before we got Dante and the Romantics merging Lucifer with Satan, Beelzebub, and all things big-time baddy, S’tan meant the Adversary, or the One Who Opposes. Think of him more as a plot device than as evil incarnate—Satan doesn’t appear anywhere in the Hebrew Bible in the way we think of him today.) So the story of Job Author #1 had a plot problem—if the God of Abraham was simultaneously all-powerful and all-good, then why on earth would He do all these horrible things to poor old Jobey?
