He not only emerges as an adversary of God, but, as such apocalyptic works as Jubilees, the Testament of Reuben, the Book of the Secrets of Enoch (2 Enoch), and the Qumran documents show, he is also the leader of the fallen angels. The figure of Satan in noncanonical Hebrew literature intensifies his identification with evil. But the transition from the sa ṭan of the Old Testament, which pre-figures the Devil in some way, to the Satanas of the New Testament, who is the Devil, is clear enough. Wallace, see a more definite movement toward an association of evil with Satan. Other scholars, such as Edward Langton and Ronald S. According to one approach, represented by Giovanni Papini, Jeffrey Burton Russell, John Noel Schofield, Gustav Davidson, and others, Satan is still not quite God's adversary, only his minion. One might distinguish here between two approaches toward Satan in the Old Testament. It has been argued that Satan "was not evil but became evil by identification with his functions" in the course of time (Robbins, 1966, p. Scholars seems somewhat divided on the question of the extent to which evil may be associated with Satan in the Old Testament. The chapter gives an account of David's census and of the punishment for it, and is dependent on 2 Samuel 24 but whereas it is said in Samuel that Jahweh said to David, "Go, number Israel" because he was angry with the people, it is said in Chronicles that Satan "moved David to number Israel." Satan is clearly a development out of the group of spirits which were in earlier days thought to be from Jahweh's court, members of which were sent upon errands of disaster to men. Barton (1911),Ī further witness to the fact that Satan is now held to be responsible for evil. The third passage in the Old Testament in which Satan figures ( 1 Chr. 3), Satan, on his own initiative, opposes Joshua. By contrast, in a second occurrence ( Zec. The first of these contexts is in the Book of Job, where Satan belongs to the court of God and, with God's permission, tests Job. However, while echoes of a Canaanite myth of God's conflict with the dragon and the sea may be found in the Old Testament, Satan is not associated with these references but is clearly mentioned in three contexts (except for Psalms 109:6, in which he is inferred). In the New Testament, Satan as the Devil is called the "great dragon" and "ancient serpent" ( Rv. This supernatural being not only acts as an adversary: his name itself means "an obstructor" (Russell, 1977, p. Its use in the Hebrew scriptures ( Old Testament) covers three types of beings as opponents: (1) a human being, as in 2 Samuel 19:22, (2) an angelic being, as in Numbers 22:22 –35, and (3) a particular adversary, as in Zechariah 3:1 –2, where sa ṭan functions as a common rather than a proper noun and does not refer to "the Satan," but where the idea of a being having a distinct personality is still conveyed. Although the name Satan sometimes has been connected with the Hebrew verb su ṭ, which means "to roam" (perhaps suggesting that Satan acts as God's spy), it is more commonly derived from the root sa ṭan, which means "to oppose, to plot against." The word thus basically connotes an adversary.
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