Ep 274: The Devil: A History part 2

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This is the second part of atwo part episode. In part one,
I discussed the earliest mentions of thedevil, both in the Old and New
Testament of the Christian Bible, aswell as ancient Jewish literature and the Intertestamental
period, and some ancient sources ofinspiration that helped mold the devil into the
archfiend of the Christian God. Inpart two, I'll be discussing evil entities

(00:20):
and concepts and other cultures, themany names associated with the devil and their
origins, the many descriptions of thisentity and his infamy and pop culture,
and the conclusions we can draw fromthe research devils some folks. One sees

(00:48):
more devils than a vast hell canhold theseus Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
I've mentioned several contributing cultures to theRoland persona of the Devil already, the
biggest of which was Persia. Zoroastrianismand Babylonian mythology not only influenced Jewish writers.

(01:12):
Many stories found in the Bible arestraight up retellings of older myths.
Mesopotamia is the epic of Gilgamesh,introduced fantastical entities such as Humbaba, a
figure of terror that guarded the Cedarforest, which the hero Gilgamesh had to
overcome. Ahuramazda fought against the forcesof Ahriman, the opposer in an eternal

(01:34):
struggle of good versus evil. InZoroastrianism, Marduke fought the goddess Tiamat,
who had given birth to dragons,snakes, beasts, and ogres in the
Babylonian Enuma Eleish. Besides being pittedagainst the head of the Babylonian pantheon,
Tiamat bore a son called Kingu,whom she wanted to rule all other gods.

(01:56):
He was the general of her army, who rebelled against Marduke, but
fell to Marduke's hand, just ashis mother had. With the blood of
this malicious god and some clay,Marduke molded the first human, an act
that could arguably be the beginning oforiginal sin and the spark of evil within
everyone. Thenceforth. All these hada hand in shaping the devil in later

(02:21):
Christian theology. But what was goingon in other parts of the world.
If evil existed and threatened humanity,Surely it wasn't just in the ancient Near
East. Let's take a trip aroundthe world and see who else was running
amuck, although we'll be getting offto a slow start as we stay relatively
close by heading a bit south tothose wild Egyptians. Egyptian mythology is rich

(02:49):
in characters, settings, stories,and traditions. With its portrayals and modern
culture like the nineteen ninety nine cinematicmasterpiece The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser and reach
Lies, one could easily believe thereis evil everywhere in the mythology and a
god or two in charge of itall. The jackal headed Anubis weighing hearts
and feeding the unworthy to the monsterAhmet is surely evocative of something malevolent.

(03:15):
But I'm going to save you sometime here. It wasn't. This pair
was impartial judgment personified a god whowas coldly indifferent to mortals and a chimeric
rubbish bin just waiting to snack onrotten souls. Just two judgy boys doing
their jobs. In fact, thatjob was to annihilate evil souls, So

(03:37):
fair play to the Egyptians. Theyreally shamalan to that one. A closer
representation of evil would have been apappus aka apep the giant serpent who was
the immortal enemy of the sun godRaw. Every night he tried to stop
Raw's journey in his sunboat by devouringor giving it a hypnotic stare, and

(03:58):
every night Raw his entourage would defeathim. Apophis was considered the embodiment of
chaos, and so linked the conceptof isfet. Isfet was for all intents
and purposes, evil in that itwas the opposite of ma At, or
truth and order. When Anubis weighedthe hearts of mortals, the hearts were

(04:21):
placed on a scale with a featherof maat. Hearts heavier than the feather
got tossed into ahm It's jaws,and the equal weighed hearts got the soul
into the worthy afterlife. Egyptians believedmat and is fet could not exist without
each other, and though one's dutywas to rise above is fet, there

(04:44):
still had to be harmony in theuniverse with both concepts. If anything bad
happened, it was is fet overcomingMaat for the time being, but the
universe would always ebb and flow tobring the two back in harmony. Is
Fet could be violence, but couldalso be a failed Nile flood, a
disease, or a lego on thefloor when you're barefoot. Apophus was sometimes

(05:08):
considered the embodiment of Isfet, butmainly in the sense that he opposed Raw's
light in order. He was primarilya deity of the afterlife, and thus
had little to no dealings with livingmortals, which brings us to another deity,
perhaps the one that popped into yourhead when we arrived in Egypt,
Set, god of deserts, storms, violence, and foreign oppressors. Set

(05:33):
was an enigmatic deity as complex ashis portrayals, and by that I mean
what the hell kind of animal headdoes he have? Is it an ardvark?
Is it a wild dog? Isit a penis with eyes and chopsticks
for ears? Nobody knows. Man. He came to be known for killing
and mutilating his own brother Osiris,living alone in the desert, and helping

(05:55):
foreign invaders conquer Egypt. He wasdepicted with red skin and the color red
in general, a color Egyptians associatedwith fire and destruction, and another string
on the corkboard to the devil,and his fight against Osirius's son Horace became
a legendary depiction of good versus evil, although it was really more Shakespearean revenge

(06:16):
against a usurper. However, heis not the archfiend Droid we're looking for,
as he was also depicted helping rawfight off apupphists from time to time,
and was worshiped as patron god ofmany cities and pharaohs due to his
military power and blessings. Some depictionscan elicit fear and all, perhaps even

(06:41):
distrust and enmity, but he's fartoo complex to be called the main force
of evil. In Egyptian mythology,they did have demonic entities, although the
term demonic now carries many Christian connotations, but in the dark, lonely fringe
areas in the desert, in tombsin caves. Egyptians worried about entities that

(07:03):
were dangerous and carried names like Heof the Repulsive Face and He who lives
on excrement. Transfigured spirits called Akuand malicious spirits variously known as Keftu,
Jay and Moot could mess with mortalsphysically and mentally, but had no leader

(07:24):
directing them. So evil for theEgyptians was in a cosmic balance, with
good manifesting here and there and withinvarious entities, but it was a necessary
part of life. It also helpedkeep people safe, as they knew to
stay away from the dark, dangerousspots which were scattered all throughout the Middle
East, spots where other cultures alsosaw evil lurking, not the least of

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which was pre Islamic Arab religion.If we fast forward a bit to the
seventh century CE, and entity familiarto many of you begins to emerge in
Arabic literature. The beings of SmokelessFire Gin are attested in writings during this
time, and while both the originsand details of what they were and where

(08:07):
they came from our murky, wecan at least infer that they were supernatural
beings, more powerful than humans butstill mortal, and something between man and
God or man and angel. Inthe hierarchy. People worshiped them, which
has led to the belief that maybethey were pagan nature deities who became demonized

(08:28):
by the other Abrahamic religions and possiblyZoroastrianism. Like the Egyptian spirits I just
mentioned, Gen were relegated to thedark, dismal, dangerous places people dared
not go. They also gained areputation for hating mankind, being able to
shapeshift and turn invisible, causing violenceto people, and even possessing people.

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Of course, there are examples ofgen who were benevolent and protected people,
and even falling in love with humans, but most people seem to view them
as capricious at best and violent demonsat worst, living in fear and awe
of them. The Quran, writtenin the seventh century ce mentions Gin twenty

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nine times, explaining their creation andculture, and how they were made to
worship Allah just like humans, onlythey were made first. Scholars and theologians
throughout history have hemmed in haut aboutGin, and you can get several different
pictures of what they are depending onthe source. However, belief that they
were invisible beings who held enmity towardshumans and could take over a person's body

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has led them to be viewed asdemonic. With the location of the people
who believed these stories, it hasbeen postulated that they stemmed from some of
the malevolent entities mentioned in Part onewith Mesopotamian, Babylonian and Jewish myths,
but in Islam, there is adistinction between Gin and demons. Demons fall

(10:05):
into two basic categories, shayatin ordevils and div or fiends. You can
really smell the Indo Iranian influence withthat last one, as Zoroastrianism and before
that, Hinduism used the term deva. Interestingly, the term started out as
the word for a god or deity, then became an entity not wholly evil,

(10:30):
but something to be rejected, andby the time Islam got a hold
of it, it meant fiend,deva, diva div what's next, David
shit? Anyway, Islamic demons definitelytry to lead human kind astray in their
mission to counter Allah's will, andare naturally and forever evil beings. A

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couple examples of these types of entitiesare the marid, a dumb, rebellious
giant, and if Fret more cunningand wicked type of demon, and one
often depicted in pop culture as beingable to control fire. It makes me
think of Final Fantasy seven, whereI think you can summon and effreet in
a spell. With Islam, wealso get centuries of prior Abrahamic pedigree,

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including what we discussed in Part onewith how the figure of the devil became
an entity unto himself, and theKoran was written with a fully fledged arch
fiend called Iblis, who controls theShaatine and dives. Taking a huge queue
from the tale of the Devil's fallfrom Grace and Second Enoch, the Koran

(11:39):
tells of Iblis's arrogance and refusal tosubmit to man. Sarah two, verse
thirty four is of particular interest,saying, and remember when we said,
unto the angels, fall prostrate beforeAdam, and they fell prostrate, all
Saint Eblis. He was of theGin, so he rebelled against his lord's

(12:00):
command. Will you choose him andhis seed for your protecting friends instead of
me? When they are an enemyinto you? Calamitus is the exchange for
evildoers. In this one verse weget the act that caused the devil's downfall
and the fun fact that he wasquote unquote of the Gin, like I

(12:20):
said. Scholars have argued all throughhistory on interpretations and versions of Eblis,
with some saying yes, he wasa Gin, some saying no, he
was an angel, YadA, YadA. In the angel version, Iblis was
actually Azazel, a name I broughtup in Part one, and another one
I'm saving for some fun stuff forlater in this part. Either way,

(12:41):
he was sentenced to Hell here calledJohannam and specifically Sigen, a prison like
place of torment at the bottom ofHell. Save sixteenth eighteen. Iblis said,
because thou hast thrown me out ofthe way, lo I will lie
and wait for them on thy straightway. Then will I assault them from
the fourth and then behind them fromtheir right and their left. Nor wilt

(13:05):
thou find in most of gratitude forthy mercies? God said, get out
from this disgrace and expel. Ifany of them follow thee, hell will
I fill with you all. TheQuran skillfully ties up the loose ends that
had frayed and the other Abrahamic religionsby giving the devil motivation right out of
the gate of sweet succulent revenge.Then he made a deal with Allah to

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be able to impose his will onmankind, to which Allah compromised by letting
him do it to unbelievers only Sarahfifteen thirty six through forty two. Ibili
said, Oh, my Lord,give me then respite till the day the
dead are raised. God said,respite is granted thee till the day of
the time appointed, Ibli said,Oh, my Lord, because thou hast

(13:54):
put me in the wrong, Iwill make long fair seeming to them on
the earth, and I will putthem all in the wrong. Accept thy
servants among them sincere and purified bythy grace. God said, this way
of my sincere servants is indeed away that leads straight to me. For
over my servants. No authorities shaltthou have, except such as put themselves

(14:16):
in the wrong and follow thee.Having said all that, there are many
interpreters and believers of the faith thattake the fact that Allah made Eblis in
the first place and has a divineplan that allows for Eblis to act full
ali ones, because in the endGod and goodness will prevail. In this
fatalistic sense, the devil is aninstrument of God, and there is a

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lot to answer for from all partiesinvolved. Sarah thirty five six. Verily
saving as an enemy to you,so treat him as an enemy. He
only invites his adherents that they maybecome companions of the blazing fire. Is
that is that entrapped man. Let'sexpand our magnifying glass a bit and start

(15:03):
heading away from the Middle East.How about we pop over to Greece and
see what the devil looked like.There. We'll start underground, as that's
where Old Scratch eventually ends up.But way down Hades town the king on
the chromium throne, as Hades himself, he's not the devil, so let's

(15:28):
turn back around and go back topside. Hades like the devil held dominion under
the surface where souls could end up. He was connected with snakes and Hades
like the devil eventually could lurk aroundevery corner, but he wasn't the boogeyman.
The devil became sure people were inno hurry to come face to face

(15:48):
with him, but the real fearthey bore was more for the finality of
death than the fear of being torturedin fire and anguish. Forever. Far
from evil, he just had arrestingbitch face, and in fact was more
interested in keeping balance and judging thingsfairly. The Greeks had evil deities,
but most were all minor gods andgoddesses in charge of specific things. Airis

(16:14):
was the goddess of discord, Inyowas the goddess of destruction, Apata was
the goddess of deceit. You hadDemos and Phobos, gods of Panic and
terror respectively, also the names ofthe moons of Mars. And speaking of
the moons of Mars, Moros wasthe god of doom. Not sure if
he went on to become God ofDoom two, three or any reboots.

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Actually I know he wasn't the godof doom two because I was suck it
cyber demons. So Greece did nothave the devil and was not super instrumental
in shaping the devil we know personalitywise. Anyway, we'll come back to
that. One could possibly argue thereare ties with a few similarities I just
mentioned for Hades, but Greek godwere royal a holes out for themselves,

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as they were made in the imageof the culture that worshiped them. Less
mythological and more philosophical. Was aconcept put forth by Plato in his Symposium
of a type of ethereal spirit calleda Theamone. Centuries later, Christian luminaries
would pick this term up and bastardizeit to denote beings of pure evil who

(17:23):
worked for the devil and attack humansin a variety of ways, But the
original meaning, as imagined by Plato, was that of an unseen intermediary between
man and the gods, inherently goodand trying to influence man to use reason
and good judgment. Plato's student Aristotleexpounded on the idea, probably to everyone's

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detriment, by saying there were evildaimons who incited evil actions in both men
and gods. You can bet laterChristians loved this idea, as it took
the heat off both God and menand put the blame squarely on these evil
beings. Plato also described the conceptof an absolute, perfect capital g good

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in the Republic, but what hemaybe didn't realize was that the idea also
implied an absolute evil, which wouldhave been a bingo for us in our
quest to track the devil down.But he didn't say anything about the search
continues. What do Asian and Polynesiancultures have for devilry, Well, not

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much actually. The religion of Buddhismis mostly concerned with how to prevent suffering,
and evil is born out of thegreed and desire that sometimes arises within
us. If we take the conceptof evil as just discussed with Plato,
the implied absolute antithesis of good,it's not really a concept found in Buddhism.

