Devil

Etymology

Devil comes from the Greek twin wheels (of diabolein = to separate) who means slanderer who is the reverse of the Greek symbolon : bringing together.

Personification of the principle of the evil

It seems that the notion of division of power in a force of the good and one of the evil is relatively recent in the history of the beliefs. In the more primitive worships, the good and the evil result both from the same deity, since this one was regarded as container all that exists. The same deity was thus at the same time capable of good and evil. An example is given by it by the goddess to head of lioness of ancient Egypt Sekhmet which destroyed humanity (on order of Re) but was also venerated for its capacity of protection and cure, or Seth which usurped the throne with Osiris but which also made it possible the sun to rise each morning as a combatant Apophis. One can also quote Loki, god Scandinavian who faultily killed Balder, but which saved the field of the gods Aesirs of the giantess Skadi.

In the primitive monotheisms, each clan or tribes had his god with all these attributes, causes good and evil which arrives to the men. The polytheism is considered, in this argumentation, like a bringing together of the various clans, each one having his own divinity. The union of the male god and a god female reflects the successful and levelling union of two clans. When that during the bringing together of two clans a divinity replaces some another peacefully, it is then described like having been generated by the former god: it is the son or the girl of this god then deposed and whose worship becomes secondaire.
Lastly, and it is which the origin of the principle of the personified evil could reside, when a clan belliqueusement is belliqueusement conquered, deity of the conquered clan sees themselves allotting all the bad principles and was regarded by the conquerors as the source of all the evil and, consequently, became source of fear and fear. An example of this theory is given by the evolution of the worship of Seth ( Setekh ) in ancient Egypt to the profit of that of Horus. For the people of high Egypt, Seth was a benevolent god, role occupied by Horus (and Osiris) in Low Egypt. During the unification high and low Egypt, Horus and Seth became, initially, brothers, and were venerated like a god bifide Hâpy, then, helping time, Seth was regarded as lower than Horus for finally personifying the source of any evil, the Satan of old Egypt. Seth was frequently represented like a black snake, a black pig or by a man with the russet-red hair (the red words and desert - high Egypt where Seth was venerated is desert - are very close one to the other as a hieroglyphic Egyptian). It is curious to note that the red-headed men also were regarded as “satanic” during the European Moyen-âge , probably because of the evocation about the fire (associate to the devil in Christianity) which pointed out their color of hair.

Origins

The majority of the religions preceding the Christianisme integrate one or more gods incarnating the evil. Contrary to the Christian vision however, these divinities generally have a double face and parallel to their malevolent dimension, are the object of a worship for their positive aspects. They are moreover frequently the cause only of one of the facets of the evil and its demonstrations. The existence of an entity representing the personification of the evil under all its aspects and combining the functions of Master of the inframonde, destructor of cosmos and person in charge of the worst aspects of humanity seems to be a Christian singularity. The development of this original figure borrows nevertheless from the religions applied with the the Middle East and the influences of which the authors of the Bible were subjected.

Mesopotamy

The religion mésopotamienne is one of the first to represent the universe like the battle field of the cosmic confrontation between the good and the evil. The epopee of Gilgamesh, the oldest known text, mark already first appearance of a diabolic character in the figure of Huwawa. This monstrous giant keeps the forest of cedars in which Gilgamesh the wood which misses its people want to cut. Gilgamesh occit the monster but does not withdraw any glory and is seen of it on the contrary punished by Enlil, lord of the sky and king of the gods. Huwawa beyond its terrifying aspects ( its howling is like that of a storm, its mouth is fire and its breath is death ) a natural force with the crowned character represents indeed.

Persia

Zarathoustra is at the origin of an upheaval without precedent in mythology mésopotamienne since it replaces all the gods existing by two entities, one beneficial, Ahura Mazda, god of the light bringing the order, the other Ahriman or Angra Mainyu, governing the destroying forces. It creates the first dualistic religion thus by opposing two equivalent powers and projecting a vision of the world in black and white. Certain disciples of Zarathoustra will reintroduce some of the former gods and will suggest that Ahriman is subordinated to Ahura Mazda. This interpretation gives to the benevolent god the role of ultimate judge who lets the demons try humanity and intervenes only as a last resort to prevent the victory of the evil. This concept of Last Jugement (religion) is one of the components of the Christianisme.

Ahriman is probably the character having influenced the Christian devil more. True incarnation of the evil, able to compete with the benevolent god, it is assisted by seven major demons.

Egypt

The Egyptian Pantheon provides two divinities whose contribution to what will become the devil is significant. On the one hand Anubis, which reigns on the kingdom of dead and carries attributes that one will find at the Christian demon: the character semi-man, semi-animal or the tail. In addition, Seth, of which one of the forms is a snake and who could have given his red color to Satan.

