Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly, Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, argues that the familiar story of Satan as a proud angel named Lucifer who rebelled and fell from heaven is not in the Bible at all. In his reading, Satan in the Bible is a functionary in God's own court, an obstacle, a tester and an accuser, and he never switches sides. That one claim reshapes how you read Job, the Gospels and the whole history of the devil.
Dr. Kelly starts with his own road from an Iowa farm town through thirteen years as a Jesuit seminarian to a career at UCLA. From there he walks through the only three Old Testament places where a supernatural satan appears: Balaam's talking donkey in Numbers 22, the heavenly court in Job, and the trial of Joshua the high priest in Zechariah. He then names the church fathers who built the later story: Justin Martyr, whose wordplay tied Satan to the serpent in Eden, and Origen, who read the taunt against the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14 as Lucifer's fall. He closes with why Dante's Satan contradicts itself and the four words he wants people to remember.
Key takeaways
- The story of Lucifer rebelling and being thrown out of heaven was built after the Bible was closed. Dr. Kelly says you can open the Bible and look for it, and it is not there.
- A supernatural satan appears only three times in the Old Testament: as an obstacle to Balaam in Numbers 22, as a tester in Job, and as an accuser in Zechariah 3.
- In the Balaam story the angel of Yahweh himself comes out "as a satan" against Balaam. Dr. Kelly says this has been lost in translation, both in the Greek Septuagint and in English Bibles.
- In Job the satan works for God, and Job never knows he exists. Job attributes everything that happens to him to God.
- Dr. Kelly holds that Satan never turns into God's enemy, even in the New Testament. He is still a celestial bureaucrat testing people and trying to keep the unworthy out of the kingdom, even if he uses low methods like entrapment.
- Justin Martyr linked Satan to the serpent of Eden through a play on the name Satanas, and Origen later applied Isaiah 14, a passage addressed to the king of Babylon, to Satan himself.
- His conclusion after more than fifty years of study is simple: don't blame the devil.
Key quotes
Some people use the term demonologist. I call myself a diabolologian.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly
Everybody thinks that they know that, but it's not really there. All that stuff was invented after the Bible was closed down.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly
The angel of Yahweh appears as a satan against Balaam, and he only appears to the donkey.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly
He never does. That's the key. That's my whole sentiment. He never does.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly
I have an article that calls him the cosmic J. Edgar Hoover.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly
About the guest
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly is Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA and former director of its Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. A former Jesuit seminarian, he has spent more than fifty years studying the history of Satan.
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Questions this episode answers
Is Lucifer the same as Satan in the Bible?
Dr. Kelly argues that he is not. Isaiah 14 is a taunt addressed to the king of Babylon. It was Origen of Alexandria who first read it as describing an angel and later decided it referred to Satan himself, and that reading became part of the later biography of the devil.
Is the serpent in Genesis Satan?
Dr. Kelly points out that Genesis never calls the serpent Satan. He traces the identification to Justin Martyr, who etymologized the Greek Satanas as "apostate serpent" and concluded that Jesus himself had named the serpent as Satan. That reading was accepted from then on.
Does Satan work for God in the book of Job?
Yes, in Dr. Kelly's reading. The satan appears among the sons of God in the heavenly court, reports that he has been patrolling the earth, and tests Job with God's permission. Job never learns the satan exists and attributes everything to God.
Where does the word Satan appear in the Old Testament?
Dr. Kelly says the word is used several times for human adversaries, including once for David. A supernatural satan appears only three times: blocking Balaam in Numbers 22, testing Job, and accusing Joshua the high priest in Zechariah 3.
Is Satan God's enemy in the New Testament?
Dr. Kelly argues that he is not. Satan is unpopular with Jesus, Paul and the letters of John, and he uses entrapment, but he is still doing the job he had in the Old Testament: testing people and trying to keep bad people out of the kingdom of God.
Full transcript
Read the full transcript
Johnny Ova: Welcome everybody to the Dig In Podcast. I am your host, Pastor Johnny Ova, and today we are joined by Dr. Henry Kelly. Dr. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: You're very welcome. Glad to be here.
