¹ Cf. Forsyth, Neil, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) 107Google Scholar : “In the collection of documents…known to Christians as the Old Testament, the word [Satan] never appears…as the name of the adversary…rather, when the satan appears in the Old Testament, he is a member of the heavenly court, albeit with unusual tasks.” Russell, Jeffrey B. (The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity [Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1977]Google Scholar chaps. 3, 4), investigating in his work “perceptions of evil,” begins with a discussion of evil figures including examples from India, Egypt, and Greece. The present discussion focuses instead on the various perceptions of Satan found in New Testament sources and their Jewish antecedents and parallels. In his discussion of Christian theodicy, , Russell (The Devil, 222Google Scholar ) notes that “generations of socially oriented theologians dismissed the Devil and the demons as superstitious relics of little importance to the Christian message. On the contrary, the Devil…stands at the center of the New Testament teaching that the Kingdom of God is at war with…the Kingdom of the Devil. The Devil is essential in the New Testament because he constitutes an important alternative to Christian theodicy.” On this point I agree with Russell but go considerably further: in New Testament sources the devil plays a major role not only in theodicy but simultaneously in the Christians' social identification, both of themselves and of those they regard as “others.”

² See, for example, Murray, Robert, “Jews, Hebrews, and Christians: Some Needed Distinctions,” NovT 24 (1982) 194–208Google Scholar ; and idem, “'Disaffected Judaism' and Early Christianity: Some Predisposing Factors” in Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs, eds., “To See Ourselves as Others See us” : Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985) 263–81Google Scholar . I am grateful to my colleague Peter Brown for referring me to the former article, and to Jacob Neusner for discussion of the latter.

³ See, for example, , Justin1 Apol. 5Google Scholar ; 2 Apol. 5 ; , AthenagorasLegatio 24–27Google Scholar ; , TatianOr. Graec. 7-8, 16–17Google Scholar . Also see Wey, Heinrich, Die Funktionen der bdsen Geister bei den griechischen Apologeten des zweiten Jahrhunderts nach Christus (Winterthur: P. G. Keller, 1957)Google Scholar ; and Pagels, Elaine, “Christian Apologists and ‘The Fall of the Angels’: An Attack on Roman Imperial Power?” HTR 78 (1985) 301–25Google Scholar.

⁴ Note, for example, 1 Chr 21:1, where Satan “incited” King David to evil; or Job 2:3, where the Lord himself admits that Satan “incited” him to act against Job. Numbers tells the story of Balaam, who decided to go where God did not want him to go. God sent one of his angels—here called in Hebrew the “messenger of the Lord”—to oppose him, but this opponent, invisible to Balaam, was seen by his mount, who stopped in her tracks. Balaam beat her until the ass spoke out and rebuked her master (Num 22:21-35).

⁵ See Cross, Frank M., “The Council of Yahweh in Second Isaiah,” JNES 12 (1953) 274–77Google Scholar . See also , Forsyth, The Old Enemy, 110Google Scholar : “The word ‘Satan’ is a title rather than a proper name, since it appears with the definite article, roughly equivalent to ‘Attorney General,’ or ‘Public Prosecutor.’”

⁶ Schaferdiek, Knut, “Satan in the Post-Apostolic Fathers,” s.v. “οατανασ” TDNT 7 (1971) 163–65.Google Scholar

⁷ Kuhn, Harold B., “The Angelology of the Non-Canonical Jewish Apocalypses,” JBL 67 (1948) 217.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Montefiore, Claude G., Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews (London: Williams and Norgate, 1892) 429.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Moore, George Foot, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, vol. 1: The Age of the Tannaim (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927) 401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ See, for many examples of such argumentation, Klein, Charlotte, Anti-Judaism in Christian Theology (trans. Quinn, E.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978)Google Scholar.

¹² Smith, Jonathan Z., “Introduction to‘The Prayer of Joseph,’” in Charlesworth, James H., ed., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1985) 2. 701.Google Scholar

¹³ See, in particular, the fine essays by Jonathan Z. Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” and William S. Green, “Otherness Within: Towards a Theory of Difference in Rabbinic Judaism,” in , Neusner and , Frerichs, “To See Ourselves as Others See Us” 3–48 and 49-69Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Smith, Morton, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971) 62–146.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Levenson, Jon D., Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988)Google Scholar . I am grateful to John Collins for refer-ring me to this work.

¹⁶ Ibid., 44.

¹⁷ The author of 1 Chronicles apparently intended to mitigate the offense caused by such alternate interpretations as that recorded in 2 Sam 24:1, which claims that it was the Lord himself who, in anger against Israel, incited David to sin.

¹⁸ , Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics, 62.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Hanson, Paul, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975) 125.Google Scholar

²⁰ I appreciated the discussion by Forsyth (The Old Enemy, 114-15) who compares Satan's role to that of an agent of government surveillance, a kind of heavenly J. Edgar Hoover, “who, as director of the FBI, no longer checks his every move with the president, but imperceptibly, at first, begins to act on his own initiative.” Forsyth, apparently following Hanson's argument, notes too that here Satan becomes a “cosmic projection of the groups hostile to the temple hierocracy” (p. 117).

²¹ Certain anthropological studies of witchcraft point out that it is precisely such persons who are most likely to be accused of witchcraft in certain tribal societies. See, for example , Marwick, Max, ed., Witchcraft and Sorcery (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970)Google Scholar . Note the summary in Philip Mayer's introduction to that book: “The witch is conceived as a person within one's own local community and often even within one's own household” (p. 60). I am grateful to Menachem Lorberbaum for pointing out to me the passage in Deut 13:6, “Your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul” may “incite” (rvon) a person to idolatry and thus apostasy.

