Tracing the Legend of the Fall of Satan

An overview of the Old Testament canonical material and selected intertestamental apocalyptic literature has revealed a development in demonology. The fundamental picture is the heavenly assembly or divine council where Yahweh rules enthroned among the angelic host and the earth is presided over. There is a role in the heavenly court for a prosecutor, and adversary, but the angel fulfilling this role is not necessarily evil in and of itself, but rather faithfully carrying out an assigned task. But somewhere there is a “malfunction” in the council and not all the angelic host is trustworthy. Psalm 82 indicates this malfunctioning and Yahweh’s calling the council into question.

Psalm 82 is a good point of contact to begin to trace the development of demonology and the fall of Satan from the Old Testament through the apocalyptic material. As Morgenstern points out, the psalm begs the question of an original malfunction or sin among the host of heaven and how many of the host were involved. The following discussion will highlight the apocalyptic development of the legend of the fall of Satan from Jubilees, 1 and 2 Enoch, and the Life of Adam and Eve. These passages will show points of contact with the canonical passages of Ps. 82, Gen. 6:1-4, and Isa. 14:12-14. Since dating is such a difficult matter, the temporal sequential development of the legend is not at issue here. Hat is at issue is the apocalyptic picture of the fall of Satan pieced together by noting parallels in apocalyptic material and points of contact with canonical passages, which would have existed at the time of the New Testament.

Genesis 6:1-4 and Its Interpreters

The first step in tracing this malfunction presupposed in Ps. 82 is the Genesis 6:1-4 passage. Though there is much speculation, this passage appears to have three distinguishable groups of supernatural or quasi-supernatural beings in verse 4: the Nephilim, the sons of God, and the mighty men. The “sons of God” can be accounted for as angels. The mighty men can be accounted for as the half-human/half-angelic abomination issued from the union of the angels with human women. The third group, the Nephilim, is left unaccounted for in this text.

Jubilees 5:1 contains the simplest rendering of the Gen. 6 passage:

And when the children of men began to multiply on the surface of the earth and daughters were born to them, that the angels of the Lord saw in a certain year of that jubilee that they were good to look at. And they took wives for themselves from all of those whom they chose. And they bore children for them; and they were the giants.

Note that this version is actually shorter than the Gen. 6 account. Verse 3, which concerns God’s judgment, is missing, and the “sons of God” have been identified as angels while the offspring of this abominable union have been identified as “giants.”

Josephus’ account is much the same:

For many angels of God accompanied with women, and beat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they had in their own strength; for the tradition is that thee men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants.

Here Joseph also identifies the sons of God as angels and the mighty men as giants.

But the most detailed account is found in 1 Enoch 6-16. The essentials of the story are the same as those listed above but with great elaboration on such matters as the names of the angels, the nature of the oath which the leader of the evil angels makes to secure the actions of the other angels, the nature of the evil of the ensuing offspring, the bringing of the case by the good angels to God, and Enoch’s intercession for the evil angels. Morgenstern makes much of the similar wording of 1 Enoch 15:4 (“Surely you, you [used to be] holy, spiritual, the living ones, [possessing] eternal life”) with Ps. 82:6 (“You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High”).

The First Fallen Star

1 Enoch 86:1-6 provides a valuable link in the legend of the fall of Satan. Chapter 85 symbolically recounts the births of Cain, Abel, and Seth and the murder of Abel by Cain. These three sons are symbolized by bulls; Abel is the red bull; Cain is the black bull, and Seth is the white bull. The bulls produce many progeny. Then in 1 Enoch 86:1-6 proceeds:

Again I saw (a vision) with my own eyes as I was sleeping, and saw the lofty heaven; and as I looked, behold, a star fell down from heaven but (managed) to rise and eat and to be pastured among those cows. Then I saw these big and dark cows, and behold they all changed their cattle-sheds, their pastures, and their calves; and they began to lament with each other. Once again I saw a vision, and I observed the sky and behold, I saw many stars descending and casting themselves down from the sky upon the first star; and they became bovids among those valves and were pastured together with them, in their midst. I kept observing, and behold, I saw all of them extending their sexual organs like horses and commencing to mount upon the heifers, the bovids; and the (the latter) all become pregnant and bore elephants, began to bite with their teeth and swallow and to gore with their horns. Then they began to eat those bovids. And behold, all the children of the earth began to tremble and to shake before them and to flee from them.

