Harvard Divinity School

The Social History of Satan, the "Intimate Enemy": A Preliminary Sketch

Author(s): Elaine Pagels
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 105-128
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School
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HTR 84:2 (1991) 105-28

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SATAN, THE "INTIMATEENEMY":

A PRELIMINARYSKETCH*

Elaine Pagels
Princeton University

The figure of Satan has been a standing puzzle in the history of religion.
Where did this figure originate, and what is its role? Satan is scarcely
present in traditional Judaism to this day and is not present at all in classical Jewish sources-at least not in the form that later Western Christendom
knew him, as the leader of an "evil empire," of an army of hostile spirits
who take pleasure in destroying human beings.1 Yet images of such spirits
did develop and proliferate in certain late antique Jewish sources, from ca.
165 BCEto 100 CE. Specifically, they developed among groups I shall call

*For their helpful criticism and comments during the preparation of this work, I am
grateful to many of my colleagues, including Professors Glen Bauersock, John Collins, Paul
Hanson, MarthaHimmelfarb, Menachem Lorberbaum,Doron Mendels, and George Nickelsburg.
'Cf. Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1987) 107: "In the collection of documents. .. known to Christians as the
Old Testament, the word [Satan] never appears. .. as the name of the adversary. .. rather,
when the satan appears in the Old Testament, he is a member of the heavenly court, albeit
with unusual tasks." Jeffrey B. Russell (The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to
Primitive Christianity [Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1977] chaps. 3, 4), investigating in his work "perceptions of evil," begins with a discussion of evil figures including
examples from India, Egypt, and Greece. The present discussion focuses instead on the
various perceptions of Satan found in New Testament sources and their Jewish antecedents
and parallels. In his discussion of Christian theodicy, Russell (The Devil, 222) notes that
"generations of socially oriented theologians dismissed the Devil and the demons as superstitious relics of little importance to the Christian message. On the contrary, the Devil. ..
stands at the center of the New Testament teaching that the Kingdom of God is at war
with. .. the Kingdom of the Devil. The Devil is essential in the New Testament because he
constitutes an important alternative to Christian theodicy." On this point I agree with Russell
but go considerably further: in New Testament sources the devil plays a major role not only
in theodicy but simultaneously in the Christians' social identification, both of themselves and
of those they regard as "others."

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"dissident Jews,"2 which included the early followers of Jesus; within decades, the figure of Satan and his demons became central to Christian (and
later to Islamic) teaching. How did this occur?
We know that many strands of earlier Hebrew literature took for granted
the existence of malevolent supernaturalbeings, but rarely elaborated these.
"Other gods," the "gods of the nations," were sometimes depicted as hostile
to God and his people and sometimes derided as mere pretenders to divine
status. (Later, certain rabbinic and Christian sources tended to identify them
with the kingdom of Satan and his fallen angels.)3 Yet as early as the sixth
century BCE, Hebrew storytellers occasionally mentioned a supernatural
character they regarded as an opponent or adversary. The Hebrew word lo
vocalized as jcp' bears the root meaning of "to obstruct," or "to oppose."
Certain biblical passages that describe the activities of such an adversary
play simultaneously on the root nm, "to incite, instigate, or arouse." The
tension between acting as adversary, on the one hand, and inciting peopleor even the Lord himself!-to harmful action, on the other, characterizes
the satan's activities.4
Yet the term Satan was still a title that designated a specific function;
it had not yet become a proper name. Most Jewish storytellers imagined
such supernatural emissaries as among God's ':St^z, his messengers (a
term translated into the Septuagint as dyyeoti), beings modeled on the
hierarchical ranks of an imperial army or the staff of a great royal court.
Job, for example, pictures Satan as an angelic member of God's council to
whom God assigns the task of afflicting Job in order to test the limits of
his loyalty-a kind of divine prosecuting attorney.5
2See, for example, Robert Murray, "Jews, Hebrews, and Christians: Some Needed Distinctions," NovT 24 (1982) 194-208; and idem, "'Disaffected Judaism' and Early Christianity: Some Predisposing Factors" in Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs, eds., "To See
Ourselves as Others See Us": Christians, Jews, "Others" in Late Antiquity (Chico, CA:
Scholars Press, 1985) 263-81. I am grateful to my colleague Peter Brown for referring me
to the former article, and to Jacob Neusner for discussion of the latter.
3See, for example, Justin 1 Apol. 5; 2 Apol. 5; Athenagoras Legatio 24-27; Tatian Or.
Graec. 7-8, 16-17. Also see Heinrich Wey, Die Funktionen der bosen Geister bei den
griechischen Apologeten des zweiten Jahrhunderts nach Christus (Winterthur: P. G. Keller,
1957); and Elaine Pagels, "Christian Apologists and 'The Fall of the Angels': An Attack on
Roman Imperial Power?" HTR 78 (1985) 301-25.
4Note, for example, 1 Chr 21:1, where Satan "incited" King David to evil; or Job 2:3,
where the Lord himself admits that Satan "incited" him to act against Job. Numbers tells the
story of Balaam, who decided to go where God did not want him to go. God sent one of his
oppose him (D0b0
angels-here called in Hebrew the "messenger of the Lord" (mil;r'l"t)-to
L5), but this opponent, invisible to Balaam, was seen by his mount, who stopped in her tracks.
Balaam beat her until the ass spoke out and rebuked her master (Num 22:21-35).
5See Frank M. Cross, "The Council of Yahweh in Second Isaiah," JNES 12 (1953) 274-

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In classical Hebrew sources the satan never acts independently or on his

own initiative; on the contrary, he remains one of God's angels, acting only
as God's agent and serving God's purposes. But according to the German
scholar Knut Schaferdiek,the followers of Jesus suddenly turned this rather
unpleasant angel into a far grander-and far more malevolent-figure: in
certain New Testament writings Satan became God's enemy, his antagonist,
even his rival.6 Yet scholars more familiar than Schaferdiek with Jewish
literaturehave shown that this was no sudden development originating among
Christians; rather, from the middle of the second century BCE, angelologies
and demonologies began to proliferate in the literature of various Jewish
groups. Yet such imagery did not appear in all Jewish literature of that
period, but specifically in what came to be regarded (or disregarded) by the
majority of Jews as apocryphal or sectarian literature.7
What precipitated the beginning of angelology and demonology? Harold
B. Kuhn summarizes various attempts to explain it. First, this development
expresses "a growing tendency toward concreteness in a new literature."8
Although this remark describes the phenomenon, it does not explain it.
Second, such development showed "foreign influences"-Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian-on the Judaism of the time. Certainly, we can see such
influences at work here, but such so-called analysis misses the crucial point:
Why were only certain Jewish writers motivated to pick up these specific
influences at this particularhistorical moment? Third, Claude G. Montefiore
cites "a theological necessity of keeping God away from direct intervention
in human affairs."9 Similarly, George Foot Moore mentions an "increased
sense of God's distance from human affairs" that, he says, characterizes the
Judaism of that period.10 But I suspect that this third line of discussion
masks a covert apologetic motive to point out what Christians consider a
theological flaw in first-century Judaism (a flaw that they believe is about
to be "corrected"by God's immanent presence embodied in Jesus Christ).11
77. See also Forsyth, The Old Enemy, 110: "The word 'Satan' is a title rather than a proper
name, since it appears with the definite article, roughly equivalent to 'Attorney General,' or
'Public Prosecutor.'"
6Knut Schaferdiek, "Satan in the Post-Apostolic Fathers," s.v. "oatxavdc," TDNT 7 (1971)
163-65.
7Harold B. Kuhn, "The Angelology of the Non-Canonical Jewish Apocalypses," JBL 67
(1948) 217.
8Ibid.
9Claude G. Montefiore, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by
the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews (London: Williams and Norgate, 1892) 429.
I?George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, vol. 1: The Age
of the Tannaim (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927) 401.
"See, for many examples of such argumentation, Charlotte Klein, Anti-Judaism in Christian Theology (trans. E. Quinn; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978).

