The Social History of Satan, the “Intimate Enemy”: A Preliminary Sketch

Abstract

The figure of Satan has been a standing puzzle in the history of religion. Where did this figure originate, and what is its role? Satan is scarcely present in traditional Judaism to this day and is not present at all in classical Jewish sources—at least not in the form that later Western Christendom knew him, as the leader of an “evil empire,” of an army of hostile spirits who take pleasure in destroying human beings. Yet images of such spirits did develop and proliferate in certain late antique Jewish sources, from ca. 165 BCE to 100 CE. Specifically, they developed among groups I shall call “dissident Jews,” which included the early followers of Jesus; within decades, the figure of Satan and his demons became central to Christian (and later to Islamic) teaching. How did this occur?