Of note there is not so much the tradition with apparently singles out the women of Cainite descent as the only ones the evil angels had intercourse with, but rather the fact that there was one star which fell before the other stars. There is no reason given for the fall of this first star but it is implied that it was the result of some defeat because the text follows with, “but managed to rise.” 1 Enoch 88 and 90:20-21 also clearly distinguish this first star from the other stars who came down to earth.

Prince Satan

The next link in the flow of the legend is found in 2 Enoch. In 18:1-4 we find a reference to Satan as a prince of those in heaven who turned aside from the Lord in the legend behind Gen. 6:

And those men took me up on their wings and placed me n the fifth heaven. And I saw there many innumerable armies called Grigori. And their appearance was like the appearance of a human being, and their size was larger than that of large giants. And their faces were dejected, and the silence of their mouths were perpetual. And there was no liturgy in the fifth heaven. And I said to the men who were with me, “What is the explanation that these ones are so very dejected, and their faces miserable, and their mouths silent? And (why) is there no liturgy in this heaven?” And those men answered me, “These are the Grigori, who turned aside from the Lord, 200 myriads, together with their prince Satanail. And similar to them are those who went down as prisoners in their train, who are in the second heaven, imprisoned in great darkness.

Satan’s Desire to Exalt His Throne

The next step in the development of the legend of Satan’s fall in his desire to exalt his throne. In the context of a creation account a heading in a later manuscript reads, “Here Satanail was hurled from the height, together with his angels.” The passage goes on to say:

But one from the order of the archangels deviated, together with the division that was under his authority. He thought up the impossible ideas, that he might place his throne higher than the clouds, which are above the earth, and that he might become equal to my power. And I hurled him out from the height, together with his angels. And he was flying around in the air, ceaselessly, above the Bottomless.

This form of the legend can be linked with the account in Life of Adam and Eve 13:1-16:1, where, before being expelled from heaven and cast to earth, the devil claims that if God punishes him for not worshipping Ada then, “I will set my throne above the stars of heaven and will be like the Most high” (15:3). Morgenstern makes three observations about this passage. First, the devil here has a preeminent rank among the angels. Second, the name “Most High” is used for God just as it is in Ps. 82:6. Third, it appears to give two reasons why the devil was expelled from heaven. The first reason is that he wouldn’t worship Adam who was in God’s image, and the second reason is his claim to put his throne above the stars of heaven and be like the Most High.

To apply this scenario to the Gen. 6 account result in identifying the Nephilim as those angels who followed Satan who was the cast down to earth from heaven, as the root of the Hebrew term נפל might indicate. But the crucial boast by the devil to set his throne above the stars of heaven and be like the Most High echoes another passage, Isa. 14:12-14 where it is written:

How you have fallen from heaven

O star of the morning, star of the dawn!

You have been cut down to the earth,

You who have weakened the nations!

But you said in your heart,”

“I will ascend to heaven;

I will raise my throne above the stars of God,

And I will sit on the mount of assembly

In the recesses of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;

I will make myself like the Most High.”

Conclusion

This then is the delineation of the logical sequence of development of the legend of the fall of Satan. It is based on the apocalyptic material and has points of contact with the canonical works. If it has been traced accurately, it must have been current, though how widely held is difficult to say, at the time of the New Testament. The development of the legend began with Ps. 82 where it was implied that there was a malfunctioning in the divine assembly. Genesis 6:1-4 is the source of much speculation in the apocalyptic works of Jubilees, and 1 and 2 Enoch concerning certain fallen angels. Indeed 1 Enoch 86 described one angel who fell before the others. 2 Enoch then went on to describe the fallen angels of Gen. 6 and their leader, Satan. This in turn led to a consideration of the Life of Adam and Eve where Satan rebels against worshipping Adam and asserts that he will set his throne above the stars of heaven and be like the Most High (15:3), a phrase with a very close parallel with 2 Enoch 29;4. And, the references to exalting a throne above the stars or clouds and being like the Most High are strong echoes of Isa. 14:12-14. Perhaps 11QMelch. 12 shows the pervasiveness of this legend of the fall of Satan which would have been current in New Testament times, when concerning Ps. 82:2 it says, “its interpretation concerns Satan and the spirits of his lot [who] rebelled by turning away from the precepts of God to . . .” Thus, when one starts with Ps. 82 and its presupposed malfunction and follows the legend through the apocalyptic material, which often took obscure canonical passages and developed them and comes back to Ps. 82 as it was handled at Qumran, one finds that the legend of the fall of Satan is assumed to account for the malfunction.