More radical than their predecessors, these dissidents began increasingly to invoke the satan to characterize their Jewish opponents; in the process they turned this rather unpleasant angel into a far grander—and far more malevolent—figure. No longer one of God’s faithful servants, he begins to become what he is for Mark and for later Christianity—God’s antagonist, his enemy, even his rival.19 Such sectarians, contending less against “the nations” than against other Jews, denounce their opponents as apostate and accuse them of having been seduced by the power of evil, whom they call by many
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