"igd" <igd@iinet.com> wrote in message news:11ni3ccip6ht088@corp.supernews.com...

He may be reffering to the passage in the gospels where JC is spending 40 days in the desert and "Old Nick" offers him the cities of the world, Matthew 4, 1-11 for instance.  This business led at least some of the Gnostics to consider "Satan" as a guise of the demi-urge who is "the Lord of this world".

I find it somewhat amusing when people think of this verse of scripture as proof of the devil's dominion over the earth.  What if he were simply lying about his ability to deliver on such a promise?  Isn't this guy also known as "the father of lies"?  Why on earth (or in heaven, for that matter) would anybody presume the devil was being truthful?  Wouldn't it be much more likely that he was lying, making a false promise?  Yet, there go these supposedly aware Christians, believing exactly what the devil tells them to believe, despite the fact that God tells them quite explicitly that he's a liar.

Actually the whole notion of "Satan" as the priciple of evil is relatively new and almost certainly evolves out of Persian Dualist notions prevelant in the Hellenic milleiu of the times of the composition of the NT.

I don;t see that as a big jump.  It's in line with any dualistic system to regard everything as having an opposite.  If God and what God wants are "good", then there must be someone or something who is and wants "evil".

Look at the opening of the book of Job for a more originally Hebrew view of Lucifer as God's attorney general, that is to say the prosecuter or accuser before the "court of Heaven".

The Catholics recently did away with an office of "Devil's Advocate" who served exactly that function.  The job of the Devil's Advocate was to produce as much evidence as possible against the hypothesis that this or that candidate for sainthood was sufficiently saintly.  Since that office was abolished, the Catholics have been promoting every St. Tom, St. Dick, and St. Harry.  They're even trying to dredge up testimony of a "miracle" supposedly performed by John Paul 2 so that they can make a saint out of him, too.  Lacking any sort of skeptical oversight, the saint-mill will just keep cranking them out.