The Origin of Satan (9 page)

images that Mark invokes to characterize the majority—images

of Satan, Beelzebub, and the devil—paradoxically express the

intimacy
of Mark’s relationship with the Jewish community as a

whole, for, as we shall see, the figure of Satan, as it emerged over

the centuries in Jewish tradition, is not a hostile power assailing

Israel from without, but the source and representation of

conflict
within
the community.

II

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SATAN:

FROM THE HEBREW BIBLE

TO THE GOSPELS

The conflict between Jesus’ followers and their fellow Jews is

not, of course, the first sectarian movement that divided the

Jewish world, a world whose early history we know primarily

from the Hebrew Bible, a collection of authoritative law,

prophets, psalms, and other writings assembled centuries before

the four gospels and other Christian writings were brought

together in the New Testament. Who assembled this collection

we do not know, but we may infer from its contents that it was

compiled to constitute the religious history of the Jewish people,

and so to create the basis for a unified society.1

Excluded from the Hebrew Bible were writings of Jewish

sectarians, apparently because such authors tended to identify

with one group of Jews against another, rather than with Israel as

a whole. Christians later came to call the writings of such

dissidents from the main group the
apocrypha
(literally, “hidden

things”) and
pseudepigrapha
(“false writings”).2

But the writings collected to form the Hebrew Bible encourage

identification with Israel itself. According to the foundation

storv recounted in Genesis 12, Israel first received its identity

through election, when “the Lord” suddenly revealed himself to

Abraham, ordering him to leave his home country, his family,

and his ancestral gods, and promising him, in exchange for

exclusive loyalty, a new national heritage, with a new identitv:

36 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

"I will make you a great nation, and I will make your name

great . . . and whoever blesses you I will bless; and whoever

curses you I will curse" (Gen. 12:3).

So when God promises to make Abraham the father of a new,

great, and blessed nation, he simultaneously defines and

constitutes its enemies as inferior and potentially accursed.

From the beginning, then, Israelite tradition defines “us” in

ethnic, political, and religious terms as “the people of Israel,” or

“the people of God,” as against “them”—the (other) nations (in

Hebrew,
hagoyim
), the alien enemies of Israel, often

characterized as inferior, morally depraved, even potentially

accursed. In Genesis 16:12, an angel predicts that Ishmael,

although he was Abraham's son, the progenitor of the Arab

people, would be a “wild ass of a man, with his hand against

everyone, and everyone's hand against him; and he shall live at

odds with all his kin.” The story implies that his descendants,

too, are hostile, no better than animals. Genesis 19:37-38 adds

that the Moabite and Ammonite nations are descended from

Lot’s daughters, which means that they are the illegitimate

offspring of a drunken and incestuous union. The people of

Sodom, although they are Abraham’s allies, not his enemies, are

said to be criminally depraved, “young and old, down to the last

man,” collectively guilty of attempting to commit homosexual

rape against a party of angels, seen by the townspeople as

defenseless Hebrew travelers (Gen. 19:4). These accounts do not

idealize Abraham or his progeny— in fact, the biblical narrator

twice tells how the self-serving lies of Abraham and Isaac

endangered their allies (Gen. 20:1-18; 26:6-10). Nevertheless,

God ensures that everything turns out well for the Israelites and

badly for their enemies.

The second great foundation story is that of Moses and the

Exodus, which also confronts “us” (that is, “Israel”) with “them”

(that is, “the nations”) as Moses urges Pharaoh to let the

Hebrews leave Egypt. Yet the narrator insists that it was God

himself who increasingly hardened Pharaoh’s heart, lest he

relent and relieve the suffering of Moses and his own people—

and why? God, speaking through Moses, threatens Pharaoh with

devastat-

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SATAN / 37

ing slaughter and concludes by declaring, “but against any of the

Israelites, not a dog shall growl—
so that you may know that the

Lord makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel
”

(Exod. 11:7; my emphasis).

Many anthropologists have pointed out that the worldview of

most peoples consists essentially of two pairs of binary

oppositions: human/not human and we/they.3 Apart from

anthropology, we know from experience how people

dehumanize enemies, especially in wartime.

