The Social History of Satan, the Intimate Enemy.pdf

HTR 84:2 (1991) 105-28

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SATAN, THE "INTIMATE ENEMY": A PRELIMINARY SKETCH*

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 BCE to 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, Martha Himmelfarb, 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), invest- igating 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 super- stitious 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."

HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

"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 supernatural beings, 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 people- or 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 Dis- tinctions," NovT 24 (1982) 194-208; and idem, "'Disaffected Judaism' and Early Christian-

ity: 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

angels-here called in Hebrew the "messenger of the Lord" (mil;r' l"t)-to oppose him (D0b0 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-

106

ELAINE PAGELS

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 literature have 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, Per- sian, 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 particular historical 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 Chris-

tian Theology (trans. E. Quinn; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978).

107


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 traditional pattern of 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-century Jewish groups, both in Palestine and the Diaspora, both before and after the destruction of the Temple, that sought to develop a notion of community, principles of authority, sources of revelation, and modes of access to divinity apart from 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 introductory glance 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, con-

versely, 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

12Jonathan Z. Smith, "Introduction to 'The Prayer of Joseph,"' in James H. Charlesworth, ed., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1985) 2. 701.

108

ELAINE PAGELS

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, whoever blesses you I will bless; and whoever curses 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, imply- ing 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's allies, 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 endan- gered 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 narrator insists that it was God himself who continued to harden Pharaoh's heart, lest he relent and make his people's increased suffering unneces- sary. Why? When God, speaking through Moses, threatens Pharaoh with devastating slaughter, he concludes by declaring "but against any of the

109


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 quintessen- tial 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 attributed to 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 Rab- binic Judaism," in Neusner and Frerichs,"To See Ourselves as Others See Us" 3-48 and 49- 69.

110

ELAINE PAGELS

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 punish- ment.

What Morton Smith has called the "Yahweh alone" party,14 along with those prophets who articulated its views, such as Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, tended especially to indict those Israelites who adopted foreign ways- including, 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:15 thus 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 par- allel 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.

15Jon D. 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.

111


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 each- virtually 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 thou- sand 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 divi- siveness 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 Babylon- many of them educated and influential members of the conquered nation- returned from exile under the patronage of the Persian king Cyrus to re- build 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,"18 that is, people who had accommodated in various ways to the ways and customs of the neighboring peoples. Some saw those re-

turning not only as agents of a foreign king, but as a powerful group

17The author 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.

112

ELAINE PAGELS

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 between people and enemy is the line dividing Israel from the nations; in its new context, the line came to divide between two segments within Israel. . . . Now, according to the people who remained, their beloved land was controlled by the enemy, and, although that enemy in fact comprised fellow Israelites, yet they regarded these brethren as 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 Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, "The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from 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 un- successful-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. 20I appreciated 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 imper- ceptibly, 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).

113


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.23 The Jewish Vita Adae et Evae, for example, says that when God finished making Adam, he called

21Certain anthropological 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.

23For a survey of this theme in early Jewish literature and a full discussion of its appear- ance in rabbinic literature, see Peter Schafer's fine book, Rivalitat zwischen 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).

114

ELAINE PAGELS

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 prac- tices 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 communities- often the more rigorist, separatist party 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).

115


ings and in the Deuteronomic literature (including, for example, the bless- ings 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-in- chief 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 intra- Jewish 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, apparently written early in the second century BCE and so reflecting events immediately sur- rounding the Maccabean revolt, is the first great landmark of Jewish demonology. The author of this book (I Enoch 6-36) apparently takes for granted the traditional characterization of 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 view- points 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

116

ELAINE PAGELS

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 Jew- ish 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.26 Suter 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 behav- ior, 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 Watchers rather than that of the diadochoi or the priesthood, I Enoch 1-36 becomes a paradigm which is not restricted to one historical situation, but which can be applied when- ever an analogous situation arises.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 corrup- tion both to "the children of the people" and to "all nations" and envi- sioned the glorious day when "the earth shall be cleansed from pollution" (I Enoch 10.21-22)-pollution that has engulfed Israel along with the 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 6- 16," 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.

117


If the authors of 1 Enoch (unlike the ingenious and hardworking twen- tieth-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 com- manded great authority.

Sections of 1 Enoch written ca. 160 BCE, after those who regarded themselves as moderates regained control of the temple priesthood and tempo- rarily 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 Exclu- sion," in Neusner and Frerichs, "To See Ourselves as Others See Us," 76.

118

ELAINE PAGELS

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 Is- rael 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 Apoca- lyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983).

119


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, emphati- cally 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," acknowl- edges 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 "Apoca- lypse 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).

120

ELAINE PAGELS

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 tenden- cies 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 enemy- apostate 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 re- cedes 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 Helle- nistic 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.

121


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 Jubi- lees, their pernicious influence has pervaded all human society. Here Noah, ancestor of many nations, grieves as he foresees evil spirits seducing, blind- ing, 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

122

ELAINE PAGELS

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 omnipres- ent 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 interprets the 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 names- Sammael, Belial, Satan:

After [King] Hezekiah died, and Manasseh had become king. . . Sammael dwelt in Manasseh and clung closely to him... and Manasseh abandoned the service of the Lord of his father, and he served Satan, and his angels, and his powers .... Manasseh. .. served Belial; for the angel of iniquity who rules this world is Belial. .. and he rejoiced over Jerusalem because of Manasseh, and he strengthened him in caus- ing apostasy. .. and the persecution of the righteous. (Mart. Isa. 2.1-5)

123


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 compat- ible 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 unparal- leled 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.

37In fact, 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 patri- archs 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).

124

ELAINE PAGELS

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 unfaithful and forsook him, he hid his face from Israel and from his temple, and delivered them up to the sword. But remembering his covenant with the forefathers, he left a remnant to 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.

125


the interrelationship of supernatural forces, 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 appointed from ancient times to come to our support; but Satan, the Angel Mastema, thou hast created for the pit; his rule is in darkness, and his purpose is to bring about evil 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 Is- rael. . . Michael is the same as the Prince of Light."41 But this identification ignores the sectarianism that dominates the Qumran texts. Instead, as John Collins observes,

in 1 QM Michael is no longer simply the Prince of Israel, but leader of the Sons of Light. This designation may have been correlated in practice with members of the congregation, but in principle it was open to broader interpretations and freed from ethnic associations. Belial, too, is no longer the prince of a specific nation. . . . Rather, he represents evil at large, like Satan or Mastema in the book of Jubilees. . . The adoption of this terminology in preference to the traditional, national, and social affiliations opens up considerably the range of application of the eschatological language. Specifically, it invites the correlation of the eschatological drama with the. . moral conflict of good and evil within every individual.42

40For an excellent discussion of the ambivalence of 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.

126

ELAINE PAGELS

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. . . according to his share in truth and righteousness, thus a man hates deceit; and according to his share in 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 meta- physical 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.

127

128 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

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 characterizations of 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.

Documents

The Social History of Satan, the Intimate Enemy.pdf