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For one thing, if you wereto consider someone evil, becomes possible
to justify committing harm against them,and that does not fly in Buddhist teaching.
The Damapata chapter twelve, verse onesixty five says, Bible it self
indeed is evil. Dune by oneselfis one to five by oneself is evil

(19:18):
left undune by oneself indeed is onepurified. Purity and impurity depend on oneself.
No one purifies another. Evil isnot an outside force in Buddhism.
Thus there's no need to fear adevil, at least the outside force version
of him. A story of adivine being called Mara describes a time where

(19:40):
princes said Artha was tempted by threebeautiful women, possibly Mara's daughters. Mara
is kind of like the personification ofthe seven Deadly sins, and his daughters
were trying to seduce said Artha tokeep him from enlightenment. They were unsuccessful,
but Mara is often pointed to notas the devil whereafter, but at
least as an opponent to the Buddha. There is, however, a hell,

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or more precisely, sixteen hells sixteeneight hot eight cold. You go
there according to your karma, butthere is no lord of the underworld to
stop by and bring you cookies.From time to time. The cookies are
spiders. The earthly realm just abovethe hells, oddly enough, is the

(20:26):
Patala Loca or hungry ghost realm,with beings who perceive the world differently than
humans and wander around dark, abandonedplaces seeking fulfillment. Sounds a little familiar.
Chinese mythology has some similar concepts abouthell and plenty of monsters, ghosts,
and goblins, but it's not unlikeGreek mythology, with no devil figure

(20:48):
heading it all up. Same withJapanese myth If you ever come across a
translation of the devil in Japanese withthe word akuma, it comes from a
malevolent spirit of fire in Japanese folklore. It's used in place of the name
Satan in Japanese translations of Christianity,but the actual entity is an evil,

(21:10):
fiery, sword wielding flying creature whobrings misfortune and can be responsible for mental
illness. And just in case you'rewondering, Hinduism does not have a devil
either. There's no need as karmakeeps things balanced. I did find some
mentions of an entity called Papa Poorisha, who is the embodiment of all sin,

(21:33):
though I couldn't find an origin forhim. There is also a Khali
Poorisha, an ugly and malevolent entitynot to be confused with the goddess Kali.
Legend says Lord Brahma created Kali Purishato inspire sin in people, and
thus he's just doing his job,which also sounds familiar. As far as

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Oceania and Polynesian cultures, there's nosingle entity who is the arch fiend of
a single benevolent god like we havein the Abrahamic religions. There's one that's
closer to the concept of set inEgyptian mythology, and I'll get to that
in just a minute. But manyof these cultures consider natural disasters, illness,

(22:21):
even death to be a type ofevil, just not the devil.
Someone might consider these things the workof bad forces or demon of some kind,
but none of these terms carry thesame meaning that you're probably used to.
A witch doctor could be consulted todeal with any demons causing disease,
or a shaman could help with ritualsto ward off a typhoon, but all

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these things were still natural phenomena orhuman ill will that were just a part
of life. The closest you mightcome sounds good on paper, but it's
really just another character in a pantheon. As I mentioned previously, Feo personification
of evil. In Maori mythology,Theoo didn't like the overworld and was jealous

(23:06):
of his brothers and sisters. Hefought his brother Tana, god of forests
and birds, but was defeated andexiled to the underworld. Legends say he
is the cause of all evil inmankind if he's not placated with offerings.
Again, we see gods made inman's image, and humans are kind of

(23:26):
caught in the crossfire. To compare, Christians don't make offerings to the devil
to keep him satisfied in Mopi inHell, but if you had to pin
evil on a singular entity. InPolynesian myth Theoo comes closest to the devil
and seamlessly integrated with the devil whenChristianity spread there. Norse mythology paints a

(23:47):
similar picture to Greek myth wherein youfind human like gods and trickster figures,
but no devil as we know him. Loki is an obvious target here,
being the complex, trickster god ofthe Norse pantheon, but any one story
about him will show that he isno prince of Hell. Ironically, however,
he was the father of Hell,goddess of the underworld and Hellhane,

(24:08):
and a figure not unlike the GreekHades, trolls and Drowger Pepper the tales
of the Edis and Sagas, Butany mention of the devil in legends comes
from post christianization of the culture.Celtic myths have a similar refrain God's made
in man's image, with bad andtricky figures capable of help just as much

(24:32):
as harm Brie Crew of the PoisonedTongue is a figure of Irish mythology of
the Ulster cycle and was pretty mucha Loky clone. He just liked causing
trouble, not rebelling against the ultimateGod and deceiving mankind out of pure,
unfiltered hatred. Same with Sirdon ofthe Nart Sagas from the North Caucuses of

(24:52):
Eurasia. These European gods were complexand held many roles, and not one
was the ultimate evil. We findin today's capital d devil over In South
America, the Olmec, Toltec,Aztec, Mayan, and Incan cultures had
plenty of gods and goddesses, butdetails are still relatively unknown to us compared

(25:15):
to European pantheons. Like other cultures, there were gods of the underworld,
and evil creatures are monsters, butthese were cultures that worshiped the sun,
agriculture, the sea, in otherwords, more practical things. The closest
you might come to a devil figureis that of Kaizen, meaning god of
death, and Mayan culture with aname that derives from the word for fart.

(25:40):
He was nicknamed the Stinking One andhad control over earthquakes and delighted in
torturing the souls of evil people inShibalba, the underworld. Post conquest by
the Spanish, it was easy todraw parallels to the Christian devil with this
guy, continuing a pattern you're probablyalready seeing. The First Nations people of
North America were very far away froma devil figure in their mythology. In

(26:04):
fact, good versus evil wasn't reallyconceptualized the way we've seen in the Abrahamic
religions. Native Americans lived in akinship with nature, plants, animals,
landscape. Whether if evil was everdiscussed, it was in terms of what
a person does or ways to unbalancethat kinship they shared with the natural world.

(26:26):
Things could be bad. I sureyou have skin walkers, windigoes,
and other monstrous beings, but itwas a path of corruption these entities followed
or came to on their own,not the influences of a great, almost
all powerful, evil being. Andin the service of brevity, the same
can be said for most African mythologies, with a common concept that evil comes

(26:47):
from humans. So it seems theworld at large has no consensus on evil
being encapsulated in one figure. Indeed, just the civilizations in the ancient Near
East seem to have come to thisidea. But that's just a taste of
world mythologies. Honestly, each culturecould have its own podcast, not just
an episode, a whole show.But there's other things for us to get

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to. So let's move on towhat I consider one of the most important
sections of this episode. The manynames of the devil. Y'all blow Yah

(27:38):
blow. The Prince of Darkness isa gentleman Edgar Shakespeare's King Near Your Eyes
may promise Paradise the only Life.Let's revisit one of the older and most

(28:06):
popular names for the devil, Satan. In Part one, I laid out
how the term was first used inthe Christian Bible and the original meaning of
it. Jason from Dragons and Genesispodcast runs it back for us, So
Satan or Shaitan, and I've hearda few different pronunciations on that one.

(28:30):
While while I don't know a greatdeal about its presentation in the Quran and
other Islamic text because that's not reallymy field. From what I understand,
basically, the Hasaitan of the HebrewBible and the the Shaitan from Islam the

(28:53):
basically the different. The main differencein there is Christianity. The figure continue
to develop throughout the early Christian period, and from there it entered into Arabia
and became the the Islamic version.So the Christian Satan is the closer representative

(29:18):
of that figure, and that becauseessentially Islam was almost it's basically descended from
a group of Christians, so youkind of have that stepping stone, you
have the Hastatan. Eventually it becomesthe Christian devil, and the end it
becomes the Islamic you know, sheitan, so that it's it's a bit closer

(29:41):
to what we would think of asa satan. At least that's my understanding.
Like I said, I don't reallystudy Islam that much, only insofar
as it pertains to you know,like early Christianity and how things kind of
spread around. The term comes froma Hebrew roote relating to opposition or accusation.

(30:07):
If you remember, satan or hasatanwas a job title, not a
specific being. After the Babylonian exileand Intertestamental period, writers began fabricating stories
using a specific evil entity, andsince the Old Testament had opposers already,
they lazily just attached the term tothis brand new villain. The Arabic word

(30:30):
Satan was a reinterpretation of the Hebrewand was used to mean demon or gin
and eventually the main opponent of Allah. Once the Bible began to be translated
ad nauseum, the word satan beganpopping up everywhere there was a reference to
something acting against God. It wasfoisted upon the public as a proper name,

(30:52):
and once John Milton got a holdof it in Paradise lost, it
was all but sealed as the namethe devil went by. The newly created
arch fiend of God in the NewTestament was referred to not only as Satan,
but the devil, Beelzebub, Abadon, Belile, Lucifer, Apollyon,
and the great Dragon. I'll tryto be quick but thorough with these,

(31:15):
and I'll briefly start with the worddevil. The Greek diabolos is where this
term started, with a translation ofthe term slanderer from the words dia and
balaine, which together meant to throwacross. Once it got to Old English,
it was deoful and from their devilit sounds pretty dealful, jeez.

(31:41):
It was used in translations wherever theHebrew Satan was found. Thus the two
became interchangeable, and like Hasitan becamethe Satan, Diabolos became the devil Beelzebub.

(32:05):
This one is murky, but afun kind of murky. Referenced in
the Book of Kings, the namewas baal Zebul, a deity worshiped in
the Philistine city of Ekron and thoughtto be associated with the Canaanite deity Ball.
Just the name Ball meant lord,and Zebull meant heavenly mansion. But

(32:25):
scholars think the Israelites referred to thisdeity with a derogatory pun with the name
baal Zebub, a term derived fromthe word for poop, So instead of
Lord of the heavenly mansion, hebecame lord of poop. Oh man,
if Michael Flatley was Lord of thedance, Michael Flatulencely was lord of the
poop. Sorry, anyway, sincethere was a strong connection to flies with

(32:52):
poop, he was eventually called Lordof the flies. Second Kings one two
and a Hasia fell down through alattice in his upporchunity that was in Samaria,
and was sick, and he sentmessengers and set unto them go inquire
of Baalzebub, the god of ecrime, whether I shall recover of this

(33:15):
disease. It's not exactly painting Beelzebubin any light here, let alone a
nefarious one. It's not until weget to the pseudopographical Greek text, the
Testament of Solomon, written in thefirst or second century CE, that we
find baelz Abul has become a princeof demons who was formerly a high ranking

(33:36):
angel in heaven. Who inspires allkinds of sin in men. You can
clearly see the connection to our fiendishfriend, the devil. Here. The
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, andLuke mentioned Jesus driving out demons by Beelzebub.
And I still can't wrap my headaround what the hell this means.
Matthew twenty five through twenty seven,and Jesus knew their thoughts, said,

(34:00):
unto them, every kingdom divided againstitself is brought to desolation, and every
city or house divided against itself shallnot stand. And if Satan cast out
Satan, he is divided against himself, how shall then his kingdom stand?
And if by Beelzebub I cast outdemons by whom do your children cast the

(34:20):
mountain, therefore they shall be yourjudges. Clear's mud. Jason hits us
with some more details. So originallyit wasn't bill Zibub, it was baal
Zebul, And what that meant waslord of the manor. It was essentially
a title for a Canaanite deity,and it basically meant the lord of the

(34:45):
heavenly Palace. And the way theirbeliefs worked, they had this great mountain
called Mount Zaphon, which was inwestern Syria, and this mountain called Mount
Zaphon, which would later they wouldlater change the location of it to far
to the south, right outside Jerusalem, and the name would eventually become Mount

(35:08):
Zion. But in its oldest versionit was called Mount Zephon, and it
was farther to the north, andatop it was said to be this great
garden, and inside it was atent and then later a palace, and
this is where the gods lived.And the lord of this palace had the

(35:30):
nickname Balsa Bull, and this meantthe lord of the manor, So this
was the one who kind of ruledthis godly palace, you know, is
basically just saying man of the house. And this was the Canaanite god Bald
also called a DoD or Hadad,and this was a green god associated with

(35:53):
fertility, not like human fertility,but like fertility of the land. So
you know, if you wanted yourcrops to grow, if you wanted your
nation to prosper, this is thegod you would make sacrifice too. And
one of his nicknames is the Lordof the Manor or the Lord of Heaven.
And this bals Zabul later on theJews. They would they would sort

(36:20):
of insult him and also his priests. And one of the things that they
did was they sort of made thispun. They would say, instead of
baal Zebul, lord of the manor, they would say baal Zebub, which
meant the lord of flies. Andscholar's best guess is that they were essentially

(36:43):
saying that their their deity Ball wasa pile of animal excrement and his priests
were the flies buzzing around him.And this is actually where you get the
book title Lord of the Flies.It's a reference to that, and so

(37:04):
that that's where this name balls Abubor bills a bub comes from. It's
a play on the nickname Lord ofthe manner. They've changed it to lord
of the flies. And this deityBall would basically become a sort of villain

(37:25):
for Yahweh. And this happens allthe way back in the Jewish Bible.
The priests of Yahweh and the priestsof Ball were seemingly in conflict. The
exact nature of this is uncertain,as the only the only literature we have
on it comes from the Yawistic side, you know, which is hardly going

(37:49):
to be unbiased. We don't reallyhave anything from the opposite side, and
we certainly don't have anything as impartial. But there was this this conflict between
these different groups of worshippers, andwhat they frequently do is they take all
of the different bad traits, whetherit's from the deity itself or even just

(38:14):
human behavior, and they attribute itto this other God. And so,
you know, ball worshippers they commitadultery, they worship idols, they commit
human sacrifice, all sorts of wickedheathen things. Of course, these were
things that everyone did, and theyalso depict them as all being foreigners.

