The Christian tradition had long engaged in this process of expansion. Developing the ancient midrashic speculations that some of the angels had objected to the creation of the first humans and envied the qualities that God conferred upon them, Ambrose, Augustine, and their contemporaries began to posit behind the serpent’s temptation of Eve a backstory: the rebellion of Satan and his legions. By the Middle Ages these speculations had been elaborated into an account of a full-scale war in heaven, with Satan leading a third of the angels in a reckless, mad, doomed uprising against God and then,
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