Who is the Satan?

I don’t think the snake in Genesis is either a divine being or just an animal. I’m of the view that Genesis was written quite late, in the early 3rd century BCE. So when I read Genesis 2-3, I see a parable about the dangers of heeding Hellenistic thought and choosing the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil rather than a trusting relationship with God.

Ancient Greek and Hellenistic religious practices included many well known snake symbols related to Greek gods and sacred figures (e.g. Pythia, the oracle at Delphi; the serpent-entwined rod of Asclepius) and these would be widely familiar throughout the regions conquered by Alexander the Great. I think it’s pretty interesting that canonical Jewish texts have a lot to say about earlier conquerors such as the Assyrians and the Babylonians, but are mute on Alexander and his heirs. The Maccabean texts give us some of the Hellenistic history, but these books aren’t part of the TANAKH.

My best guess is that the author of Genesis 2-3 was warning faithful Jews to stay well away from the lies of Greek and Hellenistic philosophy if they wanted to stay on good terms with their God. So the villain of Eden was a competing – and very powerful – philosophical and religious stream of thought that had to be resisted by God’s men and women. (In the wisdom parable of Genesis, Adam and Eve obviously didn’t do a very good job of resisting the allure of Greek and Hellenistic thought.)

The book of Job is probably allegorical all over, since Job is written as one of the righteous men of antiquity in Ezekiel 14. But that doesn’t mean the figures can’t be interpreted. The paper I mentioned explains the role of the satan as an accuser in the book against Job, not Satan.

I don’t buy the notion that Isaiah 14 is talking about a divine being, when it is clearly talking about a human rebel. I don’t even see enough evidence that it is drawing on Ugaritic divine material. The God Athtar did not try to usurp the throne of Baal, he was elected by the gods in his absence. Also, whilst Athtar becomes the ‘ruler’ of the underworld (great earth, which I suspect is related to the Sumerian term Ki-gal), the shining one is just another Repha’im, a spirit of a dead King.

I don’t know if it is “clearly” talking about a human rebel. Isaiah 14 says “How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn, You have been cast down to the Earth, You who once laid low the nations!” How do you explain that? It looks to me like Tate’s comments might be correcct.

In the taunt song, the king’s fall is described in almost cosmic terms: a descent from heaven to the netherworld in Sheol. But the tyrant is clearly an earthly king in vv. 16-20: a man who had shook kingdoms, overthrown cities, refused to let prisoners of war go home, and left the dead to lie on the battlefield as rotting and unburied corpses (vv. 18-20). The portrayal of the tyrant is paradigmatic. If I may adapt a statement about the hero figure from the mythologist Joseph Campbell, this is “the tyrant of a thousand faces.” His name is Legion, and his kind has plagued the history of humanity. Obviously the tyrant in Isa. 14 is not Satan, though his hubris, arrogance, and fall is described in terms influenced by ancient ideas about the rebellion of a lower divine being against the reign of a high god. In this way of thinking, a lower divine being aspires to the status and power of a high deity, but fails in rebellion, or through lack of power, and is cut down to the ground and even down to the depths of Sheol. In Isa. 14, the tyrant is greeted in Sheol by the taunts of tyrant kings who have gone before him (Isa. 14:9-11): “You have become like one of us!” (pg. 14)

So, while in context, the passage is obviously about the ruler of Babylon, Tate argues that Isaiah was creating a poetic text based on the fall of a divine being, and applying it to the ruler himself to ‘poetically’ describe the fall, in a sense. I think the idea of a divine being present is supported by all the similarities mentioned in the video I originally posted. I must learn more about Mesopotamian and Ugaritic beliefs to make a judgement about Isaiah’s connection to such things.

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Okay, but since Isaiah is using divine language to describe a human figure, I see no reason why the Shining One must be a real divine being.

Wait, I’m lost. Whose the shining one? The character of Isaiah 14?

What, you didn’t carefully study all 140+ posts in this thread? I think you are slacking. Michael Heiser Serpent, Son’s of God, Nephilim, Watchers and Genesis

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I’d hate too sound too heretical but I didn’t even know of that thread until now. Perhaps the stake can wait another day?

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Don’t feel bad, I didn’t read it either. :wink: Just checked in every once in a while to make sure everyone was playing nice.

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I favor a more three-dimensional interpretation of the snake:

It is a snake, it is a tree, it is a deity. It is wise. It is immortal.

It is a lot like Ningishzida was to the Sumerians. In some Sumerian texts, Ningishzida and Tammuz are the same “entity”.

In this famous image, Ningishzida is a two-headed dual-gendered adrogene , guarded by two cherubim.

