I had to pull out some old notes for this post. Took me over two hours to reread some old stuff and write this
I voted "yes" but I don't think he is evil. I can explain below.
Satan serves Yahweh as an arch-angel. Some say his name is Samael, the arch-angel of death. He isn't evil except when Yahweh commands him to be. But that doesn't mean that Satan is the devil.
In
Isaiah 45:7 Yahweh pretty explicitly makes it clear that he created both good and evil, light and dark and that he is the cause of all of it. It's only theology and tradition that says otherwise. Some translations may translate this as "clamaity" or something like that, but the King James Version and many others translate it as "evil". Perhaps someone well versed in Hebrew could enlighten us on their understanding of the Hebrew word
וּבוֹרֵא that is translated into "evil" sometimes in English:
ז יוֹצֵר אוֹר
וּבוֹרֵא חֹשֶׁךְ, עֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם וּבוֹרֵא רָע; אֲנִי יְהוָה, עֹשֶׂה כָל-אֵלֶּה. {פ}
KJV: I form the light, and create
darkness: I make peace, and create
evil: I the Lord do all these things.
The truth is Satan never fell but is still part of the Heavenly Host. In Habakkuk 1:13 Yahweh says he cannot look directly at evil, and yet in the opening of the Book of Job there is Samael,speaking to God in Heaven with the other angels (in verse 6) in front of Yahweh's throne and reporting on his duty. It is then that Yahweh
volunteers "Have you considered my servant Job?" I want anyone who doesn't believe me to go back and read it, it is Yahweh who offers Job to Satan to test. Samael was just doing is... job
The problem is that when the New Testament was written it had strong Greek and Jewish Pseudepigrapha from the Second Temple Period which repainted what was a title into a devil conception.This is actually why you have the contrast of intended meanings between the Old and New Testaments.
There is actually a verse where David is called
Satan;
First Samuel 29:4 in the form of
לְשָׂטָן: http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt08a29.htm
ד וַיִּקְצְפוּ עָלָיו שָׂרֵי פְלִשְׁתִּים, וַיֹּאמְרוּ לוֹ שָׂרֵי פְלִשְׁתִּים הָשֵׁב אֶת-הָאִישׁ וְיָשֹׁב אֶל-מְקוֹמוֹ אֲשֶׁר הִפְקַדְתּוֹ שָׁם, וְלֹא-יֵרֵד עִמָּנוּ בַּמִּלְחָמָה, וְלֹא-יִהְיֶה-לָּנוּ
לְשָׂטָן בַּמִּלְחָמָה; וּבַמֶּה, יִתְרַצֶּה זֶה אֶל-אֲדֹנָיו--הֲלוֹא, בְּרָאשֵׁי הָאֲנָשִׁים הָהֵם.
And the princes of the Philistines were wroth with him; and the princes of the Philistines said unto him, Make this fellow return, that he may go again to his place which thou hast appointed him, and let him not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he [David] be an adversary to us: for wherewith should he reconcile himself unto his master? should it not be with the heads of these men?
In
Second Samuel 19:22 David calls the sons of Zeruiah
Satan;
כג וַיֹּאמֶר דָּוִד, מַה-לִּי וְלָכֶם בְּנֵי צְרוּיָה--כִּי-תִהְיוּ-לִי הַיּוֹם,
לְשָׂטָן; הַיּוֹם, יוּמַת אִישׁ בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל--כִּי הֲלוֹא יָדַעְתִּי, כִּי הַיּוֹם אֲנִי-מֶלֶךְ עַל-יִשְׂרָאֵל.
JKV:
And David said, What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah, that ye should this day be adversaries unto me? shall there any man be put to death this day in Israel? for do not I know that I am this day king over Israel?
And Obedient angel referred to as a Satan in
Numbers 22:22:
כב וַיִּחַר-אַף אֱלֹהִים, כִּי-הוֹלֵךְ הוּא, וַיִּתְיַצֵּב מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה בַּדֶּרֶךְ,
לְשָׂטָן לוֹ; וְהוּא רֹכֵב עַל-אֲתֹנוֹ, וּשְׁנֵי נְעָרָיו עִמּוֹ.
KJV:
And God's anger was kindled because he went: and the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ***, and his two servants were with him.
