Devil
The devil ( Latin : from Greek meaning "thrown around", or "deported") is the spirit of evil. If in Manichaeism , the principle of evil is tied with the principle of Good, in the Judeo-Christian, evil in the world is blown by an entity, the Devil. If it is in the spirit of evil, it is also evil fallen angel , and therefore a creature of God and was not created but has fallen ill himself by seeking the equal to God and rejecting it. In doing so he rejected the Good and is the source of evil: "He was a murderer from the beginning, and it does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar and the father of lies "(John chapter 8 verse 44 , goat , dragon , raptor , etc..), the more often hideous and repulsive.
Summary |
The word devil comes from the ancient Greek (diabolos) (from the verb "diabll") which means "slanderer."
Personification of the evil
It seems that the concept of division of power into a force for good and evil is relatively recent in the history of beliefs. In more primitive religions, good and evil are both from the same deity, since it was regarded as containing all that exists. The same deity was therefore both capable of good and evil. An example is given by the lion-headed goddess of ancient Egypt Sekhmet that destroyed humanity (on the order of Ra ) but was also revered for its powers of protection and healing, or Seth, who usurped the throne Osiris but also allowed the sun to rise every morning fighting Apophis. It also included Loki , Norse god who viciously killed Balder , but who saved the realm of gods Aesir of the giantess Skadi.
In primitive monotheism, each clan or tribe had its god with all these attributes, because of good and evil that happens to men. Polytheism is considered in this argument, a reconciliation of the various clans, each with its own divinity. The union of the male god and a female deity reflects the successful union of two clans and egalitarian. When that during the merger of two clans in a deity replaces another peacefully, then it is described as having been caused by the old god is the son or daughter of that god then stripped and whose worship is secondary.
Finally, and this is the origin of the principle of evil personified could reside, when a warlike clan is conquered, the deity of the clan is given all the bad principles and was regarded by the conquerors as the source of all evil and, therefore, became a source of fear and apprehension. An example of this theory is given by the evolution of the cult of Seth (Setekh) in ancient Egypt in favor of that of Horus. For the people of Lower Egypt, Seth was a benevolent god, a role occupied by Horus (and Osiris ) in Upper Egypt. Upon unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, Horus and Seth became, as a first step, brothers, and were revered as a god bifid Hapi , then, given time, Seth was considered inferior to Horus finally personify the source of all evil, the Satan of ancient Egypt. Seth was frequently depicted as a black snake, a pig or a black man with red hair (the words red and desert - Upper Egypt where Seth was revered is desert - are very close to each other in Egyptian hieroglyphics).
Origins
Most religions before Christianity incorporate one or more gods embodying evil. Unlike the Christian view, however, these deities are generally two faces parallel to their size and malicious, are the object of worship for their positive aspects. They are also frequently the cause of one aspect of evil and its manifestations.
The existence of an entity representing the personification of evil in all its aspects and combining the functions of master of the underworld, the destroyer of the universe and responsible for the worst aspects of humanity seems to have appeared with Christianity. The development of this original figure nevertheless borrows religions practiced in the Middle East and influences which the authors of the Bible were submitted.
Mesopotamia
The Mesopotamian religion is one of the first to represent the universe as the battlefield of the cosmic battle between good and evil. The Epic of Gilgamesh , the oldest known text, already marks the first appearance of an evil character in the face of Huwawa. This giant monster guard the cedar forest in which Gilgamesh wants to cut the wood is missing from his people. Gilgamesh slays the monster, but will derive no glory and sees instead punished by Enlil , Lord of heaven and king of the gods. Huwawa beyond its terrifying aspects ("his roar is like a storm, his mouth is on fire and his breath is death") in fact represents a natural force on the sanctity.
Persia
- Zarathustra is the source of unprecedented upheaval in the Mesopotamian myths the gods because it replaces all existing two entities, one positive, Ahura Mazda , the god of light making the order, the other Ahriman or Angra Mainyu , the destructive forces presiding. It creates the first religion dualistic powers equivalent to between two and projecting a vision of the world in black and white. Some followers of Zarathustra reintroduce some of the old gods and suggest that Ahriman is subject to Ahura Mazda. This interpretation gives to the role of benevolent god ultimate judge who let the demons tempt mankind and intervenes as a last resort to prevent the victory of evil. This notion of the Last Judgement (religion) is a component of Christianity.
- Ahriman is probably the person who most influenced the Christian devil. True incarnation of evil, capable of competing with the benevolent god, he is assisted by seven major demons.
