Ep 274: The Devil: A History part 1

Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
He's known by many names, thedeceiver, the slanderer, the tempter,
the serpent, the great Dragon,the evil One, the many handed One,
the Father of Lies, El Diablo, Iblis, Beelzebov, Beliel,
Mephistopheles, Apollyon, Lucifer, Lordof Darkness, Prince of Hell, Old

(00:24):
scratch, Old nick Old, Harry, slew Foot, split Foot, Jimmy
square Foot, Satan, and anunholy host more. But most are content
with just the Devil, a figurereferenced all over the world. The entity

(00:47):
known as the Devil is said tobe the source of woe and ruin for
us all. He is feared,cursed, avoided, and sometimes defeated in
fiddle contests. But he's always upto some of no good, and always
ready to strike those not vigilant inguarding against his tricks. Or so it's

(01:07):
taught. But where did this embodimentof ultimate evil come from? And why
do so many fear the goat legged, horned, bat winged, forked,
tongued, pointy tailed, red complexionedman, And why do so many dance
with him, run with him,shout at him, raise him, chase
him, turn and face him.This is not the greatest blurry photos episode

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in the world. No, thisis just a tribute. Everyone. Welcome

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to Blurry Photos. I'm your host, David Flora. Welcome in. Make
yourself nice and comfy. We havea ton of ground to cover on this
two part episode. This is onemany of you know I've been working on
for months, and it's a topicI've been more and more curious about as
I've learned more and more comparative mythologyover the years. And that is the

(02:23):
topic of the history of the Devil. And this is primarily the Christian devil
aka Satan, aka Lucifer, akanone of the above, which we'll get
to. And I'm excited to sharemy research with you guys about this figure
of religion, which I'll go aheadand say seems to be one hundred percent

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misunderstood in our current time period andculture. I have read a couple books
in the research which I'll be pullinga lot of sighted info from, including
Gerald Massardier's A History of the Deviland the Birth of Satan Tracing the Devil's
Biblical Roots by T. J.Ray and Gregory Mobley. Both are excellent

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reads, certainly different from each other, but incredibly insightful in an academic style.
I also spoke with Jason from theDragons and Genesis podcast. He'll be
shown up here and there throughout theepisode a quick audiobook update and film update,
and then we'll get started. Volumesone, two, and three of
It Stalked Me by Tom Lyons arenow available on Audible. Those are my

(03:30):
newest audiobook offerings to go along withBigfoot Frightening Encounters and the ever popular Living
among Bigfoot series, all by TomLyons, so check those out when you
get a chance. You should beable to get a free audiobook download by
going to audibletrial dot com, slashblurry or by visiting blurry photos dot org

(03:52):
and scrolling down until you see thelink to get yourself a free audiobook and
a thirty day trial membership, whichyou can can so any time, but
you get to keep the free audiobook they give you, so feel free
to use it for any of thosetitles I just mentioned, or go out
and get yourself whatever you want.I'm not the police of you, and
Shadows in the Desert is still waitingto be sold for distribution. Derek said

(04:15):
his contact has spoken to studios liketen ninety one, Bloody Disgusting and Discovery
Channel, so we're hoping to geta meeting very soon. And we are
now into creating the bonus content forthe Blue Rays, and apparently you can
get bonus content on digital streaming platformsnow. In fact, we just had
a meeting yesterday to talk about allthe stuff we wanted to include as bonus

(04:39):
material. So it's agonizingly slow,but it is moving forward, and judging
from how impatient I am right now, I can only imagine how you guys
feel, and I sympathize with youand appreciate your patients with this process.
Back to the entity of the hourthe devil. The base image i'd like

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us to start with a is thatof the goat legged, horned, goated,
winged, pointy tailed, and forkedtongued troublemaker with red skin who delights
in tormenting humans, collecting souls,inciting all kinds of evil, and playing
a random violin. Here and there, we'll get into lots of that stuff,
like maybe he's not just a reddevil. Maybe he's a slick haired,

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handsomeman in a sharp suit. Orand bear with me on this one,
maybe he's neither. Maybe there's alot more to think about and consider.
So I'll ask a huge favor ofyou, and that's to leave your
preconceptions at the door, put asidewhat you've been taught, what you've heard,
even what you believe, and listento the information I'm going to present

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with a completely open mind. I'mgoing to give you a historical and academic
presentation of facts I've researched with aslittle sarcasm or snark as I can muster.
Spoiler alert, there's going to bea little bit just to break things,
but at the end I'll offer abit of my opinion on it,
although I'm mainly interested in passing alonghistorical context and scholarship so that you can

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have the most complete picture of theDevil you never knew you needed, and
then you're free to form whatever opinionof your own you'd like. I find
this stuff terribly fascinating, and Ihope you will too. In this two
part episode, I'll be covering theearliest mentions we have of the Devil,
including some sources of inspiration, startingwith the lore of the ancient Near East

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Jewish literature and the Old Testament ofthe Christian Bible. We'll jump into some
more sources of inspiration, then withZoroastrianism and mythology from Babylon and Mesopotamia.
Then we'll circle back to the ChristianNew Testament with some important info about the
Intertestamental period, and you'll start tosee how the figure takes shape and begins

(06:50):
coming into its own. That'll beour first part. In part two,
I'll be discussing the Devil and othercultures, and this is where it's a
little murky, but still interesting.Each culture has some kind of take on
evil, even if that take isthat there is no evil, and I'll
highlight a few of those for youin the hopes of giving a more well

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rounded experience. Then we'll talk aboutthe many names of the Devil. We'll
see if we can track down theorigins and backstories of some of the more
well known ones. I'll then tacklethe Devil in modernity and bring us into
the twenty first century with how theDevil got his looks and the popularity he
enjoys in pop culture over the years. Finally, I'll have a conclusion section

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where I hope to point out somephilosophical, sociological, and contextual aspects of
this figure based on the information presented. I'll end with my thoughts and try
to keep them as short as Ican, because this episode is not about
what I think. It's about bringinghistory and context to a concept rarely discussed

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academically. After researching this, Ifully believe it's better the devil you know
than the one you don't. Soadopt a devil may care attitude, because
we're going to give the devil asdue and trust me, we're going to
have a devil in the town.Thus I clothe my naked villany with odd

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old inns stolen out of Holy writit, and seem a saint when most
I play the devil Richard the ThirdShakespeare's Richard the Third. If someone asks
you what the earliest appearance of thedevil is, what springs to mind?

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Would it be Genesis Chapter three,when the serpent tempted Eve to eat the
apple in the garden of Eden.While Satan has mentioned several times in the
Bible culminating with a full realization ofmaleficence in the Book of Revelation, Genesis
was not actually one of those times. This is a point I'll circle back
to later, but I'd like totake a step back from the scripture for

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a moment to point out something.The author of Genesis, thought to be
written around the sixth century BC,describes a paradise where sickness, death,
and sin were unknown. However,just three short chapters into the book,
temptation, disobedience, and punishment suddenlyappear in God's perfect creation. When King

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kills Abel in chapter four, it'sclear something's up, and it sure seems
like evil is afoot. At thetime of its writing, most cults were
henotheistic, meaning they worshiped a singlegod but did not deny the existence of
other gods. In Vedic religion,the Rigveda mentioned several gods that had a

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unitary essence. Zoroastrianism followed a hiromazda, but allowed for minor gods and goddesses
to exist and also be worshiped.Followers of Yahwism, the worship of the
god Yahweh in Israel, recognize theregional gods around them, including the Canaanite
pantheon headed by the chief god lSo one might think there would be a

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chief god of evil they could pointtoo and blame for spoiling the garden of
earthly delights. We find in Genesis, thus opening the door for Satan to
stroll right on through. But thisdoesn't seem to be the case again.
I'll come back to our serpentine friendlater. But in fact, the first
time we get the words Satan inwriting is in the fourth Book of the

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Old Testament, Numbers, chapter twentytwo, verse twenty two. But the
anger of God was kindled as Balemwas going, and the Malahashem, the
Angel of God, stood in theroad Satan against him. This does not
mean Hell's chief himself challenged Balum andthe donkey he wrote in on Satan in

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this case and indeed for all casesin the Old Testament, is a noun
meaning adversary, opponent, or accuser, and comes from a verb meaning to
stop, oppose, or obstruct.It was written as just Satan many times
in numbers first and second Samuel andfirst Kings, and sometimes written with the

