Who was "he" talking to?

[Secular Elf]

Satan is at the root of all these other religions, what better deception than to provide a other belief systems that people fill better fits them than the only true God.

This is one of the things that makes it easy to defend one's own beliefs.  Other beliefs that are based on what appear to be the same reasoning are attributed to people being misled by Satan, who can masquerade as an angel of light.  But it means that everyone's explanation sounds exactly the same and no one can tell the difference.  How can one be sure that it was really god speaking to him, and not the devil?

Good point.

The thing about Satan, as anyone familiar with Judaism, as either a believing Jew, cultural Jew, or as a student of comparative religion can attest, is that Satan is not a person, but a title, "the accuser", and is part of the broader group of angels in Judaic mythology. In other words, Yahweh's right-hand of justice, so-to-speak. It was the Romano-Greek Christians of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages who made Satan into the figure of "The Devil"; the recipe is quite simple: pour in some dualism by making Satan the bad god, throw in the attributes of Hades/Pluto as the ruler of a fiery underworld, add some imagery by taking the horns and hooves of Pan and sticking them on Lucifer, pin a pointed tail and throw in a dash of red dye mixed with some superstition about the originator of tragedy and voila! You got the king of devils and the adversary of Yahweh.

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"And God said, Let there be light".

(a) Why would a god have to *say* anything?
(b) Who or what was around to hear and action the request?

Back to the original poster's question.

The answer lies in comparative religion and mythology.

It is a basic ancient Middle Eastern belief that has carried down through the centuries to today that, especially from ancient Egyptian religion, which had a major influence on Christianity since many of the earliest Church Fathers were Egyptians from Alexandria and environs.

To explain the world around them, in their minds at least, the forces of nature represented cosmic beings, called gods, who had such power that they could speak things into existence. The spoken word had power in ancient Egyptian mythology and belief. In the cult of Ptah, the creator god, Ptah spoke and the cosmos came into being. Words had power. That is why the ancient Egyptians believed that if you carved someone's name in stone, such as a pharaoh's name, their existence in The Field of Reeds (paradise, heaven) was assured. Remove the hieroglyphs in the name and cause the person to cease to exist. Speak the right spells and write the proper incantations on papyrus and tomb walls and you ensure the Pharaoh's or other individual's safe journey to Duat, the halls of judgement.

That idea was borrowed by the Early Christians from Egyptian mythology. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Magical. All religions have magic in them of some sort.