²² Which account is earlier (Genesis 6 or 1 Enoch 6-11) remains a debatable issue. See, for example , Milik, J. T., The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Q&mran Caves (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976)Google Scholar ; Nickelsburg, George W. E., “Apocalyptic and Myth in 1 Enoch 6-11,” JBL 96 (1977) 383–405Google Scholar ; Barker, Margaret, “Some Reflections on the Enoch Myth,” JSOT 15 (1980) 7–29Google Scholar . Cf. Alexander, Philip S., “The Targumim and Early Exegesis of the‘Sons of God’ in Genesis 6,” JJS 23 (1972) 60–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ For a survey of this theme in early Jewish literature and a full discussion of its appearance in rabbinic literature, see Peter Schafer's fine book, Rivalitdt zwischen Engeln und Menschen: Untersuchungen zur rabbinischen Engelvorstellung (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1975)Google Scholar . For evidence in Muslim sources see Awn's, PeterSatan's Tragedy and Redemption: Ibtls in Sufi Psychology (Leiden: Brill, 1983)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Tcherikover, Victor, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (New York: Atheneum, 1970).Google Scholar

²⁵ Nickelsburg, George W. E., “Apocalyptic and Myth in 1 Enoch 6-11,” JBL 96 (1977) 195–233.Google Scholar

²⁶ Suter, David, “Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest: The Problem of Family Purity in I Enoch 6-16,” HUCA 50 (1979) 115–35Google Scholar . Cf. Nickelsburg, George W. E., “The Books of Enoch in Recent Research,” RelsRev 1 (1981) 210–17Google Scholar.

²⁷ Collins, John, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1984) 127.Google Scholar

²⁸ George W. E. Nickelsburg, “Revealed Wisdom as a Criterion for Inclusion and Exclusion,” in , Neusner and , Frerichs, “To See Ourselves as Others See Us,” 76Google Scholar.

²⁹ See the article by Nickelsburg, George W. E., “Riches, the Rich, and God's Judgment in I Enoch 92-105 and the Gospel According to Luke,” NTS 25 (1979) 324–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ On the basis of the Watcher story in 1 Enoch 6-16 , , Forsyth (The Old Enemy, 167–70Google Scholar ) comments that it implies “a radically different theology” from that of the Genesis primordial history, in that “in Enoch we have heard nothing about a wicked humanity. Instead, all human suffering is attributed to the angelic revolt and the sins of their giant brood.” Yet as I read the Enoch literature, its authors demonstrate awareness of the tension—and correlation!–of human and angelic guilt, or at least of the possibility of contradiction. The passage may be included as a corrective to any who exempt humans from responsibility by blaming the angels’ transgressions. For a discussion, see Himmelfarb, Martha, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ This tendency is noted by , Nickelsburg, in “Revealed Wisdom,” 73–91Google Scholar , and more fully articulated by Collins in Apocalyptic Imagination.

³² For discussion, see especially James H. Charlesworth, “The Triumphant Majority as Seen by a Dwindled Minority: The Outsider According to the Insider of the Jewish Apocalypses,” in , Neusner and , Frerichs, “To See Ourselves as Others See Us,” 70–130Google Scholar.

³³ Daniel foresees that foreign kings “shall seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant; but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action” (Dan 11:32). In the age to come “some shall awake to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan 12:2).

³⁴ , Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 149–50.Google Scholar

³⁵ Nickelsburg, George W. E., Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 79Google Scholar ; Mendels, Doron, The Land of Israel as a Political Concept in Hasmonean Literature (Tubingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1987) 59Google Scholar.

³⁶ Flusser, David, “The Apocryphal Book of Ascensio lsaiae and the Dead Sea Sect,” 1EJ 3 (1953) 34–47Google Scholar ; cf. also Marc Philonenko, “Le Martyre d'Esaie et l'histoire de la secte de QoumrSn,” in idem, ed. , Pseudepigraphes de I'Ancien Testament et manuscrits de la Mer Morte (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967) 1–10Google Scholar.

³⁷ In fact, the way this author correlates cosmic conflict with internal social conflict was not lost on the Christian convert Justin Martyr. Writing his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew about three hundred years later, Justin not only refers approvingly to the Martyrdom of Isaiah, but explicitly declares that the death of Isaiah, “whom you [Jews!] sawed asunder with a wooden saw,” was “a mysterious type of Christ being about to cut your nation in two, and to raise those worthy of the honor to the everlasting kingdom along with the holy patriarchs and prophets; but…he will send others to the condemnation of the unquenchable fire along with similarly disobedient and insubordinate people from all the nations” (Justin Dial. 120.5; my emphasis).

³⁸ The figure often called (“worthless,” evil, destruction) often is designated in the Qumran texts.

³⁹ Yadin, Yigael, The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962) 229.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ For an excellent discussion of the ambivalence of good and evil in later sources, see Halperin, David J., The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel's Vision (Tubingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1988)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ , Yadin, The Scroll of the War, 236.Google Scholar

⁴² , Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 128–31.Google Scholar

⁴³ See, for example , Black, Matthew, The Scrolls and Christian Origins (New York: Scribner, 1961) 91–117Google Scholar.