| Subject: Satan as a post exilic invention? Think again. |
Author:
stan
|
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Date Posted: 04:06:31 11/15/04 Mon
In reply to:
CJ
's message, "Interesting wisdom again for wendy" on 15:35:15 11/14/04 Sun
"Satan" occurs 22 times in preexilic books and 9 times in postexilic books of the OT. The most intimate portrayal of Satan in the OT (if not the whole Bible) appears in Job. In the first 2 chapters of Job we may read dialogue between him and Jehovah. Job was written some 1,000 years before the Babylonian exile. Also, Job is considered by the majority of scholars (not just Christian one's whom you may consider biased in some way, but non-Christian scholars also) to be the oldest book in the Bible.
"Demon" occurs 5 times in the Old Testament. All ccurrences are preexilic. Genesis 6 even describes how demons materialized human bodies to have illicit relations with females. This occurred at least 2,000 years before the Babylonian exile and was written some 1,000 years before the Babylonian exile.
It should also be noted that sometimes angels/demons are referred to as "sons of the true God" in the Bible so there is additional information as to the pre-exilic appearances of Satan in the Bible.
The book of Zechariah is the only main postexilic book of the OT that deals extensively with angels and Satan, it being similar in many ways to the Revelation of John.
What are we therefore to conclude from all of this? That the evidence shows that Satan was not a post exilic adaptation taken from the Jewish Babylonian captivity because the Jews already had an awareness of Satan, demons, and angels well before this.
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