Talk:Satan

Removal of Russel's source

@Ar2332 greetings, first of all, thanks for some necessary clean-up, many Users have not realized. Especially the claim taht Belial and Satan were synonyms should have been tackled before. I am, however, initiating the discussion because I believe you may have made a mistake by removing Russel. In Russel's "Devil, Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity" (1977) he introduces on page 99 Zorastrianism as a belief-system with strong impact on the concept of the Devil on both Christianity and Judaism. On page 101-102 the details are explained. Page 100 is mostly just an image. That being said, is it possible you confused something? VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 00:54, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I definitely saw pages 101-102 and there was nothing relevant there, but I did not see the beginning of the Zoroastrianism discussion as it was paywalled. Could you provide the relevant text from page 99 and we can work from there? And don't you mean 1987a not 1977? (The text said 1977 before I deleted it, but I'm pretty sure this was a mistake, and a comment in the text by someone else noted the same.) Thanks Ar2332 (talk) 09:45, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Sure, I have the book at home. I want to reply then back. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 13:16, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Here the relevant quote:

Dualistic religions form a spectrum from the extreme and absolute Zoroastrianism, becoming more and more attenuated through the Zoroastrian heresy Zervanism, GNosticism, and Manichaeism to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, wzhere dualism almost ceases to exist. All these religions, however different from one another, stand together in their distance from monism.

and

But the dualism introduced by Zarathushtra was a revolutionary step in the development of the Devil, for it posited, for the first time, an absolute principle of evil, whose personification, ANgra Maunyu or Ahriman, is the first clearly defined Devil.

regarding the publication date: Published 1977 but printed 1987. Hence the confusion, I suppose. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 22:25, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

OK, I'll readd the reference, however I will label it "1987a" so that the links work correctly. Thanks Ar2332 (talk) 06:02, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Viccio and Iblis

Greetings,

I would like to bring to point an inconsistence between a secondary source and the primary text it seems to rely upon. Viccio is referred to in the following passage in the article " al-Baydawi, instead argues that Satan hoped to be an angel,but that his actions made him a jinn". The source states:

"The Secret of Revelation and Interpretation, says taht Iblis belongs to the angels as far as his hopes were concerned, but that his actions placed him among the djinns."

When reading again over this part, it seems to me that the author suggests that Baydawi states that Iblis becomes a jinn as a result of his actions. As I recently wrote through several tafsirs by means of preparing the related Iblis article, I just noticed that this is not what Baydawi said. Gibril Fouad Haddad translates the following passage from Baydawi's tafsir:

and Iblis was one of the angels, otherwise he would not have been included in the order given to them, nor would it have been valid to except him from them. This is not contradicted by saying of Allah Most High, except Iblis - he was of the jinn (al-Kahf 18:50), because it is possible to say he was of the jinn behaviorally and of the angels generically, (...) (pp. 543)

This is the closest I could find in Viccio's source. However, it is not that Iblis "hoped" to be an angel or was an angel through "hope", but he was an angel in essence. Since the translation matches Viccio's statement that Iblis' actions are like that of the jinn, this seems to be what the author was referring to. Next, I would also like to draw attention to the following part, a few pages later:

There might be a type of angels that are no different from devils in their essence but differ from them only in accidents and attributes - like the virtuous and wicked among humans - and the jinn comprise both [aspects], Iblis being of this type, as stated by Ibn Abbas

Here, jinn is a species to whom angels and devils belong, and Iblis is an angel who behaves like the devils. as per (WP:SOURCEWRONG) I would suggest to rewrite that passage in question. The translator offers a comment on Baydaw's interpretation. Would this be eligible for a better summary of Baydawi's opinion? VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 01:47, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Some of the citation are also poorly cited sadly, like others can contained only link. That's it. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 02:55, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Visual Clutter: the Devil is in the Detail

Nice article, shame about the overload of links. As well as looking unsightly, does not all the visual clutter tend to disrupt reading? Also, might not keeping the underlining - but changing the blue links to black - help to offset the visual distraction?

Nicknames

@VenusFeuerFalle:, ait so i made the disambiguation Old Roger, listing Satan since Old Roger is an old nickname for him. However, user:Bkonrad removed it per WP:MOSDAB because it was missing from the root article. Thus i implemented a short list of nicknames in the root article, here, which you then removed for some reason. Now all i want is a useful disambiguation page, so i feel yal with oppinions on the matter can discuss how to solve this. Blockhaj (talk) 13:28, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

The disambiguation page can exist even if the name is not mentioned on the main article. THe reasons for removal were provided in the edit summary. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 14:30, 11 May 2025 (UTC)