(urth) Devil/Satan/Lucifer

[David Stockhoff]

Thanks Andrew---I'd like to hear more from Antonio too.

I agree that Christian orthodoxy does not posit two eternal, opposing 
principles of good and evil, and that makes the "origin myth" of Satan 
key. Whether it "allows" this idea of real personified evil may be a 
different question, since I believe even the Vatican has a house exorcist.

Regardless, the Devil is largely a folk concept, like the Harrowing of 
Hell and so on, that was invented (or built up from pieces) during the 
Middle Ages. It might be more correct to say "orthodox tradition" rather 
than "orthodoxy"---Christianity has many contradictory traditions, as 
all religions do.

We also have two testaments of the Bibles to deal with. The Serpent in 
the Garden is in Genesis, which is most closely tied with myths of 
creation and precedes all other books. The name Satan does not appear 
there---but "everyone" agrees the serpent is Satan. Satan appears in the 
New Testament. Lucifer appears in the Old, but see below ...

I just found the following bit of illumination on a Mormon web site and 
make no guarantees about it, but it is an example of the kind of 
transformations that occur over centuries 
(http://www.lds-mormon.com/lucifer.shtml):

"Lucifer makes his appearance in the fourteenth chapter of the Old 
Testament book of Isaiah, at the twelfth verse, and nowhere else: "How 
art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou 
cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"
.
..Lucifer is a Latin name.... In the original Hebrew text, the 
fourteenth chapter of Isaiah is not about a fallen angel, but about a 
fallen Babylonian king, who during his lifetime had persecuted the 
children of Israel. It contains no mention of Satan, either by name or 
reference <http://www.ankenyiowa.gov/index.aspx?recordid=1481&page=22>. 
The Hebrew scholar could only speculate that some early Christian 
scribes, writing in the Latin tongue used by the Church, had decided for 
themselves that they wanted the story to be about a fallen angel, a 
creature not even mentioned in the original Hebrew text, and to whom 
they gave the name "Lucifer."

Why Lucifer? In Roman astronomy, Lucifer was the name given to the 
morning star (...Venus). The morning star appears in the heavens just 
before dawn, heralding the rising sun. The name derives from the Latin 
term lucem ferre, bringer, or bearer, of light." In the Hebrew text the 
expression used to describe the Babylonian king before his death is 
Helal, son of Shahar, which can best be translated as "Day star, son of 
the Dawn."

The scholars authorized by ... King James I to translate the Bible into 
current English did not use the original Hebrew texts, but used versions 
translated ... largely by St. Jerome in the fourth century. Jerome had 
mistranslated the Hebraic metaphor, "Day star, son of the Dawn," as 
"Lucifer," and over the centuries a metamorphosis took place. Lucifer 
the morning star became a disobedient angel, cast out of heaven to rule 
eternally in hell. Theologians, writers, and poets interwove the myth 
with the doctrine of the Fall, and in Christian tradition Lucifer is now 
the same as Satan, the Devil, and --- ironically --- the Prince of Darkness.


I wonder if Iubar, in the context of BOTNS, should somehow be read more 
in terms of "heralding the rising sun" (the New Sun?!) than "fallen 
angel." Or both.

Anyway, you can see why I emphasize Milton's Lucifer, since Paradise 
Lost is a retelling of Genesis and Lucifer the angel is nowhere else so 
much expounded upon.


On 12/11/2010 1:46 PM, Andrew Mason wrote:
> Antonio said they are different philosophically, but I'd like more
> explanation of that - I'm not sure what philosophical traditions we
> are talking about here. Perhaps this links up with another thing David
> said, that Satan is an eternal source of evil while Lucifer is a
> fallen angel. In that case I think we can say quite firmly that any
> diabolic figure in Wolfe (I'm not convinced there are any, but any
> there might be) would have to be a fallen angel (or, an in some way
> corrupt angelic sort of being) - Christian orthodoxy doesn't allow
> eternal sources of eveil, and I'm pretty sure Wolfe goes along with
> that.


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