# Devil
The Devil is the personification of evil and the great adversary in the [Abrahamic religions](https://www.edgepedia.org/abrahamic-religions), known as Satan in Judaism and Christianity and as Iblīs or al-Shayṭān in Islam, with comparable adversary figures such as Māra in Buddhism and Angra Mainyu in [Zoroastrianism](https://www.edgepedia.org/zoroastrianism) that scholarship treats with care rather than as names of a single being. The English word "devil" comes from the Greek *diabolos*, "accuser" or "slanderer", itself the standard Greek rendering of the Hebrew term *śāṭān*[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1685/the-origin-of-satan/) • [2](https://cdn.mohrsiebeck.com/7e%2Cf19a66b5ab498585bc25be85277bfc.pdf). The name names a role, and the role is not the same in every tradition[3](https://www.divinityatlas.com/adversaries/all).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Names | Satan (Hebrew *śāṭān*, "adversary"), diabolos (Greek, "accuser"), Iblīs and al-Shayṭān in the Qur'an[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1685/the-origin-of-satan/) • [4](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eblis/) |
| Hebrew Bible | A totally evil Satan is nowhere to be found; *ha-satan* is an accuser within the divine court, a servant figure rather than God's enemy[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1685/the-origin-of-satan/) |
| Islam | Iblīs appears 11 times in the Qur'an, ten of them in the story of his refusal to bow before Adam; the Qur'an says he "was of the jinn", and Islam rejects any cosmic dualism[4](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eblis/) • [5](https://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/i/iblis.html) |
| Zoroastrianism | Angra Mainyu (Ahriman) is a hostile spirit opposed to Ohrmazd, and the orthodox Pahlavi account sets their battle at 9,000 years[6](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ahriman) |
| Buddhism | Māra, from the Sanskrit root *mṛ* ("to die"), is the personification of the forces antagonistic to enlightenment and the Buddha's chief antagonist[7](https://www.encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Mara_%28demon%29) |
| Comparative status | Reading Satan, Iblīs, Māra and Angra Mainyu as one role is disputed: it flattens genuinely different accounts of what an adversary is[3](https://www.divinityatlas.com/adversaries/all) |
## From accuser to enemy
The [Hebrew Bible](https://www.edgepedia.org/hebrew-bible) presents *ha-satan* as a figure within the heavenly court, an accuser who tests the faithful rather than an independent power of evil. Satan "as a totally evil being is nowhere to be found in the Jewish Bible"[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1685/the-origin-of-satan/). A later tradition in the Hebrew Bible does propose a personified evil force opposing God, but the full development came later[8](https://repository.nwu.ac.za/bitstreams/5e4f3fe5-2008-46b1-8032-2ad2b8244b93/download).
**A measurable shift.** The promotion of Satan from servant to adversary can be read in two successive versions of one episode: 2 Samuel 24 recounts how God's wrath prompted David to take a census of Israel, while 1 [Chronicles](https://www.edgepedia.org/chronicles) 21 says "And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel"[6](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ahriman). Scholars have asked whether Iranian influence, especially during and after the Jewish exile in [Babylonia](https://www.edgepedia.org/babylonia), helped bring about this change in Satan's conception; a parallel exists between the Iranian two-spirits myth and the doctrine of the two Spirits in the [Dead Sea Scrolls](https://www.edgepedia.org/dead-sea-scrolls)' Manual of Discipline, though a historical connection is probable rather than demonstrated[6](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ahriman).
Research on Satan in the [Old Testament](https://www.edgepedia.org/old-testament), the [Pseudepigrapha](https://www.edgepedia.org/pseudepigrapha), the Qumran literature and the [New Testament](https://www.edgepedia.org/new-testament) shows a long, complicated literary history behind the New Testament "Satan" and "Devil"; the Greek *diabolos* is essentially a translation of the Hebrew *śāṭān*[2](https://cdn.mohrsiebeck.com/7e%2Cf19a66b5ab498585bc25be85277bfc.pdf) • [9](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1476993X10363030). A religio-historical analysis of Second Temple Jewish literature concludes that the early church uniformly understood the Satan as a real mythological being, probably an angel[10](https://academic.oup.com/jts/article-abstract/70/1/21/5404472).