(38:39):
It was all these evil foreigners thatdid this. But then there's a few
times in the Bible where they slipup and they talk about how they're doing
it or their ancestors are doing it, and they should stop doing it.
And so it looks like they usedto, you know, they used to
engage in these practice and then theystopped doing it. And then when they

(39:02):
were retelling the story, you stilllike, oh, make sure you change
that line to say that it wasthose you know, the evil Moabites and
Canaanites that did that. No,don't say it was Grandpa the Kurds that
it was the impetus for a massivebrexitus. I think, yeah, yeah,

(39:22):
so uh so, yeah, that'sthat's basically what it is. They're
they're taking this god who wasn't anevil deity. He was the patron deity
of the land, and they're recastinghim as a villain, and every chance
they get there, they're basically saying, oh, look, everything evil.
Yeah, it's because of that oldgod. And since one of his symbols

(39:45):
was a bull, which was,you know, a symbol of a lot
of ancient deities, including el andyahweh, because it's a symbol of strength.
I mean, like there are afew things out there on land that
are stronger than an angry bull,you know. I mean, like just
go out to a yellowstone and lookat a bison. That's frightening. Okay,

(40:07):
I'd rather face a bear, So, you know, I mean,
these things, it's it's like ifyou know, a locomotive ate grass and
then occasionally just attacked people, youknow, So yeah, they're they're they're
scary. And so this was asymbol of these different deities, you know,
and a lot of them had this, you know, as a sort

(40:29):
of symbol and these were symbols thatyou know, uh decorated the Jerusalem Temple,
you know, our descriptions that wefind talk about, you know,
all the different statues of bulls thatwere there, so that this was accepted
iconography. But eventually they start toget away from that and they say,

(40:50):
okay, well, no, no, the only gods that are depicted by
bulls are those evil gods like bald, you know, and he's just a
steaming pile of bull crap buzzing withpriestly flies. And then later on they're
like, oh, baal, he'sfull of corruption and excrement and debt Satan.

(41:12):
And so by the time you hada like with early Christianity, they're
they're taking these different things like baland Leviathan and stuff like that, and
they're just rolling them all into onething. And it's basically anything they don't
like gets categorized as being a traitof Satan. Abadon and Apollon. These

(41:37):
names are connected in that Abadon comesfrom the Hebrew word for destruction, and
Apollon comes from the Greek translation ofAbadon and means destroyer. Though the term
was not used as a name inclassical Greek texts the Hebrew Bible portrays Abadon
is just destruction or a place ofdestruction, often interpreted as where the dead

(42:00):
bide not to be outdone, andtaking a concept and repurposing it. The
New Testament renders Abadon and Apollyon andentity Revelation nine eleven. And they had
a king over those, which isthe Angel of the bottomless pit, whose
name in the Hebrew tongue is Abadon, but in the Greek tongue hath his
name Apollion. None of these aredirectly saying this is another name for the

(42:24):
devil. The best you can getis Angel of the abyss. I found
several sources saying The apocryphal gnostic textActs of Thomas, written in the early
third century CE, states Abadon isthe name of a demon or the devil.
But I searched through several translations ofthat text and saw not one mention

(42:46):
of Abadon being the devil. Therewas one single mention in one version that
said to you, I speak offspringof Gehenna, and Abadon. Gehenna was
a real place said to be cursedand was a figurative equivalent for Hell.
And as mentioned, Abadon was abottomless pit. This passage is speaking to

(43:07):
beings from those places, not literalchildren of an entity Belile. This is
a peculiar one, as the originis murky, and many scholars have disagreed
as to the meaning of the word, appearing twenty seven times in the Hebrew
Bible. It's been translated as eitherworthless, yokeless as in throwing off the

(43:30):
yoke of heaven, never to riseas in never to do well sedition,
and a land from which there isno return. There's definitely a negative connotation
with all these, but it's awide array of possibilities. Deuteronomy thirteen thirteen
states, certain men, the childrenof Belial are gone out from among you,

(43:53):
and have withdrawn the inhabitants of theircity, saying let us go and
serve other gods which ye have notknown. In this sense it becomes idolaters,
and the term sons of or childrenof was a Semitic idiom, basically
meaning those who do this. Somescholars believe it was a purposeful corruption of

(44:15):
the name of a Babylonian goddess,Belily. It's also been argued the opposite
is true, that Babylon borrowed thename from Jewish writings, but it seems
like consensus lies with the former thought. Belile and the Aramaic pronunciation of Beliar
are found quite a bit in theDead Sea Scrolls, where it is a

(44:37):
singular entity in charge of the sonsof darkness, or those who didn't think
the same way the Essenes did atthe time. One scroll says, you
made Belile for the pit angel ofenmity in darkness is his domain. His
counsel is to bring about wickedness andguilt. All the spirits of his lot
are angels of destruction. They walkin the law of darkness towards it goes

(45:01):
their only desire. Other fragments equateBelial as an angel against God and in
one the angel of darkness. Inanother he is named the king of evil
and Prince of darkness. Several otherapocryphal texts relate the word as a name
for the devil. It occurs oncein the New Testament Second Corinthians six fifteen.

(45:24):
And what concord hath Christ with Belialor what part hath he that believeth
with an infidel? Once again,it seems we have a term that started
as an idea or adjective that afterthe intertestamental period became just another name for
a villain, the Great Red Dragon. Red dragons are the most covetous and

(45:47):
greedy of all dragons, forever seekingto increase their treasure hoards. They are
obsessed with their wealth and memorize aninventory accurate to the last copper. Oh
sorry, I accidentally picked up myD and D Monster manual. The devil
has been linked to a dragon motifsince the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew

(46:08):
Bible, and likely reflect Mesopotamian andCanaanite legends before that. You you still
sort of have this idea though,of the Leviathan, and it gets you
know, downgraded to just being acreated animal, and people begin blaming the
Leviathan for different things like floods.So if you have a flood or any

(46:32):
kind of destruction by water, atidal wave, rex as ship or something
like that, well that was Leviathanstirring in the deep. And so you
now have you, along with aSatan angel testing people, you also have
this underwater sea dragon that is causingdestruction. And so any sort of like

(46:54):
torrential rains or anything like that canbe laid at the feet or the fe
of this water dragon, so youhave another scapegoat, you have another source
for calamity, and so the dragonmotif gets wrapped up into the ideas of
this sort of this cosmic destroyer,and that's where you get the idea of

(47:20):
chaos and fire and stuff like thatbeing wrapped up. In the Book of
Revelation, Satan is frequently referred toas a dragon. This comes from the
Book of Daniel, which is referringall the way back to the stories of
Leviathan, the great fire breathing whale, crocodile, sea serpent that would live

(47:44):
in the Mediterranean and sink ships.And so that's where your dragon motif comes
from. So anytime you see Satanbeing referenced as a dragon or a serpent,
it's taking the story of Leviathan andrecasting it as this source of darkness,
destruction, and chaos, which justrepresents the primordial earth before the gods

(48:08):
came in and separated things and beganorganizing the whole creation. A direct naming
of the devil as the Great Dragondoesn't appear into the Book of Revelation,
written in the late first century CE, Chapter twelve nine says and the Great
Dragon was cast out that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, which

(48:30):
deceiveth the whole world. He wascast out onto the earth, and his
angels were cast out with him.And in chapter twenty two, and he
laid hold on the dragon, thatold serpent, which is the devil in
Satan, and bound him a thousandyears. The simple phrase that old serpent

(48:52):
effectively rhet conned centuries of prior understandingforever afterward. The serpent in the Garden
of Eden thus became synonymous with thedevil. An apologists jumped on the chance
to take some blame away from Yahwehand mankind. Lucifer. That brings us

(49:14):
to a big one, maybe thegranddaddy of all misinterpretations, Lucifer. Jason
kicks it off for us. Theidea of Lucifer are really the name Lucifer
comes from two different places in theHebrew Bible. This is Isaiah chapters fourteen
to twenty and Ezekiel chapter twenty eight. And what it's talking about in these

(49:39):
two places are two different kings.I think Assyria and Babylon, and I
used to know the actual names ofthose kings. So in the case of
Isaiah fourteen to twenty it's Sargon thesecond and Ezekiel eight it is King Ifebal

(50:01):
the third, who is the Kingof Tire. And what's going on here
is they're they're giving a bunch ofsort of like prophetic imagery concerning these two
kings. And basically what you haveis these kings they've each done something that

(50:22):
has angered the Israelites and by extension, angering their God. And these kings
have failed at something. And soif someone has failed and you know,
they suffer a defeat, or theyget sick, or they die, you
know, or some sort of calamitybefalls them, then it was thought that

(50:45):
they had done something to anger atGod and within receiving punishment. And so
in this case they're talking about thesetwo different foreign rulers, and I believe
one of them was supposed to goand conquer somebody. I don't remember.
Anyway, these two people were beingperceived as being punished for something, and

(51:07):
so they're talked about as if theywere these great, lofty kings who have
been cast down. And essentially theywere too prideful, and yahwe just gave
them the boot. And so theyhad started off up on high, and
now they had been brought low,and all of this gets wrapped up in

(51:28):
astrological imagery because a lot of peoplethought that, you know, stars and
comets and things like that could tellyou things about what was going to happen
with important people. So if yousaw a shooting star, that probably meant
that a king or a prince haddone something wrong and had been cast down

(51:50):
or had died. And there wasactually this this belief that stars were essentially
angels that were the heavenly copy ofpeople on earth, and so your fate
was linked with the fate of aspecific star, or rather you were a
copy of the star, because thestar, the stuff going on in the

(52:14):
heavens is the real event, andwhat's happening on earth is basically a dim
representation of it. So when youhave these two different stories concerning these two
different kings from Ezekiel and Isaiah,what you have is these two different kings
who were being sort of demoted orpunished by Yahweh for their deeds and sister

(52:38):
being wrapped up with this astrological imagery. One of the things that many kings
were associated with was the last starthat you would see just before the dawn,
and this would come up over theeastern horizon and it was extremely bright,
and it actually wasn't a star,it's the planet vena Us. And

(53:00):
then right after it and in veryclose proximity, the sun would come up,
and so there would be these storiesabout how a king or you know,
someone being represented by this star wouldtry to usurp the Ultimate power by
you know, ascending First they're like, ah, look, you know that

(53:22):
this star Venus, the morning Star, is trying to come up before the
sun. But then the sun comesup and it's so bright you can't even
see Venus anymore. It just burnsout its light altogether. And so they
had these stories about the morning Star, you know, attempting to usurp the
ultimate power and then being like castdown or burned away when the sun comes

(53:45):
up. And this was retold asa king because they were often associated with
the brightest stars in the sky,things like Jupiter and Venus or Mars.
And then he's essentially trying to usesurp the great High God of Israel,

(54:05):
l l Yon or Yahweh as Land Yahweh were merged, and so you
have a story of the morning Star, which another word from morning star is
Lucifer trying to use surp the heavenlythrone and then ultimately being cast out by
God. And this was a storynot about any angels. It wasn't about

(54:27):
any celestial entities. It was aboutkings who had failed and their prideful ways
had ultimately led to their downfall.But since it was tied up with all
of these disastrological imagery and themes,it was easy to link that at a

(54:47):
later date with other stories concerning eviland prideful angels, such as the ones
we find in the Book of Watchers. In First Enoch, the word comes
from the Latin words lux or LUsmeaning light and fur meaning bearing together it

(55:08):
makes light bringer or don star.Lucifer was a godly personification of the planet
Venus, son of the goddess ofdawn Aurora, and one of the brightest
objects in the sky. Indeed,Roman poet Catulus called its evening aspect noctifer
or night bringer, as it couldstill be seen as the sunset. But

(55:31):
here again we see the translation bugbiting hard, as the term Lucifer found
in the Bible was translated from theHebrew hellel beIN shehar shining sun of the
morning. A term the ancient Hebrewsused for the planet Venus. The Greek
translation rendered the term Hiosphoros, theGreek word for bringer of dawn, so

(55:55):
you can see where the Latin termlucifer came from when they was translated once
again into the Latin Vulgate around threeeighty two CE. This was done by
one Dude Jerome, born in theRoman Empire around present day Croatia or possibly
Bosnia. He learned Latin and someGreek early in life, then tried to

(56:20):
learn Hebrew later after he converted toChristianity. Working from the Greek Septuagint itself,
a translation of the Hebrew Bible,Jerome translated Heosphoros as Lucifer. You
could also point to origin of Alexandriatwo hundred years later, saying certain passages
were about the devil. Later Englishtranslation kept this name instead of its meaning,

(56:45):
and it has caused a whole heapof trouble. The particular Bible passage
to blame is Isaiah fourteen twelve.How art thou fallen from Heaven, oh
Lucifer, son of the Morning,how art thou cut down to the ground,
which just weakened the nations with thepopularity of the Devil's Fall from Heaven

(57:05):
myth, this one verse suddenly tackeda whole new name onto the devil's growing
list of monikers. But if someonehad taken two damned seconds to pay attention
in a reading comprehension class, thiswould never have been considered another name for
the devil eight short ass verses earlier. The scripture is crystal clear that this

(57:28):
is a taunt against the current Babylonianruler, stating in verse four, thou
shalt take up this proverb against theking of Babylon and say how hath the
oppressor ceased? The Golden City ceased? And this taunt continues for about twenty
more verses, including the one withLucifer, which obviously was a sarcastic jab

(57:53):
at the Babylonian king, but itfit too well with the later repurpose tale
of the Fall from Grace. Andyes, I will mention John Milton owning
some responsibility in this mess with thecharacterization of Satan as Lucifer in his seventeenth
century Paradise Lost. And you knowwhat, Dante two for the Inferno in

(58:14):
the fourteenth century, never ever,ever, was Lucifer the name of the
devil. But because of numerous translationsfrom language to language to language, coupled
with the popularity of a made upstory and biblical apocrypha, here we are.
Now we have a Fox slash Netflixshow that ran for six seasons,

(58:37):
which I haven't seen a single episodeof, but as far as I can
tell, is mostly just a goodlooking dude running around naked a lot.
We're halfway through the names. Standup, take a water break. Mammon.

