The History of the Devil

Amazing hour documentary I think everyone should watch if they're interested.

The documentary discusses the origins of the devil and where certain concepts come from.

What I learned from watching this (Notes/ Summary if you can't watch):

• In the bible, there is no mention of a dark figure up against God in the early Testament.

• A misconception is that the serpent in Adam & Eve was the devil -  there is no mention of the serpent ever being the devil taking form, it's a talking serpent that is a symbol of evil - as Eve picked the apple from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

• Satan is only mentioned in the Bible as unwary angel. In the book of Job, Satan argues that Job is only obedient to God because he has a good life. God agreed for Satan to test Job by inflicting disease that would cause pain to him and his family. In the end, Job continues to worship God and Satan loses the argument. Satan was never depicted as a bad angel.

• In the Old Testament, heaven and hell does not exist. Instead, all people who die go to a place called Sheol.

• People have always believed in evil. In several religions, there are several god and bad gods. 3,500 years ago it was a Persian man named Zoroaster, a religious teacher, reduced the whole cast of good and evil Gods to 2; a Good God and a Bad God. This is what created a true separation of Good and Evil. These Persian ideas made their way into the Hebrew scriptures soon after.

• Greek culture comes to Israel. We all know Greek Mythology. The God that shaped our image of Satan was the Greek God - Hades, ruler of the underworld who has a black face or black beard and sits on a black throne with a black fork. He's also the God of wealth and abundance.

• In another Greek story, Zeus defeats the winged half-God/half-serpent Typhon and throws him down to into the underworld. This was the story that inspired God throwing the rebellious angel Satan into the underworld.

• When we think of hell - we think of fire, lava, and people being tortured. Where did it come from? In the New Testament, Jesus warns people of Gehenna. Gehenna is a town near Jerusalem which was a rubbish heap and it would stink so badly that they would set fire to the town that would burn for several days or even weeks. It was also where they burned the bodies of executed criminals. This was the inspiration for Hell.

• When the Romans conquered Jerusalem, they were hated and accused them of being demonic. In the Book of Revelation, the devil is known as The Beast with the symbol 666 appearing. The Beast 666 could refer to Caesar. If you take Nero Caesar in Aramaic and count out the numeral values of the letters, it comes to 666.

• 4 centuries after the death of Jesus, Constantine makes Christianity the official state religion and use Satan as a weapon for anyone who refused to convert or disagreed with the Church. And people who were "Satanic" were put to death. These were the earliest witch hunts.

• Because people worshiped Pagan Gods, the church had to discredit these Gods to get people to convert to Christianity. They turned the happy loving God Pan into a scary demon. He is depicted with horns.

All of this is told in the first 20 minutes of the documentary. The rest talks about how the Church and the government have used Satan to control the world and maintain power and how it is still used today.