## Iblīs in Islam
In the Qur'an the devil appears under two names, Iblīs and *al-shayṭān*[11](https://portal.kardan.edu.af/%28S%28d1uy3zx5qxvcrsfrlct1zqhj%29%29/KardanDigitalLibrary/DownloadFile.ashx?name=Islam_-_The_Key_Concepts2023_08_06__09_56_11.pdf). The name Iblīs, according to the *Encyclopaedia Iranica*, appears to derive ultimately from the Greek *diabolos*, perhaps through the Syriac *dīblūs*; some Muslim authorities instead connected it with the Arabic *ublisa*, "he was rendered hopeless", referring to the accursedness that followed his rebellion[4](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eblis/) • [12](https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/Iblis.pdf). The name is found eleven times in the Qur'an, always as a proper name, and ten of the eleven occurrences relate to the story of the creation of Adam and Iblīs's eviction from heaven; the exception, Q 26:95, speaks of the "hosts of Eblīs" cast into Hellfire[4](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eblis/) • [12](https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/Iblis.pdf). Iblīs is thus the name tied specifically to the refusal to bow down before Adam, while *al-shayṭān* is used far more frequently, for the devil's maleficent plots against man[4](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eblis/).
**Angel or jinn.** The Qur'an says that Iblīs "was of the jinn" (Q 18:50), and since angels in Islamic teaching do not disobey God, classical commentators divided between reading him as a jinn who lived among the angels and other reconciliations, such as taking "jinn" as a class of angels; the question has no single agreed answer across Islamic scholarship[5](https://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/i/iblis.html). What Islam does settle is his status: Iblīs remains a creature wholly subject to God, and Islam firmly rejects any cosmic dualism[5](https://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/i/iblis.html). A cross-religious analysis of Iblīs and Satan notes that Western thought has often oscillated between literal personification and psychological symbolism, influenced by Miltonic and [Romantic literature](https://www.edgepedia.org/romantic-literature), while the Qur'anic framework holds to a distinct ontological position for Iblīs as a free-willed being of the jinn rather than a fallen angel[13](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6151789).
## Māra and Angra Mainyu
The closest Buddhist counterpart to the Devil is Māra (Tibetan *bdud*, Chinese *mo*), the personification of evil in Buddhism. In traditional biographies of Buddha Shakyamuni, Māra appears as his chief antagonist, attempting to prevent his attainment of buddhahood through threats and temptations; within [Buddhist cosmology](https://www.edgepedia.org/buddhist-cosmology) he is a powerful divinity of the form realm (*rūpadhātu*) dedicated to preventing liberation from cyclic existence[7](https://www.encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Mara_%28demon%29). The name comes from the Sanskrit verbal root *mṛ*, related to words for death such as *maraṇa* and *mṛtyu*, and Māra can mean "maker of death"[7](https://www.encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Mara_%28demon%29).
Zoroastrianism offers the sharpest contrast. Angra Mainyu, Avestan for the "hostile spirit" known in later Persian as Ahriman, is God's adversary in the Zoroastrian religion and seems to have been an original conception of Zoroaster's; in the Gathas he is the direct opposite of Spənta Mainyu, the two being twin spirits of the primeval choice, both sons of Ahura Mazdā before either chose evil[6](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ahriman). In the later orthodox Pahlavi books the primeval choice disappears: Ahriman is the negative counterpart of Ohrmazd himself, the two are eternal direct adversaries of contrary natures, and their conflict is fixed by a treaty to last 9,000 years[6](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ahriman). Later Zoroastrian thought spiritualized Ahriman into an allegory of the evil tendencies in man, to the point that a catechism written by a Parsi high-priest in 1910 does not mention him at all[6](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ahriman).
