Talk of the Devil: Unpacking the Language of New Testament Satanology (Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 2016) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 2016
This study counts references to Satan in the NT, by any designation. First, all candidate texts are surveyed. These include occurrences of the words σατανᾶς and διάβολος (with and without the article) and 30 other terms which potentially refer to Satan, descriptively or allegorically. Having laid ground rules for counting potential references in close proximity, candidate texts in which the referent is uncertain are analysed exegetically to decide whether they do refer to Satan. These include texts in which σατανᾶς or διάβολος occurs without the article and texts in which neither σατανᾶς nor διάβολος occurs. Through exegesis, a final count of 137 references to Satan in the NT is obtained. An alternative, probability-weighted approach estimates the number at 129.2. In either case, the total is strikingly greater than a simple summation of instances of σατανᾶς and διάβολος.
In Defence of New Testament Satanologies: A Response to Farrar and Williams
Journal for the Study of the New Testament
Satan is a key figure in many New Testament books. The authors of these books build on hugely diverse Second Temple traditions and themes. A recurring trend in New Testament Satanology is to assume or argue for a monolithic image of Satan throughout the New Testament. This trend is seen, most recently, in Farrar and Williams’s (2016) argument for a distinct, coherent Satanology, published in this journal. Such a uniform New Testament Satanology is untenable: there is only evidence of New Testament Satanologies. Within the 27 books of the New Testament, and indeed within works of a single author, various – sometimes almost contradictory – Satanologies are evident. As such, the New Testament authors continue the Second Temple trend of diverse Satan traditions, and any examination of Satan should keep this front and centre.
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2018
Much scholarship has recently been done on the Satanology (Satan-concept) of New Testament books or writers. This study attends to the Satanology of early "non-canonical" Christian writings, which have been comparatively under-researched. The literature examined includes the so-called Apostolic Fathers and other texts that can be reliably dated to c. 100-150 C.E., namely Ascension of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Peter, Odes of Solomon, Gospel of Truth, Ptolemy's Letter to Flora and Justin Martyr's writings. Over 160 certain or probable references to Satan, under various designations, are identified. Analysis of this data set proceeds in two directions. The first looks at the concept's explanatory power: for what kinds of evil did Satanology help to account? The discussion traverses various loci of perceived satanic activity, from the human heart to community boundaries to earthly political authorities to a dualistic cosmos to the abstract realm of ideas. The second analytical section explores ways that Christian writers and communities incorporated Satanology into their religious life through liturgical forms, hermeneutics for reading the Jewish Scriptures, and theological debates about the nature of God and evil. Satanology is found to have been a pervasive and distinctive feature of Christianity in the early subapostolic period.
Journal of Theological Studies, 2019
The challenge of reconceptualising mythological concepts like the Devil in contemporary Christian theology is well known, but some interpreters find a demythologised Devil already within the New Testament. To evaluate this approach exegetically, this study attempts to reconstruct the religion-historical setting of New Testament Satanology by exploring leading suprahuman opponents (LSOs) in pre- and non-Christian Second Temple Jewish literature. In contrast to most previous attempts at such a reconstruction, the present study is methodologically conservative, admitting into evidence only texts that can be reliably assigned to a pre-70 C.E. date and non-Christian Jewish provenance. The investigation shows that there was no standard Jewish Satanology during the Second Temple period. Moreover, ‘Satan’ is not clearly attested as a personal name prior to the New Testament and may therefore be a title or Funktionsbezeichnung in most occurrences therein. New Testament Satanology shows significant continuity with earlier and contemporaneous Jewish LSO-concepts but is relatively more homogeneous, suggesting that a consolidation of Satanological terminology and concepts occurred very early in church history. This consistency, together with the abundance of mythological religion-historical parallels to the New Testament Devil, suggest that the early church uniformly understood the Satan as a mythological being—probably an angel.
Σατανᾶς G4567 -vs-Σαταν G4566 How One New Testament Chaldean Loanword Causes Confusion in the Identity of Satan, 2023
Jesus, His disciples, His immediate followers, and most importantly the authors of the New Testament (NT) were not only Jewish culturally, but also Jewish theologically. The education of Jewish children was mandated, as early as 75 BC; the education of older boys and men can be traced back to the period of the Second Temple.1 It is true that those involved in the Jesus movement were primarily common laypeople from the community at large, but surely, they were all familiar to some degree with the Hebrew satan (G4566 -Σατᾶν / of Hebrew origin H7854) of the Old Testament (OT). To the curious student of the Greek NT the question arises, “Why did the authors of the NT choose to borrow a Chaldean Loanword to identify the ‘great dragon’ of Revelation 12, the ancient serpent, called the devil and ‘satanas’ (G4567 – Σατανᾶς – of Chaldean origin)?” All through the OT, God is the creator of the world; suddenly in the NT satan is somehow transformed into the god of this world. How did this paradigm shift happen, the ‘Greatest Shift in human thought’ in the history of the world?2 The answer lies within a misunderstanding, and therefore a misapplication, of one simple Chaldean loan word.