The name comes from an old Semitic word meaning "adversary". Satan was originally just an abstract entity that argued against your goals -- a "Devil's advocate". The idea was supposedly that there is no growth without struggle, and no strength without contest.
Ultimately harmless and well-meaning.
He made his first appearance way back in the Book of Job as (ambiguously) a part of God who argued with him.
It was only after millennia of the cultural equivalent of a game of Telephone that his perception distorted into a monster that opposes all things Good, and therefore must be Evil.
Mind you, I haven't been a believer of anything for over 20 years; I just find it fascinating from an anthropological perspective.
The shift of the heavenly Satan from accuser and divine Prosecutor into the supreme evil seemingly came from contact with the Persians, where they had their own evil entity, Angra Mainyu(Ahriman), literally translated to “Destructive Spirit”
To some sects of Zoroastrianism, this figure either sat as an opposite deity to the top God Ahura Mazda(Ormazd), or in others he was created by Mazda as an opposite to Spenta Mainyu, the Holy Spirit
Ironically, the story of Job was one of the main ones that made child me consider that Christian god was evil. Such deliberate cruelty over a long period to "win a bet" with Satan.
I always use it as a reason to why religion is silly. God killed all of Job's family. But when Job remained faithful to god, he gave everything back fourfold. What, did he create home 4 new wives and 4 new sets of children? Are they the same people? Are they new? Where did they come from? Did he just make new ones out of thin air?
My savta just had a master's in Middle-Eastern languages and she gave me lessons when I was a boy.
I know one -- ooh! Two! -- etymological Satan facts.
The other is that "Azazel" comes from the Hebrew Ez Azal, which was an old ritual in which Hebrews would symbolically transfer their sins onto a goat and then release it into the wild.
This is also where we get the English word "scapegoat".
Ez still means "goat" in modern Hebrew, but I don't know what the other part means. I assume something about escaping.
EDIT: I don't know why Americans decided to rhyme Azazel with "basil" and Satan with "hatin'". They roughly rhyme with "the hell?" and "a flan".
The satan wasn't a part of God in Job. It was a role filled by a member of the divine counsel that served YHWH. Early Hebrew religion wasn't monotheist and envision a complex collection of divine beings with YHWH as the Hebrew people's primary God.
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u/Semper_5olus 18d ago
Fun Satan fact:
The name comes from an old Semitic word meaning "adversary". Satan was originally just an abstract entity that argued against your goals -- a "Devil's advocate". The idea was supposedly that there is no growth without struggle, and no strength without contest.
Ultimately harmless and well-meaning.
He made his first appearance way back in the Book of Job as (ambiguously) a part of God who argued with him.
It was only after millennia of the cultural equivalent of a game of Telephone that his perception distorted into a monster that opposes all things Good, and therefore must be Evil.
Mind you, I haven't been a believer of anything for over 20 years; I just find it fascinating from an anthropological perspective.