**Why comparison has limits.** A comparative reference work on adversary figures notes that the category itself is disputed: Zoroastrianism's hostile spirit stands as a counter-principle existing alongside the good creator from equally ancient times, something the adversary found in the monotheisms decidedly is not; the Hebrew Bible's satan acts as an accuser inside the divine court; Māra tempts the Buddha yet stays bound by the same conditions as every other being; and the Qur'an presents Iblīs as a jinn who refuses to bow[3](https://www.divinityatlas.com/adversaries/all). James W. Boyd's study *Satan and Māra*, first a 1970 [Northwestern University](https://www.edgepedia.org/northwestern-university) dissertation and published by Brill in 1975 as *Satan and Māra: Christian and Buddhist Symbols of Evil*, undertook exactly this kind of comparison of the early Greek Christian and early Indian Buddhist mythologies of evil, analyzing the terminology, deeds, nature and power of each figure before setting the two mythologies side by side[14](https://brill.com/display/book/9789004378452/B9789004378452_s007.xml) • [15](https://dlbs.liberal.ntu.edu.tw/jp/search/search_detail.jsp?seq=285357).
## The Devil in art and literature
The Devil's visual career begins in late Antiquity. According to the Italian art historian Laura Pasquini's 2024 book on diabolic iconography, one of the earliest appearances of the Devil in a Christian context is a profile on the 4th-century mosaic of the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta at Aquileia, Italy, an image reminiscent of the evil-warding masks of Bacchic and other early rituals[16](https://www.countrylife.co.uk/luxury/art-and-antiques/the-king-of-hell-was-fat-from-gorging-on-souls-and-he-expelled-some-more-from-his-bowels-the-many-guises-of-the-devil-antiquity-to-present-day). What many scholars deem the first proper representation of Lucifer came about 200 years later in the 6th-century mosaic of the sheep and the goats at St Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, where the devil is an angelic figure in blue with deflected gaze and claw-tipped toes[16](https://www.countrylife.co.uk/luxury/art-and-antiques/the-king-of-hell-was-fat-from-gorging-on-souls-and-he-expelled-some-more-from-his-bowels-the-many-guises-of-the-devil-antiquity-to-present-day).
**From monster to antihero.** From the 11th century Satan loomed in European churches as ruler of the underworld, and the imagery varied widely even within one artist's work; Giotto's Last Judgement in the Arena Chapel at Padua (1303–1305) shows a Satan fat from gorging on souls, expelling and re-devouring the damned in a perennial cycle[16](https://www.countrylife.co.uk/luxury/art-and-antiques/the-king-of-hell-was-fat-from-gorging-on-souls-and-he-expelled-some-more-from-his-bowels-the-many-guises-of-the-devil-antiquity-to-present-day). Renaissance painters such as Raphael and [Lorenzo Lotto](https://www.edgepedia.org/lorenzo-lotto) gave Lucifer an increasingly human, even beautiful form[16](https://www.countrylife.co.uk/luxury/art-and-antiques/the-king-of-hell-was-fat-from-gorging-on-souls-and-he-expelled-some-more-from-his-bowels-the-many-guises-of-the-devil-antiquity-to-present-day). In literature, [John Milton](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-milton)'s *Paradise Lost* made pride the defining trait of a tragic Satan, and a Durham thesis comparing Milton's devil with the Qur'anic Iblīs notes that although both defy God's command, the object of veneration differs fundamentally: for Milton's Christian reader, God could reasonably demand that angels bow to his Son, while in Islamic teaching it would be unreasonable for Satan to bow to anyone other than God[17](https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12614/1/May_2018_Final_Submitted_Thesis_by_Al-Akhras.pdf?DDD11+=).
## What the concept does
One enduring assumption in the study of religion is that belief in the devil emerged to explain the existence of evil. A 2026 [Cambridge University Press](https://www.edgepedia.org/cambridge-university-press) blog essay argues against this, holding that the devil appears in early Christian texts concerned with theological controversy, biblical interpretation, pastoral care, political crisis and Christian formation, so that modern scholarship has often approached the sources with the wrong set of questions if it treats the devil as a solution to the problem of evil[18](https://cambridgeblog.org/2026/07/the-devil-does-not-explain-evil/). The field continues to produce large syntheses, such as *The Routledge History of the Devil in the Western Tradition* (2025), a 598-page interdisciplinary volume covering 2,000 years, from scriptural origins and medieval development through witch-hunting and possession cases to contemporary politics and digital culture[19](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Routledge_History_of_the_Devil_in_th.html?hl=en&id=dQdPEQAAQBAJ&output=html_text). Within Christian systematic theology, the devil's identity and activities are discerned concretely in his contradiction of Christ, treating diabolical temptation, demonic possession and devilish falsehood as the three aspects of "the devil's business"[20](https://abdn.elsevierpure.com/en/publications/gods-adversary-and-ours-a-brief-theology-of-the-devil/).
