Does Satan exist? A Jewish Perspective....

Last night, I caught part of a debate on Nightline as to whether Satan was real, or a mythical being. It got me to thinking about the Jewish answer to this question.

Usually, Satan is not given much prominence in Jewish thought and the Old Testament, although he's mentioned in the Book of Job. Here he's an angel in the service of God, who's role is to test an individual's faith. He's not God's adversary, or cosmic opponent. It is usually God seen as the one delivering punishment for wrong-doing and it's not mentioned that those being punished whether in Sodom, or Nineveh, are being tempted by Satan, or anyone else. Rather the emphasis is on personal responsibility for the actions of the wrongdoers.

Judaism, especially Kabbalah, sees evil not as something separate and personified, but as an imbalance in cosmic energies (the Sefirot) that need's to be corrected. It is the individual human being, as God's co-creator and the only creature with free-will that has the responsibility of restoring universal balance and turning it towards goodness.

This all changes with the rise of Christianity which sees humans as sinful, fallen beings and Satan/Lucifer as the arch-enemy of Jesus. It creates for great drama and I believe was meant to help convert the pagans of the Roman Empire, who were familiar with myths of celestial battles between gods and demons. It's part of the process of Christianity, as the official religion of the empire, assimilating foreign beliefs into itself and becoming the religion about Jesus instead of the faith of Jesus.

If Satan does exist, I tend to believe he's one of the angels, or creative forces, in service to God as depicted in the Book of Job. He works only with God's permission and is not his opponent. It would be totally consistent with Jewish theology to say that he represents mankinds animal nature, or basic instincts that tempt his higher consciousness with a multitude of physical desires. This is metaphorically told in the first chapters of Genesis as the fall of Adam and Eve from the oneness of the spiritual realm where they were in communion with God to the seeming diversity and separateness of this physical world. We will discuss this further in the near future.

Thanks for reading. I'll keep you posted (ha, ha!).

Shmuel