THE ORIGINS OF SATAN - The legends of heaven Watchers

THE ORIGINS OF SATAN - The legends of heaven Watchers

From: The Black Arts

By: Richard Cavendish

Publisher: Picador

(Page 315 - 319)

The name Satan comes from a Hebrew word meaning "adversary". In the older books of the Old testament, written before the Jews were carried away into exile in Babylon in the 6th century BC, a satan is merely an opponent. The angel of God "stood in the way for an adversary (satan)" against Balaam. A satan was not necessarily supernatural. The Philistines refused to accept David, because they were afraid he would turn his coat in battle and become their satan or adversary.

In two later passages, written after the exile, "the satan" appears. He is an angel and a member of God's court who acts as an accuser of men before God. In the book of Zechariah, possibly dating from the late sixth century BC, the prophet sees Joshua the high priest standing before God to be judged. The satan stands at Joshua's right hand "to resist him" or argue the case against him. There is already a suggestion that the satan is excessively zealous as a prosecutor, because God rebukes him excessively a righteous man.

In the first two chapters of Job, perhaps written about a hundred years after Zechariah, the satan is still the accuser of men and he now seems definitely malignant. The sons of God present themselves before Jehovah and the satan is with them. In words which were probably intended to have an ominous ring, the satan says he has come "from going to and from in the earth and from walking up and down in it". Jehovah praises Job as a righteous man, but the satan argues that it is easy for Job to be faithful to God, because he is happy and prosperous. As a test, Jehovah allows the satan to kill Job's children and his servants and his cattle, but Job refuses to curse God for these catastrophes, saying philosophically, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord". The satan is not at all content with this. "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." Jehovah lets the satan afflict the unfortunate Job with a plague of sore boils all over his body, but Job still remains faithful.

In this story, the satan is determined to destroy Job's credit with God and he is the direct instrument of Job's punishment. But he acts only under God's instructions and he is felt to be performing a useful function. He tries to bring to the surface the wickedness inherent in men. Later, it was thought that the satan's malicious zeal must make him as repulsive to God as he was to man.

In "I Enoch", a Jewish book which is not included in the Old Testament but influenced the early Christians, there is a group of satans who by this time are not welcome in heaven at all. Enoch hears the voice of the archangel Phanuel "fending off the satans and forbidding them to come before the Lord of Spirits to accuse them who dwell on the earth". There are also "angels of punishment" who seem to be identical with the satans. They are seen preparing instruments of punishment for "the kings and the mighty of this earth, that they may thereby be destroyed". These passages were probably written in the first century BC.

It was from this notion of an implacable angel who accuses men and punishes them that the Devil of medieval and modern Christendom eventually grew. When the Old Testament was first turned into Greek, "the satan" was translated as "diabolos", meaning "an accuser", with the implication of a false accuser, a slanderer, and this is the word from which our "Devil" comes.

Later Jewish writes tended to separate good and evil, and to see Jehovah as entirely good. They found the actions of Jehovah in some biblical stories distinctly unedifying and so they put them down to an evil angel. When the story of David numbering Israel and God's vengeance for this crime was first told - in "2 Samuel", which may date from the early 8th century BC - Jehovah puts the idea of taking the census into David's mind. But when the same story is retold in "I Chronicles", possibly written in the 4th century BC, it is Satan who is responsible. "And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel". This is the only use of Satan as a proper name in the Old Testament.

In later Jewish writings and in Christian theory the figure of Satan becomes clearer and his powers are magnified until he is the great opponent of God and man, almost - but never quite - beyond God's control. It was natural for people to wonder how the satan, originally a valued if unpleasant official of God's court, had fallen from grace to become God's enemy. One explanation was found in the story of the Watchers, the germ of which appears in Genesis.

When the race of men began to increase in numbers, "the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose".

In those days, "there were giants in the earth" and the daughters of men bore children by the angels which "became mighty mean which were of old, men of renown". The story may have been meant to account for the supposed existence of giants and heroes in early times, but intentionally or unintentionally, the next verse connected it with the coming of evil to the earth. "And God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually". It was because of this that God decided to destroy mankind in the Flood.

There are several possible references to this story in other Old Testament books, but the first full version of it in its later form is given in "I Enoch", in passages probably written in the 2nd century BC. "And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: "Come, let us choose wives from among the children of men and beget us children". These angels were of the order of Watchers, the sleepless ones. There leader was Semjaza - or in other passages, Azazel. Two hundred of them descended to earth on Mount Hermon. They took wives "and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them". They taught their wives charms and enchantments, botany and the cutting of roots. Azazel taught men to make weapons of war, swords and knives and shields. He also introduced the evil art of cosmetics.

Their human wives had children by the Watchers - great giants who ate up all the possessions of men. "And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind, and they began to sin against birds and beasts and reptiles and fish, and to devour one another's flesh and to drink the blood".

God sent the archangel Raphael to imprison Azazel in the deseart till the last judgement, when he was to be hurled into eternal fire. The other Watchers were made to look on while their children, the giants were killed. Then God told the archangel Michael to bind the angels in the valleys of the earth until the day when they would be cast into everlasting torment in an abyss of fire. But the earth was not purged of evil. Demons issued from the bodies of the dead giants and have remained in the world ever since, causing wickedness, destruction and oppression.

One passage sympathetically suggests that the sin of the angels was not so much lust as a longing to enjoy the comforts of family life, as men do, and this is the first hint of a theme which was developed later - the idea that some of the angels were jealous of man.

God explains to the angels that because they are immortal and need no descendants they have not been given wives and children. But to later ages the point of the story was that evil and bloodshed and forbidden arts came to earth through an appalling crime against Nature, the physical union of the angelic and divine with the mortal, which produced monstrosities - the Giants.

It seems likely that the medieval insistence on, and horrified fascination with, the sexual relations of witches with the Devil owes something to the legend of the Watchers. The story is the diabolical counterpart of a revered mystery of the Christian faith - the descent of the Divine to a mortal woman and the birth of the Saviour.

Some of the early Christian Fathers, including Saint Augustine, rejected the legend of the Watchers and found the origin of evil in a revolt against God by a great archangel who rebelled through pride. Their scriptual authority was the famous passage in "Isaiah" which foretells the approaching doom of the King of Babylon.

This was the foundation of the Christian doctrine of the Devil's attempt to make himself the equal of God and his expulsion from heaven in punishment. As an explanation of the satan's fall from grace it had the advantage of fitting the tendency of later Jewish and Christian writers to exalt Satan's status to almost the position of an independent God. Lucifer, it was said, had been the archangel's name in heaven, and Satan was his name after his fall.