## References
1. [The Origin of Satan, World History Encyclopedia](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1685/the-origin-of-satan/)
2. [Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity, Mohr Siebeck](https://cdn.mohrsiebeck.com/7e%2Cf19a66b5ab498585bc25be85277bfc.pdf)
3. [All Adversaries, Divinity Atlas](https://www.divinityatlas.com/adversaries/all)
4. [EBLĪS, Encyclopaedia Iranica](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eblis/)
5. [Iblis: The Devil Figure in Islamic Tradition, The Mystica](https://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/i/iblis.html)
6. [AHRIMAN, Encyclopaedia Iranica](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ahriman)
7. [Māra, Encyclopedia of Buddhism](https://www.encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Mara_%28demon%29)
8. [Reflecting on Evil and the Devil, North-West University repository](https://repository.nwu.ac.za/bitstreams/5e4f3fe5-2008-46b1-8032-2ad2b8244b93/download)
9. [Derek R. Brown (2011), The Devil in the Details: A Survey of Research on Satan in Biblical Studies, Currents in Biblical Research](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1476993X10363030)
10. [New Testament Satanology and Leading Suprahuman Opponents in Second Temple Jewish Literature, Journal of Theological Studies](https://academic.oup.com/jts/article-abstract/70/1/21/5404472)
11. [Islam: The Key Concepts](https://portal.kardan.edu.af/%28S%28d1uy3zx5qxvcrsfrlct1zqhj%29%29/KardanDigitalLibrary/DownloadFile.ashx?name=Islam_-_The_Key_Concepts2023_08_06__09_56_11.pdf)
12. [Iblīs, St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology](https://www.saet.ac.uk/Islam/Iblis.pdf)
13. [Mohammad Ashraf Bin Muhammad Daniel Sudakar, The Ontology of Evil: A Cross-Religious Analysis of the Nature of Iblis and Satan in Islamic and Western Traditions, SSRN](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6151789)
14. [James W. Boyd, The Activities of Satan, in Satan and Māra, Brill, Numen Book Series 27 (1975)](https://brill.com/display/book/9789004378452/B9789004378452_s007.xml)
15. [Satan and Māra: A Comparative Study of the Symbols of Evil in Early Greek Christian and Early Indian Buddhist Traditions, NTU library record](https://dlbs.liberal.ntu.edu.tw/jp/search/search_detail.jsp?seq=285357)
16. [The many guises of the Devil from Antiquity to the present day, Country Life (2025)](https://www.countrylife.co.uk/luxury/art-and-antiques/the-king-of-hell-was-fat-from-gorging-on-souls-and-he-expelled-some-more-from-his-bowels-the-many-guises-of-the-devil-antiquity-to-present-day)
17. [Al-Akhras (2018), thesis comparing the Qur'anic devil and Paradise Lost, Durham University](https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12614/1/May_2018_Final_Submitted_Thesis_by_Al-Akhras.pdf?DDD11+=)
18. [The Devil does not Explain Evil, Cambridge University Press blog (2026)](https://cambridgeblog.org/2026/07/the-devil-does-not-explain-evil/)
19. [The Routledge History of the Devil in the Western Tradition (2025)](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Routledge_History_of_the_Devil_in_th.html?hl=en&id=dQdPEQAAQBAJ&output=html_text)
20. [God's Adversary and Ours: A Brief Theology of the Devil, University of Aberdeen Research Portal](https://abdn.elsevierpure.com/en/publications/gods-adversary-and-ours-a-brief-theology-of-the-devil/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Philosophy, religion, and mythology › Mythology and folklore › Deities and deity classification*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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