FREETHINKER'S
BOOK OF
MORMON

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The Book of Mormon portrays a modern idea of Satan that did not exist at the time that the narrative is purported to have taken place.

Satan

God, the Source of Good and Evil

Once the Israelites parted company with their Canaanite neighbors and became monotheists, their tribal god, Yahweh, became the source of all things, including evil and calamity.

I make peace and create evil. I the LORD do all these things. (Isaiah 45:7)

…shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? (Amos 3:6)

Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good? (Lamentations 3:38)

The Israelites no longer had other, foreign gods to blame for their misfortunes. There was no one but Yahweh to take responsibility. This put the Israelites in the awkward position of worshiping a god who not only brought happiness but also misery and death.

Early Satans

The earliest uses of the word “satan” (השטן) in the Hebrew Bible during the First Temple period refer not to an single evil entity who opposed the Israelite god Yahweh but to an earthly and angelic agents who served Yahweh in a special role. The Hebrew word for satan isn’t a name yet. It was a job title. Yahweh, being the source of good and evil, still directed these agents in their jobs.

In 1 Kings 11, Yahweh sends two separate human satans (i.e. adversaries) to punish Solomon for following his wives into idolatry: Hadad and Eliadah. Yahweh sends an angelic satan in Numbers 22 to block Balaam’s path.

In the Second Temple literature of the Hebrew Bible after the Babylonian exile tell of satans who test the faithfulness of humankind and accuse them in God’s court if they fail. The satan in Job is a member of the heavenly court who helped Yahweh to test Job’s loyalty by destroying his livestock and killing all of his children. The angelic satan in Zechariah 3:1 is the prosecuting attorney in Yahweh’s court who tries to find out the high priest Joshua’s sins. Whatever trouble these satans made, it was still at the behest of Yahweh.

The uncomfortable belief that they worshiped a god who both blessed and cursed them without explanation may have led the Israelites to gradually create an autonomous evil figure to be Yahweh’s scapegoat. An autonomous satan could take the blame for creating evil in the world thereby leaving Yahweh blameless. ¹

This transition is illustrated by a suggestive change in the story of David’s census. 2 Samuel 24 tells the story of how David numbered his people and Yahweh sent a plague that killed 70,000 people in punishment. A later writer retells this story in 1 Chronicles 21 but with a critical difference: Yahweh tempts David to number the people in 2 Samuel, but Satan tempts him in 1 Chronicles. The chronicler seems unable to accept a god who both tempts David to sin and punishes tens of thousands of innocents when David falls to the temptation, so he changes the story to put the blame on an autonomous Satan. Note that this is the first time in the Hebrew Bible that Satan appears as a name “Satan” (שטן) rather than a title “the satan” (השטן).

The Serpent

It must be mentioned that their is no basis in the Hebrew Bible for the identification of the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve in the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden with Satan. This interpretation appears sometime during the intertestamental period between the writing of the Hebrew Bible and the beginning of the Christian New Testamant.²

Lucifer

One Era’s Deities Become the Next Era’s Demons ³

The modern mythos of Satan share many similarities to the deities of neighboring cultures: Canaanite, Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman. Over time, the angelic servant of the Hebrew Bible takes on the characteristics of deities from these cultures. It has not been demonstrated that the modern Satan mythos borrowed from some of these cultures. The similarities are suggestive, at least, that the original Israelite idea of Satan borrowed from the mythology of Israel’s neighbors and that our present-day Satan came into existence after the writing of the Hebrew Bible.

Historically, when a culture replaces one set of gods with another, it tends to relegate the losing set to the status of evil spirits. The Christians made demons out of the Olympian deities of Greece and Rome, just as the Olympian religion had earlier transformed the earthbound Titans into evil spirits. ⁴

There are echoes of the Satan that we know today in many mythological characters:

The Canaanite god of death, sterility, and the underworld. Mot whose name means “Death” rules from a throne named “Pit”. Mot feuds with his brother Ba’al, the god of fertility.⁵ A Canaanite demon of the netherworld, Habayu, had horns and a tail.⁶

Anubis, an Egyptian god, judged the dead in a subterranean underworld Set—the Egyptian god of the desert, darkness, and Chaos—warred with his brother Osiris and his nephew Horus.