(59:39):
Some medieval ding dongs equated the nameMammon with devil, pointing to passages
like Matthew four twenty four, whichstates you cannot serve God and mammon.
Once again, we have a termthat has been stolen to use as a
proper name. Mammon comes from theAramaic word for wealth or profit, basically

(59:59):
money. In the Middle Ages,it became the name from one of the
seven Princes of Hell, appearing infourteen o nine, the anonymously written and
redundantly titled The Lantern of Light manufactureda classification system for the seven deadly sins
and the demons that preside over them. Mammon was the name given to the
demon who presided over you guessed itlust, just kidding it was greed.

(01:00:24):
And now that I'm looking over thislist, let's knock a couple other names
for the devil off. You've heardmost of these by now. Funnily enough,
you'd think someone would have stepped inand said, Hey, that can't
be the name of the devil.It's the name of this demon but low.
So we have Mammon for greed.We also get Lucifer for pride.
Beelzebub is envy out a left field, Satan is wrath, Abadon is gluttony,

(01:00:52):
Belfagore is sloth. And this wasa Canaanite derived entity originally called by
all poor after a mount and calledPiore and Moab where Ball was worshiped.
And lastly, we have Asmodius forlust. Asmodius was mentioned in Part one
as the right hand d bag ofAriman and Zoroastrianism. Honestly I put him

(01:01:15):
as the demon of wrath, sinceZoroastrian cosmology listed him as the demon of
wrath. But anyway, how aboutSamael. Here's another one with a pedigree
as strong as the fall from Gracestory. First appearing in First Enoch,
he was a fallen angel whose namemeant venom of God. Jewish literature of

(01:01:37):
the Second Temple period had him paintedall sorts of nasty, variously, saying
that he was the serpent. InEden, he was the incarnation of Evil,
chief of all Satan's commands, demonsfathered kine, dated Lilith, ordered
his pizza with no sauce what,and was responsible for all evil brought upon
Israel and Judah. Apocryphal writings inthe first century CE and beyond and equate

(01:02:00):
him directly with the devil, thetwo being interchangeable. Now here's one that's
become more and more interesting lately,Moloch. For a long time, Moloch
has been regarded as a Canaanite godwho demanded child sacrifices, a coursul.
John Wilton. Milton had him asa chief demon and pagan god in Paradise

(01:02:23):
lost first Molach horrid king, besmearedwith blood of human sacrifice, and parents
tears though for the noise of drumsand timbles loud, their children's cries unheard
that passed through fire to his grimMino. The term in the Greek Septuagint
the first seven Books of the OldTestament has been translated as king. And

(01:02:47):
then the New Testament Book of Acts, chapter seven, verse forty three says,
YEA, he took up the tabernacleof Moloch in the star of your
God reb fan figures which he madeto worship them, and I will carry
you away beyond a Babylon. Theambiguity to something evil is odd, but

(01:03:07):
it has come to mean a godthat you make child sacrifice to, and
has even been linked to the infamousBohemian grove ritual, the cremation of care.
However, scholarly opinion on this figurebegan shifting in nineteen thirty five with
some very interesting research by German theologianOtto ice Felt. Jason goes into detail

(01:03:31):
about this fascinating development. So,for centuries there was this figure named Moloch,
this evil deity that was worshiped throughoutthe land of Canaan, and it
gives reference to numerous times in theBible where people would actually conduct human sacrifices

(01:03:53):
to this god named Moloch. AndMoloch is usually depicted as almost almost like
an Egyptian god, where you havelike a human with an animal head,
in this case the head of abull, and this Moloch he would basically
live in like fiery tunnels beneath mountains, so it's almost like a volcano god,

(01:04:15):
and he lives deep in the earth. And if you wanted to make
a sacrifice to Moloch, you wouldtake usually your firstborn child and burn them
on an altar. And this seemsabsolutely horrible, you know, but sometimes,
you know, ancient people did somehorrible things. And this was the

(01:04:39):
belief up until the early twentieth centurywhen scholars came to realize that some of
these texts in the Old Testament thatwere referencing this Moloch the phrasing was off.
There had always been a problem withthe phrasing, but as people began

(01:05:00):
examining earlier copies of the text anddigging a bit deeper, they began to
realize that this wasn't just like acopyist error. Something had been deliberately done
to the text. And what theydiscovered is that the way the phrasing had
worked, they weren't making an offeringburnt like a child burnt sacrifice to a

(01:05:27):
god named Moloch or Molech. Theywere making a molek sacrifice. So this
is a Moloch was a specific typeof sacrifice, and in every instance that
I can find. It basically meansthat you took one of your children,
you know, typically the firstborn andusually the firstborn son, and you burned

(01:05:51):
them alive to a god, notto a specific god named Moloch with a
bullhead, but to whatever deity youprayed to. And so a Moloch wasn't
a god you sacrifice to. Itwas a type of sacrifice to whatever god
you were making a sacrifice too.It could be to any deity that you

(01:06:14):
worshiped. And the troubling thing aboutthis is the places where you find these
Moloch sacrifices being referenced are all placeswhere the primary deity being worshiped was Yahweh.
And so it looks like these weresacrificed. In many cases, these

(01:06:35):
were like child sacrifices to Yahweh.And that's why the phrasing of the text
got changed to essentially cover up thefact that some of the ancient Israelites used
to make human sacrifices to Yahweh.And we actually find a few instances,

(01:06:58):
like there's one of them that popsto mind in the Book of Exodus,
where it actually commands people to makehuman sacrifice to Yahweh. It says you're
you know, it's laying out,you know, the rules for sacrifice,
and it says like you're the firstbornof your cows, and your goats and
your sheep, and your own childrenwill be given to Yahweh. They get

(01:07:23):
to stay seven days with their mother, and on the eighth day you sacrifice
them to Yahweh. Now, laterin the book they repeat this command,
but when they do, they say, but for your firstborn child, you
can substitute like a goat or alamb and not kill your child, because

(01:07:45):
we don't do human sacrifice anymore,which is sort of the whole point of
the Abraham and Isaac's stories, likeno, no, no, no,
we don't. Okay, yeah,we used to do that, we don't
anymore. We substitute the human withan animal. That's what gets sacrificed.
And so that's what the Moloch ordealwas all about. It was originally human

(01:08:06):
sacrifice to a deity, and inmany cases these would have been conducted to
Yahweh. And at some point,probably around the seventh sixth centuries, somewhere
around there, they were switching awayfrom human sacrifice and they said, okay,
we're gonna say this was not toYahweh, and eventually the text got

(01:08:28):
so confused that it looked like theywere sacrificing to a god that never was
never mentioned. It was never existed, There was never a Moloch. It
was just a confusion of the text. So does that mean then that there
was an original story of Abraham andIsaac that did have him sacrificing Isaac,

(01:08:50):
and then they came in later andchanged it. Yes, there there's actually
evidence in the story that Isaac nevercame down off the mountain, because right
after that you have Abraham and Sarahhanging out and there's no mention of Isaac,
and then after that Sarah dies,and so you've got this whole little

(01:09:17):
section after that story from the enduntil the time that Sarah dies, where
basically Isaac just doesn't exist. Andso some scholars have actually suggested that in
the original story, Isaac was sacrificed, and then later the story got changed

(01:09:38):
so that in that scene it's substitutedwith a ram which that scene is actually
borrowed from a scene with someone wassupposed to be sacrificing their child to Zeus
and one of his messengers. Iforgot who shows up. It's like no,
no, no, take this sheepand dad, and then they sacrifice

(01:10:01):
the sheep. And then this sheepis used at some point to like mop
up a bunch of water that haslike gold in it, and it later
gets hung up on a tree inthe Caucus Mountains and it becomes the Golden
Fleece. Huh, and then mynamesake has to get on a ship and
go try to find it. Soso yeah, there's actually a lecture series

(01:10:24):
you can get off of Audible aboutthe Old Testament from a professor Amy Jill
Levine, and she actually talks aboutthis, the possibility that Isaac was sacrifice
and that it was Ishmael, whoinherits everything you know, is Abraham's son

(01:10:45):
with the slave Hagar, which iswhy we have the whole story about her.
And then Ishmael, like Jacob,ends up having twelve sons, one
for each of the tribes. Butthen they say, oh no, they
get sent off and they go elsewhereand have twelve other like the fathers of
twelve other tribes. So it lookslike it may have been that Isaac was

(01:11:11):
sacrificed and it was his son Ishmaelwho carried on his line. How did
they figure out that this was anaction as opposed to a deity. Does
this term show up in other Hebrewtexts or did they take the structure of

(01:11:34):
the word and say, this actuallyis a verb, it's not a noun
or something like that. My exposureto this came from several articles and a
book that i'd read a couple ofyears ago, and I hadn't looked at
him in that particular context much sincethen. There's a book Human Sacrifice in

(01:11:58):
Ancient Israel, Heath dural Uh,that goes in depth into this particular topic
H and he cites all of therelevant uh scholarly literature on the the these
discoveries and the more accurate renderings ofthose passages. But that that would be

(01:12:19):
the best I can't remember all thedetails of it off the top of my
head, um, because it's beensome years since I was looking at that
material, but that would be theplace to go for it. And that's
a relatively recent take it. Yes, yeah, that's UH. That is
based on the latest scholarship and um, I want to say, it's only

(01:12:41):
a few years old. So thisstunning reversal seems to be a name that
became a term not became. Italways was, but I've gotten tired of
hearing about terms becoming names. Whoknew Yahwei had such a thirst for children
blood? I find this terribly fascinating, but I shouldn't be too surprised.

(01:13:04):
As Jason explains, Yahweh had ataste for just about any kind of blood.
At the end of Second Samuel,we have a thing where Yahweh is
once again upset with the Israelites,and the reason given is that during the
time of King Saul, he didn'tThere was like some group of people his

(01:13:29):
at war with, and Yahweh commandedhim to kill everybody, but he didn't
kill all of them. He onlykilled some of them, so it was
genocide, but it wasn't a completegenocide. He allowed some of them to
live genocide light. And Yahweh gotupset with that, and so he I
think he visited another plague on himor something. So the Israelites are being

(01:13:49):
punished for something that their previous kinghad done, and there there's a great
famine. I think, like allof their grains stopped growing or something.
I think that was the problem,and the only way to fix this was
to take a bunch of the maledescendants of King Saul. So Saul's already

(01:14:11):
dead, he's been dead for years. David has to go and round up
a bunch of the male descendants,so a bunch of his sons and grandsons,
and they're all taken up onto ahill outside of Jerusalem and they're all
impaled as a sacrifice to Yahweh sothat the famine will be over. And
it's like, oh, that's kindof horrible. So we have like this

(01:14:34):
mass human sacrifice of a whole bunchof innocent people, but not burned,
right, right, right, Sowe have this and they're all they're all
crucified to appease Yahweh to ensure agood grain harvest. But we have another
one in Um in the Old Testamentinvolving Jeptha's daughter and up that he's going

(01:15:00):
to fight I believe the Ammonites,and he asks Yahweh to basically help him.
I think this is in the Bookof Judges. He asked Yahweh to
basically grant him victory in battle.And the deal that jep the Yahweh make
is that jep Theo will be victoriousin battle, but at a cost.

(01:15:24):
He's going to have to sacrifice thefirst thing that exits his house. When
he returns home, he goes intobattle, he's victorious. He comes home
and his oldest daughter walks out,so he has to bring her to a
big pile of wood and set heron fire and burn her alive. And

(01:15:46):
so we you know, and soin this one, like there's no ram
that shows up at the last moment. You know, they're like, she's
a woman. We don't need toapologize for this. Yeah, and uh,
they end up using this. Thisis an ideological tale to explain a
certain festival that's done at a certaintime of year. Guy Fawkes night.

(01:16:06):
Yeah, we have another story inwhich a person sacrifices their own oldest child
too. Yahweh. And it's actuallya burnt offering, it's a Moloch sacrifice.
So yeah, the story of Jeptha'sdaughter is definitely one and there's no
intervention to savor in that one.What book did you say? That was?

