Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Satan (ho satanas)
The name the New Testament gives the chief adversary, a role that had become a name.
Matthew 4:10, in every translation this tool compares.
In the Hebrew Bible the word is a job: the accuser. By the New Testament it has hardened into a name, and Revelation 12 works like a glossary entry, tying the dragon, the ancient serpent, the devil and Satan together as one figure.
By the New Testament the role has become a name, and Revelation 12:9 works like a glossary entry, identifying the dragon, the ancient serpent, the devil, Satan, and the deceiver of the whole world as one figure. DDD's article (P. L. Day) treats the four Hebrew Bible passages with a celestial satan as most likely four separate beings, not one developing character. In Numbers 22:22-35 the satan is Yahweh's own messenger sent against Balaam, acting on Yahweh's orders. In Job 1-2 hassatan carries the article, which makes it a common noun ("the Accuser"), and the being is one of the sons of God at the council, testing whether Job's piety survives the loss of its reward without opposing God's rule outright. In Zechariah 3 the satan stands at the high priest Joshua's right hand to accuse him and is rebuked by Yahweh's messenger, a different figure again. Only in 1 Chronicles 21:1, without the article, does the word plausibly work as a proper name, and even there DDD notes that the earliest texts using Satan indisputably as a name (Assumption of Moses 10:1; Jubilees 23:29) come centuries later.
G4567 (Σατανᾶς), 36 occ
Whether Revelation's identification is exegesis of Genesis 3 or a later synthesis read back into it is where serious readers part ways. Revelation 12:9 fuses the dragon, the ancient serpent of Genesis 3:1,14, the devil (slanderer), and Satan (adversary) into one figure, a deliberate synthesis that gathers every strand of cosmic opposition, from Eden on, into a single adversary. DDD goes further and calls the common claim that the Hebrew Bible shows a developing notion of Satan anachronistic on its own terms, since Satan by that name isn't in the Hebrew Bible at all and at least two of the four celestial-satan texts (Numbers 22 and Zechariah 3) plainly show different divine beings in different and even opposed roles.
- Matthew 4:10
- Matthew 12:26
- Mark 3:23-26
- Luke 10:18
- Luke 22:31
- John 13:27
- Romans 16:20
- Revelation 12:9
- Revelation 20:2
- Numbers 22:22-35
- Job 1:6-12
- Job 2:1-7
- Zechariah 3:1-5
- 1 Chronicles 21:1
- J. W. van Henten, "Dragon," DDD, 265-266
- G. K. Beale and Sean M. McDonough, "Revelation," Commentary on the NT Use of the OT, 1125
- C. Breytenbach and P. L. Day, DDD s.v. "Satan," 726-731
- Heiser, *Unseen Realm*, chs. 8, 32, note-to-build: currently `kind: person`, uncurated