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definite article ha, meaning the InJob and Zachariah, its use signified a
role or a job as opposed toa singular being. You could translate Hacitan
as the opponent or the adversary.Jason reinforces this point in the details of
the Book of Job. The earliestdepictions that we have of Satan aren't of

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a bad guy, They're not ofan evil figure. So we see one
depiction of Satan in the opening chaptersof the Book of Job, and there
the character isn't an individual per se, it's more of a job title.
Yahweh is sitting in the Divine Counselalong with all of the other sons of

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God, and among them is arepresentative called a Satan or a Hasatan,
and he's just come up from Earth, where he's basically been patrolling looking for
wicked people. And Yahweh asks thisHasatan, which is a job title,

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not a specific name, if hehas encountered Job, who is a faithful
servant, and this Satan figure basicallyreplies that Job is only faithful because he's
been given everything, you know,everything he has has pretty much been handed
to him, and he has thiscushy life. He's very prosperous. He

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has all this land and livestock andperfect health and everything else. And he
essentially tells Yahweh that if some ofthat were taken away, then Job would
turn around and curse Yahweh to hisface. So Yahweh gives this this figure

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the Hasatan permission to test Job,but he gives him certain restrictions. He's
not allowed to attack him personally orto take his life. And so the
this Satan character he goes down andhe gets in there to basically take away

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his property and his family, andso Job's children die, a bunch of
his servants die, his livestock iswiped out, a bunch of his property
is destroyed, and he's still faithful. So then the whole scene basically repeats
there. You know, the Satanis up in heaven. He's talking to

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Yahweh and he's like, okay,but look, he's only faithful because you
placed these restrictions on me. Youdidn't let me take the gloves off,
let me attack you personally. AndYeah's like okay, but you can't take
his life. So then he goesdown and he afflicts Job with all of
these horrible conditions. You know,he has like a skin rash and just

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all sorts of things, and sohis health has drastically declined, but he's
still alive and he continues to praiseYahweh. He's like, well, I
don't really know why this is happening, but there must be a reason,
and then the thing goes into thewhole big set of dialogues which makes up

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the body of the Book of Job. But the depiction of this character,
he wasn't an opponent of Yahweh.He is essentially like an undercover agent.
He's there to test the will ofpeople, you know, to find out
what they're truly made of. Andthe name you know, which basically means

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an adversary or an opponent, itdoesn't mean he's an opponent of God.
He works for God, he ishe's basically just set as someone's opponent.
In this case, he's being Job'sopponent. And we see this elsewhere in
the Bible where the name you know, this name Satan or Hastaitan can basically

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just mean any opponent, and it'seven talked about in the first Book of
Samuel, where David could be asatan to King Saul. It doesn't mean
that he's going to be evil.It means that he could become a political
rifle, which eventually he does.And so it doesn't mean that someone is

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evil. It just means that they'rean antagonist towards you for whatever reason.
And this is what these angels serveand They're essentially there to be placed in
someone's path to prevent them from doingsomething, to prevent them from getting by
with some sort of falsehood, likea false belief, proclaiming that they're just

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and pious when an actuality they're not. And that's the purpose of him.
In the Book of Joke we seehow a satan's role in the Hebrew Bible
is one of opposition and obstruction andlittle else. In fact, as Jason
said, Satan's worked directly with andfor God. As Gerald Massie says in

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his work A History of the Devilquote, Satan is thus the instrument of
the deity end quote. Other OldTestament appearances of the term satan appear in
conjunction with King David and King Solomon. First Samuel twenty nine four sees the
Philistines send David away from their ranksduring wartime for fear that he may turn

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again to his home which thou hastassigned him, and let him not go
down with us to battle, lestin the battle he be as satan to
us. In other words, getthis guy out of here, so he's
not in the way or a hindranceto us. In Second Samuel nineteen twenty
two, David is restored as kingafter a rebellion and customarily swore an oath

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not to execute a man who hadcursed David. Previously a military leader by
the name of Abishai wanted death forthe man, and David said, what
have I to do with you,ye, sons of Zeroya, that ye
should this day be as satan untome, saying why are you going against
my word here in front of everybody? What are you this guy's lawyer?

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Now? In first Kings, Solomonspeaks of the times being good to build
a temple to God, saying,but now Hashim Melohai have given me rest
on every side, so that thereis neither satan nor peggara misfortune. Later
chapter eleven, God is angry atSolomon, not for having so many wives

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and getting it on a lot,but for having foreign wives and giving them
freedom of their own religions. Forthis abominable transgression, God raised up satan
unto Solomon Hadad the Edomite, andEloheim raised up against him another satan resin,
the son of Eliada, and hewas a satan to Israel all the

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days of Solomon. In addition tothe mischief that Hadad did. So God
was stirring up adversaries to Solomon becauseHeaven forbid he married a foreign girl and
let her do her own thing,literally, Heaven forbid. These are examples
of satan being a title that couldbe used for anyone by anyone. For

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examples of hasaitan or a specific beingcalled the satan, we turned back to
Job and reference what Jason just toldus. Hastan in that tale was an
angel of the heavenly court, butnot the devil as we would call him.
Rather, it was like saying thelawyer of the heavenly court. The
specific angel didn't matter, nor wasthat his name. He was his job

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title. And this was what Jasonrelated to us. Job won six.
Now, there was a day whenthe sons of God came to present themselves
before the Lord, and Hasatan camealso among them, and that's when God
was like, hey, what haveyou been up to? And the Satan
was like just strolling around earth andGod said, hey, did you see

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Job. He's pretty much my favorite, and YadA YadA. I won't rehash
what Jason said, but the pointis that the Satan challenges God to test
Job, and it was not theSatan's fault what all happened to him.
In fact, he's not seen ormentioned again in the tale after chapter two.
The Book of Job is forty twochapters alone by him a devil.

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And then you want to blame foryou cause me to crime to suffer.
I am an angel, and youare the cause your love man, I
was your lover. The devil lurksin the best of us. An angel
lives in the rest of us.Angel a devil. It's all up to
you. I can be wicked orI can be true love me whatever.

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The term Satan appears in Psalm oneoh nine, speaking of adversaries against love,
and Hasitan makes another appearance in theBook of Zechariah chapter three. And
he showed me Joshua, the highpriest, standing before the Angel of the
Lord and Hasitan at his right hand, to accuse him. Zechariah witnesses a
heavenly courtroom drama where an angel Satanchallenges the court to prove Joshua worthy of

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leading the priesthood. God overrules theprosecution, going so far as to reprimand
Hasita and saying even all of Jerusalemreprimands it. So God seems to regularly
clash with a Satan figure in heaven, but it's not the epitome of evil.
He's doing it with. It's angels. He's tasked with the sole purpose

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of clashing with him. If II'm a devil, I'm spiteful and mean,
and you hurt me, a trickme or tease me, I am
an angel, uncommon, serene,and you kiss me, A love me,
A please me. And the devillurks and the best of us an
angel listener, rest of us,angel a devil, I'll do what you

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say. You are the sculptor,and I'm a claim love me whatever.
There is a being named in theHebrew Bible that carries some interesting connotations,
and one could argue was later incorporatedinto the legends of the proper noun Satan

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Mashie the destroyer, the instrument ofGod sent to kill swaths of people at
a time. You can find theseentities in Exodus twelve twenty three, Second
Samuel sixteen, Second Kings nineteen thirtyfive, and First Chronicles twenty one fifteen.
It's mentioned as the emissary of deathduring passover, bringer of death to

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Assyrians and to destroy Jerusalem. Hereand there the last instance First Chronicles,
chapter twenty one can arguably be considereda turning point in Jewish literature and thought
process. King David is told bySatan to conduct a census in Israel.
God gets angry at this and punishesDavid by unleashing a plague on Jerusalem,

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in this case connected with a macheteangel. However, this is a retelling
of the same story from Second Samueltwenty four, which begins and again the
anger of the Lord was kindled againstIsrael, and he moved David against them
to say, go number Israel andJudah. Second Chronicles twenty one says,

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and Satan stood up against Israel andprovoked David to number Israel. Here in
lies a theme will be seeing againand again that of whoever wrote Chronicles whitewashing
previous things that make God seem likea real bastard. Now we start getting
the term Satan replacing God as theresponsible party for the woes of the Jewish

