How a Greek God Became the Devil in Christianity
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today’s video we’re going to discuss how
the modern conceptualization of the Devil in Christianity was inspired, both in appellation
and in appearance, by Greek Gods. First, we’re going to look at how the Greek god Eospherous
became the inspiration for one of the devil’s most infamous epithets; second, we’re going to cover
how the Greek god Pan inspired the Devil’s horned, cloven-hoofed appearance; and lastly, we’re going
to wrap up the video by diving into how the Devil became the incarnation of evil in the world.
Let’s get into it.
Known as Aurora to the Romans, Eos was the goddess of the dawn. She was the daughter
of the first-generation titans Hyperion, a solar deity, and Theia, whose sphere of
influence included sight and blue sky, and thus was herself a second-generation titan. Helios,
the sun, was her brother, and Selene, the moon, was her sister. Many mortals caught her eye, and
she wasn’t above abducting them, taking a page out of Zeus’ book on several occasions. One was Orion,
the giant, incredibly handsome master hunter who was set in the sky as a constellation after his
death. Another, Tithonus, Greek mythology’s version of Methuselah, the longest lived
man in the bible, was cursed with the torturous combination of immortality without agelessness.
Eos’ first consort was Astraeus, the titan-god of stars, planets, and astrology, and together,
they produced a multitude of children, including: the wind gods Notus, god of the South wind,
Boreas, god of the North wind, and Zephyr, god of the West wind, and all of the stars of heaven.
One of these stars was Phosphorus, also called
Heosphorus and Eosphorus. He was the personification of the morning star,
which was the planet Venus as it sparkled in the sky before sunrise. The Latin name
for Phosphorus was Lucifer, the name the morning star was known by to the Romans.
And this, of course, begs the question: how did the Roman name for the morning star become one of
the Devil’s names, and not just any name, but one of the most popular throughout the Middle Ages?
In the Book of Isaiah, one of the books of the Old Testament,
there’s a passage that reads as follows:
“How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the
earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on
the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds. I will make
myself like the Most High. But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit.”
Out of context this passage sounds like it’s addressing the devil,
but it’s actually part of a long taunt directed at the king of Babylon.
In 382 A.D, St Jerome, as commissioned by Pope Damasus, translated the Hebrew scriptures into
Latin. At the time, there was a proliferation of Old Latin versions in circulation,
so the reason for St Jerome’s translation was to create an official version that would
supersede the multitude of Old Latin versions; and to this end, the endeavour was a success,
as St Jerome’s translation became the standard for the Western Latin-speaking church.
Because the Romans used the name Lucifer when referring to the planet Venus, the morning star,
St Jerome also used the name Lucifer in his translation, which - I believe - is how the
name Lucifer first entered the lexicon of Christianity, becoming a perennial piece of
vernacular that would eventually became known by everyone in the Western world.
With the appellation portion of this video covered, let’s move on to
how the god Pan was an early inspiration for a bestial version of the Devil’s appearance.
Pan was the god of shepherds and their flocks. He made his home in the wilds,
particularly the wilds of Arcadia, in which its pastures, forest, and mountains were
his favourite haunts. His parentage was ambiguous, either the son of Hermes and
Dryope or of Zeus and Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. Unlike most other Greek gods,
Pan’s appearance wasn’t strictly human. He was a hybrid with the upper body of a man
and the lower body of a goat. Also, depending on the version, he either had the head of a goat
or the head of a man with goatish qualities. He mostly kept company with other hybrid creatures,
like satyrs and nymphs, and because of this - and his appearance - he became a revered member of
the entourage of Dionysus. It should also be said that Pan’s relationship with the nymph community
was less than copasetic, as they went to great lengths to evade his dogged and lustful pursuits.
In one instance, a nymph by the name of Syrinx transformed herself into reeds to keep him from
getting his hands on her. Pan then used those reeds to fashion the very first reed pipe.
His personality was jovial and affable, and he was quick to smile and full of mirth.
His favourite instrument was the reed pipe, and in one story, Pan challenged Apollo
to a music contest. King Midas sat in judgement and had his own ears replaced with those of an
ass for his trouble. He chose Pan as the winner, so he was punished by Apollo for his poor taste.
Pan had three characteristics - his horns, his cloven hoofs, and his large phallus - that became
absorbed into the Devil’s own appearance, contributing to his first iconic portraits.
Prodigious endowment became synonymous with the devil. At first, he and his astounding
appendage were drawn black, but later were drawn red to symbolise hellfire. This also
ties into metaphorical interpretations of Eve’s seduction by the serpent in the garden of Eden.
In retrospect, that aspects of two Greek gods were subsumed into the Devil’s own characterization
seems rather fitting. Everything Pagan - really, anything that pertained to god
that wasn’t in line with orthodox beliefs - became the domain of the devil and thus evil.
An interesting prism to look at this through is that, though the Devil ended up being the
personification of evil, it could be he didn’t begin that way. Scholars posit that the Devil
conceptualized as a being of pure evil and as the wellspring of all evil is conspicuously
missing from the Old Testament, and that it wasn’t until the acme of the Persian Achaemenid Empire,
when Jewish people were under the yoke of Persian rule, that the notion of Satan as the antithesis
of God began to permeate Judaism. Zoroastrianism, a monotheistic religion, had superseded the
previous polytheistic infrastructure of the Persian religion. It was defined by a dichotomy:
Ahura Mazda, an all-powerful god of absolute good, and Angra Mainyu, the great adversary,
a being of absolute evil. King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem
in 539 BCE, and through them, elements of Zoroastrianism were exported,
such as the notion of attributing all evil to a single entity of absolute evil.
And that’s it for this video!
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