The Adversary
Satan, is the Hebrew word for “adversary”. It derived in Christian religion from terms used in Abrahamic faiths, applied today and throughout history to traditional belief about the fallen angel from Heaven. In Islamic religious tradition, it applies to the Jinn. In Hebrew ha-Satan is “the accuser”, or Satan itself, meaning “to overcome”– the accuser being the angel that challenged the faith in God that humans held, in book Job and Zechariah in the Bible. Although, other Abrahamic religious belief systems attribute the term to minor demons, lesser deities and evil spirits, or even just the term for general evil. The Northwest Semitic root word, is śtn, meaning an act of hostility, to be hostile, or to aggressively accuse. Although in Job, there is a separate reference found; when God asks the angel where he has been, replies that he has been “wandering” (mi’ŝut) and walking on the earth. The root ŝut means to wander on foot, making Satan, the Wanderer.
Many people falsely mistake the appearance of Satan to resemble the Satyr, or the god Pan in Greek mythology; some believe the link is there somewhere, but the evidence is lacking. Some sources say that Satan is invisible, others believe he resembles the Minotaur. Other sources believe that he has a human form, that being what is commonly known as Mephistopheles. In other contexts, he resembles a darkened angel, –the angels of Heaven glow brightly, supposedly lit from within by the spirit of God, –with horns, a tail, and/or bat-like wings. In the Biblical Book of Revelations, Satan is instead described as being a dragon. In the Hebrew Apocrypha –The Apocrypha being books that are sometimes included in the Bible at the back, that are not readily accepted as scripture, –there are different description of Satan/The Devil.
In The Book of Wisdom, Satan is described as being the being who first brought death to the world. In the second Book of Enoch, or Slavonic Book of Enoch, there are references to a Grigori Watcher named Satanael. The Grigori are known simply as “The Watchers”; in what is known as the “popular” version, the Watchers were a group of two hundreds angels who walked the earth and mated with human women, one of the prefects among them being the ever-illustrious Azazel. However, in other books of the Apocrypha, the Watchers are guardian angels, naturally, wandering the Earth and watching over humans. The Slavonic Book of Enoch is completely unknown in origin, and authorship, but it describes Satan as being prince of the Grigori, and cast down from Heaven as an evil spirit who knew the difference between what was righteous and what was sinful.
Other examples of Satan in the Apocrypha is the angel Mastema who induced God to test Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac; in this context he is Satan in name and nature. The Chasidic Jews in the eighteenth century believed ha-Satan to be Baal Davar. In the Old Testament, Satan was the accuser, his function under God something like a “prosecuting attorney.” Many are familiar with all the different names for Satan in Christianity, such as the bastardised Beelzebub, which was actually once a Philistine god, Lucifer, the Devil, the dragon. However, one might find especially interesting that Leviathan was once described as a “crooked serpent” , and later Satan is described in the same fashion in Revelations 12:9. Leviathan was considered to be the forces of chaos that were pre-existent on earth before God. ‘Sar ha Olam,’ was thought once to be a name for Metatron, used in text to describe a possible scribe of God, one of the highest angels, and also the force who tried to stop Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. ‘Sar ha Olam’ was also described as Satan by Michael, Jehoel and St. Paul.