I think that it's very clear from the root word
שָׂטָן as well as context and normal Jewish understanding that Satan as an entity, perhaps Samael, is not the devil. Actually I don't think that Judaism actually has a real devil or really even a Hell. I kind of think that was brought into the mix with the Greek influences with Hades and the Underworld and Gehanna, the burning pit where Moloch reigned. Actually the word "Hell" comes from the Teutonic Goddess of the dead Hel who's domains included torture and punishment. So really the idea of Hell where people go, or a Satan which tortures people there or goes there isn't actually Biblical.
It just kind of seems that way because of the Greek influences and Catholic cherry picking of the books to be included in the New Testament over the centuries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devel..._canon#Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon
So it took
500 years for people to even settle on those books. Considering all the texts like the Gospel of Thomas or Judas that were excluded, I cannot say for certain that there wouldn't be more contemporary texts inline with the Old Testament. This is expounded by the fact that Revelation was the
last accepted book of the Bible, centuries after the fact and it's the only one that actually explicitly refutes the Old Testament and it's more ancient interpretations on this matter.
The title Lucifer means Morning Star or Light bearer and is used to refer to Jesus Christ in
Revelation 22:16 and
(can't find where he was specifically called "light-bearer" in a new testament translation but I'll post it if I do find the verse again I know I read it years ago) . Followers of Cagliari actually called themselves Luciferians and Lucifer was considered a Christian name by early Christians. In
Second Peter 1:19 Christians are told to let the "Morning Star" rise in their hearts! This is probably because Jesus called himself the "Light of the World" in
John 8:12.
New International Version:
"We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts."
In
Revelation 2:26-28: (NIV)
To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations— 27 that one ‘will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give that one the morning star.
Further on Lucifer I can point out that in
Isaiah 14:12-14 that taken in a proper historical and astronomical context and, gee, actually reading the text, that Lucifer in this case actually refers to the planet Venus. The Latin word for Lucifer corresponds to the Greek Φωσφόρος (Phosphorus) and is not explicitly any devil. Also, anyone who is aware of how Venus tends to act in the morning, it often rises into the sky during Dawn and then fall back down behind the horizon as day comes. This is why it's called the Morning Star.
Why would Lucifer be punished by saying he is going to "ascend into Heaven" if he was already there? The fact is this verse is nestled right in the middle of talking about events that, with a literal interpretation, happened 3,000 years after the Garden of Eden. It also in the same chapter describes him as rotting. But in
Luke 20:35-36 it's established that Angels cannot die. So even with taking the New Testament it doesn't make sense to argue that Lucifer actually refers to an Angel let alone Satan in Isaiah 14.
It seems to me that Satan and Lucifer are different things, and neither is the devil. I just don't see anything to really support it other than one or two verses in Revelation, but considering how late it was canonized into the Christian Bible and Revelation's contradictions to other books in the Bible and the older understandings it stands to reason that these verses might of actually been added at a later date, as some have actually argued in the past.
In conclusion I think that based on what the books in the Christian Bible say coupled with some context and historical understanding one can't really make a good argument for Satan being anything *but* serving God, not because he is forced to, but because he never fell from Heaven in the first place and is actually an arch-angel who's always been obedient. Actually if we can take a page from Islam, angels don't actually have free will so it's not like any angel could of rebelled in the first place. It only seems that Christianity views Satan as some fallen angel who disobeys Yahweh. I don't think there is really any real evidence of that though, as I have shown.
There just isn't any evidence other than *one* verse that contradicts so much else established in the Christian Bible once one looks at the original languages and intended meanings. It just seems like people wanted to cram the devil idea into the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible even though it doesn't actually fit nicely.
Also on an interesting note Mathew 2:2 talks about the star in the East leading to Jesus... it should be noted that typically Lucifer is associated with the East and is the associated cardinal direction used by some occultists and Luciferians/Satanists during rituals. This probably also happens though because Venus rises and then falls back down in the East, also the direction the Sun rises in. Some astronomers have shown that there is a lot of evidence pointing towards a conjunction between Venus and Jupiter around the time that Jesus was born that would of stayed in the same direction every night for a good while Not that any of this is part my argument, just some neat stuff about Lucifer/Venus/Jesus neat I wanted to point out. One can interpret from that what they will.