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In any case, such comments are simply wrong: for example, angelic intervention is nowhere more present than in the Christian book of Acts, the
author of which intended to convey an immediate sense of God's active
presence. The presence of angels and demons precisely expresses direct
divine intervention in human affairs, whether God is sending his angel to
block Balaam's way or allowing his satan to afflict Job in order to test his
fidelity.
This article sketches some of the ways in which Satan appears in several
extracanonical Jewish sources. I propose that one primary function of the
image of Satan is to articulate patterns of group identification distinct from
the traditional Israelite pattern-the identification of the people of Israel,
God's chosen nation, against "the nations and their gods." I suggest that the
image of Satan tended to develop at the time that it did among specific
groups for whom this traditionalpatternof identification was breaking down.
In particular, my observations suggest that those who developed and elaborated the image of Satan were Jews involved in struggling not only against
the nations, but also, and in some cases primarily, against other Jews, often
against a dominant majority. I do not intend to suggest uniformity among
such groups; on the contrary, they were fractious and diverse, ranging from
various groups of Essenes to the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps all
that they did share in common was that they were, in their various ways,
dissidents. Jonathan Z. Smith attempts a more precise definition:
Those first-centuryJewishgroups,both in Palestineand the Diaspora,
both before and after the destructionof the Temple, that sought to
develop a notion of community,principles of authority,sources of
revelation,and modes of access to divinity apartfrom the Jerusalem
Temple, its traditions,priests and cult.12
Such dissidents, I suggest, often came to denounce their Jewish opponents,
one and all, as apostates, and so to accuse them of having been seduced by
the power of evil, called by many names: Satan, Belial, Mastema, Prince
of Darkness.
This article offers an introductoryglance at a variety of Jewish literature
in order to explore how, in this period, the figure of Satan correlates with
intra-Jewish conflict. As a check on this hypothesis, I shall note that, conversely, the figure of Satan does not appear in the work of Jewish writers
of the same period who identified with the majority of Jews and who
12JonathanZ. Smith, "Introduction to 'The Prayer of Joseph,"' in James H. Charlesworth,
ed., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1985) 2. 701.

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continued to maintain the traditional identification of Israel versus "the

nations."
First, let us recall how sources preserved in the Hebrew Bible ordinarily
identify "us" and "them." In these early traditions, as we noted before, the
devil is absent. According to the foundation story recorded in Genesis 12,
Israel first received its identity through election, when a God previously
unknown suddenly revealed himself to Abraham, ordering him to leave his
home country, his family, and his ancestral gods, and promising him, in
exchange for exclusive loyalty, a new national heritage with a new identity:
I will make you a great nation, and I will make your name great. ..
and, whoeverblesses you I will bless; and whoevercurses you I will
curse. (Gen 12:3)
Thus, when God promises to make Abraham the father of a new, great, and
blessed nation, he simultaneously defines and constitutes its enemies as
inferior and potentially accursed.
Israelite tradition, then, defines "us" simultaneously in ethnic, political,
and religious terms as "the people of Israel," or "the people of God" against
"them"-the (other) nations (in Hebrew, ianr)often characterized as inferior, morally depraved, even accursed. We may call this a theory of the
"alien enemy." Thus Gen 16:12 goes on to explain that Ishmael, ancestor
of the Arab people, was a "wild ass of a man" hostile to everyone, implying that his descendants, too, are animalistic and hostile. Gen 19:37-38
adds that the Moabite and Ammonite nations are descended from Lot's
daughters, which means that they are the illegitimate offspring of a drunken
and incestuous union. The people of Sodom, too, although they are
Abraham'sallies, not his enemies, are said to be criminally depraved, "young
and old, down to the last man," collectively guilty of attempting to commit
homosexual rape against a party of defenseless Hebrew travelers (Gen 19:4).
Although these accounts do not idealize Abraham or his progeny-in fact,
the narrator twice tells how Abraham and Isaac's self-serving lies endangered their allies (Gen 20:1-18; 26:6-10)-God ensures, nevertheless, that
everything turns out well for their people and badly for their enemies.
The Exodus story also simultaneously constitutes "us" (that is, Israel)
and "them" (that is, the nations) as Moses' attempts to pressure Pharaoh to
let the Hebrews leave Egypt increase in hostility and violence. Yet the
narratorinsists that it was God himself who continued to harden Pharaoh's
heart, lest he relent and make his people's increased suffering unnecessary. Why? When God, speaking through Moses, threatens Pharaoh with
devastating slaughter, he concludes by declaring "but against any of the

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Israelites, not a dog shall growl-so that you may know that the Lord
makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel!" (Exod 11:7; my
emphasis). According to such sources, then, what God does to them is
almost as important as what he does for us: the nations, seen collectively,
are at once the other and the enemy.
This feature need not surprise us; in the context of anthropological research, it is just what we should expect. Many anthropologists have pointed
out that the world view of most peoples consists essentially of two pairs of
binary oppositions: human/not human and we/they. These two oppositions
are often correlated: we = human; and they = not human.13
That Israel's traditions deprecate the nations, then, is no surprise. Much
more surprising is that they make exceptions. In the first place, Hebrew
traditions sometimes include a sense of universalism where one might least
expect it. Even God's election of Abraham and his progeny includes a
promise of blessing to extend through them to all people, for that famous
passage concludes, "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed"
(Gen 12:3). Second, when a stranger appears alone, the Israelites accord
him protection, precisely because they identify with the solitary and defenseless stranger. One of the earliest creeds of Israel recalls how Abraham
himself, obeying God's command, became a solitary alien: "A wandering
Aramean was my father. . ." (Deut 26:5). Moses, too, was the quintessential alien, having been adopted as an infant by the Pharaoh's daughter.
Although a Hebrew, he was raised as an Egyptian; the family of his future
in-laws, in fact, mistook him for an Egyptian when they first met him. He
even named his first son Gershom ("a wanderer there"), saying, "I have
been a wanderer in a foreign land" (Exod 2:16-22). Certain statements of
biblical law express empathetic identification with the solitary alien: "You
shall not wrong or oppress a stranger; for you were strangers in the land
of Egypt" (Exod 22:21). But the Israelite approach to their neighbors in
groups is often aggressively hostile; because the nations are depraved and
inferior, the Lord will drive them out "like locusts" before the invading
Israelite armies (Isa 40:22b).
This pattern of identification, which I have called that of the "alien
enemy," seemed to suffice so long as Israel's empire was expanding and the
Israelites were winning their wars against the nations. One of the psalms
attributedto David declares that, "God gave me vengeance and subdued the

13See, in particular, the fine essays by Jonathan Z. Smith, "What a Difference a Difference
Makes," and William S. Green, "Otherness Within: Towards a Theory of Difference in Rabbinic Judaism," in Neusner and Frerichs,"To See Ourselves as Others See Us" 3-48 and 4969.

