Quote:Perhaps, but God created Satan
But "satan" was a rather minor figure in the OT.
http://www.realdevil.info/1-1.htm
Quote:The words Satan, Devil, demon, Lucifer, fallen angel etc. simply don't occur in the whole of the book of Genesis. Throughout the Old Testament, the one and only God is presented as all powerful, without equal and in no competition with any other cosmic force. The Old Testament makes it clear that any 'adversary' to God's people was ultimately under the control of God Himself. All Angels are spoken of as being righteous and the servants of God, even "Angels of evil / disaster", who may bring destruction upon sinners, are still God's Angels carrying out His will and judgments. God's people Israel initially held this view; but as has so often happened to God's people, they mixed their true beliefs with those of the world around them. Earlier Judaism spoke of the human tendency to evil [yetser ha-ra] and the tendency to good [yetser ha-tob]. This tendency to evil they understood as being at times personified or symbolized by "the devil": "Satan and the yetser ha-ra are one" (1). But earlier Judaism rejected the idea that angels had rebelled, and they specifically rejected the idea that the serpent in Genesis was satan. At that time, "the Jewish devil was little more than an allegory of the evil inclination among humans"
It took xtian thugs to develop "the devil" into some all-powerful force that they needed to be saved from. As H.L. Mencken put it so eloquently:
Quote:What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.
