Lucifer
Lucifer is believed to be a fallen angel and the Devil in Christian theology. Lucifer is associated with the sin of pride and believed to have attempted a usurpation of God, whereafter being banished to hell.
The concept of a fallen angel attempting to overthrow the highest deity parallels Attar's attempt to overthrow Ba'al in Canaanite mythology; Attar is thrown into the underworld as a result of his failure. The story is alluded to in the Book of Isaiah and transferred to Christian beliefs, and is also used in the Vulgate.
As Lucifer is the antagonist of God in Christian beliefs, some sects of Satanism began to venerate him as a bringer of freedom. Other religious communities, such as the Gnostics and Freemasons, have been accused of worshipping Lucifer as their deity.
Lucifer frequently appears in popular media to this day.
Roman folklore and etymology
In Roman folklore, Lucifer was the name of the planet Venus, though it was often personified as a male figure bearing a torch. The Greek name for this planet was variously Phosphoros Φωσφόρος or Heosphoros/Eosphoros Ἑωσφόρος. Lucifer was said to be "the fabled son of Aurora and Cephalus, and father of Ceyx". He was often presented in poetry as heralding the dawn. The Latin word corresponding to Greek is. It is used in its astronomical sense both in prose and poetry. Poets sometimes personify the star, placing it in a mythological context. As the Latin name for the morning appearances of the planet Venus, it corresponds not only to the Greek names Phosphoros and Eosphoros, but also to the Egyptian name Tioumoutiri, and the Old English term Morgensteorra.A similar name used by the Roman poet Catullus for the planet in its evening aspect is "Noctifer". This name respectively corresponded to not only the Greek name Hesperus Ἕσπερος, but also the Egyptian name Ouaiti, and the Old English term Æfensteorra.
Latin Lūcifer “light-bringer, morning star” ; used in the Vulgate for Isaiah 14:12, later applied to Satan in Christian tradition. The translation of the Hebrew word means "Shining One".
The 2nd-century Roman mythographer Hyginus said of the planet:
The Latin poet Ovid, in his 1st-century epic, describes Lucifer as ordering the heavens:
Ovid, speaking of Phosphorus and Hesperus as identical, makes him the father of Daedalion. Ovid also makes him the father of Ceyx, while the Latin grammarian Servius makes him the father of the Hesperides or of Hesperis.
In the classical Roman period, Lucifer was not typically regarded as a deity and had few, if any, myths, though the planet was associated with various deities and often poetically personified. Cicero stated that "You say that Sol and Luna are deities, and the Greeks identify the former with Apollo and the latter with Diana. But if Luna is a goddess, then Lucifer also and the rest of the Wandering Stars will have to be counted gods; and if so, then the Fixed Stars as well."
Planet Venus, Sumerian folklore, and fall from heaven motif
The motif of a heavenly being striving for the highest seat of heaven only to be cast down to the underworld has its origins in the motions of the planet Venus, known as the morning star.A similar theme is present in the Babylonian myth of Etana. The Jewish Encyclopedia comments:
The fall from heaven motif also has a parallel in Canaanite mythology. In ancient Canaanite religion, the morning star is personified as the god, who attempted to occupy the throne of Ba'al and, finding he was unable to do so, descended and ruled the underworld. The original myth may have been about the lesser god Helel trying to dethrone the Canaanite high god El, who lived on a mountain to the north. Hermann Gunkel's reconstruction of the myth told of a mighty warrior called Hêlal, whose ambition was to ascend higher than all the other stellar divinities, but who had to descend to the depths; it thus portrayed as a battle the process by which the bright morning star fails to reach the highest point in the sky before being faded out by the rising sun.
This Jewish tradition has echoes also in Jewish pseudepigrapha such as 2 Enoch and the Life of Adam and Eve. The Life of Adam and Eve, in turn, shaped the idea of Iblis in the Quran.
Christianity
In the Bible
In the Book of Isaiah, chapter 14, the king of Babylon is condemned in a prophetic vision by the prophet Isaiah and is called הֵילֵל בֶּן-שָׁחַר, who is addressed as הילל בן שחר. The title refers to the planet Venus as the morning star, and that is how the Hebrew word is usually interpreted. The Hebrew word transliterated as or occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint renders הֵילֵל in Greek as Ἑωσφόρος, "bringer of dawn", the Ancient Greek name for the morning star. Similarly the Vulgate renders הֵילֵל in Latin as, the name in that language for the morning star. According to the King James Bible-based Strong's Concordance, the original Hebrew word means "shining one, light-bearer", and the English translation given in the King James text is the Latin name for the planet Venus, "Lucifer", as it was already in the Wycliffe Bible.However, the translation of הֵילֵל as "Lucifer" has been abandoned in modern English translations of Isaiah 14:12. Present-day translations render הֵילֵל as "morning star", "daystar", "Day Star", "shining one", or "shining star".