Egypt
The Egyptian pantheon provides two deities whose contribution to what will become the devil is significant. First Anubis , guiding souls to the underworld and carries attributes that we find the devil in Christian character half man, half beast, or the tail. On the other hand, Seth , one of whose forms is a snake and who may have given its red color to Satan . We can also consider that this same form of Seth was taken by Christianity into the serpent who tempted Eve and drove her to sin. Canaan The character of Canaanite religion that most influence the Christian devil is undoubtedly Baal , the god of fertility and son of the god El. Pejorative and negative vision that the Bible offers Baal probably reflects the views of Jews on this god of a pagan religion but it appears that his worshipers, Baal had the size of a savior in its fight against Mot, the god of death and sterility. If ancient Greece is the cradle of reason, philosophers Greek, however, had an influence on the very anthropomorphic vision than their contemporaries, in all strata of society, had gods and explained further by the vicissitudes through very human their existence. The Greek mythology has profoundly influenced the representation of the demon of New Testament , especially through Hermes (messenger of the gods is in fact also the god of thieves and one that leads the dead in the infra-world) but also his son, Pan. It will forward to the devil in fact five of his character traits most recognizable hooves, horns, goatee, hairy legs and the stench. Satan also inherit its size personification of eroticism. In particular, under the influence of Augustine of Hippo who sees the unbridled pursuit of an obstacle to the erotic life of the soul, the artists will turn to Pan as a source of inspiration for the representation of a daemon by issuing the seductions land as absolutes, away from the spiritual life. If the distinction between good and evil is sometimes diffuse, numerous deities having two faces, one benign and one attacker, Hesiod says, however, that bad actions are punished by the gods who entrust the Erinyes task of tormenting those who go against the laws of the cosmos. With Plato appears a clearer distinction between the aspiration to the world of ideas and the temptation to yield to physical needs (including an opposition inspired by the struggle of Zeus and Dionysus against the Titans ). The god of the Jews is essentially monistic , much loved for his kindness feared for his anger, he is omnipotent and leaves no room for competition. In contrast to the beliefs of their neighbors, the people of Israel do not seek to be attributed to deities external events that may not understand but rather he believes is responsible for his own fate: everything that occurs evil is the result of his wanderings and breach of his covenant with Yahweh who punishes accordingly. I form the light and I create darkness, I'm happy and I create evil: I the Lord who do all this: Es 45.7 This vision, if it appears to correspond to the mentality of a tribal people in perpetual war to conquer territory, seems less relevant after the Jews defeated their opponents and began to settle. The questions of social organization and morality emerge and then the books of the prophets, written at the time, show a special concern for questions of good and evil. On the sidelines of the official theology, popular beliefs still exist and are mentioned many times in Deuteronomy . Judaism then develops a belief in the existence of an evil spirit (already existing in other religions), responsible for the calamities that would have previously been regarded as the justice of Yahweh before the wanderings of its people. Monism of principle is respected but we are moving increasingly towards a de facto dualism. If these angels (malak Yahweh) were originally a neutral role and may even appear as the manifestation of God in visible form by humans, their personality emerges gradually. Psalm 82, heralding the descent into hell Satan says: "God was standing in the divine assembly, among the gods, he found: The Book of Job After the exile and enslavement in Babylon in the sixth century BC. AD , Jews questioning their status as chosen people. The misunderstanding of the Jews who struggle to accept their own sins as the only justification of evils that befell them leads to theological developments which can be traced mainly in the Book of Job. This passage in fact marks the first explicit appearance of Satan. Literally, "enemy" or someone who opposes the character appears multiple times in the Old Testament and can be translated in different ways depending on context, and the Book of Job is still the first appearance of names, explicit (we no more talk of "snake" for example) thereof. There appears to be a tormentor of humanity, personified for the occasion by Job, a torturer that God does not leave act within the limits of what humanity can support and make a voluntary choice of God. Indeed, Satan argues that fidelity to Yahweh of Job is the result of the kindness that has been granted and that if his faith was tested, his loyalty would not last. Satan is afforded by God the freedom to do evil for the sole purpose of testing the sincerity of the faith of Job. Then the Lord said to the Adversary, "All right! It is in thy power; respects only his life ": Jb2.6 The main text of the Book of Job consists of dialogue with his four friends in which Job expresses the plight of humanity in the face of adversity that it fails to explain. However, despite all the hardships, Job did not deny his god: Released bare my mother's womb, naked I shall return. