THE DEVIL: A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
(Investigator 154, 2014
January)
The Devil was
first
invented by Zoroaster of Persia who called it Ahriman "the evil one."
In the
3rd century b.c. the
Jews created Satan from the Greek god Pan.
Hell was
invented in 600
b.c. by the Jewish author of Leviticus.
The
concept of good versus
evil predates Christianity. All older religions had it. Without this
"Bad Guy" all religions will not be able to function.
The
story of the Devil/Evil
is crucial to all religions. One must have a "Bad Guy" to counter the
"Good Guy" promoted by that particular religion.
The Good
Guys always win;
what a surprise?
The
concept of Hell and
Judgment at death was first described in the Old Testament "Book of
Daniel" composed around 165 b.c.
The
Devil had many names
over the centuries — Satan, Lucifer, Belial, Beelzebub, Baal, Loki, etc.
The
Devil is depicted in
may distorted forms of the ugly, serpents, dragons, monsters, etc.
Christianity
claimed he was
a fallen angel, kicked out of Heaven. Therefore God must have created
him in the first place. Ha! Ha!
Brian de
Kretser
Institute
for Research into
Religions
Darwin,
Australia.
THE DEVIL, the Ten Lost Tribes and Zoroaster
Anonymous
(Investigator 155, 2014
March)
ZOROASTER
Did
Zoroaster invent the
Devil as claimed by De Kretser in #154? Did the Old Testament get the
Devil from either Zoroaster or the Greek god Pan?
The Pan
connection seems a
new idea unmentioned in text books, therefore I'll consider the
Zoroaster connection.
Zoroaster was an Iranian religious reformer born near Tehran who lived
approximately 628 to 551 BC.
A POSSIBILITY
Archaeology
has not
discovered, and it's unknown, when belief in two embattled gods, one
good and one evil, first originated. If it goes back to the first
humans as indicated in the Bible then the transmission of that belief
could have progressed via many lines of human descent. In that case
Zoroaster and the Old Testament could be independent presentations of
older ideas derived from different sources.
TEN LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL
Alternatively,
it is
possible that Zoroaster got the idea of a conflict between two gods
from the Hebrew Scriptures that became the Old Testament:-
In 722
BCE, approximately
130 years before Zoroaster founded Zoroastrianism, Assyria forcibly
resettled 27,000 Israelites of the 10-tribe kingdom of Israel to
Mesopotamia and Media. Media lay to the north of Persia; the two
countries merged in the mid 6th century BC and the whole became
"Persia".
Israel's
destruction
actually involved three Assyrian kings — Tiglath Pileser, Shalmaneser V
and Sargon II — and multiple invasions and deportations from 734 to 715
BC. The Bible summarizes these events in II Kings 15:29; 17:24-41;
18:11; and I Chronicles 5:6, 26.
K.
Lawson Younger (2003)
shows that the deportations are confirmed in the annals of Tiglath
Pileser and Sargon II, and by archaeological discoveries in Israel and
Mesopotamia.
Assyrian
records also show
that Sargon conquered part of Media in 716 BCE and this makes plausible
the Bible's statement that Israelites were resettled there.
Most of
the resettled
Israelites were made forced laborers in agriculture and construction.
Others became soldiers or charioteers. Assyrian records show that some
became officials, translators, commanders, supervisors, consultants,
and even priests.
Many
Israelite deportees
adopted Assyrian names but tacked on to them a short form of "Yahweh",
the name of God. Younger (2003) writes:
A key
element
for detecting Israelite names in Assyria is the suffix "-Yau." Scholars
call this a theophoric element, a divine component in the name. The
particular theophoric element here is a form of Yahweh, the name of the
Israelite God. Many names with the "-Yau" suffix appear in Assyrian
military records, denoting a person's Israelite identity.
