my dog earl

Don't know where the name Lucifer actually came from ( maybe the RCC) - his name is irrelevant though. Call him Bob if you want.

I was hoping you would expound on the Lucifer falling from grace story. It seems that it might have been pre-biblical!!

Does the fact that the story of Lucifer might have come from an RCC story lessen it in any way? Most fundamentalists I know discount most of the RCC.

hinduwoman

In Terry Pratchett's "Eric" the devils torture the souls, but since the souls are immaterial they don't feel pain

And in Bernard Shaw's hell only people who are interested in romance, love, beauty go there; people who are interested in doing useful work go to heaven.

Magus55

The story of Lucifer doesn't come from the RCC - his name may. I gave you verses showing the angels sinned, including Satan and were banished to Hell. That is the jist of the fall of the angels.

Magus55

Well Terry Pratchett and Bernard Shaw aren't God so their opinions are meaningless when it comes to eternal fate.

Demigawd

Yeah, but Pratchett's musings on western mythology is alot more insightful and amusing than any christian apologetic.

So, when comparing him to the bible's multiple authors, Terry's comprehension of mythology makes all biblical writers his own bitch.

winstonjen

Neither are/were the authors of the bible, and you have yet to prove that they were divinely inspired. Surely a book as good as you describe would be simple to understand and self-consistent.

Rhaedas

This might answer both questions about the name Lucifer, and where the story comes from.

Lucifer is a symbolic name that was held onto instead of being translated from Latin into English. The story of the fall of the angels is a misunderstanding of the symbolic or reference of the meaning of the story.

I'm sure literalists won't like that answer...not surprisingly.

Lucifer: What’s in a Name?

In the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (chapter 14), there is a passage talking about the King of Babylon, who was not a favorite of Isaiah’s. Verse 12 of that chapter runs (in the oldest known version of the Bible): “How you are fallen from heaven, O day-star, son of the morning! How you have been cut down to the ground-you who laid low the nation” (Dead Sea Scrolls Bible 292).

The King of Babylon had apparently been given (or perhaps himself assumed) the title “Day-Star,” which is a name for the planet Venus, the first planet or star seen in the morning just before the sun rises, hence the King was also called “son of the morning.” The identification of important monarchs with heavenly bodies has always been common, as for example King Louis XIV of France was called the “Sun King.” Now, the word Lucifer “light bearer” was the Latin term for the “day-star” or Morning Star because it brought in (or bore) the light of the day.

So when the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Latin, the word lucifer was used in this verse, rendered into Latin as Quomodo cecidisti de cælo, lucifer, qui mane oriebaris? That is literally, “How have you fallen from heaven, light bearer, who are born in the morning?” The reference to falling from heaven was doubtless Isaiah’s way of putting the Babylonian king in his place by sarcastically observing in effect: “OK, you call yourself the Day Star of Heaven, you who think you’re so high and mighty, but look at you now--you, the so-called Day Star, have fallen from your place in the heavens and have yourself been cut down to the ground.”

However, the early Christian interpreters misunderstood the expression “fallen from heaven” and, instead of recognizing it as a figure of speech playing on the destruction of the wicked King of Babylon, who called himself the Day Star, they thought it was a literal statement about a fall from heaven and identified the event with the legendary fall of Satan. So they thought that the term “Day Star,” or “Lucifer” in Latin, referred to Satan. And thus a term for the planet Venus became one of the names of a devil. It was a mistake caused by misunderstanding figurative language as a literal statement, a common problem among fundamentalists.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Magus55
Why do you care? You know for a fact it doesn't exist right? So why constantly argue over it?

OK, Magus. You tell us what you would like us to discuss instead.

fried beef sandwich

You know, that actually makes a lot of sense, considering that evangelical christians interpret the "Michael and the Angels fighting the Dragon, with 1/3 of the dragon's angels being cast down" as the author of revelation witnessing a vision of the past. A Christian who did not initially believe in the Lucifer Story would have a hard time interpreting that vision in that fashion. Rather, he would probably interpret that as one of the final climactic battles of the end times, or maybe even THE final climactic battles of the end times.

Mageth

I find it interesting that these accounts don't show up until the New Testament (in the OT, Satan seems to be chummy with God; see Job), and that they sound very similar to some of the Greek/Roman myths of various gods and demigods being tossed from their respective "heavens."