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nations under us. ... By this I know that God is pleased with me-in that
my enemy has not triumphed over me" (Ps 41:11).
Yet at certain points in Israel's history, especially in times of crisis, war,
and danger, a vociferous minority spoke out, not against the alien tribes
and foreign armies ranged against Israel, but to blame Israel's misfortunes
instead upon members of its own people. Such critics, sometimes accusing
the nation as a whole and sometimes blaming certain rulers, claimed that
Israel's disobedience to God had brought down suffering as divine punishment.
What Morton Smith has called the "Yahweh alone" party,14along with
those prophets who articulatedits views, such as Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah,
tended especially to indict those Israelites who adopted foreign waysincluding, as the worst of their crimes, the worship of foreign gods. Such
prophets, along with supporters of the deuteronomic program, set out to
make Israel a truly separate people. The more radical of these prophets
spoke as if Israelites who tended toward assimilation were as bad as the
nations; only a remnant, they said, remained faithful to Israelite traditions.
These critics not only adopted the traditional antagonism toward the nations, but also denounced those within Israel who tended toward assimilation.
Certain of these prophets, too, as Jon Levenson points out, had used the
monsters of Canaanite mythology to symbolize Israel's enemies:15thus First
Isaiah proclaims that "The Lord is coming to punish the inhabitants of the
earth; and the earth will disclose the blood shed upon her, and will no more
cover the slain" (Isa 26:21). The same author goes on, apparently in parallel imagery, to warn that "in that day, the Lord with his great hand will
punish the Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that
is in the sea" (Isa 27:1). Second Isaiah also celebrates God's triumph over
traditional mythological figures, Rahab, "the dragon," and "the sea," as he
proclaims God's immanent triumph over Israel's enemies. Thereby, as
Levenson observes, "the enemies cease to be merely earthly powers... and
become, instead or in addition, cosmic forces of the utmost malignancy."16
Familiar with this tradition of identifying their foreign enemies in mythological terms, certain writers of the sixth century BCE took a bold step: they
began to adopt mythological imagery to characterize their struggle against
14Morton Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1971) 62-146.
15JonD. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine
Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988). I am grateful to John Collins for referring me to this work.
16Ibid., 44.

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certain intimate enemies, that is, against certain of their fellow Israelites.
Consider, for example, the accounts told in 1 Chr 21:1-7 and Zech 3:1-9.
Each articulates a specific situation of intra-Jewish conflict, and eachvirtually for the first time, among extant sources-depicts Satan, as it were,
on the verge of deviating from his role as God's agent to become God's
enemy.
First Chronicles 21:1-7 attempts to explain the origin of the census by
stating that "the satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to number
Israel." Unable to deny that the command he and others found so offensive
came from none other than the king himself, this author chooses to suggest
that a supernatural adversary within the divine court, "the satan," had
managed to infiltrate even the royal house and lead the king himself into
sin.17 As the chronicler tells the story, the satan instigated this act against
the Lord's will; so that "God was displeased with this thing, and he smote
Israel." Even after David abased himself and confessed his sin, the angry
Lord punished him by sending an avenging angel to destroy seventy thousand Israelites with a plague, and the Lord was barely restrained from
destroying the city of Jerusalem itself! What distinguishes this story from
those of Balaam and Job is that here Satan has begun to deviate from his
role as God's agent to become, in effect, his opposition.
If 1 Chronicles invokes the satan to personify forces that arouse divisiveness and destruction within Israel, the prophet Zechariah depicts the
same adversary as the spokesman for those whom the prophet regards as
destructive elements among the people. Zechariah's account reflects conflicts that arose after thousands of Jews who had been exiled in Babylonmany of them educated and influential members of the conquered nationreturned from exile under the patronage of the Persian king Cyrus to rebuild Jerusalem's walls and Temple. As Morton Smith reconstructs their
history, the returning exiles intended to reestablish the worship of "Yahweh
alone" in their land, and they assumed that in the process they would
reestablish themselves as the priests and ruling hierarchy of their people.
Yet they encountered bitter resistance from many who had remained in the
land. Many of the latter, descendants of those who had remained behind in
587 or who had returned soon afterward, were adherents to the "syncretistic
cult of Yahweh,"18that is, people who had accommodated in various ways
to the ways and customs of the neighboring peoples. Some saw those returning not only as agents of a foreign king, but as a powerful group
17Theauthor of 1 Chronicles apparently intended to mitigate the offense caused by such
alternate interpretations as that recorded in 2 Sam 24:1, which claims that it was the Lord
himself who, in anger against Israel, incited David to sin.
'8Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics, 62.

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intending to seize back all the power and land they had been forced to
relinquish after they departed. Without wholly accepting Paul Hanson's
reconstruction of this conflict, we may appreciate his observation, based on
evidence in certain prophetic texts, of precisely the shift we noted above:
The old line betweenpeople and enemyis the line dividingIsraelfrom
the nations; in its new context, the line came to divide betweentwo
segments within Israel. . . . Now, accordingto the people who remained,theirbeloved land was controlledby the enemy, and, although
that enemy in fact comprisedfellow Israelites,yet they regardedthese
brethrenas essentially no different from the Canaanites.. . . (my
emphasis)19
In the intense heat of this intra-Jewish conflict, one voice for the returning
exiles, the prophet Zechariah, tells a story that casts the satan as spokesman
for the "people of the land" who opposed the returning high priest and his
party:
The Lord showed me Joshuathe high priest standingbefore the angel
of the Lord, and Satanstandingat his right hand to accuse him. And
the Lordsaid to Satan,"TheLordrebukeyou, O Satan!The Lordwho
has chosen Jerusalemrebukeyou! Is this not a brandpluckedfrom the
fire?" (Zech 3:1-2)
As early as the sixth century BCE,then, a source sympathetic to the returning exiles has the satan articulate the viewpoint of a disaffected-and unsuccessful-party against another party of their fellow Israelites. Thus, this
story, like that of 1 Chr 21:1-7, depicts Satan on the verge of deviating
from his role as God's agent to become his enemy.20
It is striking, however, that when Israelite writers identified their intimate enemies in mythological terms, the images they chose were seldom
the animalistic and monstrous ones they regularly hurled against their foreign enemies. Instead of Rahab, Leviathan, or the dragon, most often they

19Paul Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975) 125.

