The Miltonian myth of Satan as an angel named Lucifer who rebelled against God and was cast out of Heaven in primordial times has no real grounding in the Bible, and yet it is the origin story that many—if not most—Christians regard as canonical. In the Old Testament, Satan operates as an obedient member of God’s heavenly court even as he roams the earth testing God’s followers. In Jubilees, he is the leader of the evil spirits who remain after the flood, permitted by God to tempt humans. Early Christianity incorporates Satan into a Middle Platonist matrix, imagining him to be the prince of the corrupt angels or demons who control the earth and lowest heavens. It is only the tradition we find in an apocryphal text, The Life of Adam and Eve, that moves Satan’s expulsion back to Eden and explains why it happened.
In discussions of whether the Edenic version has a biblical basis, people inevitably bring up a certain verse in Luke:
I watched Satan fall like lightning from heaven. (Luke 10:18b)
Taken without more context, it’s easy to see why this verse can be interpreted as confirming some version of Satan’s primordial expulsion. But is that what the verse is really talking about? Let’s take a closer look.
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