Space Chef

Um, excuse me, but you're one of the rudest posters on this forum. You constantly use sarcasm and insults, then assume a superior stance when people use them towards you. You're a hypocrite.

Also, by refusing to provide evidence, you're showing your weakness.

I'm gonna make a little wager, k? I believe that the Gnostic theories of demiurges and a vast pantheon of demigods is true. I don't believe, I know for a fact, bub. You are wrong, you have a weak and easily tricked mind, and now the burden of proof is upon you to prove me wrong. That's what you always say to non-christians on this forum, atheist, Hindu, agnostic, or whatever. You are wrong, Magus. Prove ME wrong.

Of course, you could stop being such a jerk, we could start a bonfire, paint symbols on each others bodies, and dance to Door's songs, if you want.

judge

I think Dr X is pretty much right here. Firstly there is at least one good thread here somewhere on this.
But the one I remember is about the Assyrian god of the dawn rather than the sun god.
The God of the dawn is associated with the planet venus, which appears low on the horizon and does not "rise up to heaven " like Jupiter (the king planet I think?)
Jerome(?) later translates(?) this as "lucifer" in his latin bible, and somehow it becomes associated with old nick.

The stuff about war in heaven is from Revelation chapt 12...gotta go

Jack the Bodiless

This is probably superfluous, but:
Note that Isaiah 14:13-14 describes the ascent that precedes the fall:
So Lucifer started out below the clouds, on (or near) the Earth. This is not consistent with Lucifer being a "fallen angel", originally in Heaven.

And Morris is a crackpot.

Roller

I would suggest Elaine Pagels The Origins of Satan.
Also check this page.

[Edited Amazon Link - MD]

Doctor X

Please to meet you! Hope you can guess my name!

This is quoted from Forsyth's The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth

. . . the myth alluded to in Isaiah looks like a blending of the Ugaritic traditions with a story very much like the Phaethon myth; the three together look like variants, adapted to their several purposes, of one common rebel plot.

The following part of Isaiah's famous taunt represents the shades of the dead kings in Sheol, the Waste Land, greeting a new arrival. . . :

The ambitious thoughts of the rebel allude to some figure like the Ugaritic Athtar, who also went up to the "reaches of Zaphon" to challenge the king (though Baal, not El, in the versions we have), and the name of this mythological rebel, "Shining One, Son of Dawn," makes him an exact equivalent of the Greek Phaethon.

Shahar [Even we cannot render the transliterations with "." below letters. This is close.--Ed.], in various Hebrew contexts, preserves some of its old mythological meaning as a feminine dawn goddess ["Ps. 108.2; 110.3, 139.9, in which dawn has wings and can fly. . . ." from footnote.--Ed.], and the original of this feminine dawn may well have been the Indo-European goddess Usas, the Heos of Homer and Hesiod, perhaps blended now with Semitic Ishtar. Her son, Helel, may possibly be the sun itself, and indeed Shahar may mean the rising sun, according to an older school of thought, or Helel may be an allusion to the planet Venus, as most modern commentators on the passage believe. Whether or not the composer of the Isaiah passage made this explicit identification, the Greek translators of the Septuagint certainly did, since their translation of Helel ben Shahar as Heosphoros ho proi anatellon clearly combines the astrolonomical identification with Hesiod's Hesophoros, son of Heos, the dawn-bringer, Venus. The Greek was in turn rendered by the Latin vulgate as Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris, and the name has stuck to the rebel ever since.

Whether he has a specific original in the period, or whether he is the generic representative of all such kings--a more likely assumption--this particular Babylonian king apparently led a glorious life, but he is here aligned with the upstart rebel, . . . . . . and the redactor of this text, the man responsible for its inclusion in the Isaiah scroll, has no doubts about who this is. He introduces the poem with the following prose words addressed to the Israelites: "When Yahweh has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon."

It is generally agreed that the poem we are discussing does not come from the genuine Isaiah of Jerusalem, the great eight-century prophet.

--J. "I'm a Man of Wealth and Taste" D.

References:

Forsyth N. The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth. Princeton: 1987.

