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Satan

Adversaries

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Satan, whose name means the adversary or the accuser, is in Christian tradition the chief opponent of God and the tempter of humanity, identified with the devil and with the serpent of Eden. Developed from the accusing angel of the Hebrew scriptures, such as the figure who tests Job, he became in later belief a fallen angel who rebelled against God through pride and was cast out of heaven, leading the forces of evil and ruling hell. He tempts, deceives, and accuses, and is destined for final defeat. He stands as the archetypal embodiment of evil, pride, and rebellion against the divine, the shadow against which the good is measured.

Facts
Life
Office Held
Held in later Christian tradition to be the ruler of a kingdom of demons opposed to God, though the extent and nature of that dominion is never spelled out systematically in scripture itself. 1
Place of Activity
In the Book of Job he appears among the sons of God presenting himself before the divine council, and describes his activity as going to and fro on the earth and walking up and down on it, an itinerant testing role rather than the fixed rule over hell later Christian tradition would give him. 3
Position Profile
Key Text
Named as the accuser who tests Job in the prologue of the Book of Job, and as the tempter of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. 1
Attributions
Mythic Association
Later Christian tradition identifies him with the serpent of Genesis and with the dragon cast down in the Book of Revelation. 1
Tradition
Islam holds a broadly parallel figure, Iblis, a jinn who refuses God's command to bow before Adam, a distinct account existing alongside biblical tradition's own developing portrait rather than derived from it. 2
Status
Status Within the Tradition
His role develops across the biblical corpus from a testing prosecutor in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Job to the New Testament's outright adversary and tempter, a shift later Christian theology reads as progressive revelation rather than contradiction. 1
Attestation
Historicity
Not a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 1
Traditions Revering This Figure
Judaism 2
Traditions Revering This Figure
Christianity 2
Identity
Gender
Male 1
Origins
Origin of the Name
The Hebrew word ha-satan, from which the name derives, functions in the earliest biblical texts as a title, the adversary or accuser, rather than a proper name, describing a role a heavenly prosecutor plays in the divine court before later tradition fixed it as an individual being's name. 3
Learn More
The Accuser in the Court, Not the Enemy of God

The Satan of the Hebrew Bible and the Satan of later Christianity are not the same character, and the difference is visible in the grammar.

In the Hebrew Bible the word satan is a common noun meaning adversary or accuser, and it is applied to human beings, to a political opponent of Solomon, and to the angel who blocks Balaam's road, who is called a satan sent by God to obstruct him. Where the figure appears in the divine council it usually takes the definite article: ha-satan, the accuser, a title rather than a name.

In Job, ha-satan is a member of the heavenly court who arrives with the other sons of God and proposes that Job's piety is bought. He acts throughout with explicit divine permission and within limits God sets. He is a prosecutor, and he is not God's enemy. In Zechariah he stands to accuse the high priest and is rebuked. In the whole Hebrew Bible he appears in something like three passages.

The one place the word appears without the article, in First Chronicles, has him inciting David to take a census. The parallel passage in Second Samuel attributes the same incitement to God. That is the clearest single piece of evidence for the development: a later writer, uncomfortable with attributing the provocation to God, transferred it.

The transformation into a cosmic rebel happens in the intertestamental literature, First Enoch, Jubilees, the Qumran material with its Prince of Light and Angel of Darkness, and arrives fully formed in the New Testament, where Satan is the ruler of this world, the tempter, and the one cast down.

Devil, Demons and the Fall

Several distinct figures were merged into the Christian Devil, and untangling them is most of what can usefully be said.

Diabolos is the Greek word the Septuagint uses to render satan, and it means slanderer. It becomes a name in Greek and Latin Christianity, giving the English devil. Beelzebul in the Gospels is a title of the prince of demons, derived from a Philistine god at Ekron whose name appears in the Hebrew Bible in a deliberately insulting altered form, lord of the flies. Belial is a separate term from the Hebrew Bible, meaning worthlessness, personified in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Lucifer is an entirely different accident, treated in its own entry.

The fall of Satan is assembled from passages that are not about him. Isaiah 14 is a taunt against a king of Babylon. Ezekiel 28 is a lament over the king of Tyre. Luke has Jesus say he saw Satan fall like lightning, without a narrative. Revelation 12 describes a war in heaven and the dragon thrown down, and identifies the dragon with the ancient serpent, Satan, which is the source of the identification with the serpent of Eden. Genesis 3 does not name Satan. It has a serpent, described as the most cunning of the animals God made.

The elaborate biography, pride before creation, a third of the angels, the war, the pit, is patristic and medieval theology, given its dominant English literary shape by Milton in 1667. Paradise Lost is not a source. It is a poem, and it has done more than any doctrine to fix the picture.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Anton LaVey (reference article), Sources

This source names Satan directly: "of the founder of the Church of Satan, covering his self promoted biography, the church's 1966 founding and LaVey's own published writings including The Satanic Bible."

