V. The Nature of Satan

Only some manuscripts of Luke quote Jesus as telling the tempting Satan to "Get thee behind me" and Matthew says only "Get thee hence." On the other hand, both Matthew and Mark agree as to the wording of Jesus' warning to Peter: "Get thee behind me, Satan." This can be understood "in view" of the fact that when someone is standing before you, he is much more imposing than if he is behind you. Jesus is face to face with Satan, while God is somewhere in the far distance. Who then is more real, God or Satan?(30) With Satan standing right in front of Jesus, he tends to seem more real than God. Are then his gifts and promises more real than those of God. Jesus' doubt in God must be countered with a remark like "Get thee behind me." Speaking of doubt let us quote a passage from Erik Erikson:

Doubt is the brother of shame. Where shame is dependent on the consciousness of being upright and exposed, doubt, so clinical observation leads me to believe, has much to do with a consciousness of having a front and a back -and especially a "behind." For this reverse area of the body, with its aggressive and libidinal focus in the sphincters and in the buttocks, cannot be seen by the child, and yet it can be dominated by the will of others. The "behind" is thus the individual's dark continent, an area of the body which can be magically dominated and effectively invaded by those who would attack one's power of autonomy and who would designate as evil those products of the bowels which were felt to be all right when they were being passed.(31)
Children are made to learn that the part of the body which they cannot see is "evil." In such a sense the "behind" is where Satan actually belongs. If he comes around and faces us, then our entire body, not just our "behind," is in danger of becoming evil. Was Jesus ever in danger of being wholly overcome by his own evil impulses?

One question remains. Why is Satan associated with a fiery hell? It has already been suggested that Satan embodies, among other forbidden im­pulses, the desire to play with fire. Apocalyptic literature (for example Enoch 54:6 as quoted in Section VI) makes many references to a fiery hell where evil spirits will eventually be destroyed. Satan and his angels are to be bound and cast into a fiery furnace. In the book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are bound and cast into a fiery furnace for refus­ing to worship the king's idols. In this story, despite the death of those who threw them into the fire, the victims remain magically unscorched. This is a more straightforward projection of the desire to play with fire. Perhaps hell is the projection of such a forbidden impulse onto evil spirits who will be punished there.

Instead of such a general approach, one can take an historical one by considering the origin of the Hebrew word "Gehenna," which we know by translation as "hell."
By the first century A.D. many Jews believed in the hell (Gehenna) of fire as a place where sinners were tormented, either after the final judgment or in the intermediate period before the judgment. The name is derived from the "ge Hinnom" or valley of Hinnom (Josh. 15:8), southwest of Jerusalem, where human sacrifices had been offered and refuse was still burned.(32)
Such a valley answers well to requirements for the habitation of demons. It is unclean and uninhabitable. In this sense hell comes strictly from the local Jewish experience and does not help the student of comparative primitive beliefs.

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30. Who seems more real in Job, thee Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, and Faust? God or Satan?
31. Erikson, Of. cit., p. 224.
32. The Interpreter's Bible, of. cit., p. 296.

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