The Rebellion in Heaven Motif: Historical Survey

 

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint Lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

8 January 2011

 

One of the cardinal pillars of Seventh-day Adventism is the Rebellion in Heaven reality. We say motif but that is a misleading term in the title of the article. It is not just human ingeniuity, it is not a human construct or human literary design. It is not just a legend or myth to help explain something else. From Genesis to Revelation runs this theme in nearly each book. All controversy, all wars, all anger, all deception goes back to this theme.

 

Ancient Near Eastern Examples

From the earliest tablets discovered that dates just after the Flood of Noah in 2521 BCE, we have evidence of the role of the snake motif in Mesopotamia and it compares very well with the themes and what we know of it in the Bible. An article appeared online by this researcher (Koot van Wyk, "Snake Motif in Mesopotamia and the Bible" dated to 2007/05/20 at http://www.egw.org at VANWYK NOTE 5). Other articles also dealt with the motif at Niniveh in 650 BCE (Koot van Wyk, "Israelite midrash at Niniveh and the Rebellion in Heaven Motif" dated to 2007/05/22 at http://www.egw.org at VANWYK NOTE 7). When this researcher was studying at an Adventist College in 1976, prof. Johan Japp dealt with the subject important to Adventism and described in Patriarch and Prophets by Ellen White (see Koot van Wyk, "Fall of Lucifer (class notes by Johan Japp 1976)" 2008/10/11 at http://www.egw.org at VANWYK NOTE 820). In texts, on seals, in iconography the motifs that modern scholars so easily allocate to myths, or legends, or prehistory in Genesis or borrowed elements in Genesis and the like, are in essence the following situation. All people are traced back to the sons of Noah who left the ark after the Flood. This means that biblical realities which were stories of reality of the past were kept alive but as people secularized, there was a degeneration of the detail and it got mixed with their own newly created natural religions and superstition. If something looks very vivid and elaborate outside the Bible to appeal to the reader that the limited description of the Bible is borrowed from that of the Environment in Ancient Times, the situation is just the other way around. The reality was so well known that description in the Bible was not necessary, at least with all the detail. So what happened is that what was obvious to the Hebrew mind became attractive to the secularized natural religion inventor who reworked the pure detail with mixed data to concoct a fabrication in elaborate description, descriptions and iconography that mislead modern scholars today in deciding what came first, the chicken or the egg?

Paul Hanson suggested that a glance over the motif in the Bible leads to the result that some modern studies whould trace the origin of the Rebellion in Heaven theme back to ancient Near Eastern cyclical and mythical thinking.(1) He indicated that this motif is a strong Semitic one in the Ancient Near Eastern Parallels of Sumer, Akkad, Hurrian and Ugarit. It also occur in Greek legends of Hesiod and Aeschylus.(2)

 

Early Church Fathers

In the early church fathers, 1 Clement and Barnabas, a Christo-centric approach was followed but on the other hand Tertullian who blurred typology with Hellenistic allegory kept to the identification of Satan as the figure of Isaiah 14:14.(3)

 

Two Schools of Interpretation

The emergence of two exegetical schools, namely, the Alexandrian and Antiochene school of interpretation left the Lucifer-motif of the Bible in the Alexandrian school as stronger than in the Antiochene counterpart.

 

Alexandrian School of Interpretation

The Alexandrian school of interpretation turned the allegorical method of Philo the Jew, into Christian reading and Origen developed this method further. Yet, Origen identified Satan in Isaiah 14:12.(4)

In the West, the Latin Fathers employed and nurtured this allegorical principle and at least Ambrose(5), early Jerome(6) and Augustine(7) identified Satan in Isaiah 14:12.

 

Antiochene School of Interpretation

The Antiochene School of Interpretation is the exegetical methof founded by Lucian of Samosata (312) and we find a reaction against Alexandrian allegorism. Contra-Origen were Diodones of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia. John Chyrsostom developed these exegetical principles. This school's exegesis was firmly anchored to history and the literal meaning of Scripture. Yet, we do not find the Rebellion in Heaven theme here as strongly as the way we find it is the Alexandrian school.

 

Second Council of Constantinople (553 CE)

At the second council of Constantinople the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia were condemned as Nestorianism and ordered to be burned.