Canaan

The character of the religion cananéenne which will influence more the Christian demon is without question Baal, god of the fertility and wire of the god El. The pejorative and negative vision that the Bible offers of Baal is probably the reflection of the opinion of the Jews on this god of a pagan religion but it seems that for its admirers, Baal had the dimension of a saver in his combat against Mot, god of died and of sterility.

Greece

If the ancient Greece is the cradle of the reason, the philosophical Greek however had a very relative influence on their contemporaries who, in all the layers of the company, referred about it still usually to gods with through very human explaining the vicissitudes of their existence. The Greek Mythologie deeply marked the demon of the New Testament, in particular through Hermes (the messenger of the gods is indeed also the god of the robbers and that which carries out deaths in the inframonde) but especially its son, Pan. This one will indeed transmit to the devil the five its most recognizable character traits: shoes, horns, the goat, hairy legs and stench. Satan will inherit moreover its dimension of personification of the sexual desire. In particular, under the influence of the vision of the sexuality of Holy Augustin who associates sexuality with the demon, the artists will turn to Pan like source of inspiration for the representation of the demon.

If the distinction between the good and the evil is sometimes diffuse, of many deities presenting two facets, one benevolent and the other malevolent one, Hésiode affirms nevertheless that the ill deeds are punished by the gods who entrust to the Érinyes the task to torment those which go against the laws of cosmos. It is with Plato that a clearer distinction between the aspiration in the world of the ideas and temptation appears to yield to the material needs (an opposition inspired in particular by the combat of Zeus and Dionysos against the Titan S).

Rome

The Christians moreover were inspired by the images of the Etruscan tombs which depicted scenes of horror, demons and flames… The Etruscan Mythologie took as a starting point the Greek Mythologie much, and during the first centuries of Christian hegemony with Rome, it had to survive in parallel of religions polytheists. It thus appears natural that the Christians were inspired, consciously or not, of what they had under the eyes, and especially of these Etruscan gods who represented for them paganism, therefore the incarnation of the evil.

The Etruscan Charun , demon of death, is often represented on the Etruscan frescos, sarcophagi, ballot boxes and vases as of the IV E, like a laughing monster, hirsute, for the hooked nose, the wild boar teeth, is equipped with an enormous mallet.

Appearance in the Torah

The god of the Juifs is of gasoline Moniste, adored as much for his kindness than dreaded for his anger; he is omnipotent and seems not to leave any place to competition. Contrary to the beliefs of their neighbors, the people of Israel do not seek to charge to external deities the events which it cannot include/understand but considers rather than he is the person in charge of his own destiny. All that occurs of evil is the consequence of its wanderings and nonthe respect of its alliance with Yahvé which punishes it consequently. I form the light and I create darkness, I make happiness and I create misfortune: it is me, the LORD, which do all cela.

Es 45.7

This vision, if it seems to correspond to the mentality of tribal people in perpetual war to conquer a territory seems less relevant after the Jews overcame their adversaries and started with sédentariser. The questions of social organization and morals emergent then and the books of the prophets, written at that time, reveal a concern privileged for the questions of the good and the evil. In margin of official theology, the popular beliefs remain and are evoked in many recoveries in the deuteronomist. Reproducing diagrams already existing in other religions, a celestial court starts to see the day, populated messengers/servants who will endorse the responsibility for the calamities which would have differently fallen to Yahweh. The monism of principle is respected but one directs more and more towards a dualism de facto . If these angels ( malak Yahweh ) have a neutral role initially and can even seem the manifestation of the god in a visible form by the man, they take their independence gradually. Psalm 82, preceding the descent into Hell of Satan, indicates: God drew up himself in the divine assembly, in the middle of the gods, it judges:
I declare it, you are gods, you are all of wire of the Almighty,
however you will die like the men, you will fall the princes. just like

The book of Job

The concept of divine assembly experiences a particular development following the exile and the reduction in slavery in Babylon to the VI E. This test leads the Jews to wonder about their statute of elected people. Certain installations seem necessary so that the dogma can answer the incomprehension of the Jews which pain to accept their own sins as only justification of the plagues which fall down on them. The biblical authors are thus brought to work out a Théodicée which one finds the trace mainly in the Livre of Job. This passage indeed marks the first true appearance of Satan which, although remaining submitted to God, takes the role of tourmentor of humanity, personified for the occasion by Job. This one, faithful and devoted believer becomes the object of a polemic between God and Satan, which supports that the fidelity of Job is only the result of kindness which were granted to him and which if its faith were put to the test, its honesty would not last. Satan is thus seen granting by God freedom to make the evil with an only aim of testing the sincerity of the faith of Job. Then the LORD called to the Adversary: “Is! It is in your capacity; respect only its life”

Jb2.6

The essence of the text of the Book of Job is consisted the dialog with his/her four friends during which Job expresses the distress of humanity vis-a-vis an adversity that she does not manage to be explained. However, despite everything the tests, Job does not disavow its god: Left naked the belly of my mother, naked I will go back there. The LORD gave, the LORD removed: That the name of the LORD is béni

Jb 1.21

This text is fundamental in the creation of the character of Satan. If this one does not have yet the statute of equal and rival of God, it acquires an existence and an autonomy which thereafter will be taken again and developed by the literature apocryphal book. The Book of Hénoch in particular described the corruption of the guardian angels, allured by girls of the ground . This literature thus establishes a bond between the demon and sexuality, as with the women who will be largely taken again and amplified with the Middle Ages, although these passages are not included in the gun of the Old Testament.

