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.
The ruler of this world
John's title for Satan, conceding real authority and announcing its end.
John 12:31, in every translation this tool compares.
John's title for Satan, used three times and every time around the cross. It grants him a real jurisdiction and announces the end of it in the same breath.
Three times in John, each time in the setting of the cross, and each time as someone cast out or judged. The title concedes a real jurisdiction and announces its end in the same breath. DDD's Devil article (G. J. Riley) treats "ruler of this world" as one of a cluster of names covering the same ground: "the whole world lies in the power of the evil one" (1 John 5:19), and Satan claims to control "all the kingdoms of the world" when he offers them to Jesus (Luke 4:6). Early in the second century Ignatius of Antioch already uses a near-identical title, archon tou aionos toutou, "ruler of this age," as his usual name for Satan, more often than either "Satan" or "devil" (Ephesians 17:1; 19:1; Magnesians 1:2; Trallians 4:2; Romans 7:1; Philadelphians 6:2), so the title was standard early Christian vocabulary and not a Johannine one-off.
- John 12:31
- John 14:30
- John 16:11
- 1 John 5:19
- Luke 4:6
- Heiser, *Unseen Realm*, ch. 32
- G. J. Riley, DDD s.v. "Devil," 244-248
- DDD s.v. "Aion," 14 (on the Ignatian parallels)