Johnny Ova: I'm very much looking forward to our conversation, because I get asked a million questions about the devil, about the history and all these different things. So I'm excited to be chatting with you. Let's jump right in. You spent years as a Jesuit seminarian training for the priesthood before becoming one of the world's leading scholars on the devil. How did that journey happen?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Well, I was a simple person growing up in a little farm town in Iowa. I grew up in the Catholic Church, and I wanted to learn more about the faith, so I picked the most learned religious order. I went to nearby Creighton University, and they told me I needed more Latin, so I spent another year getting more Latin. Then I joined the Jesuit order, and they spend a long, long time in the seminary before the priesthood. I spent thirteen years, and I finally decided that it was too lonely an apostolate, and I left after all those years and decided not to go that route. I left and I married and carried on in a university order, basically. I did get a doctorate in English literature during that time, and I went on to UCLA, and I've been there all the years since.
Johnny Ova: That's amazing. What drew you to the study of the origin of Satan, or the devil?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: I realized quite early on, especially when I was taking a course on Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Salem witch trials and so on, that the history of Satan was very much at odds with common sense and with what was in the Bible, and I decided to fix it, or try to fix it. So I started at that time, simultaneously looking at what was in the Bible, what was in literature and what was in history. It's very odd that during the Jesuit training we spend ten years in the order looking at other things besides scripture and theology and canon law before we actually take any courses in those subjects. But I did see that there were lots of things being said about the devil and about other things that were at odds with what was really in the Bible. So from that time on I decided to look into it and see what was wrong and what could be fixed.
Johnny Ova: That's great. You're the second person I've had on about this, but not at your level of expertise. I guess it just sounds funny that someone specializes in the devil.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Yeah. Some people use the term demonologist. I call myself a diabolologian.
Johnny Ova: A diabolologian. Man, too funny. All right, let's break this down. Most Christians think they know Satan's story. A proud angel named Lucifer rebelled against God, got thrown out of heaven and tempted Adam and Eve. Before we tear it apart, can you walk us through the familiar version to put everybody on the same page?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Yes. Everybody thinks that they know that, but it's not really there. All that stuff was invented after the Bible was closed down. It's not there at all. You open up the Bible and look for it, and it's simply not there. You look for it in the story of Adam and Eve and you say, where is it? It's not there.
Johnny Ova: Where does this attribution come from? Is it just trying to connect dots? I almost don't understand how the original connection came to be, specifically with Adam and Eve, where it's like, all right, let's make that serpent Satan.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Well, you can try doing it that way. But if we start from the beginning, we can see that it was all a good-faith effort to make sense of the Bible. So maybe we should start from the beginning and find out exactly what is in the Bible to begin with. In the Old Testament there are only three places where a supernatural figure named Satan is mentioned. The first place is something that has always been wiped out by the translators. It has been lost in translation. And it turns out to be the funniest, most amusing place in the Bible, but it's always lost. It's one of only two places where there's a talking animal. This is the talking donkey of the freelance prophet named Balaam, in the 22nd chapter of the book of Numbers.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: After the people of Israel have been wandering in the desert for forty years, they come to camp on the plains of Moab across the river Jordan. Balak, the king of the Moabites, is very worried, and he tries to hire a prophet named Balaam. Balaam says, look, I've got to ask God about this. He prays to Elohim, to God, and God hesitates at first and finally gives him permission to go. He saddles his donkey and gets underway. But then all of a sudden, and the Bible is patchwork here, it seems there's a new author. As soon as he gets on his way, the original Hebrew says that his going angers Yahweh, and the angel of Yahweh appears as a satan against Balaam. But he only appears to the donkey.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: First the donkey goes into the field, and Balaam beats her. It's a female donkey. The donkey starts going again and then rubs up against the wall, and Balaam beats the donkey again. Then the donkey falls down in the road, and Balaam beats her again. Finally the donkey starts talking to Balaam and says, why are you beating me like this? I've been your faithful donkey all along. And finally the angel of Yahweh starts talking with the voice of Yahweh himself and says, if the donkey had not turned aside, I would have killed you and let the donkey live. I have come out as a satan against you. And poor old Balaam says, well, I didn't know there was a problem. In fact God had already given Balaam permission. It's very funny, like a comedy of errors. It's a very strange scene. But in the Greek Bible, the Septuagint, the satan is gone. It's as if God is satanized against Balaam. And in the English translations the satan is missing altogether. That's one of the three episodes in which there is a supernatural satan.