(01:16:28):
Judges Judges Chapter eleven. Mephistopheles,The last big name association I want
to discuss is one of the youngestones Mephistopheles today. This name and its
abbreviated version mephisto are interchangeable with thedevil, but the character of Mephistophiles has

(01:16:50):
always been a demon in service ofthe devil. Its first appearance came in
Der Fausboch, a chat book orsmall forty page story book written around the
fifteen seventies in Germany. It concernedthe Historia von doctor Johann Fausten, a
fictional account of the real Doctor Faust, a German alchemist who had died about

(01:17:13):
thirty years earlier. In the tale, doctor Faust summons a demon named Mephistopheles
to broker a deal whereby he wouldlive deliciously for twenty four years with Mephistopheles
as his servant, and then thedevil could have his soul for eternity.
The tale was not original. Asimilar German folk tale existed prior and inspired

(01:17:35):
the anonymously authored work, but itin turn would inspire countless other works of
the same tale. Some of thoseinclude Christopher Marlowe's sixteen sixteen play The Tragical
History of Doctor Faustus Gerta's eighteen oeight play Faust, Barelioz's operatic musical dramatic

(01:17:55):
legend La Damnation de Faust in eighteenforty six Lists eighteen fifty seven Faust Symphony,
and an incredible host more composers,songwriters, films, shows, art
and literature too many to name.Because of the appeal of the moral dilemma
involved, the Deal with the Devilmetaphor has gained wide popularity from then on,

(01:18:17):
and no doubt helped in attaching thename Mephistopheles to the devil, even
though there is a clear distinction betweenthe two in the play. We'll be
revisiting Mephisto here in just a littlebit, but for now, I'll run
down through some other devilish names thathave been conjured, up, tacked on,
invented, and improvised over the years, just to give you a little

(01:18:40):
cherry on top. Tinebriffer or shadowbearer, snakey, cacodemon, shown spiegel
or pretty mirror, the Boogeyman,ragamuffin, crooked nose, the many handed
one, Ribald, the father oflies, gentleman Jack, the goodfellow,
error, Dickens, dickon less,dick, old nick, old rip old

(01:19:01):
horny, old Harry, and oldscratch. And that's just old scratching the
surface. And speaking of surface.What in the world does the devil look
like? That's almost as loaded asthe names he carries. Let's go through
the many looks for the devil overthe years up to and including the modern

(01:19:21):
Devil. I don't want you,but I'd hate to lose you. You've
got me in between the devil andthe deep blue sea. I forgive you

(01:19:42):
because I can't forget you. You'vegot me in between the devil and the
deep blue sea. I ought acrossyou off my list, but when you
come knocking at my dog, thatseems to give my heart and twiz,
I'd come on it back. Ishould hate you, the guest, I

(01:20:04):
love you. You've got me inbetween the devil and the deep blue Who
makes wakes the devil and the deepThe devil hath power to assume a pleasing
shape Hamlet Shakespeare's Hamlet. The Devilhas had one hell of a costumer.

(01:20:33):
I've described what I guess you couldcall the classic devil look of horns,
wings, redskin, et cetera.I'll get to that, but it's hardly
how he began or ended up.Let's go back to ancient Canaan and a
figure I mentioned in Part one.How by you, if you'll remember,

(01:20:54):
he is a demon described as thelord of horns and a tail. Other
ugurritic demons carried associations with fire.At least a couple were described as sea
monsters or giant serpents, sometimes withmultiple heads, as in the monster low
Tan the mighty one with seven headsthat'll come up again. In fact,

(01:21:16):
the whole reason I'm bringing these examplesup is because the many looks of the
Devil all have roots in these mythsand legends, and you can tie a
string on the corkboard to most ofthem and try and keep track of all
the animal imagery, as the Devilhas taken on aspects of all kinds of
beasts. This is likely due tothe fact that it's always been the fashion

(01:21:40):
to characterize one's enemies in a chimeric, chaos monster way, especially in apocalyptic
literature like the kinds that were beingwritten pre impost Jewish exile in Babylon.
For example, Daniel chapter seven describesfour great beasts from the sea, one
with a lyon body and eagle wingsthat stood like a man, one like

(01:22:02):
a bear, with ribs between itsteeth or a mouth in its ribs,
or something. One was a foreheadedleopard with chicken wings, and the last
just says it's a strong, dreadful, terrible beast with tin horns and iron
teeth. He was describing the empiresof Babylon, Media, Persia, and

(01:22:25):
Greece. Jason discusses the line ofthinking at the time, and so like
Hell then becomes this fiery place,but at the same time, it's also
dark, and it's like full offilth, and you know, pests and
stuff, and everything is foul andstinky and corrupt. And he looks like

(01:22:46):
a dragon but also likes like aperson, and he's covered in horns,
and you know, it's like youcan't really describe him because you're trying to
describe like five different things at once. That's why our depiction look so bizarre.
He's got like a snake for atail, and he's got all these
heads, like seven heads and tenhorns, and you know, all sorts

(01:23:11):
of things. They're trying to taketoo many things and merge them into one,
which is essentially what the modern satanis. This type of image salad
can also be found splattered across theBook of Revelation, and we finally get
a description of the devil, whoat first is called the great Red Dragon

(01:23:32):
Revelation twelve three through four. Andthere appeared another wonder in heaven, And
behold a great red dragon, havingseven heads and ten horns, and seven
crowns upon its heads, and histail drew the third part of the stars
of heaven and didn't cast them tothe earth. We get the color red,

(01:23:54):
horns and a tail, probably evenflying if he's up in the heavens
and the us all would serve laterdescriptions of the devil by people who were
clearly making it up as they wentalong. Images, art stories all drew
from these ancient concepts of composite beingsto make the devil a composite himself.

(01:24:16):
So far we have horns, wings, a tail, and snake imagery,
not to mention the color red.And there's more to come. However,
the imaginative Intertestamental period would throw acurveball with the fanciful fall from Grace story.
The devil's arrogance, pride, andnarcissism would lead to his expulsion from

(01:24:36):
heaven. People have taken that ideaand decided that his vanity came from his
almost inconceivable good looks. So nowwe have a couple of options of devil
flavors to choose from. By theMiddle Ages, depictions of the devil were
many and varied, and to behonest, pretty hilarious. He often looked

(01:24:58):
like a wild, warned, hairyogre type humanoid, sometimes with a tail,
sometimes with just mouths all over hisbody. I mean, these people
were absolutely hammered on lead or puregrain, alcohol or psilocybin, or lack
of sex or something. Speaking ofweirdos, Saint Jerome blasts back into the

(01:25:19):
picture. He's the donut who gaveus the Latin Vulgate Bible, if you
remember. But he also gave usanother lion vehicle to add to this vultron
of an entity. After ruminating onIsaiah chapter thirteen, where it's said Babylon
was the place Harry Ones danced,Jerome decided it must be talking about satyrs,

(01:25:40):
the half men, half goat,all horny creatures of classical mythology.
To Jerome, that meant they weredemons. So that demonic imagery associated with
satyrs looks to have come from Jabrome. I mean, Jerome, what is
the devil but chief of all demons? And soon you start getting the art

(01:26:00):
rolling in with a half man,half goat, allhorny with horns tailed troublemaker.
This also led to one particularly remarkableinstance, if you'll allow a short
but compelling tangent, the story ofSister Magdalena of the Cross, the nun
who made a pact with the devil. Born in Corti, Baspaine in fourteen

(01:26:29):
eighty seven, Magdalena de la Cruzwas a nun of the Franciscan order who
displayed great devotion to the church ata very young age and throughout her life.
She was said to have had avision of Jesus when she was five
years old, and claimed to havevisions repeatedly after that, simultaneously gaining fame
and notoriety at the time. Notlong after, she was said to have

(01:26:53):
cured a man's limp and made amute man able to speak, acts that
were considered miracles. At the ageof ten, According to her legend,
she thought herself too beautiful and thatno amount of covering up would atone for
her beauty. So she did thelogical thing and crucified herself to her bedroom

(01:27:13):
wall. To her this was anact of atonement. She nailed her feet
in and got her left hand nailedbefore passing out from pain and falling off
the wall, breaking a couple ofribs in the process, though a doctor
patched her up. She wanted tofeel the pain as a form of penance

(01:27:36):
and kept removing her bandages, whichled to infection and near death. But
apparently on Easter Sunday fourteen ninety seven, she had a vision where Jesus appeared
to her and cured her, andshe sat up in bed, ripping her
bandages off and screaming in joy.At sixteen, she whipped herself in penance

(01:27:59):
and claimed the wounds were healed.The next day, she had two fingers
that didn't grow normally like her others. Maybe nailing your hand might have led
to complications, but people said itwas because Jesus touched them in a vision
when she was younger. I mean, that's a red flag to me,
but we'll keep going. She becamea nun at seventeen and really upped her

(01:28:24):
devotion game by carrying a cross around, starving herself, kissing other nun's feet,
and whipping herself some more. Atage twenty two, the day she
became an official nun. It wassaid that during the ceremony, a dove
flew down from the ceiling and landedon her shoulder, seemingly whispering into her
ear, before eventually watching some moreof the ceremony and flying away into the

(01:28:47):
sky. Her fame grew and shewas considered a living saintant. She began
having more visions where she seemingly predictedthe future and was able to know things
that happened all over Spain as theywere happening or shortly after. And then
in fifteen eighteen, she told herabbess that she was miraculously pregnant with the

(01:29:10):
baby Jesus. This divided her conventwith nuns who thought it was a miracle
and nuns who threw squints and sideeyed glances due to skepticism. Magdalena responded
by mutilating herself more. The archbishopsent three midwives to examine her, and
all three concluded her virginity was stillintact. She claimed to have given birth

(01:29:35):
alone on Christmas fifteen eighteen, toa radiant baby that her hair changed to
blonde and grew long enough to wrapthe baby in. Then the next morning
she woke up and the baby wasgone and her hair had changed back to
brunette. I'm gonna skip over abunch more bonker stuff and bring us back

(01:29:55):
around. In fifteen thirty three,she was elected abbess and became a real
terror to the nuns, making themperform horrible acts of penance publicly. Her
brutal regime change, coupled with somefailing prophecies and visions, led to doubts
about her from the community. Infifteen forty three, she got sick and

(01:30:15):
started acting weird around priests, includinggoing into convulsions. A doctor was called
who stabbed her with a needle tono reaction. However, after dipping the
needle in holy water and trying again, Magdalena led out a moan of pain.
Shortly after, an exorcist came alongand discovered there were two demons possessing

(01:30:40):
her. Their names were Balbon andPetorio or Patonio. Having demons driven out
of Magdalena caught the full attention ofthe church, and an inquisitor was sent
to get to the bottom of thesituation. Under the belief that she would
die within the year, she confessedsome thing amazing. She had made a

(01:31:01):
pact with the devil at age five, where she would be granted fame in
respect for her obedience to the darkLord. It wasn't Jesus, she saw,
it was the Devil. For aboutforty years she had copulated with these
demons, and the devil described ashaving goat legs a human torso. In
the face of a satyr whose childshe berthed in fifteen forty six, she

(01:31:28):
was subjected to an otto da fay, otto da fay. What's an auto
da fae? It's what you oughtn'tto do, but you do anyway.
These were public penances by the SpanishInquisition, highly ritualistic and usually consisting of
whipping, torture, and even burningat the stake. Since the demons were
to blame, she got away withlifetime imprisonment and supposedly died in fifteen sixty,

(01:31:54):
still quite repentant. I came acrossthe story in the research and thought
it too good not to share.But the main point of including it is
how the imagery of the devil havingsator features was a prominent thing at the

(01:32:16):
time, and the lengths people havegone to throughout history to portray this character
and his powers are extreme. Continuingwith the Devil's looks. I wasn't able
to find a direct source saying Jeromewas responsible, but his imagining of Satyr's

(01:32:38):
being demons made me wonder if healso associated devilish looks with that of other
Greek mythology. Indeed, some scholars, like Jeffrey Burton Russell believe this to
be the case, as he pointsout in his nineteen seventy seven work The
Devil Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity toPrimitive Christianity. Quote. The devil's pitchfork

(01:32:59):
derives in part from the ancient tridentsuch as that carried by Poseidon, which
symbolizes threefold power over Earth, air, and sea, in part from symbols
of death such as the mallet ofKaren, and in part from the instruments
used in Hell for the torment ofthe damned end quote. I would also
love to lump in one more contenderfor inspiration. Hades obviously the first figure

(01:33:26):
you'd point to in that mythology,though wrongly as I pointed out earlier,
But here you have the ruler ofthe underworld and damned souls, and lo
and behold. He was often depictedcarrying a biden't or two pronged instrument.
These images could very well have inspiredlater artistic portrayals, though Jeffrey Burton Russell

(01:33:46):
wasn't exactly convinced. He went onto point out the more contemporary thought that
monks and church leaders could simply lookout their windows and see the peasants shoveling
hay who were scared to death,they would be handled the same way by
the devil. To him, thatinspiration made more sense than the thousand year

(01:34:08):
old influence of another culture's mythology.I leaned toward Hades and his Biden being
the source personally. Dante returns tous in the fourteenth century, introducing batlike
wings in his description of the devil. Milton strikes back with the devil being
beautiful. The Faust folk tale alsohelped the image of the devil, with

(01:34:30):
productions in the seventeenth century onward portrayingMephisto wearing Renaissance clothing and bright red and
black silks, often with red tightsand makeup of black hair and a Van
Dyke goatee. Nowadays, it's fashionableto portray the devil as a good looking
guy in a sharp suit, someoneenchanting and likable who puts others at ease

(01:34:54):
and charms his way in and outof situations. But there's not really one
look the devil carries anymore, asyou can just as easily find images of
an all red, pointy tailed,snake, tongued, two horned, batwinged,
goat legged, vandyke, sporting tridenttoting humanoid, or even all that
but a horrendously ugly oglike face.It's really up to you how you see

(01:35:18):
or don't see the devil. Onesymbol appearing a lot these days, especially
with the modern Satanic temple, isthe image of bothamet. This is the
goat legged human torsoed winged figure witha goat head that appears along with several
other bits of iconography. Many peopleequate it directly as a representation of the

