The Origin of Satan (12 page)

abandoned Israel to form their own distinct religious tradition.

He takes for granted Israel’s priority over the rest of the nations,

always mentioning Israel first. But this author takes a decisive

step by separating ethnic from moral identity and suggesting a

contrast between them. He takes his beginning from the opening

chapters of Genesis, choosing as his spokesman the holy man

Enoch, who far antedates Abraham and Israel's election and,

according to Genesis, belongs not to Israel but to the primordial

history of the human race. This author omits any mention of the

law given to Moses at Sinai, and praises instead the universal law

that God wrote into the fabric of the universe and gave to all

humankind alike—the law that governs the seas, the earth, and

the stars. Addressing his message to “the elect and the

righteous”

52 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

among all humankind, he demonstrates not only, as George

Nickelsburg observes, an “unusual openness to the Gentiles,”

but also an unusually negative view of Israel, or, more precisely,

many—perhaps a majority—of Israel's people.27

The
Book of the Watchers
tells the stories of Semihazah and

Azazel as a moral warning: if even archangels, “sons of heaven,”

can sin and be cast down, how much more susceptible to sin and

damnation are mere human beings, even those who belong to

God’s chosen people. In the
Book of the Watchers
, when Enoch,

moved with compassion for the fallen watchers, tries to

intervene with God on their behalf, one of God's angels orders

him instead to deliver to them God’s judgment: “You used to be

holy, spirits possessing eternal life; but now you have defiled

yourselves.” Such passages suggest that the
Book of the Watchers

articulates the judgment of certain Jews upon others, and

specifically upon some who hold positions that ordinarily

convey great authority.

In 160 B.C.E., after the Maccabees’ victory, a group who

regarded themselves as moderates regained control of the

Temple priesthood and temporarily ousted the Maccabean party.

Recalling this event, one of the Maccabeans adds to the

collection called the
First Book of Enoch
another version of the

story of the watcher angels, a version aimed against those who

had usurped control of the Temple. This author says that the

watchers, falling like stars from heaven, themselves spawned

Israel’s foreign enemies, depicted as bloody predators—lions,

leopards, wolves, and snakes intent on destroying Israel, here

depicted as a herd of sheep. But, he continues, God’s chosen

nation is itself divided; some are “blind sheep,” and others have

their eyes open. When the day of judgment comes, he warns,

God will destroy the errant Jews, these “blind sheep,” along

with Israel’s traditional enemies. Furthermore, God will finally

gather into his eternal home not only Israel’s righteous but also

the righteous from the nations (although these will remain

forever secondary to Israel).

A third anonymous writer whose work is included in the
First

Book of Enoch
is so preoccupied with internal division that he

virtually ignores Israel’s alien enemies. This author has Enoch

predict the rise of “a perverse generation,” warning that “all its

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SATAN / 53

deeds shall be apostate” (7
Enoch
93:9). Castigating many of his

contemporaries, this author, as George Nickelsburg points out,

like several biblical prophets, speaks for the poor, and denounces

the rich and powerful, predicting their destruction.28 He even

insists that slavery, along with other social and economic

inequities, is not divinely ordained, as others argue, but “arose

from oppression” (1
Enoch
98:5b)—that is, human sin.29

The story of the watchers, then, in some of its many

transformations, suggested a change in the traditional lines

separating Jew from Gentile. The latest section of the
First Book

of Enoch
,
the “Similitudes,” written about the time of Jesus,

simply contrasts those who are righteous, who stand on the side

of the angels, with those, both Jews and Gentiles, seduced by

the
satans
. Accounts like this would open the way for Christians

eventually to leave ethnic identity aside, and to redefine the

human community instead in terms of the moral quality, or

membership in the elect community, of each individual.

Another devout patriot, writing around 160 B.C.E., also siding

with the early Maccabean party, wrote an extraordinary

apocryphal book called
Jubilees
to urge his people to maintain

their separateness from Gentile ways. What troubles this author

is this: How can so many Israelites, God's own people, have

become apostates? How can so many Jews be “walking in the

ways of the Gentiles” (
Jub
. 1:9)? While the author takes for

granted the traditional antithesis between the Israelites and

“their enemies, the Gentiles” (
Jub
. 1:19), here again this conflict

recedes into the background. The author of Jubilees is concerned

instead with the conflicts over assimilation that divide Jewish

communities internally, and he attributes these conflicts to that

most intimate of enemies, whom he calls by many names, but

most often calls Mastema (“hatred”), Satan, or Belial.

The story of the angels’ fall in
Jubilees
, like that in the
First

Book of Enoch,
gives a moral warning: if even angels, when they

sin, bring God's wrath and destruction upon themselves, how

can mere human beings expect to be spared?
Jubilees
insists that

every creature, whether angel or human, Israelite or Gentile,

shall be judged according to deeds, that is, ethically.

54 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

According to
Jubilees
, the angels’ tall spawned the giants, who

sow violence and evil, and evil spirits, “who are cruel, and

created to destroy” (
Jub
. 10:6). Ever since, their presence has

dominated this world like a dark shadow, and suggests the moral

ambivalence and vulnerability of every human being. Like

certain of the prophets, this author warns that election offers no

safety, certainly no immunity; Israel's destiny depends not

simply on election but on moral action or, failing this, on

repentance and divine forgiveness.

