Satan as the Anti-God

For those who actually read the Bible, you should know that Satan is merely a fallen angel who is doomed to fail from the start and is only capable of tempting humans. However, in other sources (mainly modern ones), Satan is depicted as infinitely more powerful than he is in the Bible. As such, he is described as being just as, or nearly as all-powerful as God (as well as having as much importance in the cosmic scheme of things as his nemesis) and is preventing from winning from the forces of good always being on their guard. As such, Satan is upgraded to The Anti-God. Why do you think people do this? Why adapt the original Devil into something much more?

edited 9th Jan '17 2:09:25 PM by superboy313

You might also want to keep in mind that one of the earliest portrayals of Satan was not so much an "enemy of God," but someone who tempts humanity to commit sins to show God that humanity can still be led astray, while not actually being an enemy of God when tempting humanity. Satan as God's enemy seems to be an interpretation that came later.

There's also the interpretation is that Satan is God's agent provocateur who leads the goats away from the sheep, as it were, so that only the righteous get the reward and those who could be swayed miss out.

What's not explained is why anyone who can allegedly see all time and into the hearts of mere mortals would need such an agent to root out corruption or stand up and say "that guy's as crooked as a dog's hind leg m'lord" - perhaps it's an Employment Programme to give a nonsense job to an otherwise pointless entity just to make him feel like he has some actual value...

Yeah, I know Satan wasn't God's enemy in the older versions of the Bible but why do you think modern theologians elevate him to be roughly as all-knowing and all-powerful as his archenemy?

I remember reading that it was Mani who first had the idea.

Because it wouldn't make sense for anything less to even think of challenging God.

But in the original context of Satan being nothing but God's tool for "destruction testing" the loyalty/virtue of followers, there is no challenging of God - Satan runs around doing what God wants done with God's full permission (under orders to do so, in fact, since that's what "the adversary" was created for) and those who fall to temptation are marked as "damaged goods" (leaving aside the question of who allegedly manufactured these shoddy goods to begin with, of course, because who would dare question a "perfect" being).

The name "Satan" comes from a word meaning "The Adversary." This was meant to imply that he was the adversary of mankind, not God. Interestingly, the word comes from Arabic, where Shaitan/ Satan is not a fallen angel, but a renegade Ifrit, a creature of fire (as humans are creatures of earth, and djinn are creatures of air...dunno about water) who opposes Allah. Again, there's no notion that he's anywhere near as powerful as Allah, just significantly more powerful than humanity.

I don't know that there are too many actual theologians (except perhaps among Zoroastrians, who are more about balanced duality) that would say Satan is anywhere near as powerful as God. As to why so many seem to believe he is...it's a tool of various less responsible Christian denominations to instill fear into their believers, and the fearful are more likely to come to church and give to the church. If you believe the devil is out to get you, you're more likely to run to church. It's really rather amazing how many things many Christians believe that actually aren't anywhere in the Bible (our modern perception of Hell largely comes to us from Dante, who was referencing classic descriptions of the Greek underworld).

edited 22nd Nov '16 4:37:56 PM by Robbery

Add to that the fact that not all references to an "adversary" in the Bible necessarily refer to the same adversary. But it's in Organised Religion's best interests to conflate them all into one uber-adversary that's the Big Bad snapping at your heels.

Lucifer - "the Morning Star" - was an obscure/occluded reference to a real person who "fell from grace". That got conflated with Shaitan/Satan. As did the snake in the Garden of Eden - originally a mere creature like Adam and Eve or any of the other animals in the garden - thanks to a certain prolific letter-writer with an evangelical agenda...

I remember reading somewhere that before approximately the 1st century BC, most religion in the was tribal- you worshiped the Gods who would protect you from your enemies. When religion went universal- when doctrine claimed that one God was responsible for everyone, they still wanted to look to that God for protection, but protection from whom? A universal God has no rival tribes. So a Satan was invented for him, the source of all evil and tribulation, a worthy enemy to rally the faithful against. Just my speculation.

I dunno about that, or at least about the timeline. The gods of Greece and Rome were widely worshiped, and they were a bit more than simple tribal gods (they started out that way, of course, but grew to become a bit more than that). And it wasn't all about your gods protecting you from your enemies, it was frequently about you seeking your god's favor so that your endeavors might succeed, or appeasing your gods so that they didn't visit their wrath upon you. The biggest thing you generally wanted the gods to protect you from was the gods themselves. Worshiping a god is a way to try to gain some measure of control where there's none to be had any other way.

Old testament God was, while purported to be all-good (the Greeks and Romans had no such illusions about the nature of their gods, even if they probably didn't voice such opinions out loud), still pretty wrathful, and mankind was always sinful. Even without the presence of an adversary, people'd likely still be of a mind to stay in His good graces to keep Him from hitting their village with a (no doubt justly deserved, cuz they're filthy sinners after all) an earthquake or some such.

edited 23rd Nov '16 3:38:13 PM by Robbery

The problem is that there have been many versions of the concepts 'god' and 'devil' and we're kind of trying to smoosh them all together.

God didn't start out omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient or even alone. If you read Genesis, Yahweh is just the mightiest of many gods. There is also no expectation of omnibenevolence or omniscience, hence the need for an adversary.

However, that all changed as the Jews became genuinely monotheistic around 150 b.c. Perhaps not so coincidentally, this was also the time when the Abrahamics really got started on the path of ruining high classical civilizations. See the Kitos War if you want to learn more.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitos_War

But anyway, with the great classical civilizations weakened by monotheistic Judaism, sent into terminal decline by early Christianity and then finally eradicated by Islam, the old stories about imperfect Yaweh needing an adversary on the payroll didn't make much sense- you can't reconcile that older god with the theological sense of absolute certainty/righteousness that made the Abrahamics so revolutionary.

edited 6th Dec '16 6:40:13 PM by garridob

It's true that the identification of the serpent in Genesis with Satan the Devil did not come about until some references made by Jesus in the Gospels and another reference made in Revelation. Whether this is treated as The Reveal or as Retcon depends much on whether one views The Bible as Word of God penned by some 40 male secretaries or an anthology of 66 books made up completely by several different authors who continuously expanded on the same material. Not linking the two kind of makes Satan out to be some random Big Bad that just shows up for no reason and without any identifiable motive.

Going with the first interpretation, the serpent never made any attempt to question God's power, His whole argument with Eve was essentially an attack on God's right to rule over mankind, whether or not they were better ruling themselves instead. However, that is a very theological conflict and would not make for good entertainment, so instead the conflict is made into a power struggle, which necessitates Satan being near equal to God in terms of power.

edited 10th Dec '16 1:53:34 PM by shiro_okami

I'm a little disappointed that nobody has dwelt much on Zoroastrianism or Manichaeism aside from Demetrios and Robbery's brief asides on the subject, because the form of cosmic dualism which defines those faiths was a pretty big influence on how Christianity came to treat the Devil, at least on a cultural level, in the same way that Sol Invictus and Mithras were an influence on the way that the religion was practised in the Roman Empire and so forth. I mean, the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the title was, "Wait, what, like Angra Mainyu?"