Source Anton LaVey (reference article)Wikipedia contributors
Church of Satan (Wikipedia), Sources

This source names Satan directly: "Wikipedia's article on the Church of Satan, consulted 2026-08-12."

Source Church of Satan (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Paradise Lost, Sources

This source names Satan directly: "as the name before the fall and Satan as the name after, a distinction with no basis in the Hebrew or Greek biblical text."

Source Paradise LostJohn Milton
The Black Book of Satan, Literary Works

This source names Satan directly: "The Black Book of Satan is the Order of Nine Angles' own published corpus of internal texts, presented as the foundational documentary record of the group's teaching and attributed to the..."

Source The Black Book of SatanOrder of Nine Angles, attributed to the pseudonymous Anton Longthe holders' own account
The Black Book of Satan, Sources

This source names Satan directly: "The Black Book of Satan, published by the Order of Nine Angles and attributed to the pseudonymous Anton Long, is the organisation's own foundational text."

Source The Black Book of SatanOrder of Nine Angles, attributed to the pseudonymous Anton Longthe holders' own account
The Book of Coming Forth by Night, Sources

This source names Satan directly: "during his break from the Church of Satan, and it sets out Set as a genuinely existing, self-aware entity, a position that puts the Temple at odds with LaVeyan Satanism's atheistic, symbolic reading..."

Source The Book of Coming Forth by NightMichael A. Aquino
The Book of Coming Forth by Night, Literary Works

This source names Satan directly: "after he resigned from the Church of Satan on June 10 of that year over disagreement with its direction under new ownership."

Source The Book of Coming Forth by NightMichael A. Aquino
The Invention of Satanism, Sources

This source names Satan directly: "religions, none affiliated with any Satanist or Luciferian organization, and this book was published by an academic press."

Source The Invention of SatanismAsbjorn Dyrendal, James R. Lewis and Jesper Aa. Petersen
The Satanic Bible, Sources

This source names Satan directly: "Szandor LaVey founded the Church of Satan, and this 1969 book is his own foundational text setting out its philosophy, an explicitly atheistic and self-focused system that treats Satan as a symbol..."

Source The Satanic BibleAnton Szandor LaVey
The Satanic Bible, Literary Works

This source names Satan directly: "The Satanic Bible is Anton Szandor LaVey's 1969 book compiling the ritual structure, aphorisms and stated philosophy of the Church of Satan, the organization he founded in San Francisco in 1966."

Source The Satanic BibleAnton Szandor LaVey
The Temptation in the Wilderness, Religious Events
Uriel Observing Satan (British Museum, Bromley after Fuseli, 1802), Sacred Art & Iconography

This source names Satan directly: "clouds, leaning on his staff, watching Satan fall head first toward earth."

Source Uriel Observing Satan, British Museum (Bromley after Fuseli, 1802)
Uriel Observing Satan, British Museum (Bromley after Fuseli, 1802), Sources

This source names Satan directly: "collection record for "Uriel Observing Satan," an 1802 etching and engraving by William Bromley after a painting by Henry Fuseli, illustrating Milton's "Paradise Lost" for Du Roveray's edition."

Source Uriel Observing Satan, British Museum (Bromley after Fuseli, 1802)
Wikipedia, "Temple of Set", Sources

This source names Satan directly: "for the split from the Church of Satan; its limit is a Wikipedia community article rather than a new religious movements monograph, which is why it sits at reliability tier three."

Source Wikipedia, "Temple of Set"Wikipedia contributors

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Depicted In

Paradise Lost, Literary Works

Satan and his rebellion dominate the poem's opening books and drive its central narrative.

Source Paradise Lost (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005s.v. SatanView the Source
2. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997s.v. SatanView the Source
3. The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)
Anonymous (multiple authors)Job 1-2; Zechariah 3; 1 Chronicles 21:1 against 2 Samuel 24:1
Quote, Job 1-2; Zechariah 3; 1 Chronicles 21:1 against 2 Samuel 24:1
Ha-satan is a prosecutor in the divine court acting with permission. The Chronicles parallel transfers to a satan what Samuel attributes to God.
View the Source
The Book of Enoch
R. H. Charles, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge / Internet Sacred Text Archive, 1917The Enochic material
Quote, The Enochic material
Where the cosmic rebel develops, between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.
View the Source
Paradise Lost
John Milton, Samuel Simmons, 1667The narrative of the fall
Quote, The narrative of the fall
A poem, not a source. It has done more than any doctrine to fix the English-language picture of the figure.
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
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