Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters

by N.T. Wright

The Bible is never very precise about the identity of the figure known as “the satan.” The Hebrew word means “the accuser,” and at times the satan seems to be a member of YHWH’s heavenly council, with special responsibility as director of prosecutions (1 Chron. 21:1; Job 1–2; Zech. 3:1–2.). However, the term becomes identified variously with the serpent of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:1–15) and with the rebellious daystar cast out of heaven (Isa. 14:12–13) and was seen by many Jews as the quasi-personal source of evil standing behind both human wickedness and large-scale injustice, sometimes operating through semi-independent “demons.” By Jesus’s time various words were used to denote this figure, including Beelzebul/b (lit., “Lord of the Flies”) and simply “the evil one”; Jesus warned his followers against the deceits this figure could perpetrate.