The dogma of some
modern
religious cults that the "lost tribes of Israel" moved to Europe and
founded the British people and other European nations is unhistorical,
unbiblical and fantasy. "British Israelism" suffered refutation already
in the 19th century from biblical analysis. For example, David Baron
authored The History of the Ten Lost
Tribes (1915) and included an
article from 1880 titled Are We The
Ten Tribes?
Also
wrong were secular
critics of the Bible who claimed that the Israelite deportation to
Mesopotamia and Media never happened. It happened and archaeology now
proves it.
ZOROASTER AND THE BIBLE
Zoroaster's
influence in
Media and Persia was limited. Zoroastrianism became Persia's official
religion only after 224 CE i.e. 700 years later.
Israelite
and Jewish
influence was greater than Zoroaster's for several centuries. Various
Persian rulers gave Jews favorable treatment. (II Chronicles 36:22-23;
Ezra 1:1-4; Nehemiah 2:1-8; Esther 10) The events recorded in the book
of Esther imply huge Jewish influence in Persia.
The
claim of Bible critics
that Bible doctrines were taken from Zoroastrianism is based on a few
broad similarities. For example, Zoroaster preached about two gods at
war, one good and the other evil, similar to Yahweh and Satan in the
Bible.
The Britannica Macropaedia
says, "The debt of Israel to its eastern neighbours in religious
matters is easy to demonstrate on a few precise points of minor
importance but less so in other more important points such as dualism,
angelology, and eschatology."
The
Israelites who were
resettled in Assyria and Media would have taken with them the Old
Testament books that were already written, or the priests among them
would have had them memorized.
Since
some Israelites
became Mesopotamian priests it's probable they mixed Israelite beliefs
into local beliefs, forming a hybrid religion. In this way Israelite
and Jewish Old Testament beliefs could have spread and inspired
Zoroaster's teaching about the Devil. Zoroaster began making converts
in the 590s BCE which allows for 130 years of Israelite and Old
Testament influence.
THE BIBLE
The
deported Israelites had
the five books of Moses and knew the narrative about the "Serpent" that
deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden. The serpent narrative is not an
entertainment story about a talking snake, but implies that there
exists a supernatural rival of God who made it seem a snake was talking.
A copy
of "Job" may also
have accompanied the Israelites during their deportation, or been sent
later (depending on when Job was composed). And Job in Chapters 1 &
2 teaches about a supernatural being as the cause of evil.
Similarly
with the book of
Ezekiel. Ezekiel was written in Babylon in the 570s BCE and a copy
could have been taken further east to the "lost tribes" in Media. This
would have coincided with Zoroaster's ministry.
In
Chapter 28, Ezekiel
criticizes the King of Tyre. Chapter 28 is commonly understood as
having a two-fold application — to the King of Tyre and to the "Devil".
This is suggested by lines such as "You were in Eden, the garden of
God" and "the guardian cherub drove you out".
Genesis,
Job and Ezekiel
have enough information for a theology about the Devil to have formed
and circulated even without the New Testament. The "lost tribes"
therefore had ideas about the Devil from their own Scriptures. And the
Israelite/Jewish presence in Media was extensive enough for Zoroaster
to have heard.
The
Zoroaster-Old Testament
connection is therefore similar to the Persian prophet Mani (215-276
CE) and the New Testament.
Mani
began to proclaim his
new religion of Manichaeism in 245 CE and incorporated many ideas from
the New Testament. Since Christianity had a presence in Persia at the
time, and ancient New Testament manuscripts from before Mani's lifetime
still exist, we know in this instance who plagiarized from whom.
The
Zoroaster situation is
more difficult because it's more ancient and Bible manuscripts from
that period are at present not known to have survived.
Therefore
I have made an
indirect case based on Israelites living in Media and Persia, and on
the Books of Moses being in Media up to 90 years before Zoroaster's
birth.
REFERENCES:
Anonymous, Christian
Origins in Iran? Investigator # 122
Younger, Jr., K. Lawson
Israelites in Exile, Biblical Archaeology Review, Nov/Dec, 2003.