 

Medieval Exegesis

In the Medieval exegesis it was the Alexandrian method with Origen's threefold sense of Scripture (i.e. body, soul and spirit) which became the standard method of interpretation. The threefold sense soon became the fourfold sense or Quadriga (lit. "the four-horse chariot"). It became the standard theoretical principle of the medieval exegesis. The principle consists of four tenets: literal sense, allegorical sense, typological (moral meaning) sense, anagogical (i.e. after eschatology) sense. With this view Duns Scotus also identified Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12.(8) Many medieval expositors considered all four as of equal importance but Thomas Aquinas stressed the literal sense as prime. Even with Thomas Aquinas(9) do we find the identification of Satan as Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12.

Later century Catholics followed this Thomistic emphasis. Suarez(10) also identified this motif as Satan.

 

Refomers

With the Reformers of the sixteenth century there was a gradual break with the fourfold sense of exegesis. Martin Luther initially used the fourfold principle but in 1519 in his commentary on Galatians 4:24 he calls this a "kind of game". In the 1535 commentary he openly attacked this principle. He insists on the literal meaning as discovered by grammatical-historical exegesis. For him typology is only one of numerous exegetical methods and is identical to the main point at issue.

John Calvin (1509-1564) also stressed that one should abide by the natural and obvious meaning. Typology occupies a central and significant role in his theology.

 

Dutch Poets

With the work and exegesis of Armenius, a certain Dutch poet and dramatist, Joost van den Vondel sympathized. Vondel also identified Satan as the dramatis persona of Isaiah 14.(11) Also Hugo Grotius(12) and the English poet and dramatist John Milton(13) had Satan in Isaiah 14:12. Armenius was a source of inspiration to all these poets.

 

Protestant Orthodoxy

Two divergent schools of interpretation started after the Reformation, namely, the Cocceian-school and the Marshian school.

 

Cocceian School

The Cocceian school of Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669) was a revival of Origen. One still finds commentators and preachers who strongly hold to this identification of the Fall-of-Satan-motif in Isaiah 14:12. Commentators and preachers can be listed such as John Trapp(14), Edward Leigh(15), Miles Smith(16), John Salkeld(17), Joseph Beaumont(18), Adreini(19), and Thomas Heywood(20). A dissenting view was that of Joseph Hall(21).

Followers of this school in later seventeenth and early eighteen centuries were a host of British, Puritan and New England writers. In the eighteenth century Jonathan Edwards is included as belonging to this school. Followers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries particularly were the Hutchingean School (from John Hutchingson [1674-1737]) and the Plymouth Bretheren.

 

Marshian School

The Marshian school of Protestant Orthodoxy originated with Herbert Marsh (1757-1839). He accepted a more constrictive view of interpretation than the Cocceian school. He argued that only those types which are legitimized by the New Testament or declared as such by divine authority, can be accepted.

 

Rationalism

With the rise of Rationalism, the Historical-critical exegesis gave a decisive blow against the basic unity perception of scholars of the Old and New Testament. This also meant that the existence of innate and inferred types were rejected.

 

Enlightenment

During the period of the Enlightenment in the nineteenth century traditional views of biblical typology were largely disregarded within critical scholarship.

 

Lighthouse: Ellen White

In a stormy sea of biblical interpretation one find the lighthouse works of Ellen G. White on Satan as the one in Isaiah 14:12(22).

Modern commentators since the Nineteenth century and into the Twentieth century have deviated from the traditional interpretation of this section.

First they changed the translation. The traditional rendering of Lucifer for the Hebrew word helel in Isaiah 14:12 was changed to howl and still in another rendering morning star. The traditional interpretation of the dramatis persona fell by the wayside(23).

 

Patrick Fairburn (1805-1874)

Fairburn criticized both the Cocceian and Marshian school of interpretation and intended a mediating position. His classical statement of five principles on Biblical typology were: 1. regard nothing as typically good under the gospel which was in itself bad; 2. types existed not so much by prospective expectancy as by realizations in the Gospel; 3. do not see types merely as providential transactions or religious institutions; 4. types have one radical meaning but the fundamental idea in it may be often capable of more than one application; 5. give due regard to the essential difference between the nature of type and antitype. Critics has labelled this last point as "Christianized Platonism".

 

In the Twentieth Century

The major traditional views which were earlier represented by the Cocceian, Marshian and Fairburn exponents can still be found in some conservative circles, but within historical-critical scholarship interpreters, the contemporary relevance and validity of biblical typology has largely been repudiated. No wonder the identification of Lucifer as Satan in Isaiah 14:12 fell by the wayside.

 

After World War II

After World War II the emergence of neo-Orthodoxy led to the Biblical Theology Movement which maintianed the methods and results of historical criticism but wants to express the unity of the Two Testaments. The rise of anti-Semitism and National Socialism in Germany in 1933 called forth attempts to defend the value of the Old Testament. However, by the end of 1940, typology in the Bible was largely ignored by Critical Biblical Scholarship.