That Israel’s traditions deprecate the nations, then, is no

surprise. What is surprising is that there are exceptions. Hebrew

tradition sometimes reveals a sense of universalism where one

might least expect it. Even God’s election of Abraham and his

progeny includes the promise of a blessing to extend through

them to all people, for that famous passage concludes with the

words, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”

(Gen. 12:3). Furthermore, when a stranger appears alone, the

Israelites typically accord him protection, precisely because they

identify with the solitary and defenseless stranger. Biblical law

identifies with the solitary alien: “You shall not wrong or

oppress a stranger; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”

(Exod. 22:21). One of the earliest creeds of Israel recalls that

Abraham himself, obeying God’s command, became a solitary

alien: “A wandering Aramean was my father . . .” (Deut. 26:5).

Moses, too, was the quintessential alien, having been adopted as

an infant by Pharaoh’s daughter. Although a Hebrew, he was

raised as an Egyptian; the family of his future in-laws, in fact,

mistook him for an Egyptian when they first met him. He even

named his first son Gershom (“a wanderer there”), saying, “I

have been a wanderer in a foreign land” (Exod. 2:16-22).

Nevertheless, the Israelites are often aggressively hostile to

the nations. The prophet Isaiah, writing in wartime, predicts that

the Lord will drive the nations out “like locusts” before the

Israelite armies (Isa. 40:22). This hostility to the alien enemy

seems to have prevailed relatively unchallenged as long as Israel’s

empire was expanding and the Israelites were winning their wars

against the nations. Psalms 18 and 41, attributed to King David,

builder

38 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

of Israel's greatest empire, declare, “God gave me vengeance and

subdued the nations under me” (Ps. 18:47), and “By this I know-

that God is pleased with me—in that my enemy has not

triumphed over me” (Ps. 41:11).

Yet at certain points in Israel’s history, especially in times of

crisis, war, and danger, a vociferous minority spoke out, not

against the alien tribes and foreign armies ranged against Israel,

but to blame Israel’s misfortunes upon members of its own

people. Such critics, sometimes accusing Israel as a whole, and

sometimes accusing certain rulers, claimed that Israel’s

disobedience to God had brought down divine punishment.

The party that called for Israel's allegiance to “the Lord alone,”

including such prophets as Amos (c. 750 B.C.E.), Isaiah (c. 730

B.C.E.), and Jeremiah (c. 600 B.C.E.), indicted especially those

Israelites who adopted foreign ways, particularly the worship of

foreign gods.4 Such prophets, along with their supporters,

thought of Israel as a truly separate people, “holy to the Lord.”

The more radical prophets denounced those Israelites who

tended toward assimilation as if they were as bad as the nations;

only a remnant, they said, remained faithful to God.

Certain of these prophets, too, had called forth the monsters

of Canaanite mythology to symbolize Israel’s enemies.5 Later

(sixth century) material now included in the first part of the

book of the prophet Isaiah proclaims that “the Lord is coming
to

punish the inhabitants of the earth
; and the earth will disclose the

blood shed upon her, and will no more cover the slain” (Isa.

26:21; emphasis added). The same author goes on, apparently in

parallel imagery, to warn that “in that day, the Lord with his

great hand will
punish the Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and he

will slay the dragon that is in the sea
” (Isa. 27:1; emphasis

added). The author of the second part of Isaiah also celebrates

God’s triumph over traditional mythological figures—over

Rahab, “the dragon,” and “the sea”—as he proclaims God’s

imminent triumph over Israel’s enemies. Thereby, as the biblical

scholar Jon Levenson observes, “the enemies cease to be merely

earthly powers . . . and become, instead or in addition, cosmic

forces of the utmost malignancy.”6

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SATAN / 39

Certain writers of the sixth century B.C.E. took a bold step

further. They used mythological imagery to characterize their

struggle against some of their fellow Israelites. But when

Israelite writers excoriated their fellow Jews in mythological

terms, the images they chose were usually not the animalistic or

monstrous ones they regularly applied to their foreign enemies.

Instead of Rahab, Leviathan, or “the dragon,” most often they

identified their Jewish enemies with an exalted, if treacherous,

member of the divine court whom they called the
satan
. The

satan
is not an animal or monster but one of God's angels, a being

of superior intelligence and status; apparently the Israelites saw

their intimate enemies not as beasts and monsters but as

superhuman
beings whose superior qualities and insider status

could make them more dangerous than the alien enemy.

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.7 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 (
ma’lak
) 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.8

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

40 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

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 sends

him, like the angel of death, to perform a specific task, although

one that human beings may not appreciate; as the literary scholar