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people, even though it has beenfirmly established that Hasitan is but a lowly
employee of God himself, doing whatGod commands and acting in accordance with God's
wishes. It's not the figure we'rechasing to match, the evil incarnate,
direct enemy of God and all mankind. But it's a frightening step in that
direction, and it's a seed fromwhich will sprout more nefarious characteristics that begin

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to coalesce after monotheism chokes out thehenotheistic roots of Judaism, a concept that
festers in the Intertestamental period between thewriting of the Old Testament and the New
Testament and the ancient Near East.If I am a devil, I curse,
and I swear, then you robme of love and affection, bile
an angel. If you answer myprayer, you give me a love and

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protection, and the devil works andthe best of us the angel lives in
the rest of us. Angel ordevil, a curse or a prayer,
I will accept your most challenging darelove me whatever. Before we explore that

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time period, and after, let'stake a look at some cultural inspirations that
led to concepts of demons and malevolentforces seeping into thought and literature at the
time. Love is a familiar,Love is a definite. There is no
evil angel but love our motto Shakespeare'sLove's Labor's lost. The time period in

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which many books of the Old Testamentwere written, from roughly the sixth to
first centuries BC, was tumultuous andrife with war. In the ancient Near
East, the Achaimenid Empire out ofPersia was sweeping the land as major population
centers grew. The Egyptian Empire,long the powerhouse of the region, fell

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to Persian conquest, which itself wasgiven over to Alexander the Great, and
then the Ptolemys and Romans. Rebellionswere everywhere, human sacrifice, dogs and
cats living together, mass hysteria,almost constant turmoil for six centuries. You
can see how cultures mixed and matchedwith abandoned and with the mixing, new

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ideas and concepts began to make theirway into the beliefs and teachings of the
many disparate cults that were operating inthe midst of this chaos. But this
wasn't a fresh notion. Trade andsubjugation had been dispersing ideas for centuries already.
In fact, many of the OldTestament stories came directly from other cultures,

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which predated their writing by centuries themselves. The Epic of Gilgamesh, written
in Mesopotamia sometime around twenty one,provided many sources of inspiration for later religious
tales, including the Garden of edenUtnapishtam's arc in a Great Flood, ecclesiastical
advice, giants, etc. Youalso get the figure of Humbaba, some

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kind of ogre or demon adversary ofthe forest, whom Gilgamesh and the First
man Inka do fight and defeat.He is depicted as grotesque and opposes the
heroes in the story and fun fact, it's also thought to have inspired Greek
tales of Gorgons and Perseus killing Medusa. You may have heard of the demon

(27:17):
Pazuzu, whether from The Exorcist orFuturama, etc. Pazuzu was a destructive
wind entity with an interesting dual aspect. Not only was he a wild,
wandering troublemaker, he was also adomestic protectors spirit, repelling other demons and
guarding pregnant mothers. What a conundrum. The perfect bad boy. His father,

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Hanpu, also the father of Humbaba, is thought to have been a
god of evil, but we don'tknow much about him at all. It
would certainly help us in our missionto trace the devil's origins if we did,
but that's the hand we're dealt.These figures are connected to many evil
entities collectively called Leelu, with oneof the most well known being Lamashtu,

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a female demon who tried to interferein childbirth and could steal a baby during
breastfeeding. Other demons were grouped withinthe Lulu, including the Utuku, Alu,
and Galou, all with specific rolesand dwellings in the underworld and dark
and dangerous places. Other notables wereKilili, an assumed demoness associated with owls

(28:23):
and haunted places, nice Ugalu lionheaded storm demon, reshef Ugaritic god of
war and plague devor god of pestilence, and Mote also called Mavet from the
Hebrew word for death, a Canaaniteson of the chief god El who has

(28:45):
a pit forethrone and lives in aland called filth and for visuals that will
come back later, Howbayu Uguritic lordof horns and a tail who smeared poop
on an intoxicated l Basically, there'sa demon for everything, and it just
seems like if some kind of misfortunehappened, it was the fault of one

(29:06):
of dozens of entities. Circling backto the term Leelu, we find an
interesting connection with the female version ofthe term Liliitu, which you might know
as Lilith. Scholars have debated theconnection between Gilgamesh and Hebrew texts, wherein
Lilith is the first wife of Adammade from the same clay, but ran

(29:27):
out of the garden of Eden forquote unquote not lying below Adam when he
demanded she do so. Her storycould be its own episode as it developed
in later centuries, and we havea lot of rhet conning of her being
named the mother of demons and succubiand big tittied goth girl friends and other
stuff I would very easily fall preto, Sorry, other stuff mankind would

(29:51):
very easily fall pre to. Infact, there's four demon queens that came
out of Jewish mythology, Lilith,Batmalat, Naima, and Asath. Take
a pick, You're gonna have agood time. And there's one more fun
little tidbit I found that some scholarshave connected to the Lilith the Aloka.

(30:17):
It appears in Proverbs thirty fifteen,translated as horse leech but the original meaning
was more akin to vampire, whethera title for Lilith or a descendant.
The Aloka has some strong succubus slashvampi vibes, and it's probably just a
coincidence that the name backwards is HaculaBlah. A major event in shaping inspiration

(30:44):
for the devil came in the periodknown as the Babylonian Captivity or Babylonian Exile,
following their defeat in the Jewish BabylonianWar. After the Temple of Solomon
was raised in Jerusalem. Persian cultureinfluenced Jewish literature heavily. Jason discusses Babylonian
sources of inspiration for old Jewish tales, including the Leviathan so in their stores,

(31:08):
you know, the earliest creation accountshave Yahwe getting in a fight with
leviathin and it looks very similar towhat we find elsewhere in the ancient Near
East, where the gods are fightingagainst a group of water dragons, and
they represent like the primordial ocean andthe world is usually just completely covered in

(31:33):
water. It probably has Kevin Costnersailing around in there somewhere. Not positive.
Gene Hackman plays Hastan and now yeah, yeah, so you've got this
whole like what a world thing going, and they what they have to do
is they have to separate the waterso or in this case, they have

(31:53):
to kill the great water dragons.And these water dragons they basically just represent
like tidal waves and floods. Andin one well known version of this story
called the Uma Leash, the youngwarrior god Marduk comes up and he basically
makes a deal that if he killsthe dragon Tiamat, then he gets to

(32:19):
basically sit on the highest throne ofheaven. And so he does this.
He kills Tiamat. The carcass getsdivided up, basically the dividing of the
waters, separating salt water from freshwater, and a bunch of the water
the carcass of the dragon gets usedto create the farmament, and some water
is stored up there. That's whythe sky is blue and that's where rain

(32:40):
comes from. And we have thisbeing retold but de mythologized in Genesis chapter
one. It talks about how thewater gets divided up and there's the farmament
set up and the water is placedabove it and everything else, and what
they're doing is they're taking the creationby combat myth, which gets retold in

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near the end of job that actuallyhas Yahweh fighting against Leviathan in there.
What they're doing is they're taking thismyth and they're retelling it, but not
as a work of myth that haslike a god fighting a dragon, but
they're retelling it as this thing wheretheir god just kind of sits back and

(33:27):
talks and the spoken word is responsiblefor everything, which is a comes from
Greece, and it that goes intothis whole different thing it would that's a
whole different rabbitrail we probably don't havetime for. But it's this whole idea

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that they borrowed from ancient Greece becausethere's a lot of Greek and Babylonian influence
in Genesis one. So they're creationby combat story of Yahwei defeating Leviathan.
It gets retold in there, andyou you still sort of have this idea
though of the leviathin and it getsyou know, downgraded to just being a

(34:13):
created animal, and people begin blamingthe Leviathan for different things like floods.
So if you have a flood orany kind of destruction by water, a
tidal wave rex as ship or somethinglike that. Well that was Leviathan stirring
in the deep, and so younow have, you know, along with

(34:35):
a Satan angel testing people, youalso have this underwater sea dragon that is
causing destruction. And so any sortof like torrential rains or anything like that
can be laid at the feet orthe fins of this water dragon. So
you have another scapegoat, you haveanother source for calamity, and so the

(34:57):
dragon motif, it's wrapped up intothe ideas of this sort of this cosmic
destroyer. If you remember the episodeon Angels, you may recall the name
Azazel or Azazel, a fallen angelfrom the Book of Enoch. In some

