By Lewis Loflin
Judaism holds a view I find striking: there’s no devil. The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, never uses the term “devil.” “Satan” appears 13 times, mostly in Job, always as God’s servant—not an adversary. In Job 1:6-12, he tests Job with God’s permission, a role of obedience, not rebellion. Even in Zechariah 3:2, written later after the Babylonian exile, we see: “The LORD said to Satan, ‘The LORD rebuke you, O Satan!’” It’s as close to tension as it gets, yet Satan remains under divine command.
“Lucifer” appears once, in Isaiah 14:12: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” This isn’t a devil but a poetic taunt at a Babylonian king—likely Nebuchadnezzar—felled by Cyrus the Great. The Septuagint’s “Helel ben Shahar” (brilliant one, son of the morning) ties to a myth of a fallen star, not a cosmic foe. Judaism sees God alone as the source of good and evil. Isaiah 45:7 says it plainly: “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things.” No dualism here—just one Creator.
The New Testament shifts the landscape. “Satan” appears 34 times, “devil” 57, often interchangeably, marking a clear foe. Christianity, unlike Judaism, leans dualistic, echoing Zoroastrianism’s split between good (Ahura Mazda) and evil (Ahriman). Elaine Pagels, in *The Origin of Satan*, argues this wasn’t an “invention” to attack Jews but an evolution. She traces how early Christians, amid conflict with Jewish peers, recast Satan from a divine agent to God’s enemy, aligning him with those who rejected Jesus—first Jews, then pagans, then heretics. It’s a social shift, not a pure fabrication.
Judaism birthed two dualistic offshoots: the Essenes, behind the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Gnostics, linked to Nag Hammadi texts. Both saw the world as corrupt, flesh as evil, yearning for a divine reset—ideas that seeped into Christianity via John and Paul. John’s Gospel (8:44) calls Jews “children of the devil,” a stark leap from Job’s servant. Paul’s cosmic battles (Ephesians 6:12) amplify this rift. Pagels suggests this reframing turned a theological concept into a weapon against “intimate enemies,” shaping Christianity’s shadow side.
Zoroastrianism’s influence likely grew during the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), when Jews encountered Persia’s dualism. Ahriman, an evil spirit opposing God, mirrors Christianity’s devil more than Judaism’s Satan. By the third century CE, some Zoroastrian strands hardened into dualism, per scholars like Mary Boyce—though it’s debated if this predates or follows Christian shifts. The Manicheans, from Mani’s Gnostic teachings, took it further: flesh evil, spirit good, deny the body to free the soul. Augustine, once a Manichean, carried this into Christianity, influencing Protestantism’s focus on sin and grace.
The Essenes’ apocalyptic visions—world’s end, God’s kingdom—parallel Revelation’s fury. Gnostic texts like the Gospel of Thomas reject material life for spiritual escape. These threads, woven through John’s mysticism and Paul’s theology, mark Christianity’s departure from Judaism’s unity. I see this as a pivot from reason to cosmic drama, a pattern Pagels ties to exclusionary zeal.
Do Deists believe in the devil? No. As a classical Deist, I see it as a borrowed notion—Zoroastrian dualism filtered through Christianity and Islam. Good versus evil, light versus dark—it’s a framework I reject. God, sustaining all through reason and nature (like evolution’s quiet work), needs no opponent. Christianity and Islam, blending this with conversion drives and end-times fervor, have too often fueled conflict. I’ve written on this elsewhere (Deism, fundamentalism)—it’s a detour from reason’s path.
Lucifer’s tale in Isaiah isn’t Satan or a devil—it’s a king’s fall, muddled later with Zoroastrian flair. Christians fused it into their narrative, just as they reshaped Satan. Pagels shows this wasn’t about “inventing” a figure to target Jews but amplifying a tool for division. It’s a human story, not a divine one—a reflection of our struggles, not God’s.
Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for helping refine this piece. The final take is mine.
John Nelson Darby
Christian Premillennialism