20Iappreciated the discussion by Forsyth (The Old Enemy, 114-15) who compares Satan's
role to that of an agent of government surveillance, a kind of heavenly J. Edgar Hoover,
"who, as director of the FBI, no longer checks his every move with the president, but imperceptibly, at first, begins to act on his own initiative." Forsyth, apparently following Hanson's
argument, notes too that here Satan becomes a "cosmic projection of the groups hostile to the
temple hierocracy" (p. 117).

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chose instead the image of that supernatural-if sinister-member of the

divine court, the satan. This choice, I suggest, is no accident. Indeed, as
this figure came to be depicted more as a specific being than as a function,
stories about his origin began to proliferate. Diverse as these stories later
became in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, all agreed on one thing:
this greatest and most dangerous enemy did not originate, as one might
have expected, as an outsider, an alien, or a stranger. Satan is no alien
enemy; on the contrary, he is the intimate enemy-one's closest relative,
older brother, or trusted colleague. He is precisely the kind of significant
person on whose good will and loyalty the well-being of family and society
depend, but one who turns unexpectedly hostile, jealous, and destructive.21
Certain Jewish storytellers, especially during the second and first centuries BCE, began to ask the obvious question: How could one of God's
angels stray? One such group of stories, sparked by the account in Genesis
6 and amplified by traditions similar to those reflected in I Enoch and
Jubilees, describes how some of the angelic "sons of God" violated divine
order by mating with human women.22 A second group of stories, departing
from Isa 14:12-14, suggests that one of the angels, who was highly placed
in the divine hierarchy, proved insubordinate, rebelled against his commander-in-chief, and consequently was cast out of heaven, demoted, and
disgraced. A third group of stories, popular in rabbinic and later in Islamic
sources, blames, on the contrary, sibling rivalry.23The Jewish Vita Adae et
Evae, for example, says that when God finished making Adam, he called

21Certainanthropological studies of witchcraft point out that it is precisely such persons

who are most likely to be accused of witchcraft in certain tribal societies. See, for example,
Max Marwick, ed., Witchcraft and Sorcery (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970).
Note the summary in Philip Mayer's introduction to that book: "The witch is conceived as a
person within one's own local community and often even within one's own household" (p.
60). I am grateful to Menachem Lorberbaum for pointing out to me the passage in Deut 13:6,
"Your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your
bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul" may "incite" (n'on) a person to idolatry and
thus apostasy.
22Which account is earlier (Genesis 6 or 1 Enoch 6-11) remains a debatable issue. See,
for example, J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qamran Caves (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1976); George W. E. Nickelsburg, "Apocalyptic and Myth in 1 Enoch 6-11," JBL
96 (1977) 383-405; Margaret Barker, "Some Reflections on the Enoch Myth," JSOT 15
(1980) 7-29. Cf. Philip S. Alexander, "The Targumim and Early Exegesis of the 'Sons of
God' in Genesis 6," JJS 23 (1972) 60-71.
23Fora survey of this theme in early Jewish literature and a full discussion of its appearance in rabbinic literature,see Peter Schafer'sfine book, Rivalitatzwischen Engeln und Menschen:
Untersuchungen zur rabbinischen Engelvorstellung (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1975).
For evidence in Muslim sources see Peter Awn's Satan's Tragedy and Redemption: Iblis in
Sufi Psychology (Leiden: Brill, 1983).

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the angels together to admire his work, and ordered them to bow down to
their younger human sibling. Michael obeyed, but Satan refused, saying,
"Why do you pressure me? I will not worship one who is younger than I
am and inferior. I am older than he; he ought to worship me!" (Vita 14.3).
Central to all of these versions, as well as to their many variants, is
Satan's attribute as an intimate enemy. This attribute qualifies him to express conflict among Jewish groups whose primary quarrels were with other
Jews. Those who asked, "How could God's own angel become his enemy?"
were asking, in one sense, "How could one of us become one of them?"
Stories of Satan proliferated in particular within those radical groups who
had, in effect, themselves turned against the rest of the Jewish community
and, consequently, concluded that others had turned against them-or (as
they put it) against God.
During the second century BCE, as is well known, internal conflicts
became particularly acute. For many centuries, Israelites had experienced
varying degrees of pressure to assimilate to the ways of foreign rulers; but
ca. 168 BCE,the Seleucid king, Antiochus Epiphanes, outlawed Jewish practices in order to force Hellenization upon his Jewish subjects, intending to
eradicate every trace of their distinctive culture. As Victor Tcherikover has
shown, those determined to retain their ancestral traditions during those
tumultuous years had to battle on two fronts: against the foreign oppressors
and also against those Jews who tended toward assimilation.24 After 168
BCE,the victories of Judas Maccabeus brought intra-Jewish conflict into the
foreground. Consequently, many of the literary works that survive from the
Maccabean era reflect the divisions that split the Jewish communitiesoften the more rigorist, separatistparty dominated by the Maccabeans ranged
against those more inclined to assimilate. The situation is too complex to
describe in detail here; but I suggest that from ca. 160 BC those who
identified with the priestly leaders based in the Temple still defined themselves in wholly traditional terms. But those inclined toward more rigorous
separatism, and, later on, in the following century, those who joined certain
more marginal and more extreme groups, came to treat that traditional
pattern of identification as a matter of secondary importance.
What mattered primarily, those rigorists claimed, is not so much whether
one is Jewish (for in such disputes they took this for granted) but rather,
so to speak, "Which of us (Jews) really are on God's side, and which are
not?" Such groups found much ammunition in the preexilic prophetic writ-

24Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (New York: Atheneum, 1970).

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ings and in the Deuteronomic literature (including, for example, the blessings that alternate with curses on those who violate God's covenants, the
characterization of foreign worship as adultery, and the concept of the
"righteous remnant"). What concerns us in particular here is how such
groups began to transform certain elements of ancient angelology into the
increasingly powerful and malevolent being whom they called by various
names-Satan, Mastema, Prince of Darkness-an angelic chieftain no longer
serving God as his loyal subordinate, but inciting revolt in heaven; a being
so swollen with lust or arrogance that he dared to defy his commander-inchief and even to contend against the armies of heaven. Those who developed such stories of fallen angels most often used them to characterize
what they charged was the apostasy of many of their fellow Jews.
Stories of rebellion, even among angels, were not new; neither was intraJewish conflict. What was new was the way that such images of angelic
rebellion came to be correlated with intra-Jewish conflict ca. 165 BCE-100
CE; Satan (or his fellow angels, Azazel, Semihazah, and others) became, in
certain Jewish sources, leader of an "evil empire" warring against God's
rule and against the armies of heaven.
The Enoch literature demonstrates how these themes began to correlate.
The "Book of the Watchers," the first section of I Enoch, apparentlywritten
early in the second century BCE and so reflecting events immediately surrounding the Maccabean revolt, is the first great landmarkof Jewish demonology. The author of this book (I Enoch 6-36) apparently takes for granted
the traditionalcharacterizationof Gentiles as alien enemies, while tending to
depict the watchers, the fallen angels (and simultaneously, of course, their
human agents) as intimate enemies. Other sections of 1 Enoch, as we shall
see, articulate, in varying degrees and in changing circumstances, the viewpoints of various pietists intending to denounce the priestly leaders ruling in
Jerusalem along with their pagan patrons. Such pietists-soon to be followed
by dissidents more marginal and more extreme-were attempting to forge for
themselves new forms of moral and religious identity or, at least, to reinterpret
the old forms.
The "Book of the Watchers" interweaves two versions of the watchers'
fall from heavenly glory. Genesis 6 calls the watchers tD'ntrn '. This
image suggests their intimate, even genetic, relationship to God. In the two
renderings of the Septuagint, this term is translated into Greek either as oi
uioi txoi 0eoD, as in Gen 6:4, which suggests the heavenly council, or
oi ayyeXot toD 0eom, from a variant reading of Gen 6:2a, which suggests
that they are God's messengers (,nmrr
,bn) (1 Enoch 6.2). The Greek text
of I Enoch 6.2 calls them oi ayy?eot uioi toi opupavoi. I Enoch first
describes how Semihazah, leader of the watchers, coerced two hundred
other angels to join him in a pact to violate divine order by mating with