(01:35:40):
devil, but of course it's not. The term originated around ten ninety eight
in a letter from a French crusader, and was used as an alternate term
for Muhammad. It's seen in severalworks of literature in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, but in the early fourteenthcentury appears in transcripts for an inquisition against

(01:36:01):
the Knights Templar as the templar orderwas being attacked more and more frequently by
the church. Accusations of the worshipof Bahamet kept popping up, and eventually
the name was seen in forced dubiousconfessions of templar knights. It was never
described the same way twice, sinceit was a non existent thing, but

(01:36:24):
church leaders decried the worship of afalse idol and used this uproar to torture
and murder knights. In the nineteenthcentury, French esotericist and author Eliphus Levy
wrote a book on high Magic inwhich he drew a depiction of Bahamet as
a Sabbatic goat, a figure associatedwith the Sabbath. His goal was to

(01:36:46):
portray a quote symbolization of the equilibriumof opposites end quote with a good depiction
of balance and perfect social order.So the image he drew had both male
and female, human and animal,and good and evil features. The Satanic
Temple, who again do not worshipa literal Satan, has taken up this

(01:37:11):
figure as a mascot of sorts,while evangelicals absolutely lose their damned minds over
it and proclaim it to be theliteral definition of devil. Worship, or
at the very least, demon worship. You can find this guy more and
more in pop culture. And whileits meaning has gotten lost over the years,
and the image was fabricated by aFrench magician, it was originally an

(01:37:33):
alternate name for the prophet Muhammad.Never in history has the Devil enjoyed such
success in pop culture as the timewe're currently living. In film, art,
literature, music, games, youname it, the Devil can be
found there. Good omens, Rosemary'sBaby, The Mysterious Stranger, The Devil,

(01:37:55):
and Daniel Webster to name a fewnovels. The Devil's Advocate, The
Prophecy Constantine, The Witch with Everybody'sfavorite Dancing Goat. But those are some
notable films, Ghosts and Goblins,Cuphead, Diablo, and one of my
favorites, Dante's Inferno. Are somenotable video games featuring him running with the

(01:38:17):
Devil, Shout at the Devil,sympathy for the Devil, The Devil went
Down to Georgia, Devil Inside Devil'sHaircut. There's some bangers involving the Devil
in music, Lucifer, Southpark,Futurama, Supernatural, the Twilight Zone.
For some TV shows, the Devil, perhaps ironically to those scared shitless of

(01:38:40):
him, is all around us.Some people feel the devil around every corner,
see the devil in every shadow,hear the devil in every baby laugh.
In addition to these fanciful and variedportrayals of him and culture, this
is no better illustrated than in theinfamous Satanic Panic of the late eighties and
early nineties. Parents were being inundatedwith news segments about serial killers, kidnappers,

(01:39:03):
razors and candy, heavy metal,goths and yes, of course and
btggs. It created an atmosphere ofpure paranoia, which resulted in people's brains
literally opening the tops of their skulls, climbing out and running away, never
to be seen again. Okay,not literally, but honestly exhibit A gestures.

(01:39:26):
Vaguely, even poor D and Dfelt the wrath of a thousand karns
descend upon it, gathering in closeddoor rooms or dark basements, casting magic
spells, talking about demons and resurrectedcorpses, magic missile and charm undead.
A huge backlash befell the simple tabletopRPG, but luckily it managed to weather

(01:39:47):
the storm, as more and moremoms learned it was just nerds sitting around
doing math. And I don't knowabout you guys, but I'm getting the
sense another satanic panic, because rightaround the corner it feels like evangelicals are
getting more and more empowered to callanything they don't like satanic. If you

(01:40:09):
need examples, I offer the pastfew years and the names Lil nas X,
Sam Smith and Rihanna. These guysare like professional Jimmy rustlers. It's
like they're paid a commission for eachsingular Jimmy they rustle. It's hilarious.
It's also kind of sad. Ihope it's just me, but it seems
we're edging closer and closer toward theconstitutional Church and State wall being torn down

(01:40:33):
in America. I guess time willtell, But something that has stood the
test of time is the devil's involvementin superstitions. I can't get out of
our pop culture section without a fewfunds superstitions. So here's ten. Hang
a mirror by the door to keepout the devil. He's so vain,

(01:40:56):
he'll get distracted by his reflection andforget to enter. If you spill salt,
throw a pinch over your left shoulderfrom Da Vinci's The Last Supper,
which shows spilled salt by Judas andthe Folk. Belief that the devil is
always whispering in your left ear,so throwing salt might hit him. Squaw
in the eye. Cover your mouthwhile yawning, from the belief that an

(01:41:17):
open mouth will allow the devil tojump inside. No whistling at night,
from the belief that it will summonthe devil. Don't have two mirrors facing
each other, from the belief thatit opens a portal to hell the devil
can climb through. Watch out forleaves turning in the wind, from the

(01:41:39):
belief that the devil is in thatspot. Never leave a woman alone during
the first six weeks after childbirth,from the belief the devil has more power
over them then. Don't cut offboth ends of baked bread from the belief
that it would cause the devil tofly over the house. Don't whistle inside

(01:42:00):
a cemetery, from the belief thatdoing so would so in the devil.
Don't light three cigarettes with one match, from the belief that the flame represents
hill and the devil, and lightingthree SIGs with one match is seen as
disrespecting the Holy Trinity. The devil, as you are fully aware, is

(01:42:25):
a huge topic. So as notto make you feel anymore like you've already
made it to hill, let's somestuff up and think about it a bit.
The devil is an unrecuse. Hethinks he's pretty wise. He's always
after me, but he ain't figuredon my thighs. He hangs around and
hangs around and shoot me full ofsin, but he might as well be
on his way. I'll never lethim. I'll never let's devil win.

(01:42:51):
I'll never mess around with him.He may try me from the outside,
he may try me from within,but never devil win. Hell is empty,
and all the devils are here ArielShakespeare's The Tempest. Here are observations

(01:43:16):
I've made in my research. Thefirst time the world saw a devil figure
came from Zoroastrianism. Historian and religiousstudies scholar Jeffrey Burton Russell wrote, quote,
Ariman is the first real devil inworld religion. End quote. I've
bet you never heard a song likeadmapool. Well, he points me out.

(01:43:42):
Most religions in the world didn't havea figure like that. Hell Judaism
didn't have a figure like that.Babylonian myths and legends, Zoroastrianism, and
the epic of Gilgamesh heavily influenced Jewishwritings both pre but especially post Exhiloic period,
even down to the first stories inthe Old Testament. And this is

(01:44:02):
a point we'll come back to hereand there while putting this comparative mythology into
context to go into a bit ofdetail with things to consider, we have
no further to look than the storyof Adam and Eve, where the common
conception is that the devil, inthe form of a snake, seduced Eve
into eating a forbidden apple. Heslips some fruit into my hands. Say

(01:44:25):
that, old boy's a site,he says, now here's a great,
big, juicy apple. Will takea bite. Mis have never bothered me,
folks, And I'm not going blind, So or dropped it for I
knew it was a lemon all thetime. I love. Let the devil
win on. The problem is neitherof these concepts has any basis in Jewish

(01:44:45):
scripture. Has pointed out in Partone, the serpent is never called the
devil or satan anywhere in the text, and the apple is never called an
apple. In fact, it wasn'tuntil the Bible was being trans eat it
into Latin that the referenced fruit wasnamed as an apple. Ray and Mobley
in the Birth of Satan postulate thatsince the word for bad in Latin is

(01:45:10):
malice and the word for apple ismalum, the apple began to be identified
with the fruit of the Tree ofKnowledge of good and evil in a sort
of play on words. Yet thejoy Bone Jason gives us some more detail.
So in Genesis chapter three we havethe the Fall of Man story where

(01:45:39):
Eve is tempted by a serpent whogets her to eat from the Tree of
Knowledge, and she then shares thisfruit with Adam. This upsets yahweh.
They get kicked out of the garden, and the serpent is then cursed with
having to crawl on its belly,which kind of doesn't make sense because that's

(01:46:00):
what serpents already do, But it'sit's meant to serve as an ideological tale
for where we got snakes, youknow, and why these weird looking lizards
don't have any legs. Well,this is you know, frequently depicted as
the earliest appearance of Satan. Thatit's Satan in the Garden of Eden.
But the story never says that.It says that this is a nahash,

(01:46:23):
which means a serpent, and itwas never meant to be evil. And
some people say, oh, wellthe serpent lied, but if you actually
read what it's what it says.The serpent simply tells them that if they
eat from the tree of knowledge,then their eyes will be opened and they'll
be given knowledge. And then theyeat from it and they can suddenly,

(01:46:45):
you know, their eyes are opened, which is a term that we find
frequently in the wisdom literature. Itdoesn't mean that you're you know, you're
blind, that you couldn't see.It means that they're blowing the let it
off. And so what happens isthe serpent tells them to eat of this
fruit, and they do, andthey suddenly gain more knowledge. This is

(01:47:11):
a parallel story to Azazel giving people, you know, the skill of blacksmithing
and waging war and cosmetics. It'sjust sharing of divine knowledge. It's a
you know, it's a Prometheus typestory. And he actually says, you
know, the command they had beentold was that if they did this,

(01:47:32):
then on that day they would die. And the serpent says, well,
no, you won't, and ofcourse they don't die, they continue living.
And so people are trying to say, okay, well, how is
it that Satan is like telling thetruth here? Well, it's because it's
not Satan. This is a serpentdeity named Nahash who used to be worshiped

(01:47:55):
in the Jerusalem Temple. And oneof the purposes of this god was to
guard the tree that was the representationof Ashera. This was essentially a tree
that would grant eternal life and divineknowledge to the gods. This was essentially

(01:48:15):
the whole purpose of the Garden ofEden. It was to be a garden
for the gods where they would havetheir divine fruit that would give them all
of their superpowers and the knowledge thatthey possessed, and the immortality is what
separated them from humans, which iswhy at the end of the chapter,
Yahweh says, like, imagine whatwould have happened if they also ate of

(01:48:40):
the fruit of life. They wouldhave become like us, like the gods.
That that's the whole purpose of it. It's there to give eternal life
and divine knowledge to anyone who eatsit, and that separates humans from deities,
and this deity Nahash or Hushtan wouldguard this particular tree that way,

(01:49:03):
you know, only certain people couldcould eat of this fruit, and if
you weren't supposed to eat it,he wouldn't let you. If you were,
then you could eat the stuff.And basically like the goddess Asherah or
some of the other deities could decidewho got to eat it. And we
find something similar in the epic ofGilgamesh when he finds the fruit that would

(01:49:23):
grant eternal life, and then thesnake comes along and he steals it.
You know, so then Gilgamesh realizehe's going to have to die the same
way that Adam and Eve will.And so this is a similar sort of
setup. It's a similar deity.And these serpent gods in the ancient Near
East were typically associated with wisdom andhealing. And there's a there's another example

(01:49:49):
of this in I Believe numbers twentyone numbers twenty one versus five to six
I believe, And what happens isthere are some angels or angel snakes that
attack the Israelites when they're wandering inthe desert because they did something wrong.

(01:50:11):
And so Yahweh sends these it's calledsaraphum serpents. It's basically fiery snakes,
maybe cobras, we're not really sure. But they start attacking people, and
all these people are inventimated and they'redying, and Yahweh tells Moses to erect
an idol to the serpent god Nahushtan, and so he makes this big bronze

(01:50:36):
serpent and he puts it up ona pole in the middle of camp,
and anyone who prays to it isin cured of their snake bites. And
the story finishes up by saying thatthis little statue was then brought to the
Jerusalem Temple, where it was stillpresent today, and it's essentially there to

(01:50:58):
try to give a m a y'allwisticpedigree to the presence of an idol to
another deity. The story is thereto say, okay, look, we
know this is another god, andwe know that you're praying to it and
making offerings to it and everything else, and it's okay because y'away said it
was okay. Back when Moses,you know, first built the idol,

(01:51:23):
whereas originally it would have been youknow, people were suffering from some ailment
and an idol was erected and theyprayed to it and it cured them.
And the story didn't have anything todo with Yahweh because in here it's it's
sort of a clumsy adaptation because Yahwehsent the curse and then Nehushton overpowered the

(01:51:44):
curse. So it's almost like Nehushtanis more powerful than Yahweh. And so
the authors are that the redactors ofthese stories, they kind of they didn't
do the best job, you know, so it kind of doesn't really make
too much sense to be pro Yahweh, but it was the best they could
do because they had to explain whypeople were still worshiping a bronze serpent in

(01:52:05):
the Jerusalem Temple. And eventually thisbronze idol and the worshiped to Nehushton was
ended and the idol was tossed out. And we have a reference to that,
I believe in the story of IThink Hazekaya, where he goes through
he institutes these reforms, and theytake a bunch of the idols out of

(01:52:28):
the temple and they get rid ofthem, and I believe they throw them
all in a valley and destroy them. But this idea. You know,
as Yaoism became more prominent, theywere getting rid of these other idols,
you know, and the god Nehushtanwas one of the ones that gets tossed
out. This sort of set upa sort of rivalry between the priests of

(01:52:50):
Nehushtan and the priests of Yahweh.And so as these Nehushtan priests are no
longer welcome, you know, theyeither have to just only worship Yahweh or
get out, then their their deitywas essentially demonized. And they're saying,
oh, well, you know,the Nohushtan, you know, he wasn't

(01:53:12):
just you know, another deity.It was a false god or in some
cases he was evil. And weeven find references in various spots in the
Bible where they equate Nehushtan to Leviathanand they call both of them, uh,
the twisting Serpent. And so it'salmost say, oh, yeah,

(01:53:33):
this wasn't just a god you knowthat you worshiped. This was like an
evil agent of chaos. And sobecause of this link that was essentially there
to um to disparage this one deity, this serpent eventually becomes linked with Leviathan,

