Board Thread:Series general discussion/@comment-68.119.166.116-20170728152907/@comment-2112031-20170927232251

Sol Pacificus wrote:

The Wikia Editor wrote: Honestly, the connection between Satan and the Morning Star doesn't really work, because the passage supposedly referring to him as such is actually about the Babylonian king.

It should also be noted that the Canaanite god Shahar, god of dawn and one of the many sons of El, was also described as the Morning Star. I think I once read that Attar was sometimes identified as being Shahar's son.

The connection between Satan and Lucifer was always rather weird since as you said Lucifer referred to a Babylonian king, most likely Nebuchadnezzar II, and it was only later theologians that identified Lucifer with Satan by extension. At one point even Jesus was occasionally called by that epithet. However, there is indeed a Canaanite story predating Judaism of a god revolting against El in a fight for supremacy and being forced into the underworld after he failed, and this god was variously identified with the Morning Star.

Yes, that's Helel, son of Shahar (I was mistaken when I said that Attar was Shahar's son). Helel is the Hebrew word for Lucifer. Certain scholars have hypothesized that the morning star passage was based on, or at least inspired by, that particular myth.

I also know about Jesus having been called Lucifer, it was a generic term that was applied without any necessarily bad connotations. It's only when it was identified with Satan that it fell out of favor.

It's similar to how the title Baal/Ba'al, meaning "Lord", became synonymous with worshipping false gods, even though it was just a generic title attributed to multiple gods, including the Israelite Yahweh, Babylonian Marduk and even Zeus/Jupiter, through the Greek and Roman forms Belus and Belos.