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human women and begetting children. These mismatches produced "a race
of 'bastards,' the giants known as the Nephilim, from whom there were to
proceed demonic spirits," who brought violence upon earth, and "devoured"
its creatures (I Enoch 7.3-6). Interwoven with this story is an alternate
version relating how the archangel Azazel sinned by disclosing to humans
the secrets of metallurgy. This disclosure inspired men to make weapons
and war, women to adorn themselves with jewelry and cosmetics, and thus
both sexes to practice violence, greed, and lust.
Several scholars recently have attempted to identify the specific historical situations to which these accounts refer. George Nickelsburg sees Jewish storytellers in the story of Semihazah deriding their Hellenistic rulers'
claims of divine descent; thus 1 Enoch depicts the &id8oot instead as
monstrous and bastard offspring of unions that brought forth evil spirits.25
Alternatively, David Suter suggests that the story expresses pious peoples'
contempt for a specific group of intimate enemies, namely, members of the
Jerusalem priesthood.26Suter suggests that the story of the angels' ill-fated
mating with human women is meant to condemn certain members of the
priesthood for what these storytellers regard as immoral and corrupt behavior, especially intermarriage with despised outsiders, gentile women. John
Collins, noting "the essential multivalence of apocalyptic myth," points out
that these interpretations need not exclude one another:
By telling the story of the Watchersratherthan that of the diadochoi
or the priesthood,I Enoch 1-36 becomes a paradigmwhich is not
restrictedto one historicalsituation,but which can be appliedwhenever an analogoussituationarises.27
Collins's remarks seem especially apt in view of the way the author of
the "Book of the Watchers" explicitly applied the story of angelic corruption both to "the children of the people" and to "all nations" and envisioned the glorious day when "the earth shall be cleansed from pollution"
that has engulfed Israel along with the
(I Enoch 10.21-22)-pollution
nations.

25George W. E. Nickelsburg, "Apocalyptic and Myth in 1 Enoch 6-11," JBL 96 (1977)

195-233.
26David Suter, "Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest: The Problem of Family Purity in 1 Enoch 616," HUCA 50 (1979) 115-35. Cf. George W. E. Nickelsburg, "The Books of Enoch in
Recent Research," RelSRev 7 (1981) 210-17.
27John Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of
Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1984) 127.

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If the authors of 1 Enoch (unlike the ingenious and hardworking twentieth-century historians who interpret their work) are not concerned primarily with identifying specific historical circumstances, they are concerned
with a different issue, on which they express themselves with clarity and
force. What concerns them is to identify those who ultimately will belong
to the true people of God and those who will not. The "Book of the
Watchers" seems deliberately to leave aside the obvious and traditional
answer to this question-Israel! Although the author undoubtedly does take
Israel's priority for granted (for example, Israel is consistently mentioned
first, before all nations), the text seems to avoid speaking either of Israel
or to Israel directly. By focusing on the early chapters of Genesis, this
author, like the others represented in 1 Enoch, deliberately chooses a figure
who far antedates Israel's origin and Israel's election as spokesman. Enoch
belongs instead to the primordial and universal history of the human race.
This book opens as Enoch blesses "the elect and righteous," and "speaks
about the elect ones, and concerning them" (1 Enoch 1.2-3). This whole
passage indicates not only an unusual "openness to the Gentiles" (as
Nickelsburg observes), but also (as Nickelsburg refrains from observing) an
unusually negative view of Israel, or more precisely of many, perhaps a
majority, of its people.28 The stories of Semihazah and Azazel clearly bear
moral warning: if even archangels, "sons of heaven," can sin and be cast
down from heaven, how much more are mere humans-even those who
belong to God's chosen people-susceptible to sin and damnation? When
Enoch tries in vain to intercede for the fallen Watchers, one of God's
righteous angels orders him instead to deliver God's judgment: "you [used
to be] holy, spiritual, [possessing] eternal life; but now you have defiled
yourselves!" (1 Enoch 15.4). Such passages suggest then that the "Book of
the Watchers" articulates the judgment of certain groups of Jews upon
others and especially upon others who hold positions that ordinarily commanded great authority.
Sections of 1 Enoch written ca. 160 BCE,after those who regarded themselves as moderates regained control of the temple priesthood and temporarily ousted the more separatist party, apparently articulate the viewpoint
of people who identified with the latter. The "Apocalypse of Weeks" and
the "Animal Apocalypse," for example, recapitulate in allegorical form the
story of the Watchers' fall, depicting how the nations who descended from
these fallen angels begot "elephants, camels, and asses," (1 Enoch 86.4)
while the humans they corrupted began to beget with animals and birds.

28George W. E. Nickelsburg, "Revealed Wisdom as a Criterion for Inclusion and Exclusion," in Neusner and Frerichs, "To See Ourselves as Others See Us," 76.