[(Wikipedia:)Zoroastrianism]], the Persian state religion, taught of a dualistic pantheon: the good creator god, Ahura Mazda, was opposed by a malevolent god of darkness, Ahriman. Ahriman his host of demonic servant were believed to be the source of all death, disease, evil, and temptation in the world. This absolutely dualistic pantheon was an innovation in religion that may have influenced the Israelites to relinquish the belief that Yahweh was the source of both good and evil.

The Israelites would have come into greater contact with Zoroastrianism after Cyrus conquered Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to Judea. The books of Chronicles, Zechariah, and Job—which showed Satan in greater opposition to Yahweh—all date to this period. Many aspects of Zoroastrianism made their way into the Abrahamic religions.⁷

Greek civilization also lent ideas to the development of Satan. Orphism preached a dualism between the immortal soul and the cursed body in which the soul is trapped. This dualism between matter and spirit greatly influenced the Abrahamic traditions. ⁸

Satan took on aspects of two Greek gods: Hades and Pan. Hades ruled over the underworld where all the dead went. The Old Testament did not include the idea of eternal punishment in Hell.

Satan in the Book of Mormon

Hell

Egyptians believed that all the dead go to the subterranean underworld, Duat, where they are judged (except Pharaohs). Good souls were allowed to live on. Evil souls were tortured and then “consumed by fire or by hungry demons” (i.e. Ammit, the demoness whose name means “Devourer” or “Bone Eater”).⁹

Zoroastrianism taught that the righteous dead would be rewarded eternally while the unrighteous would be delivered to sadistic pain and torture.¹⁰

Hell in the Book of Mormon

Many references in the Book of Mormon are compatible with the Israelite concept of Sheol. Many of these are those quoted from biblical texts. Some references reflect modern ideas about Hell.

Hell as a place of fiery torture:

Yea, they are grasped with death and hell; and death, and hell, and the Devil, and all that have been seized therewith, must stand before the Throne of God, and be judged according to their works, from whence they must go into the place prepared for them, even a lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment. (2 Nephi 28:23. See also 2 Nephi 9:19, Jacob 3:11.)

Hell as a place where only the wicked go:

Wo unto the liar: for he shall be thrust down to hell. […] Wo unto them who commit whoredoms: for they shall be thrust down to hell. (2 Nephi 9:34,36. See also 1 Nephi 1:13; 15:29,35, 2 Nephi 28:15; 26:10, Jacob 7:18, Alma 54:7, Mormon 8:17, Moroni 8:20–21.)

There is a hope of deliverance from Hell:

And again I ask, was the bands of death broken, and the chains of hell which encircled them about, were they loosed? I say unto you, yea, they were loosed, and their souls did expand, and they did sing redeeming love. And I say unto you, that they are saved. (Alma 5:9. See also 2 Nephi 33:6, Jacob 3:11, Alma 5:6; 19:29; 26:13–14.)

Satan reigns in Hell:

[…] the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which giveth the spirit of the Devil power to captivate, to bring you down to hell, that he may reign over you in his own kingdom. (2 Nephi 2:29. See also Alma 12:11.)

personal spiritual entity named Satan who works against God and rules over Hell, a place where the wicked will be punished for eternity. This dualistic concept of Satan as an evil entity in opposition to a good God is a modern concept that is not seen in the pre-Exilic parts of the Hebrew Bible. The concepts of Satan and Hell found in the Book of Mormon derived from Zoroastrian and Greek ideas about their gods, not from Israelites prior to their Babylonian Exile. [1]

The inclusion of these modern concepts point to modern authorship.

¹ Wray, T.J. and Mobley, G., The Birth of Satan, pp. 39–40 (↑)

² ibid. p. 69 (↑)

³ ibid p. 25 (↑)

⁴ Russell, J.B., The Prince of Darkness, p. 8, as quoted in Wray and Mobley, p. 25 (↑)

⁵ Wray and Mobley, pp. 79.–81. (↑)

⁶ ibid., p. 81. (↑)

⁷ ibid. pp. 85–87 (↑)

⁸ ibid. p. 88. (↑)

⁹ ibid., p. 82 (↑)

¹⁰ The Book of Arda Viraf, chapters 18–52 (↑)