Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to

explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Most of us have heard the term devil's advocate used to describe someone who takes the wrong

side of an argument knowingly, essentially picking the side the devil would take.

Longtime listeners of this show would know that this term originates in the legal code of the

Catholic Church. As a reminder, in order for a saint to be canonized, an expert needed to take

the stand to give their best arguments for why the person shouldn't become a saint. And the Latin

title for that role was Advocatus Diabali, the devil's advocate. The connection between the

devil and legal minutia goes even deeper than that, though. In fact, the first

appearance of the term Satan in the Bible is referring not to a proper name, but a role being

performed by another heavenly deity. The term Satan means accuser or adversary. In the book of

Job, for example, it is one of these Satan's who encourages God to punish the devout Job to test

his faith.

According to some scholars, the role of this Satan is not as the cause of all evil, but as

someone who provokes the advocates of good to prove themselves.

And this connection between the concept of the biblical devil and legal procedure often

gets overlooked, likely because legal scholars

and biblical scholars work in quite distinct fields. Then again, it shouldn't come as a surprise

to anyone that Satan has appeared in legal court documents in the United States, not as a religious

reference, but as a defendant. In 1971, for example, a prisoner in Pittsburgh's

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