Satan, the devil, and lucifer

[achilles12604]

MrMalone wrote the following here.

Christian Theology on Satan is misunderstood. Satan, Lucifer and the Devil are not the same things; yes even according to the Bible.

I'm creating this thread to investigate this claim. Are these three creatures one in the same or different according to scripture?

[Goat]

MrMalone wrote the following here.

Christian Theology on Satan is misunderstood. Satan, Lucifer and the Devil are not the same things; yes even according to the Bible.

I'm creating this thread to investigate this claim. Are these three creatures one in the same or different according to scripture?

Well, Lucifer, if you read Isaiah properly, is the translation of "morning star" , and it was specifically comparing Nebeccnezzer with the the sumarrian gods of Helel and Sharar. It has nothing to do with 'Satan' what so ever.


As for Satan , "shatian".. , in Jewish mytholoyg, Satan is the accusor, the person who puts bad choices in front of people, to give them the opportunity to choose good.

[WelshBoy]

Just to add to the comments about Lucifer in Isaiah ch.14, the last verse in the following quote is, for me, the most telling:


13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

[Fisherking]

Just to add to the comments about Lucifer in Isaiah ch.14, the last verse in the following quote is, for me, the most telling:


13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

"12How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"

Why leave out verse 12? Is "how art thou fallen from heaven" a little less telling?

This writeup brings things together nicely on who Lucifer is.
http://www.bibleword.org/lucifer.shtml

[achilles12604]

Just to add to the comments about Lucifer in Isaiah ch.14, the last verse in the following quote is, for me, the most telling:


13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

"12How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"

Why leave out verse 12? Is "how art thou fallen from heaven" a little less telling?

This writeup brings things together nicely on who Lucifer is.
http://www.bibleword.org/lucifer.shtml

Very interesting.

Expanding a little more we see.

9 The grave below is all astir
to meet you at your coming;
it rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you—
all those who were leaders in the world;
it makes them rise from their thrones—
all those who were kings over the nations.

10 They will all respond,
they will say to you,
"You also have become weak, as we are;
you have become like us."

I could see how this could go either way. Lucifer could be "like us" because he is now restricted to man's domain . . death. This could marry the ideas of being called "man" yet being from heaven.

On the other hand it would be that a human king is like them because he is now dead.

Another factor in the above quote is that ALL the evil kings rise up to him. This could indicate that he was the worst of all of them. I think this points toward a fallen angel, rather than an evil king.

Here is another passage. It doesn't mention Lucifer, but it clearly connects Satan and the devil.

Revelations 12
9The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.


This passage also uses the same wording as Isaiah. . .

Hurled to the earth is the same image we see describing Lucifer in Isaiah.

[ST88]

Why leave out verse 12? Is "how art thou fallen from heaven" a little less telling?

This writeup brings things together nicely on who Lucifer is.
http://www.bibleword.org/lucifer.shtml

Isaiah 13-23 is a litany of "denunciation" of other nations. Why would there be a denunciation of "shaitan" or whatever in the middle of this list of kingdoms & their curses? This is a very sardonic passage that is not out of line with the idea that the ruler of Babylon thought he was a god, but lo he is not, he is one of us & God will treat him as such. The essay that your link points to makes a huge leap when it declares:

Truly, the ancients worshipped the morning star, Venus, as a goddess. We know that goddess worship originated with Satan. Paul said that worshipping an idol, and Venus is an idol, is worshipping demons. 1 Corinthians 10:19-20

We know that goddess worshop originated with Satan. And? That the essay turns on this point is very telling and makes it quite weak in its conclusions. The rest of the essay -- including the linguistics bit -- doesn't do much of anything to support itself.

[Goat]

Just to add to the comments about Lucifer in Isaiah ch.14, the last verse in the following quote is, for me, the most telling:


13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

"12How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"

Why leave out verse 12? Is "how art thou fallen from heaven" a little less telling?

This writeup brings things together nicely on who Lucifer is.
http://www.bibleword.org/lucifer.shtml

Yes, it is Helel, Isaiah is mocking Nebeccnezzer by comparing him to the sumarian
god "Helel", who is literally 'Morning Star'.

[Metatron]

MrMalone wrote the following here.

Christian Theology on Satan is misunderstood. Satan, Lucifer and the Devil are not the same things; yes even according to the Bible.

I'm creating this thread to investigate this claim. Are these three creatures one in the same or different according to scripture?

From my reading of the Bible, the idea of Satan evolves over time as we progress through time. Satan does not appear by name in the Torah portions of the Bible. When he shows up in Job, Satan does not act like a fallen angel and eternal enemy of God. He instead seems to perform the function of prosecuting attorney testing the righteousness of Job. Indeed, the various evils visited upon Job and his family come from God not Satan. His role is accuser, not ruler of Hell. Indeed, the name Satan is simply a title ha-satan meaning the adversary and not a proper name.

It's in the NT that Satan starts taking on his fallen angel/ enemy of God type role. My personal opinion is that this is a result of contact with Zoroastrianism, a religion featuring a good somewhat Godlike being Ahura Mazda in perpetual conflict with the evil Satanlike Ahriman. This idea of a hard supernatural break between good and evil I believe led to an evolution for Satan from accuser role to evil god role.

As for the Devil, several versions of Bibles I checked do not use the term devil at all until the NT. An exception was the King James version where devil substituted for terms like satyr and demon in other versions. The Devil as single entity only appears to enter the Bible in the NT at the same time that Satan morphs from prosecuting angel to Ahriman equivalent. So my opinion is that the term Devil is meaningless when applied to the OT Satan but is certainly equivalent to the NT version of Satan.

As Goat alluded to, the term lucifer is a Roman word meaning light bearer in this case meaning the morningstar or the planet Venus. Again several versions of Bibles I checked do not even use the word lucifer instead substituting morningstar in the Isaiah passage. Again as mentioned, the term is used in a diatribe against the Babylonian king in the midst of a whole section dissing various enemy nations like Assyria, Egypt , Philistia, etc. I see nothing here that would imply that the morningstar refers to Satan.

[Greatest I Am]

If one wants to have a serious religious discussion then we should start by recognizing that all these wonderful names are simply artistic liberty in use. We are not supposed to believe that there is an actual entity of that name.
Talking snakes, fish that spit men out after three days and angels have no real existence. These names simply represent bad ideas and notions.

If we can scrap these words then a fruitful discussion may follow.

Regards
DL

[acamp1]

The OT portrayed both blessings and curses as having come from God. Christianity - with its central notion of an all-good God - needed a way to justify the existence of evil... hence the transformation of Satan from generic adversary to stand-alone force in opposition to God.