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: The word satan is used several other times for a human being. It's applied to David once, and to other people, just to mean adversary. But it's used two other times for a supernatural figure. Once, in a very familiar case that everybody knows about, is the book of Job, where God appears with all of his angels, who are called sons of God. God pulls over one of the angels, who is called a satan, and asks him, what have you been doing? He says, I've been patrolling the earth. God says, what do you think about my good servant Job? Isn't he perfect? And he says, well, of course he's perfect. Why wouldn't he be? You've given him everything. But test him, and you'll see he's not perfect. Yahweh says, well, I'm sure he will be. And he says, well, no, test him. We all know the story. Job turns out to be perfect.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: So in the first instance, the satan works as an obstacle. We see that in the New Testament. The first time Saint Paul mentions Satan is in Thessalonians. He says, I kept trying to come to you, but Satan blocked my way. He was an obstacle. We see that in the Gospel of Mark too, where Jesus says, I have to go to Jerusalem, and Peter says, no, no, I don't want you to go, and Jesus says, get behind me, Satan. In Matthew you have the same thing, but Jesus calls him a scandal: you are a scandal to me. That word scandal means a roadblock, an obstacle. But here in the book of Job, the satan is a tester. Temptation means testing. And I find that in the New Testament the satan carries on the same job he has in the Old Testament. He follows the job of testing, and that's what you have in the temptation dialogue in the three synoptic gospels. He carries on the job of testing.
Johnny Ova: I find the Job story particularly fascinating, because it opens with this dialogue between God and this satan character, and it's almost like a challenge. Then the story after "go ahead, test him" takes place, and it looks like the satan is working for God, yet it's almost never mentioned that the satan is the one doing this stuff to Job himself.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Yeah, Job doesn't know about the satan. He attributes all that stuff to God himself.
Johnny Ova: Right. So I guess my next question would be: you have this story where it looks like Satan is working for God in Job, and then all of a sudden he turns. When did he turn into the enemy of God, versus just somebody who worked for God?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: He never does. That's the key. That's my whole sentiment. He never does. To carry on with the Job story, the satan angel predicts to God that Job will cave in, but he never does. He comes back again, and God tells him, look, you caused me to inflict all this on Job and he never did cave. And the satan says, well, let's try again. He goes back again, and Job never does, and that's the end of the story. They never pick up the satan again. That's the second appearance in the Old Testament.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: The only other time he appears is in one of the twelve prophets, Zechariah, where there's a trial scene. You have Joshua the high priest, or as you have it in the Greek version, the Septuagint, Jesus the high priest, and you have a satan figure. Where he's called satan there, it's with a capital S. It's actually Satan as a proper name, the same as in the book of Job, where it's capital Satan. In Greek it's Devil. That's where you get the word devil. It's a proper name, Devil. And there he is the accuser. His job is to accuse human beings. So those are the three functions: obstacle, tester and accuser. He provides obstacles to human beings, but he's a functionary of the celestial hierarchy, and he works for God.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: I maintain that throughout the New Testament Satan is still working for God and still operating, and that's where we see him in the three synoptic gospels, where he encounters Jesus. Throughout the synoptic gospels and in the Gospel of John, he is still working as a celestial bureaucrat, working on the side of God. His motivation is to keep the unworthy people out of the kingdom of God, not to be the enemy of God.
Johnny Ova: Let's talk about the serpent in the garden for a second, because as we mentioned, Genesis never calls it Satan. Do you know exactly when the two figures fuse together?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Yes. It's only after the Bible shuts down, and I can pinpoint the exact spot. It's in one of the earliest fathers of the church, a man named Justin. They called him Justin the witness, Justin Martyr, from Neapolis, Nablus, in Samaria. I don't know how well he knew Aramaic, but the Aramaic word for Satan is satana, and the Greek form is Satanas. He etymologized Satanas as sata plus nas: sata is apostate and nahash is serpent. So it means apostate serpent. Jesus in the Gospels calls him Satanas, so according to Justin, Jesus is calling him the apostate serpent. It is Jesus who identifies the serpent as Satan. So according to Justin Martyr, Jesus was the one who made that identification. That's where it comes from, and that was accepted from then on.