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accounts, he's depicted like a satyrand has dominion over the wilderness. The
link to devilish connotation should be obvious. But I'm going to save Azizel for
something better at the end of theepisode, so keep him tucked away for
now. I've been talking about Jewishdemonology, which probably stemmed from Babylonian demonology,
which itself probably came directly from Zoroastrianism. And we've gone far too long

(35:45):
without delving into the fascinating depths ofthat religion. There's a nice figure that
eventually factored into Jewish theology and bridgesus into Zoroastrian demonology, that of the
Prince of demons. Ass that's theGreek name from the Hebrew Ashmadai, itself
likely from the Avestan Ashmadiva, meaningdemon of wrath. He is a major

(36:10):
player in the Book of Tobit andthe Talmud, as well as later works,
but he started around the ninth centuryBC as the right hand bastard of
Zoroastrianism's evil entity Ariman. He wasoften said to go any and everywhere quote,
polluting the earth and spreading disease anddeath end quote. This proved to

(36:31):
be a popular concept in theologies atthe time and later, but as mentioned
Asmodius, was not the end allbe all of evil, an honor held
by the aforementioned Ahriman also called Agramanu. Sacred texts of Zoroastrianism teach that in
the beginning there were two cosmic spirits, and each had to make a choice

(36:53):
to be good or to be evil. The spirit known as Ahamazda chose the
path of goodness and righteousness, whileAriman chose the path of evil and corruption.
Thus the battle of good versus evilbegan with Ariman heading the armies of
the wicked arch fiend of all thatis good. According to Gerald Massarayer,

(37:15):
it was Iran who quote witnessed thefirst appearance of the devil end quote this
is a profound concept. But thefruits of Zoroastrianism were just coming to bear.
There were several stories that directly influencedthe stories of the Old Testament,
and no doubt Mesopotamian lore before that. But if you'll allow me to jump

(37:38):
ahead in a flash forward fun fact, six hundred years before Jesus the Christ
was tempted by capital lest Satan inthe desert. The ecclesiastical Zoroastrian text the
Vindidade told the story of Zoroaster akaZarathustra being tempted by Ariman. The evil

(37:58):
spirit promised zoro Aster long life andsovereignty of the world if he would but
renounce his faith in a Hiramazda threethousand years spoiler alert, he didn't.
Instead, he recited a prayer,and, like a high level cleric in
D and D, turned undead untilall the demons in arimand fled from his

(38:19):
Holy might. So these are someinspirations that factored into a roiling stew of
ideas during the Babylonian exile and afterup into the turn of the millennium.
CE. Couple these influences with thegeneral climate of Jewish culture, a people
grappling with their lot in life andcoming to terms with feelings of oppression and

(38:42):
anger, and a stark new chapterbegins with the seeds of a new religion
and new characters to relieve those feelings. Let's get back to the earliest mentions
of the Devil the New Testament editionThe Devil, All hair comes the Devil,

(39:07):
All hair comes the Devil. Old. The Devil with the Devil says,
I'm about the devil. Look outfa the Devil. Old. The
Devil with the Devil says, I'myou're so afraid of old man Satan.
No, why don't you stop yourhesitating? You're gonna be a long time

(39:28):
dead soul. The Devil with theDevil says, I, you're always giving
me the dickens, telling me thatlife's no easy pipkins. But just as
long as I have fun. Whythe devil with the Devil says I the
devil can cite scripture for his purpose. Antonio Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

(39:57):
I'll be mentioning the term Intertestamental periodfrequently in this section, and the dry
definition of that is the period oftime between the events of the protocanonical books
and the New Testament. The timespan is roughly fifth century BC to first
century CE, and it's also knownas the Deutero canonical period in Catholicism.

(40:19):
Many New Testament books and other workslike the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in
this period, though a solid handfulwere written forty two, one hundred years
after the attested death of Jesus,and that includes a few books that aren't
included in today's Biblical canon. Somemajor events in this time period were the
first translations of Hebrew scriptures into otherlanguages, the Maccabean Revolt, establishment of

(40:44):
the first synagogues, and, likemany cultures experienced at the time, the
heavy influence of Hellenistic Greece. Thismeant aspects of Greek culture began showing up
in other cultures, including more emphasison education philosophy are in rituals associated with
the Greek pantheon. It caused adivide in Jewish culture, namely between those

(41:07):
that accepted these new influences and thosethat wanted to keep things orthodox and fought
against change. But an arguably biggerrift was underwear. You can have your
social ties and bingo for your father, but the things I like to do,
you stop me one by one.Now, even if you make me

(41:30):
stronger, that ain't gonna make melive no longer. So even if I
go to the devil, where thedevil says I, the devil, where
the devil says I. The storiesand the old scriptures showed a God that

(41:54):
was simultaneously loving and perfect, anda God that was jealous, capricious,
and responsible for every suffering endured bythe creation he supposedly loved. Not only
did every blessing come from this God, every evil did as well Isaiah forty
five seven. I form the lightand create darkness. I make peace and

(42:17):
create evil. I the Lord doall these things. And remember, it
was God who first told David totake a census, then punished him for
it. It was God who decidedto test job and take everything from him.
It was God who destroyed all buteight people in a great flood.

(42:38):
It was God who sent bears tokill children. It was God who ordered
the killing of the firstborn of everycreature in Egypt. It was God who
blatantly supported slavery. This was apeople already tired of the bs persecution they
had faced for centuries, and theystarted questioning the worship of such a figure,

(42:59):
which was the beginning of their Theodyssey, an attempt to justify or defend
God in the face of evil.Why would a loving, perfect God not
only permit evil but author it tomany people? There had to be another
explanation, something else that was causingsuch horror to happen despite God. This

(43:22):
is when the Satan Hositan started tobecome the Satan capitalist, a figure with
his own agenda, no longer aservant of God, but an independent character
and a thorn in the side ofall that is good. And with the
aforementioned inspirations from other cultures, itwas pretty easy to start constructing a figure

(43:43):
that embodied such negativity. Jason talksa bit about the confusion stemming from Theodyssey.
This confusion, it pops up ata rather convenient time, and it
actually serves a theological purpose. Soat this time, the Jewish people are

(44:05):
drifting away from polytheism and into monotheism. But when you do this, you
run into the problem of explaining whereevil comes from. And their concept of
evil is a bit different from peoplein Christianity. So in Christianity, evil
is it's basically like a wickedness,but it wasn't that restricted. In ancient

(44:32):
Judaism. Evil just meant anything bad. So a natural disaster, the word
for a disaster, for calamity,for misfortune, all those it was all
the same word, and it's thesame word that they used for evil.
So evil didn't just mean, youknow, someone was plotting something wicked it.

(44:54):
It could just mean that they weregoing to do something that might inconveni
nance you, and that maybe they'reinvading your city, you know, or
maybe there's a hurricane that's about tohit New Orleans. You know, that
is considered an evil, and itdoesn't mean that it comes from some supernatural
evil. It just means that it'sbad news. And so their definition of

(45:19):
evil was much more expansive, butthey came into this theological problem with explaining
where that comes from. In thepast, and in most polytheistic cultures,
you have, you know, aneasy way out if you worship a certain
deity, like say Hera, andsomething bad happens, well you could blame

(45:40):
that on Aries, you know.Oh well, you know Aries caused this
army to come in here and invadeor whatever. Hephaestus made that spark fly
out of my fireplace and burn downthe house, you know. So these
these things were a lot easier todeal with. You just blamed it on
some other deity, and that's peopledid. But the Jews had gotten rid

(46:04):
of all of their other deities,Moat and all the others. They had
been shoved aside, and they nolonger worshiped them. They no longer some
didn't even acknowledge that they existed.So now they have the problem where does
evil come from? You know,your disaster and calamity and misfortune, And

(46:24):
borrowing this Persian idea would definitely helpbecause now they could blame it on someone
else. Post Exilic writings began tohint at Satan being a figure unto his
own, but not fully fledged.The Book of Daniel, thought to be
written around the second century BC,doesn't have a Satan figure as we know

(46:45):
him, but does allude to occupyingforeign rulers being quote unquote monstrous beasts.
After generations of exposures to Zoroastrian dualismand Ariman as an arch fiend, sentiment
toward God not being responsible for evilwas growing, and intertestamental literature began including

