I don’t care about modern folks and their poor understanding of the issues. That doesn’t determine the correct interpretation. When you write:
Actually I think we have Dante and Milton to thank for the association of Lucifer with a satan in the popular imagination. The earliest association was due to an allegorical reading of Isaiah. Which to me is just adding to the text.
I agree with the first and second sentence but disagree with the third.
I don’t think all the folks that equate Lucifer to Satan understand that isn’t in scripture and is a product of later church tradition.
And if true, that has nothing to do with whether it’s true or not. Sola scripture is a later church tradition as well.
You are correct in that allegorical interpretations of Isaiah (and Ezekiel I believe) made this connection. Based on Jesus’s words about Satan falling in Luke 10:18, a connection to the king in Isaiah was proposed by Origen and Tertullian around the same time in the early third century. By the time of Augustine in the 5th century this was widely believed and he helped cement the idea. In the 4th century Jerome (Latin Vulgate) translated morning star into lucifer which was just a noun for venus at the time. Though even if he was wrong, Augustine (City of God, book 11) knew what he was doing because he understood the historical context.
So while Milton popularized and dramatized some modern fundamentalist thinking, the actual connection goes back to roughly a little more than a century after most of the canon is written and the belief was solidified a millennium before Milton wrote.
Augustine was interpreting the text. His methodology here is part of the standard Christian toolbox. We find connections not originally there all the time (Revelation identifies the serpent in the Garden as Satan, Jesus is typologically found in a host of places the historical-critical method would say he doesn’t belong). Ask religious Jews or any critical-scholar.
I think claiming it’s “an addition to the text” is loaded and will mislead scripture only conservatives. As an example, when I interpret Genesis 1 as ancient Mesopotamian polemic I am reading a lot of extra-biblical texts to make these claims. This extends to all of the primeval history. When I realize there were multiple “Noahs” and multiple Arks and flood stories this influence our interpretation. Scripture cannot be interpreted in a vacuum by anyone. Am we adding to the text? Or simply trying to understand it? I would argue Augustine and company was simply trying to interpret its spiritual meaning.
Early Christians constantly recontextualized the Old Testament. Dare I say even the Suffering Servant of Isaiah is an example? We constantly read the Old Testament in light of the New.
“The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed.” — Augustine
We can certainly disagree with Augustine on this reading or simply say it’s an unproven possibility. But to deny it requires evidence and I would ask what grounds we do so on? If the extent of the counter arguments are historical-critical only, that is not enough for me. At best it can lead to not knowing for sure.
I would honestly say if you don’t read the OT allegorically and typological like this, you are not reading it how Jesus, the apostles, the authors of scripture, the early Jews and the early Christians did. We can argue Origen/Tertullian/Augustine was wrong but allegorical readings and typology are Christian hermeneutics 101.
Vinnie