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away the Lord's name be blessed: Jb 1.21 This text is fundamental to understanding the character of Satan in the Judeo-Christian. It is nominally directed and if no status equal to God, he has his independence. Subsequently, this autonomy will be taken up and developed but out of the barrel in the literature apocryphal and popular beliefs is not Judaism. (The Book of Enoch describes in particular the corruption of angels, charmed by the "daughters of the earth" . This literature thus establishes a link between the devil and sexuality, as well as women to be widely repeated and amplified in the Middle Ages, although these passages are not included in the canon of the Old Testament.) Heir of Judaism , Christianity takes the idea of the devil person, not concept, a person who acts, not only morally by the temptation of the faithful, but acts in the world and won to bring the faithful cons God: the Egyptians against Israel, the Roman Empire against the early Christians. Truth can not be seduced into thinking that Christian persecution can only be explained by the action of the devil coming for his lies. The Roman Empire , first persecutor is naturally the first to be described as the demon Legion. This vision is gradually generalized to cover all the divisions that emerged within the Church itself: the devil, the divider is considered the source of disputes and heresies. While the canon of the Bible is not yet fixed and that the apostles and their successors still debating the nature of the teaching of Christ , the accusation of heresy is common and implies a demonic inspiration, the errors Other Christians can not be explained only by the intervention of the "prince of liars." Consider the devil as the head of the divisions between Christians, as the inspirer of heretical beliefs and rituals arising gradually leads to accuse the Gnostics and the Bogomil and the Cathars to practice Satanic rites voluntarily. However, Christianity believes that if the devil is often at work, it is so only through men: the first Council of Braga in the barrel 8, said he could not be the cause of natural disasters. Christianity also refuses to see him during the worst of it in God and opposed to the dualistic view, inherited from Zoroastrianism , the Gnostics , Bogomil and Cathar. For them the devil occupies a key position as it is considered not only as the master of the material world in which humanity is struggling (God being the master of the spiritual world) but as its creator. (Whereas the Judeo-Christian God is the Creator of heaven and earth: the material things are good by nature, only their use can be bad). Speak of the devil is something familiar and common to Christians. Its nature and its powers are defined gradually and when theologians discuss these issues on a spiritual level, the mass of believers keeps a very vivid vision of the devil. The devil is usually represented as a degenerate human figure rather than as a supernatural monster. In layman terms, folk tales that depict make him an opponent without much power and easily deceived. His performances are also virtually nonexistent before the sixth century and become really common, accessible only with the Roman churches, including statuary and stained glass give body to the devil. While trying to spread Christianity beyond the borders of the former Roman Empire and is facing many and various pagan beliefs, the local deities are treated as hell (you must wait to see Vatican II consider other religions as the mark of a search for truth worthy of respect, even when they undermine the dignity of man, this impairment is due to ignorance more than a deliberate choice). Later, while the Islam grows and extends to Europe, the threat is seen as inspired by the devil. Preparations for these shipments also give rise to persecution against Jews popular (demonized by the mob because they refuse to pay the tax levied specifically for the Crusade), which raises the protests of the Pope. At the time of writing the New Testament , the canon of the Bible is not fixed and the apocryphal literature is widespread. It is therefore not surprising that we found an influence of the latter in the Gospels and one can consider that these writings constitute a bridge between the vision of the devil as presented in the Old Testament and is emerging in the early Christian texts. Another major influence is that of Plato that the distinction between the body (associated with the temptation to sin and thus the demon) and spirit (soul, the source of the saving virtue) is one of most significant distinguishing characteristics of the vision of good and evil in the Gospels. The apostles also seem convinced of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God and therefore place special emphasis on the purification of the soul in this perspective. Especially for Paul , Satan appears in this context as the adversary of humanity within the meaning of the Old Testament, an approach that is found especially in his epistles: Paul Thessalonians 2.17-18 The Synoptic Gospels , which historians believe they were written later, are in turn a prominent confrontation between Jesus and the devil. The first confrontation in the desert until the final battle on Mount Calvary , they are as the story of a battle between good and evil, thus placed almost on an equal footing. Jesus leads the battle for exorcising the demon well, thus illustrating a representation of the terrestrial world in the hands of demonic forces responsible for all evil. It's probably in John that this dualism is most marked. : John 8:44 The New Testament maintains, however, the ambiguity about the origin of evil, the words of Jesus through regular state of the free will of man to prove his power by choosing to renounce sin to earn his place in paradise. The book of Revelations, also attributed to Jean presents the most striking vision of the devil, and there is the unique story of a cosmic clash of the Bible (Chapter 12). The devil will take the aspect of the scariest monster: The story continues with the battle between the devil and his demons on the one hand and the angels led by Michael on the other. Something unique in the New Testament, also focusing its attention on the appearance of the demon tempter and corrupter of the role of human nature, the monster of the Apocalypse is responsible for natural disasters, like deities pre-Judaic. The beast is conquered, chained to hell