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This account goes on to say that the Watchers spawned Israel's foreign
enemies, here depicted as bloody and animalistic predators intent to destroy
Israel. But this author simultaneously depicts God's chosen nation as a herd
of sheep, itself divided between those who are "blind sheep"-the apostate-and those whose eyes are opened. The text warns that when the day
of judgment comes, apostate Jews, the intimate enemies, shall suffer destruction along with Israel's traditional alien enemies. Conversely, not Israel alone but all who survive from the nations shall be gathered together
into God's house, where they shall be included along with Israel (although
as eternally inferior to God's chosen nation).
The author of the "Apocalypse of Weeks," on the other hand, virtually
ignores Israel's alien enemies in his preoccupation with internal divisions.
Here Enoch not only foresees the election of Abraham and his progeny, but
also, within it, the rise of "a perverse generation. . . many shall be its
misdeeds, and all its doings shall be apostate" (1 Enoch 93.9-10). This
statement clearly indicts many, and perhaps the majority, of the author's
Jewish contemporaries. Furthermore,as Nickelsburg has shown, the author
of the "Epistle of Enoch," like Third Isaiah, speaks as an advocate for the
poor and the oppressed, denouncing the rich and powerful and predicting
their destruction.29 He even insists that the institution of slavery, along
with other social and economic inequities, far from being divinely ordained,
"arose from oppression" (I Enoch 97.5), that is, from human sin.30
The story of the Watchers, then, in some of its many transformations,
eventually came to alter the shape of traditional lines separating Jew from
Gentile. The latest section of 1 Enoch, the "Similitudes" (ca. 100 CE),
simply contrasts those who are faithful to God's chosen one-possibly Enoch
himself-who shall be the "light of the Gentiles," with those, both Jews
and Gentiles, seduced by "the satans." Thus the angelology and demonology of 1 Enoch, while taking Israel's priority for granted, tend to leave

29See the article by George W. E. Nickelsburg, "Riches, the Rich, and God's Judgment in
1 Enoch 92-105 and the Gospel According to Luke," NTS 25 (1979) 324-49.
30On the basis of the Watcher story in 1 Enoch 6-16, Forsyth (The Old Enemy, 167-70)
comments that it implies "a radically different theology" from that of the Genesis primordial
history, in that "in Enoch we have heard nothing about a wicked humanity. Instead, all human
suffering is attributed to the angelic revolt and the sins of their giant brood." Yet as I read
the Enoch literature, its authors demonstrate awareness of the tension-and correlation!-of
human and angelic guilt, or at least of the possibility of contradiction. The passage may be
included as a corrective to any who exempt humans from responsibility by blaming the
angels' transgressions. For a discussion, see Martha Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1983).

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aside ethnic identity and point the way toward redefining the human community instead in terms of the moral quality of each individual.31
This correlation between angelology and social identification becomes
especially clear if we compare this work with two very different Jewish
works probably written during the same decades, namely, Sirach (ca. 180
BCE) and Daniel 7-12 (ca. 165 BCE). The former, which expounds the
ethical wisdom of a revered and conservatively minded teacher, emphatically reaffirms Israel's status as God's chosen people and places the blame
for suffering squarely on human fallibility.32 In the work of Ben Sira, who
clearly identifies with the ruling groups in Jerusalem whose sons are his
students, we find no trace of apocalyptic imagery, much less of any demonology.
On the other hand, the latter sections of Daniel, written in the heat of
the Maccabean crisis, are rich in apocalyptic imagery. Daniel, like Ben
Sira, places at the center of his work the traditional antithesis of Israel
versus the nations, since what concerns the prophet above all is the destiny
of Israel. Trembling with awe and terror, Daniel receives an angelic vision
that shows him how hidden and embattled supernatural forces move the
entire course of world history. Gabriel and Michael, "the great prince who
has charge of [God's] people" (Dan 12:1) contend for Israel against the
angelic "prince of Persia" and the "prince of Greece" (Dan 10:13-21). The
author of Daniel, like the author of the "Animal Apocalypse," acknowledges a moral division within Israel,33 yet never suggests that he regards
the majority of Jews as apostates. Unlike Enoch, he does not envision an
intimate enemy, either on the human or the divine plane, nor does he
include any demonology. In fact, that Daniel maintains the traditional identification of the alien enemy (Israel against the nations) may help account
for the fact that this book became the only apocalyptic writing included in
the canon of the Hebrew Bible.
We may recall, by contrast, how differently the authors of 1 Enoch tend
to identify God's people. Both the "Book of Watchers" and the "Apocalypse of Weeks," in different ways, suggest that the sons of heaven not

31This tendency is noted by Nickelsburg, in "Revealed Wisdom," 73-91, and more fully
articulated by Collins in Apocalyptic Imagination.
32For discussion, see especially James H. Charlesworth, "The Triumphant Majority as
Seen by a Dwindled Minority: The Outsider According to the Insider of the Jewish Apocalypses,"
in Neusner and Frerichs, "To See Ourselves as Others See Us," 70-130.
33Daniel foresees that foreign kings "shall seduce with flattery those who violate the
covenant; but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action" (Dan 11:32).
In the age to come "some shall awake to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting
contempt" (Dan 12:2).

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only have led all the nations to their destruction, but have succeeded in
seducing into apostasy a whole generation of Israelites! And while the
opening section of I Enoch addresses not Israel but only "the righteous and
the elect," the author of the "Similitudes" takes to an extreme the tendencies sketched here by describing the heavenly patron of the elect not as
Michael, whom Daniel had identified in traditional terms as the "Prince of
Israel," but instead as the "Chosen One" whose followers include the righteous among both Jews and Gentiles. John Collins goes so far as to observe
that "the community that produced the Similitudes of Enoch did not find its
basic identity in membership in the Jewish people, but was sectarian in
character."34
Like the authors of 1 Enoch, the author of Jubilees is primarily concerned with divisions within Israel and invokes an account of the Watchers'
fall to characterize those he regards as agents of the intimate enemyapostate Jews enslaved to demonic powers. Writing to encourage readers to
resist the pressures of Hellenization, this author certainly engages in "many
anti-Gentile polemics," as Nickelsburg observes; yet, as Doron Mendels
notes, the author addresses the text primarily to fellow Jews.35
What troubles the author of Jubilees is this: how can so many of God's
own people, divinely destined to remain holy to the Lord, have become
apostates? While the author takes for granted the traditional antithesis between the Israelites and "their enemies, the Gentiles" (Jub 1.19) this recedes into the background. Instead, what engages this author intensely are
conflicts dividing Jewish communities internally-conflicts he describes as
instigated by that most intimate of enemies, called by various names, but
here most often called Mastema ("hatred"), Satan, or Belial.
Many scholars agree that Jubilees was written in the tumultuous times
ca. 160 BCE. The author of Jubilees, a pious Jewish patriot, denounces the
many powerful and influential Jews who had collaborated with the Hellenistic overlords and so had "walked in the ways of the nations" (Jub. 1.9).
As Jubilees relates the angels' fall, it implies, as in I Enoch, a moral
warning: if even angels who sin bring God's wrath and destruction upon
themselves, how can mere humans expect to be spared? Jubilees insists that
every creature, whether angel or human, shall be judged according to deeds,
thus warning that even Israelites are not to presume upon their election.
Since the angels' fall spawned the giants, who sow violence on earth, the
34Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 149-50.
35George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah: A
Historical and Literary Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 79; Doron Mendels, The
Land of Israel as a Political Concept in Hasmonean Literature (Ttbingen: Mohr/Siebeck,
1987) 59.