In a modern translation from the original Hebrew, the passage in which the phrase "Lucifer" or "morning star" occurs begins with the statement: "On the day the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labour forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended!" After describing the death of the king, the taunt continues:
For the unnamed "king of Babylon", a wide range of identifications have been proposed. They include a Babylonian ruler of the prophet Isaiah's own time, the later Nebuchadnezzar II, under whom the Babylonian captivity of the Jews began, or Nabonidus, and the Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon II and Sennacherib. Verse 20 says that this king of Babylon will not be "joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, thou hast slain thy people; the seed of evil-doers shall not be named for ever", but rather be cast out of the grave, while "All the kings of the nations, all of them, sleep in glory, every one in his own house." Herbert Wolf held that the "king of Babylon" was not a specific ruler but a generic representation of the whole line of rulers.
Isaiah 14:12 became a source for the popular conception of the fallen angel motif. Rabbinic Judaism has rejected any belief in rebel or fallen angels. In the 11th century, the Pirkei De-Rabbi Eliezer illustrates the origin of the "fallen angel myth" by giving two accounts, one relates to the angel in the Garden of Eden who seduces Eve, and the other relates to the angels, the who cohabit with the daughters of man. An association of Isaiah 14:12–18 with a personification of evil, called the devil, developed outside of mainstream Rabbinic Judaism in pseudepigrapha, and later in Christian writings, particularly with the apocalypses.
File:Lucifer from Petrus de Plasiis Divine Comedy 1491.png|thumb|right|Illustration of Lucifer in the first fully illustrated print edition of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Woodcut for Inferno, canto 33. Pietro di Piasi, Venice, 1491.
The metaphor of the morning star that Isaiah 14:12 applied to a king of Babylon gave rise to the general use of the Latin word for "morning star", capitalized, as the original name of the devil before his fall from grace, linking Isaiah 14:12 with Luke 10 and interpreting the passage in Isaiah as an allegory of Satan's fall from heaven.
Considering pride as a major sin peaking in self-deification, Lucifer became the template for the devil. As a result, Lucifer was identified with the devil in Christianity and in Christian popular literature, as in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, Joost van den Vondel's Lucifer, and John Milton's Paradise Lost. Early medieval Christianity fairly distinguished between Lucifer and Satan. While Lucifer, as the devil, is fixated in hell, Satan executes the desires of Lucifer as his vassal.
Interpretations
derives the word, the Hebrew name for the morning star, from the verb . This derivation was adopted as a proper name for an angel who laments the loss of his former beauty. The Christian church fathers – for example Jerome, in his Vulgate – translated this as Lucifer.Some Christian writers have applied the name "Lucifer" as used in the Book of Isaiah, and the motif of a heavenly being cast down to the earth, to the devil. Sigve K. Tonstad argues that the New Testament War in Heaven theme of Revelation 12, in which the dragon "who is called the devil and Satan was thrown down to the earth", was derived from the passage about the Babylonian king in Isaiah 14. Origen interpreted such Old Testament passages as being about manifestations of the devil. Origen was not the first to interpret the Isaiah 14 passage as referring to the devil: he was preceded by at least Tertullian, who in his twice presents as spoken by the devil the words of Isaiah 14:14: "I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High". Though Tertullian was a speaker of the language in which the word was created, "Lucifer" is not among the numerous names and phrases he used to describe the devil. Even at the time of Augustine of Hippo, a contemporary of the composition of the Vulgate, "Lucifer" had not yet become a common name for the devil.
Augustine's work became the major opinion of Western demonology including in the Catholic Church. For Augustine, the rebellion of the Devil was the first and final cause of evil. By this he rejected some earlier teachings about Satan having fallen when the world was already created. Further, Augustine rejects the idea that envy could have been the first sin, since pride is required to be envious. He argues that evil came first into existence by the free will of Satan. His attempt to take God's throne is not an assault on the gates of heaven, but a turn to solipsism in which the Devil becomes God in his world. When the king of Babylon uttered his phrase in Isaiah, he was speaking through the sprite of Lucifer, the head of devils. He concluded that everyone who falls away from God are within the body of Lucifer, and is a devil.
Adherents of the King James Only movement and others who hold that Isaiah 14:12 does indeed refer to the Devil have decried the modern translations. An opposing view attributes to Origen the first identification of the "Lucifer" of Isaiah 14:12 with the Devil and to Tertullian and Augustine of Hippo the spread of the story of Lucifer as fallen through pride, envy of God and jealousy of humans.
The 1409 Lollard manuscript titled Lanterne of Light associated Lucifer with the deadly sin of pride.
Protestant theologian John Calvin rejected the identification of Lucifer with Satan or the Devil. He said: "The exposition of this passage, which some have given, as if it referred to Satan, has arisen from ignorance: for the context plainly shows these statements must be understood in reference to the king of the Babylonians." Martin Luther also considered it a gross error to refer this verse to the Devil.
Counter-Reformation writers, like Albertanus of Brescia, classified the seven deadly sins each to a specific Biblical demon. He, as well as Peter Binsfield, assigned Lucifer to the sin of pride.