prosecutor also occurs in Zachariah 3. I would point out that the name Satan only occurs infrequently in the BIble, especially in the Hebrew scriptures. Should you search out Satan's name you would find that outside of Zachariah and Job, his name rarely occurs. It is our only source of information on Satan.

Similarly, in the Greek Scriptures, Satan is one of God's agents. In Luke Satan asks permission from God to "sift" Peter but Jesus intervenes with God to guarantee that Peter would pass Satan's testing...

Luke 22:31-32

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat.
But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

I would suggest that this passage would not make very much sense with out Satan being obedient to God.

Would the snake be a literal snake to most of you or just another figurative symbol?

The verse calls the snake a "beast of the field" and the snake's punishment is to be crawl about on his stomach, a punishment fit for a snake.

I'm certain that Adam (the man) was not a literate individual but just a name to represent the many male people God created.

[RBerman]

It says he is dead and miserable, it could be taken as a metaphor or literally, on its own. It is real similar to Jonah's experience in the fish.

Jonah did indeed have a miserable experience in the fish. He didn't die, though.

I'm not Catholic or anything, never believed in Purgatory until recent years, when I decided that Jesus comparing his days in the grave to Jonah being conscious and repenting in the fish was an affirmation of Purgatory.

I don't understand what you mean. Jesus went to Purgatory? I didn't think even Roman Catholics thought that.

["o,o"]

Hello,

I'm certain that Adam (the man) was not a literate individual but just a name to represent the many male people God created.

I cannot say that I agree completely. There are other Hebrew words that could have made the same point. For example, "zakar" means male or there is also 'iysh which mean man or husband (as in Iysh-bosheth or Ish-baal). However the word "adam" was used. I think, in part, at least for Genesis 2, to make a word play. In Genesis 2:7 it tells us that Adam was made from the dust (afar) of the earth / ground (adamah). So in this story Adam comes from Adamah (which is a female noun and sounds like the female cognate of Adam along the same lines as Robert and Roberta).

[John Goddard]

Jonah did indeed have a miserable experience in the fish. He didn't die, though.

I know, but it seems unlikely to me that Jesus would compare his three days in the grave to Jonah's conscious experience in the fish if there was no consciousness in death. Jonah wasn't sleeping.

I don't understand what you mean. Jesus went to Purgatory? I didn't think even Roman Catholics thought that.

I think it is Paradise for saints, Purgatory for sinners, like Lazarus and the rich man, conscious.

[RBerman]

I know, but it seems unlikely to me that Jesus would compare his three days in the grave to Jonah's conscious experience in the fish if there was no consciousness in death. Jonah wasn't sleeping.

I agree that there is consciousness in death. I don't believe in psychopannia, or soul-sleep. The parable of Lazarus and the rich man describes the post-death experience in terms of consciousness. Peter says in Acts 2 that the post-death experience for Jesus was agony.

I think it is Paradise for saints, Purgatory for sinners, like Lazarus and the rich man, conscious.

If there is a purgatory, it's conscious. If. But it seems to me that the RCC doctrine of purgatory is linked in fatal ways to the lie of supererogation, for the purpose of cowing the populace by the church's ability to dispense or withhold indulgences.

[TheMan]

They are the same, and God can use absoutely anything as his agent, including the wicked men who murdered his son (Acts 2:23). So "Satan was used by God" and "Satan is the enemy of man and God" are not mutually exclusive ideas.

Sorry, i'm a bit confused. Is satan evil or just an agent (meaning good)?

I would encourage you to rethink the nature of Scripture. The New Testament does not treat the Old Testament as just a collection of moral myths, and neither should we. Do you think the story of Jesus' resurrection is just a "moral and Godly message" too?

I do, but i don't think the NT makes any claims for some stuff in the OT to be literately true. For example with Adam again. Adam looks more like a representation of many men, not actually a name of 1 man, because then in the story of Cain (son of Adam and Eve, Cain later marries somebody. Who can that be, his sister?

[John Goddard]

I agree that there is consciousness in death. I don't believe in psychopannia, or soul-sleep. The parable of Lazarus and the rich man describes the post-death experience in terms of consciousness. Peter says in Acts 2 that the post-death experience for Jesus was agony.

If there is a purgatory, it's conscious. If. But it seems to me that the RCC doctrine of purgatory is linked in fatal ways to the lie of supererogation, for the purpose of cowing the populace by the church's ability to dispense or withhold indulgences.

Yeah I'm thinking more Jewish Gehenna than RCC Purgatory, I guess.

