Friday, August 18, 2023

David Winston on the διαβολος/devil in Wisdom of 2:24 being Satan, not Cain

  

24. devil’s envy. “In Ps 108:6, LXX, diabolos is the ‘accuser’; in Esther 7:4; 8:1, LXX, Haman is called diabolos in the sense of ‘opponent’ or ‘enemy.’ In 1 Macc 1:36, the akra is called a diabolos in the sense of ‘obstacle.’ The LXX also used diabolos for Hebrew satan, in the sense of ‘the one who separates,’ ‘the enemy,’ ‘the calumniator,’ ‘the seducer.’ Since this is an innovation in the LXX, we can only deduce the meaning from the rendering and from the context. The latter seldom suggests ‘calumniator,’ but rather ‘accuser,’ or ‘adversary.’ This is so in 1 Chron 21:1 and Job 1 and 2, unless we prefer ‘seducer’ ” (Foerster, in TDNT 2. 72). For the devil’s envy, see II Enoch 31:3–6; Vita Adae 12–17 (12:1: “With a heavy sigh, the devil spoke: ‘O Adam! all my hostility, envy, and sorrow is for thee, since it is for thee that I have been expelled from my glory”); III Baruch 4:8; Tosef. Sotah 4:17; BT Sotah 9b; BR 18.6; BT Sanh. 59b; ARN 1; Jos. Ant. 1.1.4. (For envy attributed to God, see Apoc. Moses 18:4; Hypostasis of the Archons 138, 6–10; On the Origin of the World 119 and Testimony of Truth, [Robinson 1977:174 and 412]: PRE 13. For the counterargument that God was not jealous, see Theophilus Ad. Autolycum 2.25; Irenaeus Adv. Haer. 5.24.20; Ps-Clement 17.16). Bois (1890) and Gregg (1909) thought this verse referred to Cain. “The murder of Abel by Cain,” wrote Gregg, “was unquestionably prompted by jealousy.… Moreover, in 10:1–4, the author makes the sin of Adam of small importance, while Cain is the first ‘unrighteous man,’ the ancestor and symbol of all who afterwards deserted wisdom.” If the allusion of our verse is to Genesis 3[4E], as is most likely, it is one of the earliest extant Jewish texts to equate the serpent with the devil.

 

A closely analogous attempt to attribute death to the devil’s envy is to be found in Theophilus Ad Autolycum 2.29: “When Satan saw that Adam and his wife not only were alive but had produced offspring, he was overcome by envy (phhonō pheromenos) because he was not strong enough to put them to death; and because he saw Abel pleasing God, he worked upon his brother called Cain and made him kill his brother Abel. And so the beginning of death came into this world, to reach the whole race of men to this very day.” Similarly, according to the Hypostasis of the Archons, Ialdabaoth envies the high station of his son Sabaoth, who had been endowed with a psychic nature capable of elevation. His envy takes on an existence of its own, and in its turn gives rise to Death (144, 3–14 [Ballard:39 and 112]. (In Irenaeus Adv. Haer. 1.30.9, envy and death are linked together as the legacy of Cain’s murder of Abel). See W. C. van Unnik 1972:120–32; De aphthonia van God in de oudchristelijke literatur (Amsterdam, London, 1973).

 

Death entered into the cosmic order. Except for Wisd and II and IV Maccabees, kosmos is used in the LXX only in the original meaning of ‘ornament,’ ‘arrangement,’ or ‘drawing up of an army.’ See Freudenthal 1890:217. The notion that death came into the world through the devil’s envy seems to be an echo of Zoroastrian teaching, although, as noted above (on 1:13), the author of Wisd, unlike the Iranian sources, is undoubtedly referring to spiritual rather than physical death. According to Zarathustra, the original static world was perfect, and alteration came into it only through the malicious assault of the Hostile Spirit. “Once death and destruction had been brought into the world, immortality ceased for gētig [i.e. material] creatures, and was replaced by the inevitable processes of birth and death. In this state of things devout sacrifice has a spenta (‘bounteous,’ ‘beneficent’) function, furthering the struggle of the good creation—a function which will continue till the last sacrifice takes place at the end of limited time, and immortality becomes again the lot of all God’s creatures” (Boyce:231). Moreover, the attack of Ahriman is motivated by envy: “The Destructive Spirit, ever slow to know, was unaware of the existence of Ohrmazd. Then he rose up from the depths and went to the border from whence the lights are seen. When he saw the light of Ohrmazd intangible, he rushed forward. Because his will is to smite and his substance is envy (arišk-gōhrīh), he made haste to destroy it” (Greater Bundahishn 1.7, translation in Zaehner 1972:313). Cf. Yasna 9.5: “Under the rule of brave Yima, there was neither heat nor cold, neither old age nor death, nor envy created by the daevas”; Yašt 15.16; translation in F. Wolff, Avesta (Strassburg, 1910):31, 269). Nor was it difficult for the author of Wisd to identify the serpent of Genesis with Ahriman, since in his attack on the material world we are informed that “he rushed upon it in envious desire.… Like a serpent he darted forward, trampled on as much of the sky as was beneath [sic] the earth, and rended it” (GB 41.10–42.6. See Zaehner 1961:262). For the knowledge of Zoroastrianism in Alexandria, see Pliny the Elder NH 30.2.4; D.L. 1.8; Bidez-Cumont 1938: 1. 85–88; Hengel 1974: 1. 230. It may also be noted that in the Apoc. Abraham 23, the serpent is identified as the instrument of Azazel. In Apoc. Moses 16, he is the devil’s vessel and in III Bar 9:7 Sammael took the serpent as a garment. (According to Vita Adae 33 and II Enoch 31, it was the devil who led Eve astray.) (David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 43; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 121–123)