Devil and Christendom

The devil very quickly takes up a duty which exceeds the theological framework to take a political dimension. The first Christian communities must indeed fight to survive and following the example it Roman capacity which lends manners more shocking to them, they are very early brought to use the figure of the demon to discredit their adversaries. The process of Diabolisation is thus born almost with Christianity. The Roman Empire, first persecutor is thus naturally the first to see itself qualifying legion of the demon. The practice spreads gradually to extend to the center even from the Church to all those whose vision does not coincide with that one wishes to promote. Whereas the gun of the Bible is not fixed yet and that the Apôtre S and their successors still discuss nature of the teaching of the Christ, the charge of Hérésie is frequent and implies a démoniaque inspiration; mistakes of the other Christians being able to be explained only by the intervention of the “prince of the liars”. Thus the gnostic , the bogomils then the cathares will be shown to practice satanic rites. These three currents propose a dualistic vision of the Christianity in which the devil occupies a key position since he is regarded as the creator and the Master of the material world in which humanity struggles. The character of the devil thus becomes quickly cement of Christendom and a figure familiar of the believers. Its nature and its capacities are still however badly defined and if the theologists discuss these questions, the mass of the believers preserves a very naive vision of the demon. The Malignant one is generally seen like a human figure degenerated more than like a supernatural monster, and the popular tales which put it in scene make of him an adversary without large capacities and easily misled. Its representations are quasi non-existent besides before the 6th century and become really current and accessible only with the Romance churches whose statuary and stained glasses give body to the demon.

Paradoxically, the devil is also a powerful instrument of proselytism. Whereas Christendom seeks to extend beyond the borders from the old Roman empire and is confronted with the many ones and various pagan beliefs, the assimilation of the local divinities malfaisantes to the devil makes it possible to make the faith Christian comprehensible and acceptable. The idea to seek the origin of the evil in the existence of a terrible malevolent power is easier to convey than the concept of Original sin retained by the theologists.

Later, whereas the Islam becomes extensive and extends as far as Europe, the threat takes the features of the demon naturally. Features which will be accentuated with the Croisade S, offering a religious alibi to a forwarding largely inspired by less glorious reasons. The preparations of these forwardings are also the occasion to persecute the Jews, another diabolized group.

The New Testament and the advent of the Prince of darkness

At the time of the drafting of the New Testament, the gun of the Bible is not fixed and the literature apocryphal book is largely widespread. It is thus not astonishing that one finds an influence of this one in the Évangiles and one can consider that these writings constitute a footbridge between the vision of the devil such as it is presented in the Old Testament and that which takes shape in the first Christian texts. Another dominating influence is that of Plato whose distinction between the body (associate with temptation, the sin and thus with the demon) and the spirit (the heart, at the origin of the saving virtue) constitutes one of the distinctive characteristics most outstanding of the vision of the good and the evil in the Gospels.

The Apôtres seem moreover convinced of the imminence of the advent of the Kingdom of God and thus place a particular accent on the purification of the heart from this point of view. In particular for Paul, Satan appears in this context like the adversary of humanity within the meaning of the Old Testament, an approach which one especially finds in his epistles: For us, brothers, after having been some separate time of you, of body but not of heart, we had all the more ardently the keen desire of you voir.
Also wanted we to go towards you, at least me Paul, one and even twice; but Satan us has of it empêchés.

Paul Thessaloniciens 2.17-18

Gospels synoptic, whose historians estimate that they were written more tardily, make as for them a place prevalent with the confrontation between Jesus and the demon. The first confrontations in the desert until the final battle on the mount Martyrdom, they arise as the account of a battle between the good and the evil, placed of this fact almost on an equal footing. Jesus carries out battle for the good by exorcizing the demon, thus illustrating a representation of the terrestrial world to the hands of démoniaques forces responsible for all the evil. It is probably in Jean that this dualism is marked the most. You have as a father the devil, and you want to achieve the desires of your father. He was fatal as of the beginning, and he is not held in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he utters the lie, he speaks about his clean funds; because it is lying and the father of the mensonge.

