Adam and Eve had a wonderful time in the garden of Eden. They ate fruit and petted the animals in the lovely sunshine. But then a serpent appeared, the devil. He persuaded the two to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, even though God had forbidden it. Punishment was their portion and with them all mankind: men would henceforth all become mortal. Did the devil have this on his bad conscience? But if you read the relevant part of the Bible carefully, you will not find the word devil or satan anywhere. Anyone who studies the Bible linguistically will discover that the existence of the devil is probably a misunderstanding. What’s up with that? In Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament (which also contains the story of Adam and Eve), the devil is nowhere to be seen. Nor in other parts, except in the Bible book of Numbers. Satan is mentioned in it. It says that God sends an angel to earth to give a message. This angel is satan. The source text reads: The angel of Yahweh (the Hebrew name of God) stood in the road like Satan against him. This is an important quote.
Linguist
The American linguist Henry Ansgar Kelly, professor of English at the University of California, carefully studied the Bible and related books linguistically. He looked at what it literally says. His conclusion was special: Satan does not exist. He did not fall from heaven, does not appear to be an opponent of God and has nothing to do with Adam and Eve. These findings can be read in the book Satan. A biography.
Satan is a function
The earlier quote from the Bible book of Numbers shows that Satan works on behalf of God. They are not opponents at all. The quote does not refer to a unique character but to some kind of function, or rather, an angel with the function of Satan. The Bible book of Job shows even more strikingly that Satan and God are not adversaries. In that book, God concludes with the sons of God, including Satan, to test Job. The quote follows: Then Yahweh said to Satan, Well, all he has is in your hand. There is cooperation here. So God and Satan are not adversaries. Moreover, this is also a function, not a special or unique character.
New Testament
In the next New Testament it is also not entirely clear what role the devil has. According to Kelly, God and the devil are still not enemies, while other researchers see it that way when it comes to the New Testament. For example, Satan is commissioned by God to punish sinners. Satan’s punishments are intended as rehabilitation, so that sinners can still find their way to God. So that’s not really evil or devilish. In the New Testament, Satan is a unique being (hence the capital S).
Vision
The story of the angel Satan who is disgraced with God and falls from heaven serves as an explanation for the current image of Satan; at first the devil and God were comrades but after a conflict they became enemies. However, this is not stated anywhere in the Bible. Reference is often made to the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus says: I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. But according to Kelly, Jesus is describing a vision he had earlier. And in the Revelation of John it says: Now has come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the dominion of the anointed: for the accuser of our brethren has been cast down. This quote is about the approaching End of Time. So it is a prediction, in other words Satan has not yet been rejected at the time of this quote. Satan is therefore not an opponent of God here and, moreover, he has never actually fallen from heaven. What is also striking is that Satan, the accuser of our brothers, is not an individual but a function.
Why a Satan?
Why did the image of the devil as an evil enemy of God arise when it is nowhere in the Bible? Professor Kelly indicates that the answer may be that not all books of the Bible have been handed down in Hebrew. The Bible quotes come from the sixth century BC. Three centuries later, the Jews translated the texts into Greek, the language spoken in that area at the time. According to Kelly, something went wrong in these translations. In Hebrew the word satan caused problems. Satan was translated in different ways, including the meaning of Satan, the evil being.
The Bible texts were often combined, interpreted, translated and rewritten over a period of hundreds of years. The early Christians had many stories at their disposal that sometimes contradicted each other and did not always fit together. Their puzzles regularly produced new stories that were sometimes far removed from the original texts.
Good and evil
Christians had difficulty combining the good and evil sides of God: after all, a mean God was a contradiction, because God is good. Then they constructed Satan. A good example is the story of the census that David took to spite the Israelites. The story is told twice in the Bible, in 2 Samuel, 24.1 and in the later written Chronicles, 21.1. In Samuel it says: Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel. And he stirred David up against them, saying, Go and take a census of Israel and Judah. However, the later Chronicles say something different: Once Satan turned against Israel. He prompted David to take the census in Israel. In the Chronicles God is good and Satan is evil, while in earlier Samuel this is not yet the case. In this God shows His mean side. It is a good example of the proposition that Satan evolved from an insignificant functionary in the Old Testament to the personification of evil in later writings.