[TheMan]

Hello,



I cannot say that I agree completely. There are other Hebrew words that could have made the same point. For example, "zakar" means male or there is also 'iysh which mean man or husband (as in Iysh-bosheth or Ish-baal). However the word "adam" was used. I think, in part, at least for Genesis 2, to make a word play. In Genesis 2:7 it tells us that Adam was made from the dust (afar) of the earth / ground (adamah). So in this story Adam comes from Adamah (which is a female noun and sounds like the female cognate of Adam along the same lines as Robert and Roberta).

I also think that there are some people with in the OT that are representations of many men. Thinking that Adam and eve were 2 people promotes the issue that cain commited incest by wedding and procreating with his sister.

[TheMan]

What i'm trying to say is that the message is the one of importance and not the thought of them being literate real events/persons.

[John Goddard]

I also think that there are some people with in the OT that are representations of many men. Thinking that Adam and eve were 2 people promotes the issue that cain commited incest by wedding and procreating with his sister.

Unless humans just evolved, but Adam was a special human created directly by God, like Jesus was. Then Cain may have married an evolved woman.

That's where I lean, interpreting the Bible to old earth and evolution.

[RBerman]

Sorry, i'm a bit confused. Is satan evil or just an agent (meaning good)?

Satan is evil. But God can use evil, including Satan, for his own purposes, so Satan can also be an agent (or a pawn, if you like) of God.

I don't think the NT makes any claims for some stuff in the OT to be literately true. For example with Adam again. Adam looks more like a representation of many men, not actually a name of 1 man, because then in the story of Cain (son of Adam and Eve, Cain later marries somebody. Who can that be, his sister?

Yes, Cain marries his sister. If you think that Adam was not a historic figure, then Genesis 2-3 are a complete waste of time. How did sin really enter the world, if not in the way the Bible describes? Why does Jesus appeal to Adam's example concerning marriage, if Adam didn't really do what Genesis 2 describes? That would be like me telling you, "You ought to take care of your kids, because Jor-El made sure that baby Superman got off of Krypton safely." And you would reply, "Umm...you know that's just a story, right?"

What i'm trying to say is that the message is the one of importance and not the thought of them being literate real events/persons.

The message only has moral force if the events are true. More to the point, the narrative itself gives no indication of being false. What do you think Matthew was trying to accomplish by tracing Jesus' genealogy back to Adam, if Adam is a fictional character? Doesn't that undermine Matthew's point about the historicity of Jesus? The line of thought you're using can be easily used to disprove the whole Bible.

[RBerman]

Unless humans just evolved, but Adam was a special human created directly by God, like Jesus was. Then Cain may have married an evolved woman.

That's where I lean, interpreting the Bible to old earth and evolution.

So ensouled humans married soulless humans and reproduced hybrid children? This is the sort of problem that theistic evolution introduces.

[John Goddard]

So ensouled humans married soulless humans and reproduced hybrid children? This is the sort of problem that theistic evolution introduces.

To me the importance isn't so much on evolved status or genetics, but receiving God's Spirit, Adam may also have been evolved but been a firstfruits of men to meet God. About the time Adam was to have emerged from the Garden we started seeing evidence of civilized writing, laws, morals.

Without the Spirit, the NT says people are as good as animals, beasts living only for their bellies, taking the Mark of the Beast. While the creatures devoted to God in Ezekiel and Revelation appeared to be man and beast.

So I'm not sure about soul status being as much a physical thing as it is a spiritual one.

[carelinks]

RBerman, you commented that "Satan is evil", and I'd like to comment on that if I may.

J.H. Walton comments upon the word "Satan": "We would have to conclude... that there was little of a sinister nature" in the word originally. The negative associations of the word were what he calls "a secondary development" as a "technical usage". They arose in the interpretations of men rather than from the Bible text itself. He continues: "Based on the use of "Satan" in the OT, we would have to conclude that Israel had little knowledge of a being named Satan or of a chief of demons, the Devil, during the OT period" (1). This of course highlights the fact that the popular idea of the Devil grew over time, and requires to be 'read back' into Old Testament texts. The Old Testament of itself simply doesn't state any doctrine of Satan as a personal being. How come they would be left in ignorance about this matter, if such a being exists and God presumably wishes to inform us about him and save us from him? How much effort did God make to save His people from a personal Satan, if throughout the entire Old Testament He never tells them of him? It should be noted that nearly all the Old Testament instances of the word "satan" refer to an adversary to people rather than to God. The picture of "Satan" opposing God hardly has a Biblical foundation.