 

Bultmann and Von Rad

Major protagonists in the debate shows that Rudolf Bultmann asserts that New Testament typology is based on an Ancient Near Eastern mythological/cosmological/cyclical view of time. This is a problem that we have addressed in the opening words to this article. Bultmann works with the hermeneutics of suspicion and will inevitably end with his results as opposed to this researcher's hermeneutics of affirmation that will end with a contrasting view as outlined in the beginning already. This view of Bultmann is in contrast to the biblical genuine linear understanding of history.

In 1957 Walther Eichrodt seeked to counter the objections of Bultmann with regard to typology. About the Rebellion in Heaven theme Eichrodt concluded "Speculation about the fall of angels must, on the other hand, be rejected on the basis of the Old Testament itself as unbiblical" (Walther Eichrodt, "Satan" in Theology of the Old Testament Vol. 2 [London: SCM Press Ltd, 1967, 1972]: 205-209, especially 209).

It appears as if the English tradition concentrate on the recuring rhythm and German circles on the revelation-history as well as reactualization of earlier traditions in new situations.

 

Modern Commentators

Modern Commentators held wide opinions as to the identification of the dramatis persona in Isaiah 14:13-14. Besides failing attempts(24) to identify him with a historical figure(25) efforts to identify him with Canaanite(26) and pre-Israelite pagan myths(27) also seem impoverished(28).

There is a tendency on the part of most commentators to consign this topic to oblivion by ignoring it. Despite this trend a few modern commentators still hold to the strong traditional interpretation of Isaiah 14:13-14 as an account of the Rebellion of Lucifer in Heaven(29).

 

Early Manuscripts

This researcher has published an article on the appearance of this Motif in early manuscripts, Judaism, and the Inter-Testamental period (Koot van Wyk, "Ellen White, John Milton, and the Dutch Poets: Fall of Man Narrative Parallels" Sahmyook Theological Review 4 [1996]: 174-182).

 

Footnotes

1) For a discussion on the relation of I Enoch 6-11 with the phenomenon of Jewish apoclypticism and its correlation with Near Eastern Parallels, see Paul D. Hanson, "The Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel, and Euhemeristic Heroes in I Enoch 6-11," JBL 96/2 (1977): 195-233. Just as Hanson is trying to disassociate the tradition of Enoch from the Greek and biblical motifs, so it is not farfetched to disassociate the Near Eastern parallels from the Bible for various reasons: a) the myths recorded are not always on tablets that are very early but are much later copies than they are published to be; b) there is a tradition of unreliable transmission of myths as compared with the reliable tradition of the Masoretic text. It is rather that by a process of semioses, the pagan writers were influenced by biblical heroes and events.

2) See P. Hanson, op. cit. 213.

3) Contra Marcion, Book V chapter XVII. The history of exegesis is that of Richard Davidson, "Typology in Scripture, A Study of Hermeneutical τυπος structures," AUSDDS Vol. II (Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1981), 17-114.

4) De Principiis i.v.5 translated by G. W. Butterworth (1936). See also Homiliae in Numeros XII.4.

5) In Psalmun David CXVIII Expositio VII.7

6) Commentariorum in Ezechielem liber IX, 28. For more views of the fathers and early protestant theologians, see the collection of Sigmund Feyerabend in Theatrium diabolorum (Frankfurt 1569), vol. 26ff. and also Heinrich Heppe in Reformed Dogmatics as set out an illustrated from the sources, ed. Ernst Bizer, translated by G. T. Thomson (1950), 216ff.

7) De Civitate Dei XIV, translated by John Healey, 1610 (compare the revised version of R.V.G. Tasker, 1945).

8) Philsophia Naturalis

9) Summa Theologia III, Qu.1a.3. translated by the English Dominician Fathers (1911-1925), 22 volumes.

10) De Angelis Lib VII c. 1305, De Inc. Disp. V sect. 4.

11) Joost van den Vondel, Lucifer by A. P. Grové (Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik Beperk, 1968).

12) Adamus Exul. For a translation see Watson Kirkconnell, ed. The Celestial Cycle: The Theme of 'Paradise Lost' in World Literature (Toronto, 1952).

13) Paradise Lost (1608-1674).

14) A Commentary . . . . upon the Epistles, (1647), 659.

15) A System or Body of Divinity (Oxford, 1654), 280ff.