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presence of evil spirits "who are cruel, and created to destroy" (Jub. 10.6)
now dominates this world like a dark shadow.
As Jubilees tells the story, their presence 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 Jubilees shows that Jews and Gentiles do not confront demonic
malevolence on equal footing. To each of the other nations God assigned
an angel or spirit to rule "so that they might lead them astray" (Jub. 15.31);
hence the nations routinely worship demons (whom Jubilees identifies with
foreign gods). But having separated Israel from demon worshipers, God
himself rules over his people and also has appointed a whole phalanx of
angels and spirits to guard and bless them.
How, then, did evil come to corrupt the human race, even including
those granted such special protection? Jubilees describes how the watcher
angels "fornicated with the daughters of men and took for themselves wives
from all whom they chose, and made a beginning of impurity, and they
begot sons," who were gigantic, hostile beings who devoured one another
and instigated violence and injustices (Jub. 7.21-24). According to Jubilees, their pernicious influence has pervaded all human society. Here Noah,
ancestor of many nations, grieves as he foresees evil spirits seducing, blinding, and killing his grandchildren. Noah pleads with God to restrain and
punish the Watchers' demonic progeny: "God of the spirits which are in all
flesh.... Let your grace be lifted up upon my sons, and do not let the evil
spirits rule over them. ... Do not let them have power over the children
of the righteous henceforth and forever" (Jub. 10.1-6). Responding to Noah's
prayer, God first commands his angels to bind all evil spirits, but then
partially relents when Mastema, chief of these spirits, pleads with him to
allow ten percent of them to roam free, "so that they might be subject to
Satan upon the earth" (Jub. 10.12).
Jubilees adds that Noah gave to Shem, ancestor of the Semites, a book
of herbal medicines to serve as antidotes for the illnesses and sufferings
that demons would inflict, "because he loved him more than all of his
sons." Yet although Shem and his descendents receive special favors and
apotropaic protection, they are not immune to demonic attack. Noah is not
alone in fearing for his progeny: the founding fathers of Israel, Abraham
and Moses, express dread on behalf of their children, despite the special
favors God has bestowed upon them.
What, then, does God's election mean? The author of Jubilees, echoing
the warnings of certain of the prophets, seems to suggest that membership
in the people of Israel, rather than guaranteeing one's ultimate deliverance

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from evil, instead conveys a legacy of moral struggle against the powers of
evil and an assurance of divine help in that struggle. Jubilees depicts
Abraham himself tested to the breaking point by Mastema. According to
Jubilees, it is Mastema who initiates the command that Abraham slaughter
his son Isaac (Jub. 17.15-18.19). Later the patriarch of Israel goes on to
express considerable anxiety lest the evil spirits, "who have dominion over
the thoughts of human hearts," capture and enslave him; he pleads with
God to "deliver me from the hands of evil spirits, and do not let them lead
me astray from my God" (Jub. 12.20). Moses, too, is well aware of his
own and his people's vulnerability. When he prays that God deliver Israel
from their external enemies, "the Gentiles" (Jub. 1.19), he prays simultaneously 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). The sense of ominous and omnipresent danger that pervades Jubilees shows the extent to which the author
regards his people as corruptible, and, to a considerable extent, already
corrupted.
In short, authors such as those represented by I Enoch and Jubilees,
who concerned themselves with intra-Jewish conflict during the second
century, developed stories of fallen angels and increasingly elaborate
angelologies and demonologies. Stories of this sort characterize these human conflicts in terms of a great cosmic war playing itself out between
God and his allies in heaven and on earth and all who defy his rule.
The Martyrdom of Isaiah offers another striking example. Many scholars
date this text to the Antiochene persecution, yet, if they are right, its author
interpretsthe troubled history of those times very differently from the authors
of Daniel or 1 Maccabees, who wrote to encourage Jews to endure persecution at the hands of their alien enemies. Instead of describing Israel's
oppression this author denounces the apostasy of a Jewish king. Here Isaiah's
persecutor is Manasseh, a king who defects from his father's loyalty to God
and turns instead to worship the Evil One, here called by various namesSammael, Belial, Satan:
After [King] Hezekiah died, and Manasseh had become king. . .
Sammaeldwelt in Manassehandclung closely to him... andManasseh
abandonedthe service of the Lord of his father,and he served Satan,
and his angels, and his powers ....

Manasseh. .. served Belial; for

the angel of iniquitywho rules this world is Belial. .. and he rejoiced

over Jerusalembecauseof Manasseh,and he strengthenedhim in causing apostasy. .. and the persecution of the righteous. (Mart. Isa. 2.1-5)

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The hero of the story, Isaiah, "when he saw the great iniquity which was
being conducted in Jerusalem, and the service of Satan and his triumph, he
withdrew from Jerusalem" (Mart. Isa. 2.7-8) and finally retreated into the
mountains. But Manasseh pursued the prophet who had denounced him and
had him brutally executed, sawing his body asunder.
Noting that the Martyrdom of Isaiah focuses upon conflict between the
righteous and their intimate enemies, David Flusser has suggested that its
author, writing during the first century BCE,adapted this archaizing legend
to depict the history of the Qumran community.36 Whether or not one
accepts Flusser's hypothesis, we note, as he does, that this text focuses
upon the intra-Jewish conflict in a way that seems in some ways compatible with the perspectives of the Essenes and later also of the Christians.37
During the first century BCE and afterwards, certain radically sectarian
Jewish groups, especially, for example, the Essene communities and the
followers of Jesus of Nazareth, placed this cosmic battle between angels
and demons, God and Satan, at the very center of their cosmology. In so
doing, they expressed how central to their experience was the conflict they
experienced between themselves and the majority of their fellow Jews, whom
both Essenes and Christians-for different reasons-denounced as apostates. Consequently, although the author of Jubilees was unlikely to have
been an Essene (or a sectarian of any kind, for that matter), the Essenes
cloistered at Qumran preserved and revered both 1 Enoch (excluding, of
course, the section added later, the "Similitudes") and Jubilees among their
sacred books.
The author of the Essene Damascus Document refers to Jubilees as a
book that reveals divine secrets "to which Israel [that is, the majority] has
turned a blind eye" (CD 16.2). The Essenes went to an extreme unparalleled among their Jewish predecessors in reading virtually all of their circumstances and experiences in terms of cosmic war. They saw the foreign

36David Flusser, "The Apocryphal Book of Ascensio Isaiae and the Dead Sea Sect," IEJ
3 (1953) 34-47; cf. also Marc Philonenko, "Le Martyre d'Esaie et l'histoire de la secte de
Qoumran," in idem, ed., Pseudepigraphes de l'Ancien Testament et manuscrits de la Mer
Morte (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967) 1-10.
37Infact, the way this author correlates cosmic conflict with internal social conflict was
not lost on the Christian convert Justin Martyr. Writing his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew
about three hundred years later, Justin not only refers approvingly to the Martyrdom of
Isaiah, but explicitly declares that the death of Isaiah, "whom you [Jews!] sawed asunder
with a wooden saw," was "a mysterious type of Christ being about to cut your nation in two,
and to raise those worthy of the honor to the everlasting kingdom along with the holy patriarchs and prophets; but. .. he will send others to the condemnation of the unquenchable fire
along with similarly disobedient and insubordinate people from all the nations" (Justin Dial.
120.5; my emphasis).