Jean 8.44

New Testament however maintains ambiguity in connection with the origin the evil, the remarks of Jesus regularly giving a report on the free will of the man who must prove his virtue while choosing to give up the sin to gain his place with the Paradis.

Apocalypse

The book of the revelations, also allotted to Jean exposes the vision more seizing devil, and one finds there the single account of a cosmic confrontation of the Bible (chapter 12). The demon takes the aspect of the most alarming monster there: Another sign still appeared in the sky; and here, it was a large red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads seven diadems. Its tail involved one the third of stars of the sky, and on the terre.

Apocalypse 12.3

threw them The account continues with the combat between the devil and its demons on the one hand and the angels ordered by Michel on the other hand. Single thing in New Testament, in addition turning its attention on the aspect tempter of the demon and its role of corrupter of the human nature, the monster of the apocalypse is responsible for the natural disasters, following the example pre-judaïques deities. The animal is overcome, connected in hell for thousand years: It seizes the dragon, the old snake, which are the devil and Satan, and it bound it for thousand ans.
It threw it in the abyss, closed and sealed the entry above him, so that it did not allure any more the nations, until the thousand years were accomplished. For that, it is necessary that it is untied for a little temps.
When the thousand years are achieved, Satan will be slackened of its prison.
And it will leave to allure the nations which are with the four corners of the terre
And the devil, which allured them, was thrown in the pond of fire and sulfur, where are the animal and the false prophet. And they will be tormented day and night, at the centuries of the siècles.

Apocalypse 20.2-10

Devil in the Breton tradition

In Brittany, at the time of the " harms of the merveilles" (Breton name of the night of Christmas), the faithful ones which goes to the church can cross the devil with each crossroads. This one, in exchange of their heart, will be able to offer happiness and fortune to them.

Modern vision

The contemporary Church and devil

Occulté but not disavowed
sails about It at fundamentalist the
the catholic priests who practice the Exorcisme always have work.

Devil and the public opinion

devil like symbol of the evil

devil: rebel and challenger

Devil and the psychoanalysis

At the beginning of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud brings a new lighting to the figure of the devil and tries the first scientific approach of the cases of " possession". By studying in a démoniaque neurosis at the 17th century a case of supposed démoniaque possession in full hunting for the witches, it suggests that the charges carried express in fact the repression of the sexual instincts that the morals of the time rejects particularly. This interpretation lies within the scope of the theory which it develops according to which the neuroses find their origin in unsatiated sexual desires.

According to Freud, the devil represents in fact a patriarchal figure and incarnates the fear and the distrust with respect to the father, while God represents the affection and the protective influence of it. There is a psychic process which is well-known for us, the decomposition of a representation implying opposition and ambivalence in two violently contrasted opposites (…). The father would be consequently the primitive and individual model as well of God as of Diable Within this framework, the religion is seen as a psychic creation making it possible the individual to accept the world which surrounds it like its own condition mortal. The demon is integrated into the individual like belonging to his unconscious, fighting without its knowledge against its own will.

Jung disputes this design by affirming the consubstantiality of the good and the evil, as indissociable as the light and the shade. God and the devil are thus not reduced to metaphors but constitute myths.

Theological vision

From a theological point of view, the devil is regarded as a angel (i.e. what we would name today a process ) revolted against God, deposed and precipitated in Enfer (on ground), which pushes the human ones to make the Mal. So certain traditions consider that the evil also comes from God, and that the devil is only one of its aspects or its agents, the majority give him an autonomous dimension. In this case, according to some, God leaves to a certain extent the free field with the devil, while preserving the possibility of the renchaîner, whereas for the Manichéens the fight between these two forces can be arbitrated only by the Man.

The tradition Judeo-Christian makes the symbol of the evil of it. It is described under an aspect ambiguous, ambivalent, androgyne, strongly sexualized, of appearance sometimes tempting and trying, sometimes feeling reluctant and pushing back.

Aspect and names

The most traditional representation is that of a red character (green in the older iconography) associated with the flames, with a human head and horns, a three-pronged fork, lower extremities of a goat and a long tail. One also finds it under several names:

Satan (Latin: Satanas )
Belzébuth
Bélial
Asmodée
Astaroth
Balazs
Azazel
Semiasas
Mastéma
Malignant the
Lucifer
the demon .
Méphistophélès .
Maufé
Iblis or Shaytan
Woland
Horned the

One also uses the Interjection “Diantre! ”, Euphemism of devil.

Representation in arts

the mystery S of the Middle Ages
the Hell of Dante
the Paradise Lost of Milton
Faust of Goethe
Pact with the Devil like topic in literature
Films: to see : Category: Devil with the cinema
the work the oath of the limbs of Jean-Christophe Grangé
the Master and daisy of Mikhaïl Boulgakov
the Devil of Marina Tsvetaïeva
the psychopompe, album of Gabriel Delmas

References

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