Whether you were brought up in one of the three Abrahamic religions or you heard about Satan from other sources, you might be familiar with the popular image of a villainous figure, horned and carrying a pitchfork, who tempts people or makes them suffer. While one of his first appearances may be within Jewish religious texts, this controversial evildoer could be an amalgamation of several characters from other faiths around the world.
Possible Influences From Persian Culture
While many tend to associate the serpent who tricked Adam and Eve in the third chapter of Genesis with Satan, the writers did not explicitly identify that character as such. In fact, his first appearance in the Hebrew Tanakh is in the Book of Job. The writer depicts a figure who appears when the “sons of God” are assembled and suggests that God’s servant Job is only loyal because of the blessings he’s received. That passage calls this figure “ha-satan,” which can mean “the adversary” or “the accuser.”
According to Haaretz writer Elon Gilad, many theologians believe that Job was written in the 6th or 5th century B.C.E. Encyclopedia Britannica details that the first Babylonian invasion of Palestine occurred in 598 B.C.E., and Persian conqueror Cyrus the Great allowed the Jewish people to return in 538 B.C.E. This would potentially place Job’s origins either during Jewish captivity in Babylon or Cyrus’ rule. Livius, an ancient history website maintained by Dutch scholar Jona Lendering, further describes an official position in the Persian royal court known as the “eye of the king.” This person traveled the empire, surveyed current events and reported any evildoing to the monarch. Curiously, Job’s version of Satan may have had a similar position, as Job 1:7 has him saying that he arrived in Heaven after “roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.”
Did Zoroastrianism Make Him a Divine Enemy?
The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies quotes an Encyclopedia Americana entry contending that Satan was originally thought to be “a servant of God, appointed by Him as His prosecutor” but came to resemble “Ahriman, the enemy of God” over time. Meanwhile, the Encyclopedia Britannica describes Ahriman as an aggressive evil spirit attacking the forces of good, creating a horde of demons and unleashing chaos and suffering onto the world. Zarathustra, the Persian thinker whose concepts created Zoroastrianism, likely lived prior to the 6th century B.C.E., so his teachings were probably widespread throughout the Babylonian empire when the Jewish people were there. Interestingly, Gilad’s Haaretz article details that the Tanakh’s Chronicles books, typically dated from the 4th century B.C.E., are the first to depict Satan as a powerful malevolent entity.
What About the Horns and Pitchfork?
Some trace medieval iconography depicting the “horns and pitchfork” version of Satan back to borrowed imagery from a few pre-Christian deities. BBC writer Alastair Sooke discussed two possibilities in a 2014 piece, listing both the Greek god Pan and the Egyptian god Bes. While Western readers are familiar with the Greek satyr-like ruler of the wilds, they might not recognize the Egyptian protector of households. Bes was a hideous horned figure, but he drove away evil spirits and symbolized music, dance and sensual pleasures. Sooke theorizes that medieval artists riffed off both deities’ appearances to give a face to their interpretations of Satan. Meanwhile, others speculate that the pitchfork could have been borrowed from Poseidon.
We now see Satan as a polarizing figure, feared by some, embraced by others and used in artistic works such as John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” Evidence suggests, however, that his image has transformed drastically throughout the last few millennia. Pre-Christian concepts have done much to forge our ideas about him, from ancient history until modern times.