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occupation of Judea and the collaboration of many influential Jews with

that occupation as evidence that the forces of evil had taken over the
world. Having withdrawn in protest from ordinary Jewish life, many of the
Essenes denounced the Jewish majority along with the pagans as followers
of Satan, the "synagogue of Belial,"38 the "sons of darkness," and warned
them of God's coming judgment.
The same correlated themes we have been tracing fueled Essene religious devotion-the sectarians' passionate conviction that the great and
immanent power of evil not only had taken over the world, but also, in the
intimate form they recognized as Belial, Satan, or Prince of Darkness, had
succeeded in seducing all but a remnant of Israel away from God's covenant. The Damascus Document opens with a warning: God "has a dispute
with all flesh, and will condemn all who will despise him," but turns his
wrath particularly upon his own people.
For when they were unfaithfuland forsook him, he hid his face from
Israel and from his temple, and deliveredthem up to the sword. But
rememberinghis covenantwith the forefathers,he left a remnantto
Israel, and did not deliver it up to be destroyed.(CD 1.3-5)
This Essene author scathingly indicts the "congregation of traitors"-certainly Jews, for he describes them as those who "depart from the way. ..
having transgressed the covenant, and violated the precept" (CD 1.13-20).
Such indictment of Israel finds prophetic parallels in its perception of the
"remnant,"but not in its view of Satan. This author envisions Israel's entire
history in terms of cosmic war: even in earliest times, "the Prince of Lights
raised up Moses" (CD 5.18) while Belial aroused Moses' opposition among
the people. Ever since then, and especially now, Belial has set out traps in
which he intends to "catch Israel"; for God himself has "unleashed Belial
against Israel" (CD 4.13).
Josephus tells us that the covenanters solemnly swore to keep secret "the
names of the angels" (Bell. 2.8, 7). Yigael Yadin, who edited the War Scroll,
commented that this text, like others from Qumran, "considerably extends
our knowledge of Jewish angelology-a subject of utmost importance in the
Judaism of that time."39 But Yadin did not tell us what constitutes its
importance: discernment of spirits, the capacity to recognize and understand
38The figure often called:0,": ("worthless," evil, destruction) often is designated :",ma
in the Qumran texts.
39Yigael Yadin, The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962) 229.

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the interrelationship of supernaturalforces, both good and evil, is essential

to the Essenes' sense of their own identity and the way they identify others.
For having set aside, not so much as wrong but as inadequate, more traditional forms of Jewish identity, the Essenes now articulate, through their
accounts of the battle between angelic and demonic forces, on which side
of the cosmic battle each person and each group of Jews stands. They insist
that the former follow the Prince of Light and the latter the Prince of
Darkness. The War Scroll, like Jubilees, says that "the angel of darkness and
all the spirits allotted to him strive to make the sons of light stumble." To
these spirits God allows-or assigns-the tasks of trying to make the holy
ones suffer, and inducing them to sin:
The Prince of Light thou hast appointedfrom ancienttimes to come
to our support;but Satan, the Angel Mastema,thou hast createdfor
the pit; his rule is in darkness,and his purposeis to bring aboutevil
and sin (1QM 19.10-12).40
Who, then, is the Prince of Light? Yadin assumed the traditional pattern of
identification: "The logical conclusion is that he is Michael, Prince of Israel. . . Michael is the same as the Prince of Light."41But this identification ignores the sectarianism that dominates the Qumran texts. Instead, as
John Collins observes,
in 1 QM Michaelis no longer simply the Prince of Israel, but leader
of the Sons of Light. This designationmay have been correlatedin
practice with membersof the congregation,but in principle it was
open to broaderinterpretationsand freed from ethnic associations.
Belial, too, is no longer the prince of a specific nation. . . . Rather,
he representsevil at large, like Satan or Mastemain the book of
Jubilees. . . The adoptionof this terminologyin preferenceto the
traditional,national,and social affiliationsopens up considerablythe
range of applicationof the eschatologicallanguage. Specifically, it
invites the correlationof the eschatologicaldramawith the. . moral
conflict of good and evil within every individual.42

40Foran excellent discussion of the ambivalenceof good and evil in later sources, see
David J. Halperin,The Faces of the Chariot:Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel's Vision
(Tilbingen:Mohr/Siebeck,1988).
41Yadin,The Scroll of the War,236.
42Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 128-31.

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As Collins points out, the author of the War Scroll implicitly goes beyond
characterizing the struggle between the Essenes and their opponents in terms
of the conflict between the Prince of Light and the Angel of Darkness, by
insisting that these two adversaries simultaneously contend within the human heart. Now, indeed, as the author of the Rule of the Community says:
The spirits of truth and deceit struggle within the human heart. . .
accordingto his share in truth and righteousness,thus a man hates
deceit; and accordingto his sharein the lot of deceit, thus he loathes
truth.(1QS 4.12-14)
Had Satan not existed already in Jewish tradition, the Essenes would
have had to invent him. For while the authors of Jubilees and 1 Enoch
attribute to fallen angels the activities of those whom they denounce as
breakers of the covenant, the Essenes go much further. As we noted, they
place at the very center of their theology, cosmology, and anthropology the
cosmic war between God with his allies and Satan or Belial along with its
allies, both angelic and human. The Essenes see themselves, along with
their angelic companions, placed at the very center of this battle between
heaven and hell; the rest of their Jewish contemporaries are nothing more
than members of a covenant of lies, a congregation of Belial. Although
they also detest Israel's traditional enemies, the Kittim (here probably an
epithet for the Romans), they concern themselves far more with "the war
of the sons of light against the sons of darkness" (1QM, title). Thus many
of their writings clearly articulate the correlation between the wars taking
place simultaneously in heaven and on earth. They invoke the figure of
Satan or Belial to characterize what they see as the irreconcilable metaphysical opposition between themselves and their opponents.
Since the Essenes are convinced that the majority of their fellow Jews
are apostates, they go so far as to borrow a theme from certain prophetic
texts (cf. Jer 31:31-33; Zech 11:7-13:9) to insist that anyone who truly
intends to belong to God's people must enter a renewed covenant or congregation.43 The sins of the people have apparently rendered obsolete the
fundamental pacts on which Israel's election depended-the covenants with
Abraham and Moses. The Essenes require that everyone who enters their
covenant must first confess himself guilty of sin, and guilty, presumably,
of participating in Israel's collective apostasy against God. Then, together

43See, for example, Matthew Black, The Scrolls and Christian Origins (New York: Scribner,
1961) 91-117.

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with his Essene brethren, he blesses all who belong to the renewed covenant or congregation, the 5tr 'inTr(1QS 1.12), and ritually curses all who
are under the governance of Belial (1QS 2.16-18).
Certain followers of Jesus of Nazareth, including the authors of the
Gospels of the New Testament, adapted and elaborated similar themes.
Discussing the Christian sources is a task beyond the scope of the present
article. Yet while the majority of Jews, from ancient times to the present,
have largely left characterizationsof Satan to marginal and sectarian groups,
Christians (and later Muslims) placed this cosmic battle, and their own
campaigns against those they have regarded as intimate enemies, at the
center of their cosmology. In future research I intend to explore the various
later characteristics of Satan and their enormous religious, social, and political consequences in the early history of Christianity.