Satanism and Demonology by Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe

Author:Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2011-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

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 be an adversary to us: for wherewith should he reconcile himself unto his master? Should it not be with the heads of these men?

It crops up again in this military sense in the first book of Kings 5:4: “But now the LORD my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent.”

The same concept of the use of the word Satan for an opponent or adversary can be found in the legal sense as well as the military context. There is an example of this usage in Psalm 109, verse 6: “Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan (his opponent, his adversary) stand at his right hand.”

Satan is regarded almost sympathetically in some of the old Jewish religious literature, where there is a parable comparing him to a prostitute hired by a king in order to tempt the king’s son. The king orders her to do her best to lead the young man into sin, but although she obeys the king’s orders, she secretly hopes that she will fail, and that the prince will pass his father’s test. The parable sets out to show Satan as a tempter sent by God, but a tempter who secretly hopes to fail to make his target sin.

In Christianity, there are a number of names that are practically interchangeable with Satan. Referring to him as the devil comes from the Middle English word devel, which developed from the Old English term deofol. Its origin is the Latin word diabolus, which the Romans took from the Greek diabellein, meaning to speak ill of someone or to slander them. Lucifer is also used as a synonym for Satan or the devil. The fallen angel is referred to as “the son of the dawn” in Isaiah 14:12, thus identifying Satan as Lucifer: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”

Satan is also referred to as Beelzebub on occasion, but Beelzebub was originally an old Philistine god, with Baal as one of the name’s root words. BaalZebub simply means “lord of the flies,” although the New Testament uses it more or less as a synonym for Satan.

The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), renders the name as Belzeboub. He is named as one of the seven princes of hell.

There is an early reference to him in the second book of Kings 1:2:

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