Being a True History of the Light-Bringer and the Name of the Adversary
I've been prompted to explain how the title 'Lucifer', meaning 'light-bearer' in
Latin, came to refer to the
Tempter/
Enemy form of
Satan. I shall attempt to do so, setting out my sources as I go.
According to a fascinating article rebutting accusations of
Satanism levelled at
Freemasons, found at http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/Writings/LuciferandSatan.html, the name Lucifer was used by the
Romans as an epithet for the
morning star - specifically, what we now know as the
planet Venus. The name was associated with a personification of the planet, not as a
goddess, but as a
demi-god or
titan, 'a son of
Astraeus and
Aurora or
Eos, of
Cephalus and
Aurora, or of
Atlas'. This Lucifer is also 'called the father of Ceyx, Daedalion, and of the Hesperides'. The name Lucifer is also applied as a surname to the goddesses
Artemis and
Aurora, who are beneficial in aspect, and
Hecate, who is considered somewhat sinister, though not the Queen of Witches portrayed by an unknown editor of
Macbeth. The
Masonic page cites
Sir William Smith's
Smaller Classical Dictionary as its source for this information.
So what do these Roman figures have to do with the
Jewish and
Christian idea of
Satan? Is this another insidious attempt - as with the timing of
Christmas and
Saturnalia - to subvert inoffensive
pagan practice to the service of the church machine? Not exactly. It may have been portrayed this way with hindsight by writers like
John Milton, who inconsistently uses '
Jove' as an epithet of his own God in some poems, while depicting pagan idols tumbling down '
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity'. In fact, no such subversion took place, although the name Lucifer certainly was mis-applied in a fascinating variety of contexts.
The connexion of a 'light bringer' or 'morning star' with Satan derives from
Isaiah 14:12, which (in the
Authorized Version reads '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!' This is generally taken to be an allegorical reference to the arrogance of King
Tiglath-Pileser III of
Babylon. (Verse 4 of the same chapter prefaces the denunciation with 'thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon...') This image is the opposite of that of a 'meteoric rise' - Tiglath-Pileser is seen as plunging to earth like a shooting star. The original
Hebrew (according to the Masonic site, quoting
E. Theodore Mullen, Jr.,
The Assembly of the Gods: The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature) is (in modern characters) 'HeYLeL BeN-ShaCHaR'. Note the 'ben-' in there, typically indicating 'son of'. In the
Greek Old Testament, the
Septuagint, this is rendered as 'Phosphoros' - 'light-bearer' again - and thus into the
Latin of the
Vulgate as 'Lucifer'. No deliberate allusion is being made here either to Satan or to the Roman Lucifers.
As a falling star was used as the image of the evil spirit known as
Wormwood in
Revelation, later scholars such as
Origen and
St Augustine of Canterbury conflated the two allusions and took
Lucifer to mean
Satan - Satan in the sense of the
Devil, the enemy of God and Man, rather than the
angel depicted in
Job. This image itself is from the
second temple period, rather than earlier Jewish thought. Further confusion dervies from the name of Lucifer Calaritanus (d. c.370), bishop of
Cagliari in
Sardinia, who was an opponent of
Arius, and founded the ultra-orthodox
Luciferian sect, which was condemned by
St Jerome for various technical reasons. References to this Lucifer and these Luciferians without context served further to complicate the issue of the use of this name.
It was with poets such as Milton that the synthesis was complete, and the name of the light-bringer came to be associated fairly indelibly with the idea of a personal devil, the 'first born angel' who opposed God.
Although I've used the aforementioned Masonic site as my principal reference, I feel I should back that up by saying that
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and my own (brief) theological training back up what is asserted here.