DEVIL, or SATAN, names applied in the New Testament and in Christian theology to the supreme impersonation of evil, considered as possessing an ob jective existence outside of man, and placed at the head of a host of inferior evil spirits, whose continual occupation is to thwart the good purpose of God and the progress of His kingdom in the hearts of men. It seems certain that this conception was foreign to the early Jew ish mind, with its strong grasp of the monotheistic idea in the person of the su preme Jehovah. It is Jehovah Himself who hardens Pharaoh's heart, and sends a lying spirit among the prophets of Ahab, and it is He who is considered as the sole source of all power, the sender of pestilence and death as well as bless ings. In the exegesis of later days the serpent that tempted Eve in Eden, and the "Old Serpent" of the Apocalypse, were alike identified with Satan, though this interpretation certainly gains no support from the story in Genesis, where the tempter is as yet hardly more than a mere animal, though one of a family almost everywhere specially associated with evil.
It is significant that the name Satan occurs but five times in the Old Testa ment: thrice in Job, where he represents himself among the "sons of God" (Beni Elohim) before the Lord.
The Jews had also their demonology like all primitive peoples, as may be seen in the seirim (satyrs, lit. "he-goats") and the shedim, both rendered by "devils" in the authorized version, and perhaps also in the Azazel of Leviticus xvi. ; but it was not till later that a special angel became differentiated from his brethren in the heavenly court, with the special function of the accuser of men, like the personification of a guilty conscience. In the vision of Zechariah we find him considered formally as the accuser of Israel. Undoubtedly also this conception had already become greatly modified during the period of exile by contact with Persian dualism. Of course such a conception as Ahriman, the mighty author of evil and the antagonist almost on equal terms of Ormuzd, was completely foreign to Jewish monothe ism, yet the Jewish Satan grew greatly both in definiteness and in power under his shadow, and henceforth it is from him directly that moral and physical harm toward men proceeds.
Persian influence appears most plainly in the apocryphal books of Tobit and Baruch, but the growth of the conception of the devil is seen also in the transla tion of the LXX., which renders his name
by diabolos, thus emphasizing and per petuating his special function as the ac cuser. Now also he becomes located in his gloomy kingdom of hell, and is at tended by troops of inferior fiends. He wages warfare on mankind by inflicting physical and moral evil, and is consid ered as the agent by whose means man fell from his original state of innocence.
In the New Testament the conception of the personality of the devil and of a kingdom of demons holds its ground, but the whole subject is here treated with a kind of spiritual reserve, in a teaching that emphasizes our own hearts and their inward temptations as the source of our evil thoughts and deeds, and connects moral evil inseparably with the earthly nature of man. The passages which speak of a fall of angelic beings (II Peter ii: 4; Jude 6) occur in scriptures of subordinate canonical rank; Jesus no where defines concretely the function of the devil; and the few positive state ments about him—that "he was a mur derer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth," that "he is a liar" (John viii: 44), and "sinneth from the begin ning" (John iii: 8), scarcely furnish a sufficient foundation for a complete doc trine on this subject. Yet the impressive manner in which it is dwelt on by our Lord and His apostles shows that it is a necessary part of Christian teaching.
The early theologians were more lit eral and less spiritual in their concep tions, and in their horror of heathen institutions came to identify the king dom of the devil in a particular manner with polytheism and the persecution they suffered under the Roman empire. Thus the devil again became a kind of rival of God, wholly unequal but yet formidable. The early Christians con sidered the gods of heathenism as in deed conquered by Christ, but yet not rendered wholly powerless, for as de graded demons and with intent to de ceive they uttered oracles, and were present at sacrifices, inhaling the sacrifi cial incense—an idea in perfect harmony with the growing materialistic concep tion of the devils, and of hell their res idence, a place blazing with eternal fire, and filled with every horror the imagina tion could suggest.