Johnny Ova: Wow. Very interesting. Now Lucifer. Isaiah 14 says, how you have fallen, O morning star. Who is that passage actually about, and how did it also get wrapped up into Satan's origin story?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: This was addressed to the king of Babylon. But Origen of Alexandria says the passage refers to someone who is not a mortal person, so it has to refer to an angel. In On First Principles he says it's some other angel. But in a later work, Against Celsus, he decides that it refers to the head angel himself, to Satan himself. That's where that comes from.
Johnny Ova: Interesting. Now when we get to the New Testament, Satan just seems darker. He tempts Jesus in the wilderness. He's called the ruler of the world.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Well, some people don't like him. Various books in the New Testament, especially the first epistle of John, really don't like him. Jesus doesn't care for him very much, and Paul doesn't like him very much. He's just not a popular character. I have an article that calls him the cosmic J. Edgar Hoover. He doesn't have very high principles. He uses entrapment and so on.
Johnny Ova: In the New Testament, do you think he was working the same functionary job he had in Job, or do you think his character started to change a bit?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: It's clear he doesn't have high principles. He uses entrapment and so on. But he's working for the government. He is not an enemy of God. His purpose is to keep bad people out. His purpose is not to make good people bad. His principle is to try to uncover the people who are bad and keep them out.
Johnny Ova: So when do the wheels really come off with this Satan character? Which church fathers built what you call the new biography of Satan, and why did they? I know you mentioned a few instances, but was it just the struggle over where evil comes from? Why are good people being attacked, and why do bad people do what they do?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: It depends. All the fathers of the church are struggling to figure out what is going on. They're all people of goodwill.
Johnny Ova: So you think that's when they start to assign these things to the Satan character?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: You're right, yes.
Johnny Ova: How much of what the average Christian believes about the devil actually comes from Dante and Milton rather than the Bible?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Dante is an interesting case. Dante was kind of mixed up. You take a look at Dante and he doesn't really get it himself. Dante has Satan fall at the beginning of time, and he's down at the bottom of hell and doesn't move an inch after he falls. He's a mindless, weeping monster at the bottom of hell. But then later on Dante has him moving around and tempting people. It's a total contradiction, and he doesn't seem to realize it himself.
Johnny Ova: Right. He's got the devil doing too many different things.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Yes.
Johnny Ova: I saw a question that seems to come up a lot from your critics: if Satan was never God's cosmic enemy, what do we do with the problem of evil? Where does evil come from in your reading?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Well, it depends. What do you mean by evil? Are earthquakes evil?
Johnny Ova: Well, yes, but they would be more natural cause and effect, I guess.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Right. I mean, earthquakes are evil. Earthquakes are bad. Cancer is bad. That's an evil.
Johnny Ova: So where would that stem from? Our decisions, making poor choices, a broken world, a spiritual enemy?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Those are evil things. But moral evils, sin, that is evil. And the idea of eternal torture in hell, that's the worst thing in the world. That's the most immoral thing about Christianity. Eternal torture in hell is the worst idea in Christianity.
Johnny Ova: I've got two more questions for you, Dr. Kelly. If I were to jump all the way back into ancient biblical times, maybe not Job but the time of Samuel, and ask, what is Satan, how different an answer would they give me than we have today?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: I'm not sure I understand your question.
Johnny Ova: I feel like today everything's the devil to some people. There's a demon behind everything. And according to some of the stuff we went over in Job, that satan character looks like he works for God. It seems like they had a different perspective on what Satan was in ancient times than we do today. So if I asked them what Satan was, would they think it's a spiritual being? Would they think it's just anything adversarial? Would they think of Satan much differently than we do today?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Yes, sure.
Johnny Ova: Last question. After more than fifty years of studying the devil, what is the one thing you most want people to walk away with from this conversation?
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: I don't know, let me see. Don't blame the devil. My wife is sitting right here, and she says, don't blame the devil. Right. Don't blame the devil.
Johnny Ova: Sometimes we reap our own stuff from making bad choices ourselves.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Yes. That's the right thing.
Johnny Ova: Awesome. Dr. Kelly, this has been a pleasure and an honor. Thank you for taking some time out to join me today. I know our audience is going to be very interested in our conversation.
Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly: Good. Thank you very much, Johnny. It's been great to be with you.
Johnny Ova: You too, Dr. Kelly. Thank you.
Filed under Satan and the Devil in the Bible