Clifford RJ. The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament. Harvard University Press: 1972.

Kaiser O. Isaiah 13-39: A Commentary. Westminster: 1974.

external solipsism

Isaiah 14:12 to 14:15 according to the Holy Bible New International Version, originally published in 1973.

12 How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! 13You said in you heard, "I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the starts of God' I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. 14 I will acend above the tops of the clouds' I will make myself like the Most high." 15 But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit.

I have gone through the rest of Isaiah, and cannot find any other mention of Lucifer there, or anywhere else in the bible. At this point, I think we can safely conclude that the name Lucifer does not appear (when text is properly translated) in the bible. So, what does this tell us then about the bible, as well as the common beliefs regarding Satan?

secular buddhist

I believe that Lucifer is Latin for morning star, so this is the very passage that mentions Lucifer.

If your question is does this entity actually refer to the Evil Opposite of God, I don't know enough to answer this myself, and defer to the more knowledgeble posters who have already contributed to this thread.

Doctor X

See above folks, my most [Turgid.--Ed.] scholarly [Quoting of Forsythe--Ed.] post.

"Lucifer" as a person is not there. It is the Latin translation of the Greek translation of Helel

This is not a satan.

--J.D.

spin

The Hebrew word concerned is HYLL and it is derived from the same verb HLL (to praise) as hallelujah (praise Jah). As the term is only used once in the Hebrew bible, no sure meaning for the word can be given, other than its admitted relation with HLL, so it appears to mean "shining" or "bright" (one) as in worthy of praise. The phrase "son of the dawn" (BN $XR) makes it clear what is meant by HYLL, the star that appears before dawn, ie Venus.

This cosmological view of the morning star (as against the evening star) is also found in the Greek translation of this verse, with Eosforos (as noted by Dr X), which means "dawn bringer/bearer", though 2 Peter 1:19 uses "fosforos", ie phosphorus, "light bringer". (De saint vot carried de baby Jesus across de river vos Christoforos, Christ bearer.)

The Latin form Lucifer (from lux "light", ferre "bring") is a simple translation of the Greek as already indicated by Dr X.

All the crap about Satan is totally irrelevant except for those who want to retroject xianizing apologetics into a pre-xian text. We have a passage ostensibly about the king of Babylon which continues from Isaiah 14:3 to 14:23 after which the text goes on to a prophecy against Assyria. It is one extended attack on this king.

=============

Further information for the brave: the passage is probably about Antiochus IV Epiphanes Theos.

A reading of the book of Judith should help one understand the relationship between the king named Nebuchadnezzar of Assyria (sic) and the king of Assyria = Syria. Many later writers including Josephus equate Syria with the name Assyria. It is Antiochus IV who attacked a king near Raghae (called Arphaxad in Judith, but was an Arsakid king of Parthia in reality). The Syrian king was king of Babylon and of Assyria by possession. Judith's time frame is well into the post-exilic period (5:18-19), so therefore is this king Nebuchadnezzar. The post-exilic king who did most damage in Judah was naturally Antiochus IV who persecuted the Jews for three and a half years.

Zaphon, Isa 14:13b, is the mountain (Baal's abode) of Ugarit and is located deep in Syria. Antiochus's surname was the "manifestation of God", which naturally was seen as blasphemous by the Jews, of his desire to reach heaven: "I will ascend to the cloud tops, I will make myself like the Most High", Isa 14:14. Dan 11:36 says of Antiochus (the king of the north), "He shall exalt himself and consider himself greater than any god, and shall speak horrendous things against the God of gods." This same Antiochus in Dan 8:10, as the little horn, "grew as high as the host of heaven". The famously arrogant Antiochus IV who sought to place himself higher tham God ended up attacked by worms (2 Macc 9:9) as is the case with Isaiah's king of Babylon, Isa 14:11b.

Not only is the passage unrelated to Satan, except in the eyes of those who don't deal with the text as it was written, but it would appear to deal with Antiochus IV, the proud Syrian king of Babylon.


spin

Doctor X

Thanks, spin, though all credit goes to Forsythe--I am just the "mouth-piece."

--J.D.