Lucifer

In modern and late Medieval Christian thought, Lucifer is usually a fallen angel commonly associated with Satan, the embodiment of evil and enemy of God. Lucifer is generally considered, based on the influence of Christian literature and legend, to have been a prominent archangel in heaven (although some contexts say he was a cherub or a seraph), prior to having been motivated by pride to rebel against God. When the angel failed, Lucifer was cast out of heaven, along with a third of the heavenly host, and came to reside in the world.

Lucifer is a Latin word meaning "light-bearer" (from lux, lucis, "light", and ferre, "to bear, bring"), a Roman astrological term for the "Morning Star", the planet Venus. The word Lucifer was the direct translation of the Greek eosphorus ("dawn-bearer"; cf. Greek phosphorus, "light-bearer") used by Jerome in the Vulgate, having mythologically the same meaning as Prometheus who brought fire to humanity. In that passage, Isaiah 14:12, it referred to one of the popular honorific titles of a Babylonian king; however, later interpretations of the text, and the influence of embellishments in works such as Dante's The Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost, led to the common idea in Christian mythology and folklore that Lucifer was a poetic appellation of Satan.

Christian tradition of a literal fall from heaven drew upon the Homeric tradition, familiar to many.

"the whole day long I was carried headlong, and at sunset I fell in Lemnos, and but little life was in me" Iliad
Homer's description of the parallel supernatural fall relates the fall of Hephaestus from Olympus in the Iliad I:591ff; the fall of the Titans was similarly described by Hesiod. Through popular epitomes these traditions were drawn upon by Christian authors embellishing the fall of Lucifer.

Jerome, with the Septuagint close at hand and a general familiarity with the pagan poetic traditions, translated Heylel as Lucifer. This may also have been done as a pointed jab at a bishop named Lucifer, a contemporary of Jerome who argued to forgive those condemned of the Arian heresy.[citation needed] Much of Christian tradition also draws on interpretations of Revelation 12:9 ("He was thrown down, that ancient serpent"; see also 12:4 and 12:7) in equating the ancient serpent with the serpent in the Garden of Eden and the fallen star, Lucifer, with Satan. Accordingly, Tertullian (Contra Marrionem, v. 11, 17), Origen (Ezekiel Opera, iii. 356), and others, identify Lucifer with Satan.

In the fully-developed Christian tradition, Jerome's Vulgate translation of Isaiah 14:12 has made Lucifer the name of the principal fallen angel, who must lament the loss of his original glory as the morning star. This image at last defines the character of Satan, where the Church Fathers had maintained that lucifer was not the proper name of the Devil, and that it referred rather to the state from which he had fallen; St. Jerome gave it Biblical authority when he transformed it into Satan's proper name.


Identification with Satan
Many modern Christians have followed tradition and equated Lucifer with Satan, or the Devil. A parallel description of Lucifer's fall is found in Ezekiel chapter 28, which contains a lament over an "anointed cherub" who was in the "holy mountain of God". He is described as "perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee." The passage goes on to describe this being's expulsion from the "mount of God", apparently because his "heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness." Afterwards the passage describes the eventual fate of this corrupted cherub: "therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more."

In addition to Isaiah, Ezekiel, Job (in which Satan appears but his origin and purpose are not stated), and various Old Testament scriptures referring to occult powers such as witchcraft, more theological details about fallen angels can be found in the Apocrypha, which are generally not considered canon by those outside Roman Catholicism.


 De-identification with Satan
A growing number of modern Christians no longer accept the tradition, however, assigning the story of Lucifer to Christian mythology. It is noted that the Old Testament itself does not actually contain a literal account of the rebellion and fall of Satan. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are directly concerned with the temporal rulers of Babylon and Tyre, rather than a supernatural being; allegorical readings of these and other passages were typical of medieval scholarship but have little place in modern critical scholarship. Revelation 12, meanwhile, is taken as a reference to Christ's triumph over Satan at his crucifixion rather than a description of a pre-historic event. Christians who reject the Lucifer myth generally believe that the origin of evil (theodicy) is unexplained in Scripture.

Liberal Christian scholarship often denies the existence of a literal personal being called "Satan" altogether, rendering the Lucifer myth irrelevant. It is argued that the name Satan itself (Hebrew: שָׂטָן) merely means "adversary" or "accuser", which may be a personification.
 

Books

Lucifer is a book written by Michael Cordy
Luceafarul (the Evening Star) is a poem by the Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu
Lucifer, by Joost van den Vondel
Lucifer is referred to as "Memnoch" in Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice
Lucifer is identified as the King of the White gods in Miguel Serrano's Nos (1980)
Lucifer became the name of Jupiter after its transformation into Earth's second sun in Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series (1968-1997)
Lucifer is the protagonist of Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer, in which he is offered a shot at redemption by God, and must live a mortal life free of sin.
Lucifer is the protagonist of Lucifer, the graphic novel series by Mike Carey
Lucifer is the main character in Waywalkers and Timekeepers, the novels by Catherine Webb, under the name of Sam Linnfer
Lucifer is a main character in Black Jewels, a book by Anne Bishop
Lucifer is a main character in Imre Madách (The Tragedy of Man), a Hungarian dramatic poem
Lucifer is a character in Midnight Nation, a graphic novel by J. Michael Straczynski
Lucifer is a character in la Révolte des anges by Anatole France
Lucifer is a character in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
Lucifer is a character in To Reign in Hell, a fantasy novel by Steven Brust
Lucifer is a character in The Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman
Lucifer is a character in Von Bek a series by Michael Moorcock
Lucifer is a character in Angel Sanctuary, a manga by Kaori Yuki about a boy who is the reincarnation of one of his fellow fallen angels
Lucifer is a character in In His Likeness, a webcomic
The fall of Lucifer is a central element of the universe portrayed in His Dark Materials a trilogy by Philip Pullman

 

Seraphim Angels 

Seraphiel   Metatron   Michael   Vehuel   Uriel   Nathanael   Jehoel   Chamuel
Lucifer   Abaddon   Asmodeus   Astaroth   Leviathan    Samael    Semyazza

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