Talk:Examples of Satan personally killing people

Job's children are the only example that come to mind off hand.--Bob_M (talk) 08:52, 20 July 2007 (CDT)

I thought God killed them. MiddleMan 09:19, 20 July 2007 (CDT)
 * Nope. He gave Satan a free hand to do whatever he liked.  He could do anything apart from Kill Job.  Now I think about it, I think he killed Job's servants as well. Ha well - back to the "Good Book" to review my memory.--Bob_M (talk) 10:40, 20 July 2007 (CDT)
 * Definitely Satan. God and Satan make the bet and in Job 1:11 God tells Satan he can do what he likes but not to touch Job himself.  Then in quick order we have 1:15 A messenger tells Job that the Sabeans have attacked and killed servants who were ploughing the fields. 1:16 Another messenger arrives to say that fire from heaven has killed his sheep and servants. 1:19 While that one is speaking another one arrives to say that his children (five sons and three daughters) were killed when the house they were in collapsed because of a great wind from the desert.--Bob_M (talk) 11:18, 20 July 2007 (CDT)

Varo Borja from The Dumas Club! (As far as I recall, anyway). -- AKjeldsen Godspeed! 11:27, 20 July 2007 (CDT)
 * Yes. Indeed. Perhaps we should put "biblical" somewhere in the title?.--Bob_M (talk) 12:37, 20 July 2007 (CDT)

Remit
Satan's remit can't include killing people, since he benefits from such actions, and would thus tend to go overboard in order to fill out his circles of hell. Even when he killed Job's children, he first had to get permission from the big white guy. Got to have separation of powers, donchya know. --98.226.7.253 10:41, 5 August 2008 (EDT)
 * At the risk of giving substance to these fables; why shouldn't his remit include killing people? It wouldn't make that much difference to hell - everybody dies sooner or later.--Bobbing up 11:37, 5 August 2008 (EDT)

The Plaque
When David following god's command counted his people God punished him with a plaque, but in one version of the story it was Satan who gave David the command to do it. --91.63.65.12 (talk) 13:55, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Common view?
We presently have: I think that we need to identify by whom this "common view" is held. It's certainly not the view of the common or garden reader of the bible, and it's equally not the view of Christian fundamentalists - or presumably any Christians who would hardly hold to the idea of additional rival Gods. It could conceivably be the view of some specialised biblical historians but in that case it probably should be clearer.--BobSpring is sprung! 11:25, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It should be noted here that many theologians don't even identify the Adversary from the Book of Job with Satan - the grammar of the Hebrew lacks the preceding article that would ordinarily identify him as The Adversary - and instead the common view is that the villain of Job is another deity, a holdover from polytheistic times.
 * Well, a common view among biblical scholars (baring the more conservative ones) is that "Satan" in Job predates the full development of the figure of Satan in later Judaism, and that in this case rather than some evil being or fallen angel, in Job was originally meant as a functionary of the divine court, one not inherently evil, although maybe not the most pleasant for humans. (Like the prosecutor in the divine courts of justice.) As to this view linking him to another deity, well I am sure some scholars think that, but I don't think that particular element is common enough to be labelled the "common view". 11:45, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

There's more
Satan also killed another human being. I'll get to that in a second. First, this article has a very Christian-centric view. Satan is the Prince of All Evil™ in Christianity, sure, but Job's household and the other victim I will soon mention are killed in the Old Testament, so Satan's murders should be seen in both a Jewish and Christian context. In Judaism, Satan is not the devil (there is no devil in Judaism), but a high-ranking angel (perhaps a Seraph?) whose job it is to keep humans from becoming too close to God without the proper qualifications,- a bouncer, if you will- and he never falls from God. As part of his duties, he tells Sarah that Abraham has taken Isaac to be sacrificed to God. This news gives Sarah a fatal heart attack, and Satan goes on his merry way. This counts as "Satan personally killing people," methinks. If we bear in mind both Jewish interpretations and Christian interpretations when dealing with figures in the Old Testament, as well as other Abrahamic religions if the figures in question are present in those traditions, we will more easily be more thorough on whatever biblical topic we are dealing with. Rand0 (talk) 11:22, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, the listing of Satan's murder of Job's household emphasizes that God condoned it. Well, in Judaism, if Satan did pretty much anything, God condoned it. So, yes, God condoned the murder of Sarah. According to Judaism, none of the angels were capable of acting against God's will because God created them that way. That said, I think there is a Midrash about a Rabbi who figured out how to turn himself into an angel and did so, so God slew him because he didn't know what this angel was capable of. Nonetheless, Satan couldn't violate God's will. I'm just trying to drive home the point of Christian-centrism in this article and possibly in other parts of RW. And please don't misunderstand one of my userboxen, the Christian view should of course be used in Old Testament topics, just not exclusively. Rand0 (talk) 16:54, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I partiall retract that second paragraph, as the article does clarify that everything Satan did would have to be cleared by God anyway. Rand0 (talk) 17:14, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure who won the argument above.--Bob"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that." 20:32, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Welcome to my world. Rand0 (talk) 14:49, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