George Lamsa grew up in a remote part of Kurdistan which spoke a language similar to the Aramaic of Jesus' times, and which had survived virtually unchanged. He moved to America and became an academic, writing over 20 books of Biblical and linguistic research. Significantly, he came to the conclusion that the idea of a personal Satan was unknown to the Biblical writers, and that Western Christians have built their concept of it on a serious misreading of Biblical passages, failing to understand the original meaning of the word "Satan" and the associated idioms which went with it. Consider a few of his conclusions in this area: "Satan" is very common in Aramaic and Arabic speech. At times a father may call his own son "Satan" without any malicious intent. Moreover, an ingenious man is also called "Satan" (Arabic [color=red]EDITME[/color][color=red]EDITME[/color][color=red]EDITME[/color][color=red]EDITME[/color]an)" (2). "Easterners in their conversations often say, "He has been a Satan to me", which means that he has caused me to err or mislead me" (3).
The Word ‘Satan’ In The Bible

1 Kings 11:14 records that “The Lord raised up an adversary (same Hebrew word elsewhere translated “Satan”) against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite”. “And God raised up another adversary (another Satan)...Rezon ...he was an adversary (a Satan) of Israel” (1 Kings 11:23,25). This does not mean that God stirred up a supernatural person or an angel to be a Satan/adversary to Solomon; He stirred up ordinary men. Mt. 16:22,23 provides another example. Peter had been trying to dissuade Jesus from going up to Jerusalem to die on the cross. Jesus turned and said unto Peter: “Get behind me, Satan...you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men”. Thus Peter was called a Satan. The record is crystal clear that Christ was not talking to an angel or a monster when he spoke those words; he was talking to Peter.

Because the word ‘Satan’ just means an adversary, a good person, even God Himself, can be termed a ‘Satan’. The word ‘Satan’ does not therefore necessarily refer to sin. The sinful connotations which the word ‘Satan’ has are partly due to the fact that our own sinful nature is our biggest ‘Satan’ or adversary, and also due to the use of the word in the language of the world to refer to something associated with sin. God Himself can be a Satan to us by means of bringing trials into our lives, or by standing in the way of a wrong course of action we may be embarking on. But the fact that God can be called a ‘Satan’ does not mean that He Himself is sinful. The wicked Balaam was opposed by an Angel of God, who stood in the walled path as an adversary, or Satan to him, so that his donkey couldn't pass by (Num. 22:22). This shows that a good being can act as a Satan to a person. Interestingly, the Septuagint translates this with the word endiaballein, 'to set something across one's path'; a diabolos is a person who performs this act. The same idea repeats in the New Testament, where Peter is described by Jesus as a stumbling block across His path to the cross, and thus Peter is a 'Satan' (Mt. 16:23).

The books of Samuel and Chronicles are parallel accounts of the same incidents, as the four gospels are records of the same events but using different language. 2 Sam. 24:1 records: “The Lord...moved David against Israel” in order to make him take a census of Israel. The parallel account in 1 Chron. 21:1 says that “Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David” to take the census. In one passage God does the ‘moving’, in the other Satan does it. The only conclusion is that God acted as a ‘Satan’ or adversary to David. He did the same to Job by bringing trials into his life, so that Job said about God: “With the strength of Your hand You oppose me” (Job 30:21); ‘You are acting as a Satan against me’, was what Job was basically saying.

Notes

(1) J.H. Walton, 'Serpent', in T.D. Alexander and D.W. Baker, eds, Dictionary Of The Old Testament And Pentateuch (Leicester: IVP, 2003) p. 738.

(2) George Lamsa, New Testament Light (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1968) p. 24.

(3) George Lamsa, New Testament Commentary (Philadelphia: A.J. Holman, 1945) p. 604.

From my http://www.realdevil.info/2-3.htm

[RBerman]

To me the importance isn't so much on evolved status or genetics, but receiving God's Spirit, Adam may also have been evolved but been a firstfruits of men to meet God. About the time Adam was to have emerged from the Garden we started seeing evidence of civilized writing, laws, morals.

Without the Spirit, the NT says people are as good as animals, beasts living only for their bellies, taking the Mark of the Beast. While the creatures devoted to God in Ezekiel and Revelation appeared to be man and beast.

So I'm not sure about soul status being as much a physical thing as it is a spiritual one.

That may be, but you still appear to be saying that there were two groups of humans. One group (exemplified by Adam, and perhaps initially containing only him) got souls. One group did not. The two groups were otherwise identical spiritually, mentally, and physically. They intermarried and had kids. Is that right? Also, are you saying that while Adam was in Eden, all the soulless men were living in a regular world outside the garden, living, breeding, and dying like we do today?