(47:07):
him along with a host of demonsand minions. Indeed, Gerald Massarier credits
Zoroastrianism with inventing demonology. Before theBabylonian exile, Jewish teachings had no bodily
resurrection, little thought of what happenedafter death, no eternal torture in a
burning hill, no armageddon, andno one but God to pin every event

(47:31):
on Persian religion. Did Jews couldfinally square the concept of why they had
such misfortune wrought upon them, Andby the time Jesus rolls into town,
there's a nice universal conspiracy playing out, wherein a nefarious, metaphysical villain was
hiding in every shadow, orchestrating everymalady, and most importantly, being the

(47:55):
absolute cause of strife, more thantheir loving God or any of their own
actions or coincidences. Ray and Mobleywrite, quote, the enormity of misfortune
experienced by the Jews seemed measurably greaterthan their errors end quote. They were
victims and they finally had a devilto blame, and it was a perfect

(48:19):
fit. After all, the PersianAhriman also carried the epithet the opposer.
What did that translate to in HebrewAriman hasatan? And the authors at the
time were like, shit, thisthing writes itself. You have this linguistic
issue that arises when you start talkingabout Areman from Zoroastrianism, which we'll talk

(48:43):
about later. His full name isAarman the opposer, So when you say
that in Hebrew, it's Araman Hasatan, which is a figure they seem to
already have. So that leads themto incorporate features of Ottoman into the identity

(49:05):
of these opposing angels who work againstpeople who may or may not be doing
something wrong. The First Book ofEnoch, one of the more interesting religious
texts written at the time and afavorite of this show in Dragons and Genesis,
is thought to have been written aroundthe third to second century BC,

(49:25):
and takes the Persian dualism and demonologyand absolutely runs with it. For Enoch,
Isaisl was in the crosshairs. FirstEnoch nine six, thou seest what
Isaisl hath done, who have taughtall unrighteousness on earth, and revealed the
eternal secrets which were preserved in heaven, which men were striving to learn.

(49:51):
And ten eight. And the wholeearth has been corrupted through the works that
were taught by Isaizell to him ascribeall sin. Interestingly, the words Satan
appears a few times in Enoch,but it seems to be both as a
proper noun and as a title.Chapter forty has Satan's plural not being allowed

(50:13):
before God. Chapter fifty three,verse three says, for I saw all
the angels of punishment abiding there andpreparing all the instruments of Satan proper noun,
And that's to cast the kings ofEarth down and punish them. And
chapter fifty four to six says,and Michael and Gabriel, and Raphael and

(50:34):
Fanuel shall take hold of them onthat great day and cast them on that
day into the burning furnace, thatthe Lord of spirits may take vengeance on
them for their unrighteousness and becoming subjectto Satan and leading astray those who dwell
on the earth. And in chaptersixty five he mentions mankind having learned all
the secrets of the angels, andall the wrongdoings of the Satans and all

(50:59):
their secret power. So which isit, Biggie, Are there Satan's ah
Satan or just Azazel running them up? It was all of them, because
between the beginning of the writing ofthe book and the end, time had
passed and the idea of one entitycarrying the name of the adversary was well

(51:19):
underway. Jason gives us a refresherof Azazel and some bonus tidbits about the
beginnings of the concept of hell.So after the idea of the godly kings
being cast down, that idea getsmerged quite seamlessly with the story of the

(51:40):
watchers that we find in the earlysections of First Enoch, and the two
in particular would be Semiaza and aZazel. One of them wants to have
sex with human women, and thatcreates a race of giants. The other
one wants to bring people forbidden knowledge, which merges quite well with the Garden

(52:01):
of Eden's story. And so Asaizel, this deity who's sort of like a
prometheus figure, he comes down andhe teaches people all sorts of things like
how to do witchcraft and read signsin the sky, like you know,
decipher the future by listening to thunder, which is called brontomancy. It has

(52:24):
nothing to do with dinosaurs, whichis disappointing. But yeah, he teaches
them about cosmetics, which is likethe most destructive knowledge in the world,
you know. I it's what's wrongwith society today. You know, maybe
it's Satan, maybe it's Mabel Lane. So Asaizel does all this stuff.

(52:45):
And because of these things, youknow, Azazel and also Samyaza, they're
they're booted out. They're kicked outof heaven because they basically corrupted the world.
And so this explains the origin ofevil, and it also demotes a
bunch of these different angels. Sothey get kicked out, and this idea

(53:06):
that these deities or these these sonsof God are introducing corruption into the world,
you know, because they were tryingto you know, establish themselves as
a great power. They get kickedout. They end up down on earth.
And that idea that being kicked outfor your own prideful ways and disobedience

(53:29):
and sharing forbidden knowledge and corrupting theperfect creation that gets merged with the idea
of these kings being kicked out andcast down for their prideful ways. And
these angels, as we see laterin Enoch, are gathered up and cast
into a fiery pit in the desert, and then it's covered up with stones,

(53:52):
and there they are tormented by angelsof torment that Yahweh sends to torture
them, and and wicked people willalso be thrown into those fires to likewise
be tortured by the angels of torment. All of these ideas will eventually play
a part in the development of theidea of Hell and the demons. Like

(54:16):
the Satans who would go and testpeople and stand against them, which were
Yahweh servants, the demons of Hellwere originally thought of as angels of torment
who worked for Yahweh to torture theevil angels, the watchers, and the

(54:37):
wicked people who served them. Andso that's why it like, it never
made sense, you know, whywould the demons torture you for being bad
if they were bad? Because originallythe angels that tortured people weren't bad.
In the oldest literature, they weregood guys who were torturing the bad guys.

(54:59):
But eventually people just said, okay, well, everything down below is
bad. Everything up above is good, and they just divided everything. So
that's where your demons come from,and that's where some of your early depictions
of Hell come from. As afiery underworld, it was a place of
torment for the watchers, where theywould be tortured by angels of torments sent

(55:22):
by Yahweh the Watchers aka the fallenAngels. According to Enoch, we're all
about that human booty. And unfortunately, the misogyny already present in the culture
was only amplified by other cultural influences, namely the Mathray cult and its penchant
for fraternity among men, and sowe sadly see a turn against women around

(55:45):
this time that just grows from thereand can be seen in the demonization of
sexual encounters in particular. We'll revisitthis idea later, but the concept of
incubi and succubi really takes hold hereand will go on to flourish in the
culture and later in medieval Europe.Another apocryphal book that shows the devil's evolution

(56:07):
during this period was the Book ofJubilees, believed to be written in the
early second century BC. Jubilees isbasically a rehash of Genesis up through Moses
getting the Ten Commandments, but withchanges, not unlike the Chronicler's whitewashing of
the David census story Jason tosses asa refresher. So the books of Chronicles

(56:30):
were actually meant to completely replace Samueland Kings. And what would happen is
occasionally a different group of people wouldsort of come into power in Jerusalem and
they would rewrite certain bits of scriptureor history to suit their own theological and
political needs. In this case,the theology had shifted by the time the

(56:54):
Chronicler came around. By the timethese limtical priests were were in charge,
and their solution to dealing with troublesometheology was to simply erase it. And
the best way to do that wasto replace it with something else. And
so the purpose of the Chronicles wasto get rid of Samuel and Kings and

(57:16):
create a new book. So ifit weren't for the fact that you know,
the books of Samuel and Kings wereso widespread as to be scattered throughout
the Mediterranean, if it weren't forthat, then we wouldn't have those books.
They would have all been destroyed andreplaced by first and second chronicles,

(57:38):
and that would have told the historyto go from the end of the time
of Judges to the Babylonian exile,and we would have to guess as to
the contents of Samuel and Kings,trying to figure out what had originally been
there. But instead we end upwith two different versions, an older version

(57:59):
and newer version. So yeah,it was a different group of people writing
a couple hundred years later who orlonger than that, actually, probably about
three hundred years later, who wantedto replace the older version with the new
theology. One of the changes concernsAbraham sacrificing his son Isaac. In Genesis,

(58:22):
Yahweh tells Abraham to prove his faithby sacrificing his son, a task
Abraham proceeds with, only to bestopped at the last second by an angel's
voice. It really is a dickmove on God's part. But in Jubilees
the story is retold with a newcharacter called Prince Mastima issuing the challenge to

