Cosmik Debris Magazine Presents Closet Philosophy: What The Hell, October 2003

What The Hell

It's October and that means two things here in California: the recall election results are in and Halloween is upon us. I don't know which is scarier.
The recall has been such a damn circus. The Republicans have been making out with Gray Devil, er, making out that Governor Gray Davis is first cousin to the Devil here. Look, I don't like the guy that much but that's taking it a little too far. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not the Devil either, but his election may well be proof of how much California's education system has deteriorated in the years since Prop 13 passed.
Actually I don't believe in The Devil anyway. And strange to say, that belief puts me in a minority. More evidence of lousy education.
What is it about Americans that we can be so taken with the idea of the Devil anyway? Last I looked it was the 21st Freaking Century! We all have digital watches and flush toilets, well at least all of us down at the club do, but in spite of all that the Age Of Reason gave us, polls still say that 2 out of 3 Americans believe in something that's straight out of medieval superstition. Among Republicans it's even higher, nearly 80% say they believe in the Devil. And he looks just like Gray Bustamante.
Okay, so you live outside California and never saw that stupid exercise in morphing that mashed the face of Cruz Bustamante and Gray Davis together to make a white haired, mustachioed gollum to scare the tiny minds of Golden State voters enough to elect a guy who plays a robot.
It's just plain SAD that we can't muster up a little more reason in these modern times. Actually we don't even much agree on who or what the Devil really is. The subject came up a few weeks ago at work when one of my more evangelical co-workers, a nice enough guy who studies the Bible with other members of his church during the week, started talking about the Devil and how he used to be an angel named Lucifer and fell from Heaven and all. Naturally I felt compelled to step in and correct him. Why? Because he wasn't talking about anything that's in the Bible, that's why. He was telling the story of Milton's Paradise Lost.
Ho hum, so many well meaning Christians can't even get their own church's story straight about the Devil. The Judeo-Christian tradition only plays at being monotheistic, you know. Not only do Christians split their One God into a Trinity, but most insist on believing in this other divine being that's capable of supernatural acts just like God is. Sounds like they believe in at least two Gods to me. And let's not bring in all the semi-divine beings like the choirs of angels, saints, demons and other spirits into the discussion, thank you.
Maybe it's time to go medieval on you guys. Or at least it's time to go pedantic on you. Don't give me that blank look like you just voted for Schwarzenegger! I said pedantic! OK, I'll save you a trip to the Funk & Wagnalls - it means treating you like schoolkids. We are going to have a test on The Devil! Don't worry, all questions are based on the venerable King James Bible. This should be easy, right?

Let's begin with Lucifer -- How many times does the name Lucifer appear in the Bible?

Never
Once
8 times
666 times

The Devil has many names, which of these are other names according to the Bible (mark all that apply)

Beelzebub
Mephistopheles
Sargon
Gozor

In which book of the Bible does the name Satan first appear?

Genesis
Exodus
Job
Revelation

How many times does Satan's name appear in the Book Of Revelation?

Never
Once
8 times
666 times

True or False -- The Bible says The Devil grants wishes to people and buys their souls with a contract.
True or False -- To get to Hell the Bible says we must cross the River Styx in a boat piloted by Charon.
True or False - The Bible says the Devil once went to war against God and he's in Hell because he lost.
According to the Bible what was Satan originally?

The snake in the Garden of Eden
God's District Attorney
God's favorite angel
The destroyer of Sodom and Gomorrah

Pens down! And now the results of that trial.

Lucifer is mentioned ONCE in the Bible, in the Book Of Isaiah. Here are the verses:
14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
14:13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14:14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
14:15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
14:16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

Many Biblical scholars consider "Lucifer" to be a reference to the King of Babylon. Babylon is in the East relative to Jerusalem and their king was equated with the Morning Star, Venus. The lines about falling most likely refer to the conquering of Babylon by Persia. Did you notice how in verse sixteen it clearly states that Lucifer is a man? This story goes on a couple more verses but basically it's a short passage. It was amplified, and rather amply amplified, into the story of Paradise Lost by John Milton which was published in 1667.

Only "A" is worth credit. Beelzebub is the name of a certain King in the Old Testament. It is translated as Lord of The Flies, but it may well be an ancient thumbing of the nose towards this king because if you change the last letter, it means Lord of the House or Temple. By the New Testament however, all reference to the king had been lost and it was more or less a synonym for the Devil. When John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, he made Beelzebub one of the main demons underneath Lucifer. Mephistopheles is a name for the Devil but it comes from the story of Dr. Johann Faust in the 1500's, which we will expand upon later. Sargon is the name of a couple different Assyrian kings in the Bible. It is also the name of an ancient soul trapped in a globe in the Star Trek episode, "Return To Tomorrow," from 1968. Gozor is the nasty entity in the first Ghostbusters movie.