(01:53:57):
and thus with Satan, and that'show you end up with the Eden
story, where it's actually about abunch of people who sort of get in
some ways liberated. They gain newknowledge. They can then go off and
start civilization. They understand all thesethings they learn about procreation. You get
a whole race of people because ofthis. Their eyes are opened, they

(01:54:20):
have better understanding, and this ishow, you know, basically a bunch
of monkeys become humans. Now it'sturned into the story about the fall.
Everything was perfect and now it's allcorrupt, and you know, so that
this snake is in a way blamedas the origin of evil, when originally

(01:54:44):
it was just a protector of divineknowledge who guarded the garden of the gods
and also helped you cure yourself fromsnake bites. It wasn't until the testamental
apocryphal literature that the snake is connectedto the devil, in particular the Life
of Adam and Eve and the Wisdomof Solomon. Gerald Massadaye goes on to

(01:55:10):
say that the expulsion story is illogical, asking questions such as why would God
consider knowing the difference between good andevil bad enough to keep it from his
creation when demanding the fear of Godmakes that knowledge necessary. And what motive
did the snake have? It justshows up, tells Eve it's fine to
eat the fruit and is never mentionedagain. And finally, if the snake

(01:55:34):
was evil or even the devil,how did it get in the earthly paradise
God created? And when did evilcome into the picture. The Hebrew Bible
paints God as the original bad guyIsaiah forty five seven. I form the
light and create darkness. I makepeace and create evil. I the Lord

(01:55:56):
do all these things Amos six.Shall a trumpet be blown in the city
and the people not be afraid?Shall there be evil in a city?
And the Lord hath not done it? First Samuel sixteen fourteen. But the
spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord
troubled him. Gerald Massardier, makinga point that stands for the whole Old

(01:56:21):
Testament, wrote quote, the Creatorwas acting like a feckless despot. The
first book thus portrays God as anangry, tyrant, wrathful and unjust,
a stranger to the idea of forgiveness, who, in his ire decides to
drown the whole world end quote.Any reference to Satan as the antithesis to

(01:56:43):
God appearing in the Old Testament hasbeen applied retroactively and ignores the fact that
God created him and he is justfollowing orders. The bad guy Satan was
created to make God look better.Massardier goes on to point out the oddity
of Jesus being tested by the Devilin the Gospels. To him, it

(01:57:03):
makes no sense for three reasons thatJesus's divinity was being questioned. That the
devil comes across as stupid, testingthe son of God while knowing he would
not be successful, and that Jesusdidn't use his magical powers to get rid
of the devil, nor did heperform a single simple miracle that would have
shut the devil up then and there. To massadier it was a crappy attempt

(01:57:27):
to introduce the world to the devilas the ultimate evil, one worthy to
be the opponent of God. Thisnew villain, carelessly appropriated from the Essene
dualism of the Intertestamental period, actsbizarrely arbitrarily doing things to people with no
clear purpose other than to serve asan entity to dislike. Again, the

(01:57:51):
need for a villain arose from theunavoidable question of theodyssey, or the defense
of God's goodness and omnipotence in theview of the existence of evil, and
in this case the evil perpetrated byGod himself, it seems the answer for
authors at that time was to temperGod's wrath and shortcomings and assign them to

(01:58:13):
another being. This is very clearin the books of Chronicles and Jubilees,
which sought to rewrite earlier stories tomake God look like less of a douche.
Jason swoops in with a refresher Soat this time the Jewish people are
drifting away from polytheism and into monotheism. But when you do this you run

(01:58:38):
into the problem of explaining where evilcomes from. And their concept of evil
is a bit different from people inChristianity. So in Christianity, evil is
it's basically like a wickedness. Butit wasn't that restricted. In you know,

(01:59:00):
ancient Judaism, evil just meant anythingbad. So a natural disaster,
the word for a disaster, forcalamity, for misfortune, all those it
was all the same word, andit's the same word that they used for
evil, and so evil didn't justmean, you know, someone was plotting

(01:59:21):
something wicked. It It could justmean that they were going to do something
that might inconvenience you, and thatmaybe they're invading your city, you know,
or maybe there's a hurricane that's aboutto hit New Orleans that is considered
an evil, and it doesn't meanthat it comes from some supernatural evil.

(01:59:43):
It just means that it's bad news. And so their definition of evil was
much more expansive. But they cameinto this theological problem with explaining where that
comes from. In the past,and in most polytheistic cultures, you have,
you know, an easy way out. If you worship a certain deity,

(02:00:03):
like say Harrah, and something badhappens, well you could blame that
on Aries, you know. Ohwell, you know Aries caused this army
to come in here and invade orwhatever Hephestus made that spark fly out of
my fireplace and burn down the house, you know. So these things were

(02:00:23):
a lot easier to deal with.You just blamed it on some other deity,
and that's what people did. Butthe Jews had gotten rid of all
of their other deities, Moat andall the others. They had been shoved
aside, and they no longer worshipedthem, They no longer some didn't even
acknowledge that they existed. So nowthey have the problem where does evil come

(02:00:46):
from? You know, your disasterand calamity and misfortune, And borrowing this
Persian idea would definitely help because nowthey could blame it on someone else.
And we see the first inklings ofthis popping up around the time that the
chronicler is rewriting the books of Samueland Kings. So we have four books,

(02:01:11):
first and Second Samuel and First andSecond Kings, and this tells the
story of the entire Jewish monarchy,starting with King Saul and going all the
way up to the destruction of Jerusalemby the Babylonians. And during this whole
period, the whole thing gets rewrittenby a levitical priest or a group of

(02:01:34):
levitical priests, and they retell thestory of those four books to serve their
own theological purposes. And by thispoint the idea of the Satan as a
sort of scapegoat begins to show up. And what we have that there's a

(02:01:57):
perfect example of this. We seethe first telling of the story in Second
Samuel, chapter twenty four, andwhat happens is Yahweh commands David to conduct
a census, and he does thisbecause he's angry at Israel, and we're
never told why, but he commandsDavid to conduct a census. David does

(02:02:18):
so, and after he counts allthe people in the nation and he comes
back with the final count, Yahwehgets upset that he conducted the census as
commanded, so he sends the Angelof Death to come in and kill seventy
thousand Israelites. David then has togo to the threshing floor of this one

(02:02:43):
little place where they process grain,conduct a sacrifice and appease Yahweh, and
yahwehvan backs off. He recalls theAngel of Death and the pestilence, the
disease, the plague that's killing allthe Israelites, it sea, and everything
goes back to normal. When it'sretold in First Chronicles twenty one, it

(02:03:06):
tells us that Yahweh didn't conduct acensus. A Satan angel came in and
told him to conduct a census.So this lets Yahweh off the hook.
He didn't command it, but insteadit becomes a test, as we find
in Job where this other angel isbasically like, hey, David, you

(02:03:31):
know, why don't you, Whydon't you do something wrong and go conduct
a census. Then Yahweh can punishhim for falling for the Satan's trick,
and so Yahweh then is essentially exonerated. It lets him off the hooks.
He didn't command David to do this, He didn't want a census. A

(02:03:53):
satan tested David's loyalty because I guessDavid should have known that we didn't want
to census, but instead he didwhat this angel told him to do.
And so the same story is told, but this new figure is inserted into
the story to let Yahweh off thehook and to sort of wash his hands

(02:04:16):
of it. So Yahweh's actions arenow passed on to the actions of this
other figure. And this is sortof the origin of the Satan figure.
He's basically put in there to takethe wicked things that are seen to be
the works of God and push themoff on another character. And it's sort

(02:04:42):
of the beginnings of a I guessthe beginnings of a mental split. You
you would have the good ideas ofa deity, and then you would have
the bad deeds, and you needto separate them and This is where we
really see the beginnings of it isin this part right here, where the

(02:05:03):
wicked actions of the deity are beingextracted from him and passed off onto another
figure. Now, the Satan isan evil. He was just there to
tempt David to see if he wasactually going to do the right thing or
not. And David failed the test, and that's why the nation of Israel's
punished. But we do see thebeginnings of that split in the idea,

(02:05:29):
And there's actually something similar to thatin Zoroastrianism, where Hara Mazda and Araman
were basically two versions of the samegreat spirit, the good side and the
bad side, and they separate.It's very similar to what we have going
on in there. And this servesthe theological purpose. You now take the
first steps towards blaming disaster and calamityand disease on someone other than Yahweh,

(02:05:56):
because before this we had the idealike in Isaiah forty five seven, where
Yahwah says I form the light andcreate darkness, I make peace and create
evil. I Yahweh do all thesethings. It was all under the purview
of one God. And with thisyou can separate it out into two distinct
figures. And so while the Satanstill works for Yahweh, Yahweh's hands are

(02:06:21):
clean of those deeds. So theSatan is basically testing you. And that's
where evil comes from. And Jasonbriefly mentioned it, and I told you
in part one we'd be coming backto it. And now it's time to
pay the fiddler who Osaizel is aname that is sometimes attributed to the devil,
And you're never gonna believe this,but it never was the Devil.

(02:06:45):
I'll explain what it actually was hereshortly. But the earliest connection to devilry
seems to have come from first Enoch, where Isaisl was a leader of the
fallen Angels who taught humans warfare andweapon smithing, makeup which craft, how
to play yuker, and was inturn taught BDSM by the archangel Raphael and
chained to jagged rocks in the darknessof Dudaiel, a place in the underworld

(02:07:11):
like Tartarus ord Gehenna. In fact, the text goes so far as to
say, quote the whole earth hasbeen corrupted through the works that were taught
by Azazel to him. Ascribe allsin end quote sounds pretty Promethean, probably
because it was, but he wasn'tthe devil. Not until Origin of Alexandria

(02:07:39):
in the third century CE was heequated with the devil, along with Nomineitas
in the thirteenth century, who identifiedhim as a demon. Interestingly, the
name is also found in Islamic literature, though not in the Quran, not
to be confused with Azazil, whichwas another name for Eblis or the devil.

(02:07:59):
In Islam, Asaizel was an angelwho almost turned his back on heaven.
No. Originally, Azazel was aplace where a scapegoat was sent in
an old Jewish ritual during Yam Kapur, detailed in Leviticus chapter sixteen. The
ritual involved two goats, one ofwhich would be sacrificed to Yahweh, while

(02:08:22):
the other would have a priest grabits head, pronounce all the sins of
Israel and its people over it,and send it off into the wilderness or
possibly toss it off a cliff.Thus the goat takes the sins with it,
thereby cleansing the people of the filthon their souls. Hence scapegoating,
singling something out and absolving yourself ofblame. It wasn't too much of a

(02:08:48):
leap to translate that idea onto afigure, just like it wasn't a leap
to borrow stories and ideas from Mesopotamiaand Persia, like the idea of the
immortality of the soul, for instance, concept going all the way back to
Vedism. The Zoroastrian idea that asoul is immortal seeped into Jewish teachings and
ultimately into Christian theology. Couple thatwith some Greek influence of orphism, a

(02:09:11):
wild set of religious beliefs that couldbe its own episode, and you can
really see the roots of Christianity forming. Orphism seem to lend the idea of
good versus evil, original sin,and humanity trying to regain its divinity to
attain salvation. If you'll pardon thebrevity of the example, I don't think

(02:09:33):
we can know how much truly influencedthe creation of the devil as a complete
entity at the time, but sufficeit to say there were many and even
the concept eventually branched off, withdifferent versions taking on lives of their own.
Just like we discussed with the looksof the Devil, the idea of
the devil is a chaos monster,a chimera of concept straight from the blender

(02:09:56):
of countless theologies after soaking in centuriesof story telling. The Sadier does not
mince words with that in mind.Quote that the notion of the devil as
God's enemy was borrowed is certain,since the very idea was alien to ancient
Judaism, yet it began to manifestitself the moment the identity of the Jewish

(02:10:18):
people was threatened. Quote. Judaismat the time was not concerned with an
individual's redemption, Therefore there wasn't muchneed for a devil. However, Christianity
became all about redemption and thus neededa figure to fight against, a role
that devil fit perfectly. To fortifytheir position, Jewish authors had to rework

(02:10:41):
the heavenly employee Satan of the OldTestament into something more useful that would ultimately
be a huge part of Christian theology. Thus God could be written as a
pleasant, non wrathful, non temperamentalbeing going forward, and the devil gets
to be the scapegoat. Then,as Christianity developed, church leaders started questioning

(02:11:05):
certain aspects, likely in the hopesof bolstering the church's position, but the
Odyssey was a hot topic, withperhaps the biggest question being when did evil
first appear. Assyrian theologian Tatian wrotein the second century CE that the devil
fell from grace first, which causedothers to fall, including man. Roman

(02:11:28):
Christian author Lactantius argued in the fourthcentury CE that quote the creative will of
God desired two antagonistic spirits, oneas the principle of good, the other
as the principle of evil end quoteto him, God created evil from the
get go, But no one couldreally agree when the fall happened or when

(02:11:50):
evil came into the picture. Wasit before the fall after? Because of
if the devil rejected God, thensurely that meant evil was around before him.
Was he the cause of it orwas he the effect of it?
It was a conundrum of pure existentialism, with theologians wondering whether the devil's existence

(02:12:11):
had preceded his essence or vice versa, and in trying to explain this cobbled
together belief church leaders eventually throughout allsorts of ideas up to and including evil
hierarchies, and demonology. With thebenefit of hindsight, we can observe that

(02:12:31):
historically evil has always been associated withwhat was Different authors of the Hebrew Bible
portray this concept here and there,but it's definitely evident in the Intertestamental period
and after, like in the Kumaranliterature of the Dead Sea scrolls recall the
sons of light versus sons of darknesson the War Scroll. The New Testament

