The BOM also says that the prophesies and themes of Isaiah apply to multiple time periods and find multiple spiritual and literal fulfillment in world history and in our personal lives. This isn’t hard to believe if you accept the addage “history repeats itself.” Therefore it makes sense that Isaiah could describe a scene happening during the pre-moral existence and apply it to the King of Babylon during his day, as well as apply it to Christ’s day, and the Last Days.

There is always debate about which era Isaiah is speaking about. The truth is he is speaking about all eras of history. Thats the purpose of the scriptures. The wisdom of ages applies to everyone both literally and spiritually, individually and collectively.

An example of what I mean is the re-fulfullment of Daniel’s prophecy about the downfall of the King of Babylon (Dan 4:33). Saddam referred to himself as an incarnate of Nebuchadnezzar and was even doing excavacions of the city of Babylon. Turns out that he suffered the same fate. Daniel describes the downfall of Nebuchadnezzar:

“He was driven from mankind; he ate grass like oxen, and his body was washed by the dew of heaven, until his hair grew like eagles’ feathers and his nails were like birds’ claws.”

David B.-
About the copyist’s respect and the authenticity of Isa 14, they are not mutually exclusive. By the copyist, I should clarify, I mean someone much later than the author (if there was one), one who was working after the content of the text had become more or less fixed. The copyist was responsible for the transmission of the tradition, which doesn’t appear to have been tampered with greatly in such transmission, especially not via sweeping theological agendas, as we often assume. The verses missing in 2 Samuel are not a result of an inauthentic text but an error in transmission.

The authenticity of Isa 14 has little to do with the copyist I’m referring to, who would have tried to copy Isa 14 exactly as he saw it.

The redactor (editor), the one responsible for putting Isa 14 next to Isa 13, is the one we have to worry about. And evidence from the different documents of the Pentateuch suggests that redactors did little more than put the texts in a comprehensible order. There is little evidence of tampering with the content other than this. When it comes to prophetic literature, it is assumed that the prophet’s cadre of followers was responsible for collecting and “publishing” the prophet’s writings (like Baruch for Jeremiah). These writings, as indicated by the widely variant versions of Jeremiah, could be arranged and rearranged according to different editorial exigences. And, when it comes to Isaiah, there is the theory that people associated with Isaiah composed their own prophecies in his “vein” at later times and circulated these with the “original” Isaiah’s words–hence Deutero- and Trito- Isaiah. So the theory is that Isa 40-55 are of a hand different from Isa 1-39 and 56-66, and that Isa 1-39 is not uniformly attributable to the “First” Isaiah.

The argument for Isa 14 is that during the First Isaiah’s time Babylonia was insignificant compared to Assyria, and wouldn’t have carried much weight with his audience. This chapter, for the most part, would have been composed during the reign of the terrible Babylonian kings, prophesying their destruction, and thus would be likely placed during some point in the exile. Then when the writings were being collected, later, Isa 14 was placed in its current context. Or so the theory goes. I’m not totally convinced of it, (which is why I invoked the “scholars say” clause), but I’m not beholden to its refutation either. For me there doesn’t have to be a single Isaiah, writing during a single period.

That said, as Hugh Page’s book discusses, there are reflexes of this type of myth that show up elsewhere (and much earlier than the Bible) in the ancient Near East. I think what Page says (though it’s been awhile since I’ve read him) is that this type of myth was pressed into service in the “Oracle against the King of Babylon” of Isa 14. We have done what Isaiah did with this myth: shape it to accomodate our theology, to help us understand the pre-existence. For us Babylon has no specific meaning as it once did.

This is all to say that invoking Isa 14 for evidence of a pre-exilic concept of Lucifer is problematic. Thanks for asking for clarification.

Yes, Jasher is most likely an example of an attempted addition to the OT text. It is both apocraphal and pseudopigraphal in nature. Yet another example of disrespect by someone for the OT text.

My point is that Israel has gone through several cycles of true belief and apostasy. It is a miracle that the OT made it to this day at all thanks to great respect by the Jews. I think there are suggestions in the NT that the patriarchs had a correct view of the nature of God and Satan. However, I think there just isn’t enough in the OT to know just what they did or didn’t believe on this issue from the OT alone.

Deut. 4: 2 and Deut. 12: 32 command to not add nor deminish from the law. This is probably as good of proof that a great many things were since added and diminished from scripture since, else why would have God commanded not to do it. Is there a commandment of God that man has not broken?

And Mormonism definitely does not teach, IMO, that a single entity is the source of all evil, but Holds the Evil is eternal. Are you basing this refutation on “good cometh from god and bad cometh from the devil.” type scriptures in the BOM, or what?

I think Kevin’s is the only understanding that makes sense of the evidence without collapsing history and disregarding contrary evidence.

Shane (10): Job didn’t use the word “Book” any more than Jacob used “adieu” (Jacob 7:27). “Book” was the word chosen by KJV translators in 1611 to render the Hebrew “sepher”, a word which definitely does not mean “book” in our understanding. It can mean many things, such as “document” “letter”, in general, any kind of written record. Citing a translation into English does not constitute proof of anything except that the translators of the KJV associated Hebrew “sepher” with English “book” as they understood “book”.

And on the same comment, 1 Enoch and the conglomerate “Dead Sea Scrolls” don’t prove anything about what the “members of the church” believed. Aside from the fact that 1 Enoch is very late and should not be read back into the Hebrew Bible, how do we know that members of the church read it, let alone believed it? And to what “Church” are you referring?

This also applies to Broz’s comment (6) on 2 Samuel and the Book of Jasher. The “exclusions” in 2 Samuel are almost all results of either variant texts in circulation or (even more commonly) errors in copying (the scribe’s eye jumped from one word down to another and thereby eliminated a verse or two). The verses that are missing are not theologically significant and cannot be attributed to deliberate omission or exclusion.

The Book of Jasher, furthermore, is not the one mentioned in Josh 10:13 or 2 Samuel 1:18. It is likely a composition whose title reflects the desire to add legitimacy to the content of an author’s message, or to fill in the interpretive gaps left by the OT. This is why there is so much speculation concerning Enoch and Melchizedek in antiquity–we only have scant evidence of these figures, so all kinds of interpreters have tried to fill in the gaps.

Finally, David B (13): Your reading of Isaiah 14 supplies much information that isn’t in the text of the chapter itself, and should not be used to prove the pre-exilic concept of Satan. Most scholars, incidentally, debate whether or not this section of Isaiah is authentically pre-exilic, (and, for that matter, the book of Job is problematic when it comes to dating). The chapter clearly states that it deals with the King of Babylon, and there is no indication of a connection between Satan and “Lucifer” (which is helel, probably ‘shining one’). In fact, there is no obstacle to understanding this being as an earthly one. In any case, there’s no indication here of outer darkness or of a pre-mortal council. All this has been supplied by LDS interpretation. We have to be aware of what is in the text and what we bring to it in the way of interpretation/assumption.

The bottom line is that there is no evidence in the Hebrew Bible of a single entity who is the source of all evil, especially not one called Satan.

Two helpful books that address these issues are:

Jon Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, and Hugh Page The myth of cosmic rebellion: a study of its reflexes in Ugaritic and biblical literature.

The gospel was being preached from Adam on up – including knowledge of Satan / evil / demons – and this may be very simplistic but – of course it would appear in pre-exilic concept. Right?
(Looking at Shane’s comment I’d say yes.)

What is your email address?

This is from a discussion while back but I want to send you three accounts of the “mantle of Joseph” falling on BY in his “debate” with Sidney Rigdon from my family history files. One is interesting and contains a detail that I have never heard before.