Yet Jews and Gentiles do not confront demonic malevolence

on equal footing.
Jubilees
says that God assigned to each of the

nations a ruling angel or spirit “so that they might lead them

astray”
Jub.
15:31); hence the nations worship demons (whom

Jubilees
identifies with foreign gods).30 But God himself rules

over Israel, together with a phalanx of angels and spirits assigned

to guard and bless them.

What, then, does God’s election of his people mean? The

author of
Jubilees
, echoing the warnings of Isaiah and other

prophets, suggests that belonging to the people of Israel does not

guarantee deliverance from evil. It conveys a legacy of moral

struggle, but ensures divine help in that struggle.

Jubilees
depicts Mastema testing Abraham himself to the

breaking point. For according to this revisionist writer, it is

Mastema—not the Lord—who commands Abraham to kill his

son, Isaac. Later Abraham expresses anxiety lest he be enslaved

by evil spirits, “who have dominion over the thoughts of human

hearts”; he pleads with God, “Deliver me from the hands of evil

spirits, and do not let them lead me astray from my God”
Jub.

12:20). Moses, too, knows that he and his people are vulnerable.

When he prays that God deliver Israel from their external

enemies, “the Gentiles”
Jub
. 1:19), he also prays that God may

deliver them from the intimate enemy that threatens to take over

his people internally and destroy them: “Do not let the spirit of

Belial rule over them”
Jub.
1:20). This sense of ominous and

omnipresent danger in
Jubilees
shows the extent to which the

author regards his people as corruptible and, to a considerable

extent, already corrupted. Like the
Book of the Watchers
,
Jubilees

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SATAN / 55

warns that those who neglect God’s covenant are being seduced

by the powers of evil, fallen angels.

Despite these warnings, the majority of Jews, from the second

century B.C.E. to the present, reject sectarianism, as well as the

universalism that, among most Christians, would finally

supersede ethnic distinction. The Jewish majority, including

those who sided with the Maccabees against the assimilationists,

has always identified with Israel as a whole.

The author of the biblical book of Daniel, for example, who

wrote during the crisis surrounding the Maccabean war, also

sides with the Maccabees, and wants Jews to shun contamination

incurred by eating with Gentiles, marrying them, or worshiping

their gods. To encourage Jews to maintain their loyalty to Israel,

the book opens with the famous story of the prophet Daniel,

sentenced to death by the Babylonian king for faithfully praying

to his God. Thrown into a den of lions to be torn apart, Daniel is

divinely delivered; “the Lord sent an angel to shut the lions'

mouths,” so that the courageous prophet emerges unharmed.

Like the authors of
Jubilees
and
Watchers
, the author of

Daniel, too, sees moral division within Israel, and warns that

some people “violate the covenant; but the people who know

their God shall stand firm and take action” (Dan. 11:32). Though

concerned with moral issues, he never forgets ethnic identity:

what concerns him above all is Israel’s moral destiny as a whole.

Unlike the writers of the
Book of the Watchers
and
Jubilees
, the

author of Daniel envisions no sectarian enemy, either human or

divine. Grieved as he is at Israel’s sins, he never condemns many,

much less the majority, of his people as apostate; consequently,

he never speaks of Satan, Semihazah, Azazel, Mastema, Belial, or

fallen angels of any kind.

Although there are no devils in Daniel’s world, there
are

angels, and there are enemies. The author presents the alien

enemies, rulers of the Persian, Medean, and Hellenistic empires,

in traditional visionary imagery, as monstrous beasts. In one

vision, the first beast is “like a lion with eagles’ wings”; the

second “like a bear,” ferociously devouring its prey; the third

like a leopard “with four wings of a bird on its back and four

heads”; and “a

56 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

fourth beast (is] terrible and dreadful and exceedingly strong;

and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and broke in pieces, and

stamped the residue with its feet.” In another vision, Daniel sees

a horned ram that the angel Gabriel explains to him “is the king

of Greece.” Throughout the visions of Daniel, such monstrous

animals represent foreign rulers and nations who threaten Israel.

When Daniel, trembling with awe and terror, prays for his

people, he is rewarded with divine assurance that all Israelites

who remain true to God will survive (12:1-3). Thus the book of

Daniel powerfully reaffirms the integrity of Israel's moral and

ethnic identity. It is for this reason, I suggest, that Daniel, unlike

such other apocalyptic books as the
Book of the Watchers
and

Jubilees
, is included in the canonical collection that we call the

Hebrew Bible and not relegated to the apocrypha.

The majority of Jews, at any rate those who assembled and

drew upon the Hebrew Bible, apparently endorsed Daniel’s

reaffirmation of Israel’s traditional identity’, while those who

valued such books as 1
Enoch
and
Jubilees
probably included a

significant minority more inclined to identify with one group of

Jews against another, as Daniel had refused to do. Most of those

who
did
take sides within the community stopped far short of

proclaiming an all-out civil war between one Jewish group and

another, but there were notable exceptions. Starting at the time

of the Maccabean war, the more radical sectarian groups we have

mentioned—above all, those called Essenes—placed this cosmic

battle between angels and demons, God and Satan, at the very

center of their cosmology and their politics. In so doing, they

expressed the importance to their lives of the conflict between

themselves and the majority of their fellow Jews, whom the

Essenes consigned to damnation.

Many scholars believe that the Essenes are known to us from

such first-century contemporaries as Josephus, Philo, and the

Roman geographer and naturalist Pliny the Elder, as well as from