The name Satan first appears in the Book Of Job.

In spite of all that talk of the Beast, Satan's name appears in the Book Of Revelation only 8 times.

False, the whole thing about buying souls with contracts is from the story of Faust.

The river Styx and Charon is from Greco-Roman mythology, and Italian Dante Alighieri wrote it into his Divine Comedy, published around 1320. It's become accepted as part of our culture's image of Hell, but it's not in the Bible.

False, that's all in Milton's Paradise Lost.

He's God's DA. Most people equate the Serpent in the Garden of Eden with Satan, but such a connection is never explicitly stated. The serpent is clearly a malevolent spirit, except that lots of fundamentalists claim LITERAL interpretation, so it must be said that Satan's literally NOT in the Book Of Genesis. In the Book of Job, Satan was rather like an investigator or accuser in the court of Heaven who was checking out our earthly endeavors and reporting back to God. God basically indulges Satan in a bet over Job's fidelity. Through Satan, God rains down all manner of tribulations on Job to break his faith; Satan doesn't lift a finger in all that nasty business without God's permission.

To recap, much of our modern day conceptions about the Devil don't come from the Bible at all. Instead they mainly come from three works of literature -- Dante's Divine Comedy, John Milton's Paradise Lost and the story of Faust.
To quickly summarize them, The Divine Comedy is a tour of Hell in three parts - Purgatorio, Inferno and Paradiso. So much is lifted from Virgil's Aeneid that Dante makes the dead Roman poet his guide through the various levels. John Milton's Paradise Lost is the story of Lucifer, God's favorite angel, who was upset about the creation of Man and went to war about it. Johann Faust apparently was a real person, who lived in Germany about 1540. He was kind of a scoundrel who claimed that he received magical powers from the Devil. Reading through what little we know of Dr. Faust I keep thinking he might have been something of an entertainer, perhaps doing parlor tricks like an early day John Edwards or David Copperfield, but writers like Christopher Marlowe in the 17th century and Johann Wolfgang Goethe in the 18th seized on his story and expanded it into some fine literature.
After these sources most of the underlying imagery for the Devil, his abode and his purpose on Earth comes from Greco-Roman and Persian (Zoroastrian) mythology, which invaded Jewish thought long before Christ arrived. What's that I hear you say? "The best trick of the Devil was to convince people he didn't exist?" Jeez, why don't you just return to the Dark Ages if you think that passes for logic. And stop quoting from the Usual Suspects too.
Remember all this as you go to your macabre Halloween parties this year -- just because a book is old doesn't mean that it's correct or accurate. Next Halloween maybe we'll go in for research on werewolves and vampires. Meanwhile we'll try to keep our new Republican Governor from sucking us dry.
No! I have to keep telling myself that there are worse fates than having Schwarzenegger as Governor, I just can't think of any. I feel like the young kid in T2 where he asks the Terminator not to kill anyone, so he responds by shooting someone in the leg. "He'll live" he says. I hope that's not the cure he's thinking of for our budget.
Maybe I'll just go back into the Closet and hide behind some armor plate for the next three years. Thanks for reading and until next month the Closet is closed.

And for those of you keeping score in our test:
0 right - Return to the dungeon immediately
1 right - At least you picked up that #7 was already answered
2 right - The PTL channel thanks you for your donation
3 right - Arnold thanks you for your vote
4 right - You deserve your digital watch
5 right - You are a Secular Humanist and you are damned
6 right - You tried to show Dogma to the last JWs who knocked on your door
7 right - You are a scholar of Biblical proportions
8 right - You are a Charter Member of Friends Of Rusty

(C) 2003 - Rusty Pipes

Official Disclaimer: The publisher and editors of Cosmik Debris Magazine are legally forced to proclaim that the opinions expressed in this column are only those of the author. On the other hand, we're very pleased to announce that we all read it and failed the test miserably. Y'know why we're pleased to announce this? Do ya? Because we're sick to death of all the letters from the Christian Right saying we're clearly Satan worshippers, that's why! If we were, we'd have aced that test, but oh no! We all sucked at it! In fact, we were stunned to find out how much bullshit the hellfire 'n' brimstone cowboys had been throwing into the Sunday morning sermons over the years. Whatever it takes to fill the silver plates. Gee, I kinda got off topic here, so please don't sue us. Please sue Rusty. But be prepared for demonic possession and other unpleasant stuff. You know... just FYI. Thank you.