Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: lums@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu (Andy Lumsdaine) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: info on the archangels sought Message-ID: Date: 6 Dec 90 08:18:58 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics Lines: 55 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article tdaniels@athena.mit.edu (Troy E Daniels) writes: The only scriptural reference that I could find is LUK 10:18 And [Jesus] said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven, referring to when Satan was cast out after losing the war. There may be some OT references (Isiah comes to mind as a good place to check), but I don't have a good reference program/bible here to check that out. What I've been told, based on other references/extrascriptural sources/hearsay/ I-really-don't-know-what-source, is that Lucifer (which means Angel of Light, roughly) was an angel, second only to God in power. However, he decided that he wanted to be first, so he got a bunch of other angels together, and they somehow attacked God an d the angels faithful to him. There was a big war between Lucifer and his followers, and Michael and the other angels on God's side. In the end, Lucifer and his followers were defeated, cast out of Heaven onto Earth, where God allows them to rule for the time being. Lucifer was henceforth called Satan. I think alot of the ideas about Lucifer / Satan in our culture are primarily due to Milton and _Paradise_Lost_. For instance, it is very common to say the Serpent in the Garden was Satan -- but this is not in the Genesis text at all. I believe this idea is originally due to Milton, but it is so pervasive in our culture (or, I should say, in the churches which I attend), that most people talk about the Serpent and Satan interchangeably. In the above quotation from Luke, Jesus just says that he "beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." I see no implication of a war in this passage. Now, admittedly, Milton based his work on Scripture (and Tradition, I assume), and he undoubtedly had very good reasons for the conclusions he made. However, his work is not Scripture, and one must be very careful in using such sources in explaining the Scripture. Peace, Andrew Andrew Lumsdaine "We don't understand the software, and lums@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu sometimes we don't understand the hardware, MIT RLE but we can *see* the blinking lights!" [That's not the only way to read Luke 10:18 of course. The disciples had just come back, reporting various miracles. In context, one could reasonably take Jesus' comment as being metaphorical -- that he saw the success of the disciples mission as being the first step in the victory of his Kingdom over Satan, and thus that he was watching Satan losing his position of authority. This is the interpretation adopted by the Anchor Bible commentary on Luke. --clh]