The Hebrew word "Satan" is from Arabic?
I don't know much about the history of the Semitic languages, but I thought Hebrew was attested for centuries before Arabic.--Кřěĵ (ṫåɬк) 12:30, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

The "Erm, that's it" section has false info as well as refuses to acknowledge non-Christian perspective
Oh, you were mad that your formatting fixes were reverted? Yet when they aren't reverted you still go through with this shit? Spinelessness I can take, but lying is inexcusable. Anyhow:

"It should be noted here that many theologians don't even identify the Adversary from the Book of Job with Satan — the grammar of the Hebrew lacks the preceding article that would ordinarily identify him as 'Ha-Satan', which means The Accuser as opposed to 'Satan.'"

This is total bull. A simple Google search will show that the Book of Job is the only book the Hebrew Bible (aside from a brief mention in a prophetic vision) that uses the preceding article of "Ha-" with the term "Satan". Every single mention of "The Adversary/Accuser" in the Book of Job is written as "Ha-Satan", not simply "Satan" as the article suggests. Thirteen times is Satan mentioned, every single mention is written as "Ha-Satan". Every single one. So this is horseshit.

"and instead the common view is that the antagonist of Job is another deity, a holdover from polytheistic times"

Aside from the source listed in the article (Which by the way, is not reliable in the slightest. Did someone seriously look at The Wisdom Books and say to themselves, "Yeah this is a scholarly source. Totally reliable"), I could not find a single source on the internet that claims, let alone passes it off as the common view, that the antagonist of Job is anything but Satan. I've seen a few that claim it is a metaphor, but never a deity.

"In fact, chronologically, the Accuser in Job couldn't be Satan who by that time had already rebelled against God shortly after God's creation of Adam and Eve, if John Milton is to be believed at any rate."

Additionally, only the Christian theology is acknowledged by the article. The Jewish view of Satan is entirely different and actually open up the article to make more rationalizations, and that's not even acknowledging the Islamic view of Satan, which the article also totally ignores.

I cannot believe this horseshit, honestly. So much for the RationalWiki providing a stable ground for discussion. 107.77.224.200 (talk) 16:20, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Before throwing are accusations you should probably cite proof. In all of the edits thus far you, under various IPs, removed a formatting fix rather than just type or copy/paste your changes back in. In addition, you outright admitted what you were doing via edit summery. Please do not insult our intelligence with such readily transparent lies. 16:28, 7 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Well I had a whole well-thought-out rebuttal but my internet shit itself and I lost it. So I’ll summarize:


 * You’ve been told that the editor thought he was readding the format fix, not removing them each time an undo was made. Even when your format fixes were preserved, you reacted the same way. You’re chastising the use of the edit summary bar to summarize an edit. And finally, no one here is lying but you. You can’t pass blame just because you refuse to acknowledge reconciliation. I admit what started this whole thing was an error on my part, and I accept the responsibility, however what is sustaining this conflict and supporting its continued life is you and you alone.


 * Finally, I’d be more than happy to cite my sources, as soon as the unreliable/unsourced claims are themselves verified. Because if that doesn’t happen, a whole other conflict will emerge because of it.
 * Do see all those words in "references" In the change you linked? Those should be in "notes", You're lying, again! I mean holy fucking crapshit in a twatwaffle!!! How the ever-loving fuck do you ignore that? How do you not notice that "hey, maybe these 'group=note' things might be important?" I mean fucking wow! 19:56, 7 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Wait, holy shit. I have no idea what the fuck those are! And I swear to God, seriously I mean it, I didn't know I was removing those! All I did was delete a sentence and type out a paragraph, I never meant to delete any 'group note' things! Was that something you were editing, because I know I personally didn't change any of the format stuff when I made my initial edit 47.20.180.99 (talk)