(58:42):
Abraham. Thus God looks like achill guy who ends up swooping in to
save Isaac. Mastima, while notnecessarily Lord of the Unholy damned is at
least a jagbag of an angel,if not some kind of high ranking demon.
The biggest WTF rewrite is arguably thestory of Moses and Yahweh almost killing

(59:05):
him over foreskin in Exodus chapter four. Yahweh gets all pissed off that Moses
hadn't circumcised his son yet and comesdown to Earth to kill Moses by hand.
He must have been out of lightningbolts that day, or heart attacks
or aneurysms, or runaway carts orboulders that got loose from a mountain and

(59:27):
rolled down a big hill but gotstopped by some trees and comically bent and
bent them until they snapped, andit kept rolling, except now it was
a boulder and a bunch of biglogs, and we can say there was
a bear or two that had climbedup into the trees and they didn't know
what was going on, but theywere really mad about it. And there's
a big cloud of boulder and treesand angry bears come smashing down the mountain
towards the end where Moses was staying, and crashes right into that end,
and Moses died. But here's thekicker. He was in the other side

(59:50):
of the end, and he diedbecause he saw this, and he got
so startled that his heart stopped.But Yahweh wanted to kill him by hand.
And Moses's wife quickly chopped off hern's foreskin and threw it at Yahweh
and was like what now, pervAnd Yahweh was like, Goku cool,
and then turned and left. That'sactually in the Bible. Jubileese just replaces

(01:00:12):
Yahweh with m Stima, so thename has attached itself to Satan's but low
a twist. Satan is mentioned aswell, separately and clearly sovereign over quote
unquote malignant evil ones on the earthand now creeping toward the first century.
See we have it in writing.The Dead Sea Scrolls, just finishing up

(01:00:36):
at the time, begin polishing thisidea in style, and since their discovery
in the mid twentieth century, mostarchaeologists have believed the works were written by
a Jewish sect called the Essenes,one of the big three sects of the
time, along with the Pharisees andSetissees. Esscenes practice piety, celibacy,
voluntary poverty, and communal life.Jason gives us a little more perspective on

(01:01:00):
them. Without the New Testament,you don't really find any reference to the
es scenes, which is weird becausethey were around at the time, and
a bunch of different Jewish groups arereference, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees
and a bunch of these others.They get referenced by New Testament authors,

(01:01:21):
but they never referenced the es scenes, and people thought, okay, well,
did the Christians just not know aboutthe es scenes? And then later
scholars said, well, why wouldthey like the es scenes? Wouldn't necessarily
talk about themselves as Esceenes, youknow, I mean, that's like speaking
of yourself and the third person.However, one of the things that the

(01:01:45):
Escenes did was they referred to themselvesas the poor and that they followed the
way. And then you find thisthroughout the New Testament. They frequently talk
about themselves and the people who aregoing to who were blessed by this theology
as the poor and how Jesus isthe way. And then they look at

(01:02:09):
and say, okay, well,these people may not be you know that
they're not saying the word es scenebecause that's not how they you know,
talked about themselves. They talked aboutthemselves as being the poor because the es
scenes they were, they were essentiallylike outcast from the Jewish Temple. Uh
and a lot of them kind oflived in a little small communities out in

(01:02:30):
the desert, you know, andthey were very poor people. Also,
if they had any money, theywould basically just use it for the entire
community. So no one ever reallyhad any wealth. And we have references
to like Paul basically doing like fundraisingtrips all over the Mediterranean to give them
money because you know, they neededto buy food and stuff, and you

(01:02:52):
know, none basically didn't look likethey really had jobs. They just lived
off of, you know, whatPaul would give. They were communists,
yeah, those filthy commies, andso there they were basically like proudly poor,
and they seem to have seen thisas an an identifying trait that would

(01:03:15):
distinguish them from the wealthy and fromtheir perspective, corrupt Jerusalem Temple. And
they would say them, oh,well, look they're dressed in you know,
fine clothing and you know, adornedwith gold and jewelry and even wear
makeup. Those evil, filthy heathens. We're proudly poor and destitute, you

(01:03:39):
know. And so we actually seethese ideas all the way back in Enoch,
where they would distinguish themselves from theJerusalem Temple by saying they're rich and
powerful and corrupt. We're poor,but we're following the correct path and will
eventually prosper and they'll all be broughtlow. And we see the same language
in the New Testament. I saidthat the other day about myself. Yeah,

(01:04:04):
so it looks a lot like theywere a lot of these things they
were doing was to distinguish themselves fromthe groups that they thought of as evil
and corrupt. So yeah, yeah, Early Christianity and the es scenes,
even if they're not the same.Early Christianity came from a group that was

(01:04:25):
very similar to the es scenes.So and it may not have even come
from just one group. It mayhave come from like the es scenes and
the Ebeanites and like half dozen othersthroughout the Dead Sea scrolls. It's clear
that Satan to them was the archfiend of Yahweh, leader of the evil

(01:04:46):
forces, battling against the forces ofgood and gobbling up victims left and right,
turning them to the dark side.In the last days of the Earth.
Turns out that was basically anyone whodidn't think the way they did,
include a majority of fellow Jews.In fact, they called themselves the Sons
of Light and believe themselves to beengaged in a war against the sons of

(01:05:08):
darkness, again, anyone who didn'tsubscribe to their particular brand of BS.
Besides the smugness of thinking themselves betterthan everyone else, with all the other
aforementioned tenants, one would have tothink Zoroaster was smiling wherever he was in
the afterlife, because in all smacksof Zoroastrian dualism. The es scenes I'm

(01:05:30):
guessing inadvertently tripped over the Theodyssey problemin their haste to pins suffering on Satan
and his minions. One of thescrolls, known as the War Scroll,
brings up an interesting point in columnthirteen, you yourself made Belile for the
pit an angel of malevolence. Hisdominion is in darkness, and his counsel

(01:05:51):
is to condemn and convict Belile.Here is another name for Satan. I
haven't brought it up before because I'msaving it for the name section in part
two of the episode. But thepoint is God himself is to blame for
the world's suffering, and I'm notsure that's the message they wanted to convey.

(01:06:12):
There are a couple more apocryphal booksI'd like to highlight before getting into
the proper New Testament, the firstbeing The Life of Adam and Eve,
likely written around the first century CE. I bring this one up because someone
finally decided to do an origin storyfor the Devil, with huge implications for
future descriptions. The entire reasoning behindSatan's enmity toward man is laid out in

(01:06:34):
a conversation between him and Adam,and with a heavy side of devil's space.
Oh, Adam, all my hostilityin THEE and sorrow, it's for
THEE, since it is for THEEthat I have been expelled from my glory,
which I possessed in the heavens,in the midst of the angels,

(01:06:55):
and for THEE I was cast outin the earth. Adam answered, what
dost thou tell me? What haveI done to THEE? Or what is
my fault against THEE? Seeing thatthou hast received no harm or injury from
us, why dost thou pursue us? The Devil replied, Adam, what
dost thou tell me, it isfor thy sake that I have been hurled

(01:07:15):
from that place. When thou wastformed, I was hurled out of the
presence of God and banished from thecompany of the angels. When God blew
it to thee, the breath oflife and thy faith and likeness was made
in the image of God. Michaelalso brought THEE and made us worship THEE
in the sight of God. AndGod the Lord spake, here is Adam,
I have made THEE in our imageand likeness. And Michael went out

(01:07:40):
and called all the angels, saying, worship the image of God, as
the Lord God hath commanded. AndMichael himself worshiped first. Then he called
me and said, worship the imageof God the Lord. And I answered,
I haven't a need to worship Adam. And since Michael kept urging me
to worship, I said to him, what dost thou urge me? I
will not worship an inferior and younger, being I am his senior in the

(01:08:05):
creation before he was made, wasalready made. It is his duty to
worship me. Now we have thestory of Satan's fall from grace, his
prideful belligerence caused him and the otherangels who shared his opinions to get kicked
out of heaven, a prequel thatfits nicely into Enoch's Watcher's story. Secondy

(01:08:30):
Knock, believed to be written inthe late first century CE, adds the
detail that a group of rebellious angels, led by one in particular, actually
tried to overthrow God, but Godcasts them out to fly around above a
bottomless pit. So, with allthis intertestamental literature floating around, writers at
the time had plenty of material todraw from when writing the New Testament,