Ningishzida-pics

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Yes, I agree with the divine interpretation. Also, for @Reggie_O_Donoghue’s comment;

Okay, but since Isaiah is using divine language to describe a human figure, I see no reason why the Shining One must be a real divine being.

Well, Isaiah may or may not be just as metaphorical as Genesis. But I think the text is using language of the fall of a divine being the describe the fall of Babylon’s leader. Fair?

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Fair. The point I’m trying to make is that Isaiah is describing Nebuchadnezzar as a rebellious divine being.

Why the serpent was a common symbol among pagans. It is seen as a symbol of rebirth and immortality, because it sheds it’s skin. I hold that it is an allegory for Israel’s entire history, being seduced into worshipping foreign gods, rather than it being directed against any particular group.

Just got an email from Bible History Daily about a post called “Who Is Satan?” It overlaps with some of the information mentioned in the OP by @ManiacalVesalius. Thought others might be interested: Who Is Satan? - Biblical Archaeology Society

I hope the link works!

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That Nebuchadnezzar is divine, or is being described in divine terms?

The latter, he is using divine language to describe a mortal king. Isaiah 14:16-17 outright calls him a ‘man’.

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Yep, I’m on board on that.

Maybe the snake is the Gnostics Demiurge.

The snake in Genesis? Genesis was written centuries before Gnosticism was born in the 2nd century.

Naw. @ManiacalVesalius.

Genesis was probably written after the Exile. It certainly wasn’t written in the Bronze Age. We know that the chronology of Abraham is quite compromised. He cavorts with the Philistines, supposedly in the Bronze Age, but the Philistines don’t even arrive until sometime before 1200 BCE (the time of the Sea People). It’s very hard to have a conversation with a people who haven’t even arrived yet. This “chronological corruption” is a loss of 800 years!

The global flood couldn’t have happened when Genesis says it happened because this would have been after the 3 major pyramids of Giza were already complete. And the one thing Archaeologists would have noticed… not to mention Egyptians… is having their temples, schools and total economy wrecked in a global flood. It either didn’t happen at all, or it was a completely different flood.

And then there is the archaeological results for Beersheba and for Edom’s Bozrah. The texts below are easy to find in Google; but they come with citations for the actual assertions. Beersheba’s well couldn’t have been a bone of contention between Abraham and the Philistines, because Beersheba didn’t exist in the Bronze Age.

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Beersheba, identified by most scholars with Tell es-Seba, was founded in Iron I (the 12th century BCE)… Archaeology has revealed that the place was unoccupied in Abraham’s days (the 21st century BCE)… Of interest was the presence of distinctive Philistine pottery shards amongst the proto-Israelite pottery assemblages in the earliest Iron Age I levels of the tell.

It is probably this presence of Philistine wares at Beersheba -when it was founded- that is being remembered in the Abrahamic narratives recounting his struggle with Philistines over the well he had created (Ge 21:22-32). [“Beersheba’s well was believed to have been dug at some time after the city’s founding in the 12th century BCE.”]

@gbrooks9’s Summary on Philistines
In fact, if the Pelest/Philistines don’t arrive in Canaan until 1175 or so, during the time of the Sea People, and do not consolidate well enough to deny Egypt access to their traditional territories up along the coast of Canaan, Phoenicia and to their frontier in northern Syria, then Abraham’s interactions with the Philistines could not have happened until well after 1130 BCE. You cannot have banter with people that don’t even exist yet.

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Genesis mentions Bozrah in Edom (Ge 36:33) which has been identified with the modern village of Buseirah… Bennett, who excavated Bozrah, writes (pp. 16-17. Crystal M. Bennett. “Excavations at Buseirah (Biblical Bozrah)”):

“There is no archaeological evidence to support the story of the king of Edom refusing passage to Moses, or for a powerful kingdom of Edom in the time of David and his son Solomon. Biblical traditions such as Genesis 36:31 ff. and Numbers 20:14 ff. probably reflect 8th-6th century BC conditions. The evidence for a very impressive occupation and a city with all the appurtences of prosperity is overwhelming during the Neo-Assyrian period and is supported by the records in the Assyrian annals, and 8th century BC biblical references to Bozrah (especially Amos 1:12).” John F. A. Sawyer & David J. A. Clines, editors: “Midian, Moab and Edom; The History and Archaeology of the Late Bronze and Iron Age Jordan and North-west Arabia”. 1983. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Supplement 24. Sheffield, England)

If Bozrah is no earlier than the 8th century and principally the 7-6th centuries BC, then this archaeological anomaly reveals that the Genesis text could not have been composed before this period of time. Genesis suggests that Bozrah is a city inhabited by one of Esau’s descendants, who are described as Kings of Edom before any King reigned in Israel (Ge 36:31). Saul, Israel’s first King is dated by some scholars as ruling ca. 1020-1000 BCE (cf. p.1548. Bruce Metzger and Herbert G. May, editors. The New Oxford Annotated Bible With Apocrypha. 1977). Archaeology has revealed that no Edomite King reigned at Bozrah before Israel had a King, because the city didn’t come into existence until the 7th-6th centuries BCE.

