SAMAEL'S REBELLION
(a) Some say that the Serpent of Eden was Satan in disguise: namely the Archangel Samael. He rebelled on the Sixth Day, driven by an overwhelming jealousy of Adam, whom God had ordered the whole host of Heaven to worship. The Archangel Michael complied without delay, but Samael said: 'I will not worship any lesser being! When Adam was made, I had already been perfected. Let him rather worship me!' Samael's angels agreed, and Michael warned them: 'Beware of God's anger!' Samael replied: 'If He show anger, I will set a throne above the stars and proclaim myself the Highest.' Then Michael flung Samael out of Heaven and down to earth, where he nevertheless continued to scheme against God's will.[146]
(b) Others say that when all the angels had obediently fallen at Adam's feet, Samael addressed God: 'Lord of the Universe, You created us from the splendour of Your Glory. Shall we then adore a being formed from dust?' God replied: 'Yet this creature, though formed from dust, surpasses you in wisdom and understanding.' Samael challenged Him: 'Test us!' God said: 'I have created beasts, birds and creeping things. Go down, and set them all in line; and if you can name them as I would have them named, Adam shall reverence your wisdom. But if you fail, and he succeeds, you must reverence his.'
In Eden, Adam did obeisance to Samael, whom he mistook for God. God, however, pulled him upright and asked Samael: 'Will you be the first to name these beasts, or will Adam?' He answered: 'I will, being both elder and wiser.' God thereupon set oxen before him, inquiring: 'How are these named?' When Samael stood silent, God removed the oxen. He fetched a camel, and afterwards an ass, but Samael could not name either.
God then planted understanding in Adam's heart, and spoke in such a manner that the first letter of each question pointed to the beast's name. Thus He took oxen, saying: 'Open your lips, Adam, and tell me their name!' Adam answered: 'Oxen.' God next showed him a camel, saying: 'Come, tell me the name of this!' Adam answered: 'Camel.' Lastly God showed him an ass: 'And can you name this also?' Adam answered: 'It is an ass.'
When Samael saw that God had enlightened Adam, he yelled indignantly. 'Do you yell?' God asked. 'How should I not,' replied Samael, 'when You have created me from Your Glory, and afterwards bestow understanding on a creature formed from dust?'
God said: 'O evil Samael, are you astonished at Adam's wisdom? Yet he will now foresee the birth of his descendants, and give every one his own name, until the Last Days!'[147] With that, He hurled Samael and his attendant angels from Heaven. Samael clutched at Michael's wings, and would have dragged him down too, had God not intervened.[148]
(c) Some allege that Satan was not Samael, but the oxlike Prince of Darkness who had opposed God's creative will even before He commanded 'Let there be light!' When God said: 'Away! I will create My world in light!', the Prince asked: 'Why not from darkness?' God replied: 'Beware, lest I subdue you with a shout!' The Prince, loth to acknowledge himself God's inferior, feigned deafness. Whereupon God's shout subdued him, as He had threatened.[149] Samael and his angels were banished to a dark dungeon, where they still languish, their faces haggard, their lips sealed; and are now known as the Watchers.[150] In the Last Days, the Prince of Darkness will declare himself God's equal, and claim to have taken part in Creation, boasting: 'Though God made Heaven and Light, I made Darkness and the Pit!' His angels will support him; but the fires of Hell shall quench their arrogance.[151]
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1. 'Samael', though said to mean 'Venom of God', is more likely a cacophemism for 'Shemal', a Syrian deity. In Hebrew myth, Samael occupies an ambiguous position, being at once 'chief of all Satans' and 'the greatest prince in Heaven' who rules angels and planetary powers. The title 'Satan' ('enemy') identified him both with Helel, 'Lucifer, son of Dawn', another fallen angel; and with the Serpent who in the Garden of Eden plotted Adam's downfall. Some Jews (Ginzberg, LJ, V. 85) also hold that he had planned to create another world, which identifies him with the Gnostic 'Cosmocrator' or 'Demiurge'. The Orphic Greek Cosmocrator Ophion, or Ophioneus, was also a serpent (see 1. 10).
2. Adam's naming of the beasts is a tale derived perhaps from a myth of how the alphabet was invented: the first and third Hebrew letters being aleph and gimmel, namely 'ox' and 'camel'.
3. That darkness (hoshekh) had existed long before Creation not as a mere absence of light, but as a positive entity, was believed by all Middle Eastern and Mediterranean peoples. The Greeks spoke of their 'Mother Night'; the Hebrews of their 'Prince of Darkness', relating him to Tohu (see 2. 3), and placing him in the north. The shout with which God overcame this Prince recalls Pan's when, according to Apollodorus, he subdued Typhon: a monster whose wings darkened the sun, and who also lived in the north, on Mount Saphon (see 8. 3).
4. 'Watchers' (egrēgorikoi in Greek), the name given to Satan's angels in the Second Book of Enoch, seems to be a rendering of two Aramaic words: irin, applied to angels in Daniel IV. 10, 14, 20; and qaddishin, 'holy ones'. A nearer translation would be 'guardian angels', which agrees both with their functions and the meanings of their names. According to Midrash Tehillim on Psalm I, ir refers to the deity Eloah.