(01:08:54):
particularly the now freshly baked concept ofone entity to villainize, whom Jesus the
Christ can be pitted against and dunkon right and left. The Gospels,
written between seventy and one ten Cstart hot and heavy with Satan as the
ultimate bad guy, the prince ofdemons, and someone with whom Jesus must

(01:09:15):
continually contend. In Mark and Luke, we see the kingdom of God threatened
by the ranks of evil who workedto undermine Jesus at every turn. Matthew,
Mark, and Luke all have Satanpopping up as soon as Jesus is
baptized by John the famous Temptation ofChrist in the Desert, though Mark leaves
out the three parts of this storyrefer back to the Zoroastrian tale of Zoroaster

(01:09:40):
himself being tempted by Ahriman for wherethis idea came from. And just like
Zoroaster, Jesus channels divinity to turnthe forces of evil, who all felled
their saving throws and had to fleeaway from him for one whole minute cleverly,
although Satan is a fully realized,free floating, full torso vaporous,
ever, and by this point hestill fulfills his namesake as an obstacle for

(01:10:03):
Jesus to overcome. Scholars have beenconfused by the temptation story in the Gospels
for a number of reasons, notthe least being why didn't Jesus use his
magical powers against the devil like hedoes other times? And why was Satan,
who knew Jesus was divine, fightinga battle he knew he couldn't win
by trying to tempt the Son ofGod. It makes for a very clumsy

(01:10:27):
and not well thought out of introductionto the enemy of all good in the
universe. But that was the introductiona figure born of the crucible of the
times, solidified in the Cumran literatureof the Dead Sea Scrolls, and fully
utilized with the introduction of the Messiahin the New Testament. The Gospels also
feature a new disturbing aspect of beliefpopular at the time. Satan's association with

(01:10:50):
illness and ugliness most likely inspired bythe old Mesopotamian idea of demons being the
cause of maladies. It's now demonsession directed by Satan himself that causes a
person to be a leper, haveher crooked back, suffer from epilepsy,
be blind, have acne, havebacne, get a hangnail, enjoy the

(01:11:12):
show. Two and a half mendecide they should start a podcast or just
be downright fugly towrant God, thegood creator of all things, that caused
such suffering, even though he hadall the power to fix them, No
twas the devil, and only throughthe miracles of Jesus the Christ could they
be cured. The original meaning ofa satan wasn't entirely forgotten, though,

(01:11:34):
and Jesus himself even calls Peter Satanwhen he says, get thee behind me.
Satan thou art an offense unto me, Peter is being an impediment,
an obstacle, a Satan to Jesus, but not thee Satan. The Gospel
of John plays with this idea,while in the midst of Satan being a

(01:11:55):
real figure and the socioeconomic climate atthe time, in political rivals thus either
take the place of Satan or becomeinstruments of his maschinations. It's like a
little text mex of Satan the jobtitle and Satan the bad guy. It
must have been a popular sentiment,though, as Paul's writings post Gospels seem

(01:12:15):
to continue the trend of branding anyonewho thought differently than he did as being
under the influence of the devil orneeding to be sent to the devil via
exile. That is some spicy forgiveness, I tell you what. Satan thus
moves on from Jesus and becomes Paul'smain rival. Ironically, it's Paul who

(01:12:38):
suffers from some kind of mystery illnessvariously interpreted as anything from epilepsy to conjunctive
vitus and something I just pointed outthat in anyone else would have been considered
demonic possession. The two never meetin the Paul line works. But Paul
sure thinks Satan works through other peopleto stop what Paul is trying to accomplish.

(01:13:00):
Satan here is taking on a morerefined role, not just hiding in
shadows or ordering minions around. He'sactively influencing human beings and getting into their
minds. But let's go ahead andget to the good stuff, the superci
and final form Satan takes in theBible and the Book of Revelation, the
ever popular apocalyptic genre was something Jewsand Christians alike found maccabley appealing, and

(01:13:27):
in John of Patmosa's siminar work,the evil One did not disappoint. Despite
the metaphors alluding to Rome and itsoppression of Jewish and Christian culture, the
symbolism found in Revelation transcended its originalpurpose and became a whole slew of new
characters and settings for future church leadersto play with. That's not to say

(01:13:48):
there aren't depictions of an actual figureof true evil that were also meant that
way, but these two came fromcenturies of borrowing and mixing concepts of evil
from other cultures for a variety ofreasons, as previously discussed. Equivalences abound
in Revelation, meaning a certain beastequates to a certain empire or ruler,

(01:14:11):
and according to John, association orfollowing of said empire or ruler equated to
worship of Satan. In the book, we see how the idea of taking
pressure of sin off of God orthe Jewish people themselves comes to a head
and has applied to a whole armyof evil, a whole malicious force that
has conspired against the world behind thescenes all along. Scapegoat is a term

(01:14:35):
I've avoided using because I'm going togo into marvelous detail about it in part
two. But suffice it to saythat was the agenda ever since the Intertestamental
period, and one could argue sincethe Babylonian exile. The horrors of Revelation
are a train wreck. Readers couldn'ttake their eyes off of, and it

(01:14:56):
was easy for future leaders to pointat and inspire fear in adherence. Revelation
showed how powerful Satan supposedly was,and people could fully see the threat they
faced in vivid detail. I'm alsoavoiding many descriptions and names of the devil
here again because I'll be discussing themin detail in Part two, things like

(01:15:17):
visuals, the ancient Serpent, theGreat Dragon, etc. Coming out of
the New Testament. We're going totake a quick jaunt through history with some
examples of how Satan was perceived andevolved. You might be able to guess
the trajectory of this arc as wildthings often get more and more extreme with

(01:15:39):
time, and this kind of progressioncan be seen in a couple of sects
in the first century CE. Awhile back, we covered the topic of
Gnosticism on the show, an offshootof Judeo Christianity that focused on personal spiritual
knowledge and had its own set ofconcepts that weren't exactly in line with Judaism

(01:15:59):
or Christianity, but derived from both. To them, anything material, anything
physical experienced on earth was evil.Evil had always existed, meaning the devil
had always existed. Apologies to Jesus, I guess who had to be incarnated
in physical form in a place worldby the devil, meaning he was evil

(01:16:23):
since he was material. Crazily enough, this idea bopped around for centuries,
with church leaders constantly trying to figureout how to use it or lose it.
In those centuries, it seems theorigin and purpose of the devil was
lost by appearances. Everyone knew therewas a devil and that he was bad,
but had no idea where he camefrom or why he was there.

(01:16:45):
And this is what I like tocall the cottony joe period of Satan.
The neophied Christian Church struggled to answerthese questions, as well as the Odyssey,
which books to include in a standardizedcanon, and what to do about
sinners and encounters with the many thingsperceived as evil in the world. They
questioned whether the devil could be savedor whether any perceived instance of him should

(01:17:10):
be eradicated, and when a churchleader spoke up and tried to establish an
opinion or take a stand, ifthat idea didn't satisfy or agree with the
slim majority of the other leaders,that leader was excommunicated. Bickering and in
fighting were constant. Was a shitshow, But instead of truly assessing the
background of the devil and how hegot to where he was, the church

(01:17:32):
decided it was best to just figureout ways to punish those who thought slightly
differently and further index Satan and hisminions existence. The Synod of Constantinople and
five forty three CE was a meetingto condemn the writings and views of the
third century CE Christian scholar Origin ofAlexandria. But it also codified their stance

(01:17:55):
on certain demonic matters, eg thatChrist can't be arcrificed on behalf of demons
as well as humans, and thatany punishment of demons and impious humans will
be forever and they will never berestored, whether they knew or cared or
not. This was the seed plantedfor future inquisitions and witch hunts to grow.

