Hello, I'm Gary Stevens, and welcome to the History in the Bible podcast.

All the history, in all the books, in all the Bibles.

The Apologies. The apocalypse always seems to be shaded and evil.

But what is the background in the text, history, and the tradition about evil and Satan?

We'll fumble around and maybe even play with fire.

Ooh, sounds spooky. I'm looking forward play with fire. Oh, sounds spooky.

I'm looking forward to hearing it.

Oh, I'll be in it.

An evil, where evil comes from, that's something that really isn't explained very well in older Judaism or even in really Greco-Roman paganism, it really it's the Persians who have a really concrete reason why there's evil. Yes, they came up with a dualistic idea, didn't they?

In the Old Testament, evil in effect, comes from God.

And the author of Jubilee's found that a profoundly disquieting idea.

And I suppose during the entire Hellenistic period, it was considered to be, well, you know, how can God possibly let these things happen?

So they came up with the idea of Satan,

who is barely mentioned in the Old Testament.

And in the Old Testament, Satan is simply the prosecuting attorney.

He's not evil in any sense at all.

In the Book of Jubilee, the Book of Jubilees is the first to construct a complex character,

which it calls Mastema, or Mastema, who is clearly Satan and the source of all evil.

Before we move on, this whole idea of the angels,

like angels like Satan, who's a fallen angel and the watchers,

that's such a bizarre concept that we don't really talk that much about.

These watchers are angels who were they were sent to teach men but they fell into sin

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