16) Sermon, preached at Worcester (Oxford, 1602), 15.

17) A Treatise on Angels (1613), 335-336.

18) Psyche (1648); Canto I, stanza 31, in Chartsey Worthies Library ed. Grosart (1880), vol. 1.

19) L'adamo (1613) ed. Ettore Allodoli (Lanciano, 1913) I(i) 436-453.

20) The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels (1635). For more Seventeenth Century references, see the list of literary treatments cited by Grant McColley in "Paradise Lost", Harvard Theological Review XXXIII (1939): 185-186 and repeated in his book, Paradise Lost 32-34.

21) The Invisible World (1659), 140.

22) Patriarchs and Prophets.

23) Joseph Addison Alexander and John Eadie. The Prophecies of Isaiah. Earlier and Later (Glascow, London: William Collins Press, 1848), 271. The traditional translation of Isaiah 14:12 was the appelative Lucifer for the original hêlêl. Rosenmüller and Gesenius were the first to change it to howl. Both scholars later adopted another interpretation of hêlêl. This interpretation makes the word a derivation of halal = to shine, denoting bright one or more specifically bright star or according to the ancients more specifically still, the morning star or harbinger of daylight. called in Greek hesphoros and in Latin, Lucifer. Later German commentators adopted this derivation, except that they read hêlȃl to avoid the objection that there is no such form of Hebrew noun as hêlêl and that where this form occur, it is confessedly a verb.

24) See Gleason L. Archer in Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982), 268-270 who mentions different identifications. Duhm and Marti identify him with Nabonidus and Belshazzar. Otto Procksch in Isaiah 1-39 Kommentar zum Alten Testament (Leipzig, 1930) identifies him with Nebuchadnezzar (contra W. H. Cobb, "The Ode in Isaiah XIV" JBL 15 (1896).

26) J. Gray in JNES 8 (1949): 27-34 identify Isaiah 14:12 with the Morningstar, the planet Venus, which in Canaanite mythology is associated with the planet Attar. Marvin Pope in El in the Ugaritic Texts," PSVT Supp. 3 pp. 61ff. identifies the original subject of this oracle in Isaiah 14:12 as the Canaanite deity El. R. E. Clements, The New Century Bible Commentary Isaiah 1-39, pp. 142-143 also endorse this interpretation.

27) W. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament Vol. 2 (London: SCM Press, 1967), 208.

28) D. Guthrie and J. A. Motyer, The New Bible Commentary Revised, p. 600.

29) Gleason L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, 270. Also Heinz Kruse, "Das Reich Satans," Biblia Vol. 58 (1977): 29-61 and especially page 57 also identified Lucifer with Satan. He says, "Die biblischer Autoren sahen tiefer: Satan möchte wie Gott sein' (vgl. Gen 3,5; Is 14,13; Ez 28,2) möchte selbst Gott sein, wenn auch nur ein 'kleiner Gott,' und das ist ein unvorstelbar hohes Gut". He further explains that it is not a matter of a second god next to God in the sense of Zoroastrian Dualism. It is rather that Satan wants to sabotage God's creation. He says: "In diesem Streben findet er genug Bundesgenossen, in der Geisterwelt wie unter den Menschen. Er ist kein Gegner Gottes im Sinne zoroastrischen Dualismus. Gott selbst zu bekämpfen ist unmöglich und daher sinnlos, aber Gottes Werk und Plan in den Geschöpfen zu sabotieren, is möglich und offenbar ungemein erfolgreich." About the reality of a rebellion in heaven he says: "Wenn es also böse, d. h. gottwidrige Geister gibt, so müssen diese irgendwann durch einen 'Sundenfall' oder eine Rebellion gegen Jahwe ans guten zu bösen Wesen geworden sein, auch wo dies in den uns erhaltenen Quellen nicht ausdrücklich erwähnt wird". The concept of Demonology in Ancient Near Eastern motifs, Old Testament, Qumran material, Pseudepigrapha, Haggadic material of Tannaic and Amoraistic Scriptures of Judaism (Mishna and Talmud), as well as the New Testament and Church Fathers , falls outside the scope of his article. See also Siegbert Uhlig, "Die typologische Bedeutung des Begriffs Babylon," AUSS 12 (1974): 112-125 especially page 118 where he accepts the traditional interpretation when he says: "Dennoch wird die typologisierung bis zum Extrem der Personifikation des Bösen vorangetrieben". Uhlig says that the city of Babylon is taken to levels of personification that belongs to the Evil one, (probably Satan?). Uhlig is not clear.