(01:18:17):
Meanwhile, the ghost of Gnosticism wasstill flitting about, this time,
making its home in Europe. Betweenthe twelfth and fourteenth centuries CE, a
movement known as the Cathars popped uparound France. Among other beliefs, they
rejected the concept of Jesus having aphysical incarnation, that he was resurrected,

(01:18:38):
that baptism was a false sacrament,and that there are two gods, one
good one bad, which struggle forpower and may or may not have been
two forms of the same entity.Basically, they thought the God of the
Old Testament was evil and created thephysical world which was evil. Humans were
actually angels who had been seduced bySatan and forced to spend an eternity in

(01:19:01):
a reincarnation loop in Satan's physical realm. The only way to break the cycle
was to renounce the material self.These beliefs are thought to have been influenced
by the asceticism of early Gnostics,and possibly by Buddhism coming over through Byzantine
trade routes in the Silk Road.Catharism was not popular, not on the

(01:19:27):
whole anyway, and in fact,the Catholic Church, annoyed that they couldn't
reign in the Cathars, ordered acrusade against them in twelve o eight.
This led to a massacre in twelveoh nine, where at least seven thousand
men, women and children, Catharsand Catholics who stood with them alike were
slaughtered by Catholic forces. Morbid fact, it's also said to be where the

(01:19:51):
phrase kill them all the Lord willrecognize his own came from. By the
fourteen century, the Cathars were allbut exterminated through Catholic efforts. Hey,
by the way, the Devil's eviljust thought I'd throw that out there,
you know, no reason. Inparticular, the devil's evil. It's the

(01:20:12):
devil that's evil. During this periodof interfaith warring Pope Innocent, the Third
Harhar convened the fourth Latter in Councilbetween twelve thirteen and twelve fifteen. Among
other stuff like calling for the FifthCrusade, Innocent issued seventy one cannons or
edicts, which established the church's officialposition on everything from elections and marriage to

(01:20:36):
cleaning and taking notes at trial proceedings. Hey man, he had two years
to make all these up. They'renot all going to be gold. And
yes, Satan was discussed in onecannon. In fact, a monumental decree
came in the First Canon with thepassage saying the devil and the other demons

(01:20:57):
were indeed created by God good,but they became bad through themselves. Man,
however, sinned at the suggestion ofthe devil. That's huge. The
church officially recognized that the devil wascreated by God and that man had sinned
at the devil's suggestion, which onlyreinforced the idea that the serpent in the

(01:21:21):
Garden of Eden was Satan himself.No mention, however, of how or
why the devil had become evil decreeafter decree rained down from on high with
language such as, we excommunicate ananathematize every heresy that raises against the Holy

(01:21:42):
Orthodox and Catholic Faith, which wehave above explained, condemning all heretics,
under whatever names they may be known. Those being handed over to the secular
rulers of their bailis, let thembe abandoned to be punished with due justice.
Canon three. And since the soulis far more precious than the body,

(01:22:04):
we forbid, under penalty of anathema, that a physician advised a patient
to have a recourse to sinful meansfor the recovery of bodily health. Canon
twenty two. We ordain that thepredates of the Church be more willing and
energetic in punishing evil words. Canonfifty five. Jews are not to be

(01:22:27):
given public offices. Anyone instrumental indoing this is to be punished. Canon
sixty nine, The one about thephysicians basically saying you got to call for
a priest before you do anything asa doctor to a person who needs a
doctor. The word punish or punishmentis in their fifty five times. The

(01:22:49):
word love is in there twice,always following the word fear, once for
what motivates one's witness testimony, andonce for what crusaders must have in their
eyes, quote unquote, the fearand love of God. Most of the
rest of the punishments mentioned in theCanons pertained to the punishment of clerics and
church leaders. But I bring thisup to give you an idea of how

(01:23:11):
language like this and future popal decreesled to countless slaughtering and maskring for the
next seven hundred years at least,crusades, inquisitions which hunts, conversion missions,
gold land, and righteous fanaticism sweptacross the world, all under the
approval, perhaps even glee, ofthe papacy. I will not attempt to

(01:23:39):
go over every instance of these typesof zealotry through history, because the podcast
would never end. And I loveyou and I don't want you to be
punished, and that's a decree fromPope David Canon for twenty sixty nine.
Nor will we hit every example ofperceived devilry otherwise throughout history. But I

(01:23:59):
do have just a few more bigones to pin on here in this section.
In thirteen twenty one, Italian poetDante Alighieri finishes his infamous The Divine
Comedy, and his first part,Inferno, provides a brand new imaginative mythology
of the devil, complete with avisceral map of Hell. His work would

(01:24:20):
inspire depictions and descriptions of Satan andhis home to this day. More detail
on that later, fourteen thirty one, a nineteen year old woman is burned
at the stake and ruined France forthe crime of public heresy. The pro
English church officials condemned her for wearingmale clothing, having visions deemed demonic,

(01:24:44):
and refusing to submit to the Church'sjudgment. That, of course, was
Joan of arc now a patron saintof France. Too little, too late.
In another example of supreme irony,Joan claimed God had given her divine
guidance on defeating the English and installingCharles the seventh of France to the throne.
An intensely pious and devoted Catholic,Joan made the mistake of getting in

(01:25:10):
the way of politics with the cherry. On top of being a strong,
willed, capable woman. The trialwas a foregone conclusion, as the mostly
pro English clergy, as well asthe University of Paris representatives who participated in
the trial were invested in a dualmonarchy, with the English king at the
forefront. In this case, thoughthey didn't stop it. The Catholic Church

(01:25:33):
was not the responsible party for theatrocity, whichwas the politics of the English.
What did the deed, But itis an example of something that had
been happening and would continue to happenwith the devil to blame something. Gerald
Massardier wrote very eloquently, quote theaccusation against Joan is a clear precursor of

(01:25:56):
the greatest tragedy of modern times,the universal edification of the devil, with
whatever is different end quote. Sixteensixty seven, English poet John Milton completes
his first edition of the epic poemParadise Lost, a creative narrative of the
fall of Man's story. From thiswork, we can point to several examples

(01:26:18):
of future perceptions of the devil,not the least of which is how Milton
personifies Satan's fervor in warring against Godand the angels and perpetrating evil, and
Milton's outright presentation of Satan as thesnake in the Garden of Eden. Milton
follows the secondy knocktale of Satan's fallfrom heaven along with his followers and the

(01:26:41):
now winged Satan is free to flybetween Hell and Earth to stir up trouble
and seek dominion over Paradise. Theidea all but guaranteed the notion of the
fall from Grace narrative over any otherSatan origin stories. Interestingly, scholars and
authors over the years have come toregard the character of Satan in Paradise Lost

(01:27:02):
as the sympathetic hero of the story, a complex character with desires and goals,
driven by the statement that its quotebetter to reign and Hell than serve
in Heaven end quote. Satan beganreally filling out a more three D image
than previously portrayed, and by theeighteenth century, the devi Ill was involved

(01:27:28):
in everything bad, even to thepoint of ridiculousness, as exemplified in Daniel
Defoe's seventeen twenty six work The PoliticalHistory of the Devil, in which Satan
influenced many events of the past,including making a pact with Oliver Cromwell.
Satan promised Cromwell power as far asthe title of Protector, but not King

(01:27:49):
of England, a term of thecontract that eventually made Cromwell so angry his
spleen burst and he died. Couldn'thave happened to a better guy? Do

(01:28:11):
some folks? Then go delos deaverknow some folks, says then, oh
you devils, dead devils, Tom, delve on that hit on my bed,
My beds my Tom, devel hiton my my bed. Go away,

(01:28:36):
Delve del leave me alone, leaveme go way down, de leave
me alone, leave me. Thiswill be the station where the train stops
for now, halfway through our journeyto learn how the Devil came to be

(01:28:57):
and evolved through history. We've covereda hell of a lot of ground,
literally, but we have a lotmore to cover. In Part two,
I'll talk about the devils of othercultures, since we've been focused primarily on
the Judeo Christian and Ancient Near Eastmythology so far. I'll also be breaking
down the origin of many of thehost of names associated with the Devil,

(01:29:20):
including Lucifer Biel's above, Mephistopheles,Beli'll, etc. Etc. Then we'll
talk about the evolution of the Devil'sappearance through the years and his portrayal and
pop culture in the nineteenth to twentyfirst centuries, and I'll conclude with a
strong look at the philosophical, cultural, and socio political implications this character has

(01:29:42):
had on the world. Stay tuned. If you miss it, you're gonna
have the devil to pay the bottomOyle pocket book bottom ayu will be seeing
when you won't do nothing? Bodyshaan't I I don't have to do nothing,

(01:30:10):
but was sha't? When you marrymarry real oald May, when you
marry married real, own name,living to your son or donal

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Ep 274: The Devil: A History part 1

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