The devil is a mythical personification of evil as conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of the Devil can be summed up as 1. a principle of evil independent from God, 2. an aspect of God, 3. a created being turning evil (a fallen angel) or 4. a symbol of human evil.
Each tradition, culture, and religion with a devil in its mythos offers a different lens on manifestations of evil. The history of these perspectives intertwines with theology, mythology, psychiatry, art, and literature, developing independently within each of the traditions. In Christian and Islamic traditions, the Devil is often seen as a tempter who leads people into sin and commands demons. It occurs historically in many contexts and cultures, and is given many different names—Satan (Judaism), Lucifer (Christianity), Beelzebub, Mephistopheles (German), Iblis or Azazil (Islam)—and attributes: it is portrayed as blue, black, or red; it is portrayed as having horns on its head, and without horns, and so on.Arp, Robert. The Devil and Philosophy: The Nature of His Game. Open Court, 2014. . pp. 30–50
Etymology The Modern English word devil derives from the Middle English devel, from the Old English dēofol, that in turn represents an early Germanic borrowing of the Latin diabolus. This in turn was borrowed from the Greek diábolos, "slanderer".διάβολος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
Definitions In his book The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity, Jeffrey Burton Russell discusses various meanings and difficulties that are encountered when using the term devil. He does not claim to define the word in a general sense, but he describes the limited use that he intends for the word in his book—limited in order to "minimize this difficulty" and "for the sake of clarity". In this book Russell uses the word devil as "the personification of evil found in a variety of cultures", as opposed to the word Satan, which he reserves specifically for the figure in the Abrahamic religions.
Yvonne Bonnetain describes the Devil as a mythic explanation model, in form of a personified supernatural power, for death, disease, and everything hostile to humanity.Bonnetain, Yvonne S (2015). Loki: Beweger der Geschichten [Loki: Movers of the stories] . Roter Drache. . . p. 267
In the Introduction to his book Satan: A Biography, Henry Ansgar Kelly discusses various considerations and meanings that he has encountered in using terms such as devil and Satan, etc. While not offering a general definition, he describes that in his book "whenever diabolos is used as the proper name of Satan", he signals it by using "small caps".
The Oxford English Dictionary has a variety of definitions for the meaning of "devil", supported by a range of citations: "Devil" may refer to Satan, the supreme spirit of evil, or one of Satan's emissaries or demons that populate Hell, or to one of the spirits that possess a demoniac person; "devil" may refer to one of the "malignant deities" feared and worshiped by "heathen people", a demon, a malignant being of superhuman powers; figuratively "devil" may be applied to a wicked person, or playfully to a rogue or rascal, or in empathy often accompanied by the word "poor" to a person—"poor devil".Craige, W. A.; Onions, C. T. A. "Devil". A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Introduction, Supplement, and Bibliography. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1933) pp. 283–284
History Pre-Historic period to Archaic period Most early belief-systems had no unifying concept of evil.Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1987b). The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-9409-3. In the oldest available records, evil is part of nature. Evil came to be symbolized by figures portrayed as corrupt and wicked. In Mesopotamia, evil is sometimes said to derive from primordial chaos, but there are no inherently evil demons or devils. Various spirits and deities could do both good and evil depending on whim.Maul, S., Jansen-Winkeln, K., Niehr, H., Macuch, M., & Johnston, S. I. (2006). Demons. In Brill's New Pauly Online. Brill. The oldest known Egyptian beliefs had no evil deities; the gods were morally ambivalent and required to submit to the divine order of the cosmos, evil being an action violating said harmony. In old Hindu beliefs, deities, reflecting the supreme reality, are both benevolent and fierce. Even in the Old Testament, the evil, and hence devilish characteristics, are an expression of Yahweh's wrath. Among ancient Middle Eastern beliefs, Zorastrianism was the first institutionized belief-system which developed a clear demonology headed by a supreme spirit of Evil (Angra Mainyu), i.e. Devil.