This archaeological anomaly suggests that Genesis could not have been composed in the 7th century BCE because within “living memory” there would be a realization that the city was a recent creation. A couple of hundred years would need to pass for the national memory to fade and forget when Bozrah came into existence, such that this tale of it being a city before there were Kings in Israel would not have been objected to by the audience. A 7th-6th century Bozrah (the principal building remains are 7th-6th centuries, not 8th) suggests Genesis was composed either in the 6th or 5th century BCE.

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A nice side-note on Edom’s territory - Bronze Age or Late Iron Age

MacDonald was of the conclusion that the Exodus narratives reflected a Late Iron II sitz im leben, and suspected that they were composed between the 7th-6th centuries B.C.

MacDonald, speaking of Kadesh-Barnea being portrayed as a town in Edom’s border (Nu 20:16), it being identified with either Ain el Qudeirat or Ain Qadeis in the Negev:

“The text probably reflects the situation at the end of the seventh or beginning of the sixth century when Edom moved, at a time when Judah was weak, into the eastern Negeb. This would have led to hostility, or perhaps increased hostility, between Judah and Edom at the end of the monarchial period (Briend 1987:42).Thus the text describes a particular geographical and cultural situation, rather than an historical condition at the end of the Late Bronze or beginning of the Iron Age.”

(p. 68, “Exodus Itineraries.” Burton MacDonald. East of the Jordan, Territories and Sites of the Hebrew Scriptures. Boston, Massachusetts. American Schools of Oriental Research. 2000. ISBN 0-89757-031-6)

In speaking of Mt. Hor’s location, MacDonald again stresses that the text is probably of the 7th or 6th century B.C.:

“The difficulty in accepting a mountain in the neighborhood of Petra as the location of Mount Hor is that Petra is not on the ‘edge/border’ of Edom but in Edom. Petra and vicinity would have been at the western edge of Edomite territory only in the city’s formative years. The text, however, appears to be late and dated to a time, possibly the seventh or sixth century, when the Edomites had expanded westward into the central Negeb.”

(p.70, “Exodus Itineraries.” Burton MacDonald. East of the Jordan, Territories and Sites of the Hebrew Scriptures. Boston, Massachusetts. American Schools of Oriental Research. 2000. ISBN 0-89757-031-6)

In his conclusions on the Exodus Itineraries, MacDonald notes that most of the sites that can be identified, appear in Late Iron II, suggesting the narratives are very late:

“On the basis of textual and literary study of these texts plus archaeological evidence from biblical sites identified with confidence, we may conclude that the passages in question probably date to the end of the Iron II period. Only then were most of the identified sites occupied; there is little or no evidence of their occupation during either the Iron I or early Iron II Age.”

(p. 98, “Exodus Itineraries.” Burton MacDonald. East of the Jordan, Territories and Sites of the Hebrew Scriptures. Boston, Massachusetts. American Schools of Oriental Research. 2000. ISBN 0-89757-031-6)

Genesis was probably written after the Exile. It certainly wasn’t written in the Bronze Age. We know that the chronology of Abraham is quite compromised. He cavorts with the Philistines, supposedly in the Bronze Age, but the Philistines don’t even arrive until sometime before 1200 BCE (the time of the Sea People). It’s very hard to have a conversation with a people who haven’t even arrived yet. This “chronological corruption” is a loss of 800 years!

I don’t agree Genesis is a post-exilic composition, some of the authors were probably pre-exilic, but all of this has nothing to do with the point you were responding to there. You seem to agree with me that Genesis was written centuries before the 2nd century Gnostic text, which is what I said. Genesis could simply have been referring to the people living in Philistia as “Philistines”, that is to say, it does not necessarily rely on the claim that the actual Philistines themselves were around at this time, it may simply be referring to the people before 1200 BC who lived in this land.

The global flood couldn’t have happened when Genesis says it happened because this would have been after the 3 major pyramids of Giza were already complete.

No clue what you’re talking about. The entirety of Genesis 1-11 is an archetypal allegory.