for a thousand years: He threw him into the abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations any more until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be loosed a little time. In the early twentieth century , Sigmund Freud brings new light to the figure of the devil and the first scientific approach to trying cases of "possession". Studying in a demonic neurosis in the seventeenth century a case of alleged demon possession in the middle of a witch hunt, he suggested that the accusations in fact express the repression of sexual urges that the morality of the time especially disapproves. Freud said: "The devil is nothing but the incarnation of the drives anal erotic repressed " This interpretation is part of the theory he developed that neuroses have their origin in desires sexually unfulfilled. According to Freud, the devil is actually a patriarchal figure embodies the fear and mistrust vis--vis the father, while God is the love and protective influence. In this context, religion is seen as a mental creation that allows the individual to accept the world around him and his own mortality. The daemon is built into the individual as part of his unconscious, struggling without his knowledge against his own will. Jung challenged this conception by saying consubstantiality of good and evil, as inseparable as light and shadow. God and the devil does not reduce to metaphors but are myths. From a perspective theologically , the devil is considered an angel rebelled against God, stripped and thrown into hell (on earth), which enables humans to do evil. While some traditions believe that evil also comes from God and the devil is one of its aspects or its agents, most give it an autonomous dimension. In this case, some say, God leaves some extent the field open to the devil, while retaining the ability to renchaner, while for the Manichean struggle between these two forces can not be refereed by humans. The Judeo-Christian tradition presents him as the evil person, a living person, not a symbol or a principle. Mind, it does not describe his body but plenty of talk about what characterizes it: it is the one who opposes God forever. For Judeo-Christian God is Love, Justice, the Way, the Truth and the Life. The devil is called the Seducer, "" the Devil "," the Liar ", as being opposed to the Truth, the Light (God) it can attract to him by deception, deception. It is also called the "Homicide" because he opposed the Life (Jesus), "Divider" because only Love p had together: just as the shadow is the absence of light, evil is the absence of good. You can not build on lies and the devil will be defeated at the end of time. The Judeo-Christian Satan is a creature of God who refused to enter into the Light but instead wanted to erect its separate existence as equal to God. In doing so, he cut off from God that is to say, all Love, Justice, The Way, Truth and Life. The Devil is a spirit, his intelligence is very high and his sin is unforgivable because he knew what he was doing unlike humans who are deceived and blinded by it. The devil disappears at the end of time at the coming of the Son of man, at the meeting of heaven and earth (Bible. In Islam, the devil is called "ayn" ( Arabic : ) whose proper name is Iblis. Lorsqu'Allah (God) created the first man named "Adam", he asked all angels to prostrate before him, but Iblis (Satan) , claiming that it was not created from fire not fall down before a being created from clay . So he puffed up with pride and thus by its arrogance and refusal to obey God that he was cursed. Iblis, his pride then asked God to grant him a confidence limit (let him live until the end of the world) to mislead men (he hates) the right way. Allah granted him this time . "What prevented you from prostrating He says: 13 - "Come down from here! 14 - He says: 15 - God says: Adam and his wife were placed in Paradise, Allah granted them to enjoy everything that was there, only one tree was forbidden. Iblis the misled, into believing that Allah forbade them the tree in question because eating it would turn them into angels (beings of light). The couple gave in to temptation and Allah sent down to Earth . In the Islamic religion, just as in Christianity and Judaism, the responsibility for the fall is not only attributed to Eve. It simply says that the Devil tried . When the word "satan" is used as a proper noun, it is the chief of demons, Iblis. Iblis is one of the jinn , creatures of fire who, as men in Islam, free will. While the angels are creatures of the order of light, the jinn are creatures of the order of the fire prior to the creation of Adam. we had created previously Iblis was swollen with pride and he hates humans. He has children who are demons at his service, they can live as much as him. Iblis and his cronies are constantly misplace men since time immemorial in every way imaginable; Iblis circumvents humans by giving them the evil and deceptive, he throws them in the raises and all aberration forms of kufr . The most classic representation of a character that is red (green in the iconography oldest) associated with flames, with a human head and horns, a trident, legs of a goat and a long tail. It is also found under several names: It also uses the interjection "Damn! " euphemism for devil. Greece
Rome
Appearance in the Torah
The Devil and Christianity
. The New Testament and the coming of the Prince of Darkness
So did we come to you, even I Paul, once and even twice, but Satan hindered us. " Apocalypse
Modern Vision 
The contemporary Catholic Church and the Devil
The devil and the public
The Devil and psychoanalysis
Theological Visions
The Judeo-Christian
The Muslim Religion
when I command you? "
"I'm better than him.
You created me from fire
and Thou hast created of clay "
Did not you proud to show you in this place.
Get out!
You are among those who are despised! "
"Give me time
till the Day they are raised. " Other traditions
Appearance and Names
Representation in the Arts
See also
Bibliography
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