Around 600 BC, Zarathustra urged his followers to turn away from the devas, in favor of dedicating worship to Ahura Mazda alone. Unique to Zarathustra's revelation was that he claimed that evil is not part of the Godhead (or ultimate reality), but a separate principle independent from God. For the formulation of Good and Evil as entirely separate principles, Zarathustra argued that God (Ahura Mazda) freely chooses goodness, while Angra Mainyu freely chooses evil. By doing so, he established the first known dualistic cosmological system, which would later influence other religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Islam. Alienated from the new sole deity, spirits of previous belief-systems thus became associated with the forces of evil and hence demons. As servants of the destructive spirit, the demons were believed to follow only evil; inflicting pain and causing destruction. Unfortunate souls, who find themselves in the domain of the evil spirits after death (i.e. in hell), are also tortured by the demons. Spirits found to align with the new sole deity then became the Godhead's servants (i.e. angels).Barr, James. "The question of religious influence: The case of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 53.2 (1985): 201-235
Thus, the originally monistic Canaanite form of Judaism absorbs parts of Persian dualistic tendencies during the Post-exilic period.Van der Toorn, Karel, Bob Becking, and Pieter Willem van der Horst, eds. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999. p. 236 However, Second-Temple Judaism, and later Christianity, differ from Persian dualism in some regards: the proposed omnipotence of God of the former does not allow for a radical dualism as proposed by Zorastrianism and later Manichaeism. Judeo-Christian tradition differs from earlier monistic beliefs by limiting the power of their Godhead through an evil principle or force, introduced by Zorastrianism. Christianity in particular, struggled with reconciling God's omnipresence with God's benevolence. While Zorastrianism sacrificed God's omnipotence for God's benevolence, thus giving rise to a principle Devil as independent from God, Christianity mostly insisted on the Devil being created and mildly dependent on God.
Platonism and early Christianity in Antiquity
One way Christianity addressed the problem of evil was by distinguishing between mind and body, an idea inherited from Greek Platonism. Similar to Zorastrianism, Platonism was dualistic. However, Platonism and Christianity differ from Persian dualism insofar as that they associated goodness only with spirit and evil with matter, proposing a form of mind–body dualism. According to Plato, God is like a craftsman (Demiurge) who builds the best possible world. However, God has to abide by the laws of nature and can only work with the material presented. Matter, thus, becomes the refractionary element in Plato's and later Neoplatonic models of the cosmos, resisting the perfection God originally intended.Calder, Todd, "The Concept of Evil", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/concept-evil/> Chapter: 2 In religious beliefs, applying such theories of evil, matter (Greek: ) becomes a sphere of lack of goodness and transforms matter into the devilish principle par excellence.Horst, P. W. v. d. (2018). Hyle Ὕλη. In Various Authors & Editors (ed.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible Online. Brill.
According to Neoplatonic cosmology, evil (or matter) results from a lack of goodness. The good spirit at the centre gives rise to several emanations, each decreasing in goodness and increasing in deficiency. Thus, in Christianity, following the privation theory of the Neo-Platonists, the Devil became the principle for the thing most remote from God.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Lucifer: the Devil in the middle ages. Cornell University Press, 1986. p. 36 Details were worked out by Christian scholars, such as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and John of DamascusRussell, Jeffrey Burton (1986). Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. Cornell University Press. . pp. 37-38 who argued that evil is merely a lack (or removal) of goodness. As such, the Devil was conceptualized as a fallen angel; a being brought forth as good first, but then turned evil by abandoning goodness.Felber, A., Hutter, M., Achenbach, R., Aune, D. E., Lang, B., Sparn, W., Reeg, G., Dan, J., Radtke, B., & Apostolos-Cappadona, D. (2011). Devil. In Religion Past and Present Online. Brill. https:// John of Damascus used the privation theory to combat dualistic approaches to evil.Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1986). Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. Cornell University Press. . p. 38 Similar rebuttals were written by Augustine of Hippo.Babcock, William S. (1988). "Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency". The Journal of Religious Ethics. 16 (1): 28–55
The possibly strongest form of body-mind dualism, and a radical step back towards absolute dualism as conceptualized earlier in Zorastrianism, was reestablished by Manichaeism. Manichaeism was a major religionR. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern TimesSUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 founded in the third century AD by the ParthianYarshater, Ehsan The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 3 (2), The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983. prophet Mani (), in the Sasanian Empire. One of its key concepts is the doctrine of Two Principles and Three Moments: the world could be described as resulting from a past moment, in which two principles (good and evil) were separate, a contemporary moment in which both principles are mixed due to an assault of the world of darkness on the realm of light, and a future moment when both principles are distinct forever.
Spread through Europe in late Antiquity and early Medieval Age