More profoundly, post-Exilic Jews puzzled about how a loving God could have allowed the destruction of his Temple and the apparent overturning of all his promises to his people. One answer was to try to let God off the hook by conceiving of a being who devoted his time to thwarting God’s purposes: he was called the Adversary, Hassatan, and although he was a fairly insignificant nuisance in the Hebrew scriptures, he grew in status in later Jewish literature, particularly among writers who were influenced by other religious cultures which spoke of powerful demonic figures.
