REL 205 Satan, Zoroastrian, Job, Babylonian Captivity

A figure known as "the satan" first appears in the Tanakh as a heavenly prosecutor, a member of the sons of God subordinate to Yahweh, who prosecutes the nation of Judah in the heavenly court and tests the loyalty of Yahweh's followers by forcing them to suffer. During the intertestamental period, likely due to influence from the Zoroastrian figure of Angra Mainyu, the satan developed into a malevolent entity with abhorrent qualities in dualistic opposition to God. In the apocryphal Book of Jubilees, Yahweh grants the satan (referred to as Mastema) authority over a group of fallen angels to tempt humans to sin and punish them.

The original Hebrew term satan is a generic noun meaning "accuser" or "adversary",which is used throughout the Hebrew Bible to refer to ordinary human adversaries, as well as a specific supernatural entity. The word is derived from a verb meaning primarily "to obstruct, oppose".  When it is used without the definite article (simply satan), the word can refer to any accuser, but when it is used with the definite article (ha-satan), it usually refers specifically to the heavenly accuser: the satan.

The satan appears in the Book of Job, a poetic dialogue set within a prose framework, which may have been written around the time of the Babylonian captivity.


Jewish views of Satan are influenced by contact with Middle Eastern Zoroastrianism. The Hebrew simply means accuser and can refer to human, and not necessarily an evil Satanic figure. In Job, the heavenly accuser, the Satan, also appears after the Middle Eastern Babylonian captivity: thus, fairly late in the Hebrew Scriptures and only after contact with other cultures.