(02:12:54):
starts hot with this concept as well, with the Book of Matthew throwing shade
at fellow Jews who didn't agree withthe directions some aspects of the religion were
going. The bigger the divide,the more the devil was involved in leading
one's enemy astray. You can findthis idea all over Paul's writings as well,
and you can clearly chart the evolutionof a culture's gods and goddesses becoming

(02:13:16):
another culture's demons and devils through historicalages. You see it with but all
ashtarref Pan basically any god that wasn'tthe Christian God during periods of colonization.
It didn't just happen with Christianity,though Old Tibetan gods became demons when Buddhism
took over, for example, butthe idea that anything different is demonic is

(02:13:41):
not one humanity has been able toescape. Sadly, as mentioned in Part
one, Joan of ARC's actions weredeemed demonic. Countless false accusations of witches
and sorcerers have been leveled throughout history. The Kathars also mentioned Part one as
well as the Templars were not theright flavor of Christian so had to be

(02:14:01):
massacred. Jews have been targeted asevil since pretty much forever. In modern
American culture, Homosexuals, transsexuals,and pretty much anyone who isn't a straight
white Christian is demonized by a significantchunk of the population. And if you
don't believe me, believe the lawsthat are being passed seemingly each week to

(02:14:24):
disenfranchise and marginalize these people. Andtoday it comes from the lazy demonization of
political rivals. Anything that is inus, anyone that thinks or acts differently
than us, is in league withthe devil. Tale as old as time,
and thus the devil became a politicaltool. Even a generous analysis of

(02:14:56):
Intertestamental writings will show that the devilwas a basic way of person find one's
enemies. The king you don't agreewith the foreign nation that is hostile to
you. The boss that fired you, the McDonald's worker who forgot the barbecue
sauce for your nuggets. They're allin league with the devil. But the
bigger picture is that this concept couldbe manipulated by those in power. Governments

(02:15:18):
could rally their people by pointing theforeign devil out. Politicians could gain votes
by equating opponents with the devil.Televangelists could buy private jets by scaring money
out of their followers with threats ofthe devil coming to get them if they
don't send a crisp new hundred dollarbill today, not tonight, not tomorrow,

(02:15:41):
not when pay day gets here.Now, God has blessed me with
seventeen cars because of how hard Ifight the devil la and he rewards those
that helped themselves and me. Sohelp yourself by sending a hundred better make
that two hundred dollars to me today. Yeah, every dollars center is another

(02:16:05):
kick on that old devil's behind.This is another concept you can find in
different cultures through history. Egyptian pharaoh'spost fifth dynasty decided what was evil,
usually their rivals or anything they didn'tlike. Islam preached that anything that stopped
short of complete submission to Allah,including any individuality, was satanic. It

(02:16:30):
was either followed the law of Islamor follow into the devil's clutches. The
Catholic Church used the devil's propaganda totarget its enemies and justify filling its coffers.
The devil also served particularly useful forexcusing forced conversions and countless massacres.
There is power in wielding the devil, and those in power quickly picked this

(02:16:52):
idea up early on. Look atany authoritarian government through history. If they
don't outright claim be God's chosen regime, they certainly claim the right to decide
what is good and what is evil, and, in a familiar refrain,
anything that goes against their desires isevil. Theocracies are no different. Even

(02:17:13):
back to Zoroastrianism, priests commanded ahuge amount of power, sometimes up to
and including legislative authority, and stillpointed to Ahriman to terrify the public into
submission. Mesopotamian priests taught that humiliationand self abasement, even in thought,
were the ways to achieve a sinfree life safe from evil. Church relationships

(02:17:35):
with monarchies throughout history were always strained, each side jealous and paranoid of the
other getting the upper hand with thedevil on whoever side you're not. The
devil was a tool, or perhapsmore accurately, a weapon, to be
wielded in statecraft. As Gerald Massardiershrewdly put it, quote, it was

(02:17:58):
politics that gave birth to the devil, and the devil is indeed a political
invention. Quote. So what werethe effects of this invention and subsequent use
throughout history? Nothing good, I'mafraid. Let me try and break it
down a bit and give examples throughhistory. First of all, connecting the
devil to the fall of man's storyinexorably connects woman to evil. It wasn't

(02:18:24):
a new concept, as one couldargue in ancient Mesopotamia, women had been
set up to fail by the mythology, such as how they're portrayed in the
Epic of Gilgamesh. Great wisdom isdisplayed by some female characters, including powerful
goddesses in the work, but perhapsmore so, they are portrayed as Harlot's
seductresses, temperamental and vindictive. TheEssenes had terrible views on women, not

(02:18:48):
only does. The majority of evidencepoint to their not even being women allowed
in their community at Cumran, afact even old plenty of the elder attested
in writings. It also seems theyheld zero social status and we're not even
allowed to study scriptures. And thereis evidence to say they blamed woman for
all evil because of her role inthe exile from Paradise. Women have had

(02:19:13):
an uphill battle in many religions,especially the Abrahamic ones, and part of
that is due to this connection tothe devil and evil as a political tool.
This excuse has been used to suppresswomen all through history. As a
political tool, the devil has beenthe impetus for the absolute insanity of the

(02:19:35):
Inquisition, which began in France inthe twelfth century CE and lasted at least
until the mid fifteenth century. Wedon't know how many people were murdered in
the name of God to fight thedevil in this time period, but conservative
estimates put the number in the hundredsof thousands. During the three centuries,
inquisitions were happening all over Europe,not just the Spanish one, which no

(02:19:58):
one expected. A spinoff of thisbloody campaign focused on witchcraft and hunting down
suspected individuals directly involved with the devil, And who did this effect the most?
You guessed it, Frank Stallone,just kidding it was women. Even
fan Thick was written with this gobbledgook in mind. Heinrich Kramer and Jacob

(02:20:22):
Springer's Mallius Maleficarum The Hammer of Witches, a guide written in fourteen eighty six
on how to torture and kill anyonesuspected of being in league with the devil
hell. Even England appointed a cockwaffleby the name of Matthew Hopkins to the
role of Witchfinder General in sixteen fortyfour. And we can't forget the lunacy
of the Salem witch trials in sixteenninety two, in which twenty five people

(02:20:45):
lost their lives, with fifteen beforethat in a New England witch hunt craze
that lasted from sixteen forty five tosixteen sixty three, and again as a
political tool, church leaders gleefully promotedan ex floyded this fear of the devil
and how easily it caused people tobe manipulated. The chains have not been

(02:21:07):
moved that far in modern times,unfortunately. Take demonic possession for instance,
something that has popped up throughout historyand continues to be a topic worried about
even today. Gerald Massarier made agood point when he wrote, quote,
if demonic possession were at all real, one would have to ask why it
afflicts not secretaries of state, famouswriters, or TV hosts, but instead

(02:21:33):
only individuals of average intellectual and psychologicalstatus. Either that or Satan is a
laughable enemy who only consorts with theweak end quote. Indeed, it seems
those who hold power are never subjectedto the devil's wrath, but it's the
church who holds power over determining whois possessed and who is not. As

(02:21:56):
a political tool, the devil hastaken the eyes of political and marginalized enemies.
And the clear example here is theHolocaust. Religion was wilded as a
tool to rally Germans to the Nazicause, and even the phrase gott Mun's
God with us appeared on belt bucklesof the Wehrmacht soldiers, regardless of whether

(02:22:20):
or not the soldiers in leadership actuallybelieved that statement or were devout at all.
And there is evidence to the contrary. Religion and the fight against evil
was promoted, and this is asentiment we have seen echoed for at least
the past century, where so muchblood has been spilled for a god against

(02:22:41):
a devil, the idea permeates everythingnow. In nineteen eighty nine, Larry
Jones, a Boise, Idaho policeofficer and editor of the File eighteen newsletter,
published the following in order to aidfellow officers in their pursuit of justice
when unted with those criminals who areled or controlled by supernatural evil bees,

(02:23:03):
philosophies, or motivations. Traditional policetools are not effective. If a cop
is in a head to head confrontationwith the Prince of Darkness or his troops,
then that cop had better have thedefeater of Satan on his side,
as well as every bit of spiritualarmor and assistance available. Mike Warkey told
me that, in his opinion,the Christian police officers were the best prepared

(02:23:26):
to be on the pettig edge inthe fight against Satanic crimes. The devil
and his henchmen are now walking talkingstraw men for people like this to target
and an excuse to act in strange, often violent ways. But it also
excuses horrible behavior and in a waylets people off the hook. Of responsibility.

(02:23:50):
Actual pedophiles, serial killers, andrapists are many times dismissed as satanic
following the will of the devil oracting that way because the devil acts through
them. The obvious mental illness isalmost brushed aside in lieu of the idea
that evil exists and must be foughtat all times, and in self fulfilling

(02:24:11):
prophecy fashion, legitimate psychopaths and badpeople embrace the idea and act like they
are under guidance of the devil.This figure has become the god of bad
behavior, the champion of deadbeats.So I'll give you my opinion now.

(02:24:37):
And if you're here purely for theacademic stuff, now's the time to fast
forward or stop. And this isjust opinion. There's no fact here,
but it's an opinion formed after doingthis research and looking at the big picture
from everything you've just heard. Here'syour chance to pop ahead or pop out.
If you're not interested in what Ithink, all right, well thanks

(02:25:01):
for being interested in what I think. Here it is there is no devil.
There never was. Zoroastrians fabricated thefirst idea of the devil. The
Old Testament never had a figure ofevil in opposition to God's will, and
there is clear evidence of such aconcept trying to be rhetconned into previous writings.

(02:25:22):
The New Testament was written after Jewishwriters decided they needed a figure like
this so that the God they worshipedwasn't an almost total prick. Since then,
the mythology of the devil has explodedand taken all sorts of forms,
none of which are real or evenbased on the book. These ideas supposedly
came from. The idea has beenused by people in power to subjugate and

(02:25:46):
murder, and continues to be usedthat way. It does not adequately explain
why there is evil in the world, nor why it would be allowed by
an omnipotent supposedly all good being rayand mobilely right. Quote Satan is a
theological coping mechanism end quote, andthat it's quote our own fervent desire to

(02:26:07):
believe that ultimately good triumphs over evilend quote, which keeps the fear of
life from being too overwhelming. Ithink it is a coping mechanism for sure.
On a personal level, we usethe devil as a lightning rod for
all the bad things we have littleor no control over in some things we

(02:26:28):
do. But it's fear that mightneed to be addressed here, not a
supernatural entity that has been completely fabricated, and ship of theseiast for too millennia.
Fear of the unknown, fear ofhaving no control, and fear of
taking responsibility are what we're grappling with. And blaming it all on a facetious
being is lazy and dumb. Englishnovelist Samuel Butler had a great tongue in

(02:26:56):
cheek quote quote an apology for thedevil. It must be remembered that we
have only heard one side of thecase. God has written all the books
end quote. It's a satire thatButler was wise enough to know. For
in truth, Man has written allthe books. Man has made God in

(02:27:16):
his image, and sadly man doesn'trealize he's made the devil in his image
as well. I have to againquote Massarier here when he wrote, quote
Satan has nothing to do with anyof this, and God even less.
It is human idiocy alone. Endquote. That's the devil. A history

(02:27:41):
in a gigantic read, completely manufacturednutshell. And now for the mistranslations that

(02:28:03):
have reaked havoc for centuries puns.If you're thirsty as hell, stop on
by England's premier devil themed drinking establishment. BL's a pub. I hear there's

(02:28:28):
a reboot of an old spaghetti westernwhere Clint Eastwood is going to play the
bad man with No Name, pittingtwo families against each other, all for
sinful intentions. Beyond the lookout forMephisto. Full of dollars. Turn the
radio dial to sixty six point sixfor all evil seventies music, including hits

(02:28:50):
from the band a'ba Don like Water, Lucifer, mamm and Mia and Thank
You for the Moloch and number one'sfrom the evil Latin rock guitarist Satana,
like Oya Como, Father of Lies, Evil Things Come in Our Way,
and of course Black Magic Woman inEvil Ways sixty six point six Good music,

(02:29:15):
Gone Bad and speaking of music,Tune in next week on ECMT for
the Evil Country Music Awards, featuringperformances by Belial love It, Clint Man
in Black Wayland, Gin Nings,Tim Plar, mcgrawl, samael kershaw Bell,

(02:29:37):
Fha, Garth Brooks and Diablo RedAllen Them's Puns, Cooled, Hey,
if you made it this far,congrats and thank you. I have
been working on this one for aboutfour months now. As you can see,
it's a massive topic, and truthfully, this was just the surface for

(02:30:00):
a lot of it. I hopeI gave you something to think about and
that maybe you learn something new alongthe way. If you liked or at
least respect the work I put intoit, please consider leaving a five star
review on Apple Podcasts. And ifyou go to blurry photos dot org,
you can find links to follow theshow on social media and other fun stuff,
like the link to my Twitch channeland a link to audibletrial dot com

(02:30:24):
slash blurry, where you can geta free audio book download of your choice
if you sign up for a thirtyday trial membership that you can cancel anytime.
I have several audiobooks I've narrated onthere, and that would all help
me if you checked out that linkand or got one of my audiobooks.
Just click on the little pictures onthe homepage. Make sure to search for

(02:30:46):
Hysteria fifty one on your podcatcher tohear me and Brent Hand discussing forty in
topics with a heavy dose of humor, and check out Quizquizbang Bang my trivia
podcast I host with my wife Annie, and I think that'll do it.
For this episode of Blurry Photos,I have been devil. Flora, don't
stop blurring.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep 274: The Devil: A History part 2