Lucifer

Lucifer is one of the main monikers used in Western literature for the Devil. The term entered into Christian conscriousness in the West when Jerome translated the Bible into Latin (which became known as "the Vulgate") in the late 4th Cent. In most modern English translations where we read Isa 14:12 along the following line:

How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! (NIV)

or,

How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! (NRSV)

the Vulgate read:

quomodo cecidisti de caelo lucifer qui mane oriebaris corruisti in terram qui vulnerabas gentes

which is followed by the translators of the KJV and maintained by the NKJ:

How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations! (NKJ)

The name Lucifer was derived from two Latin words, lux/lucis, "light" (from which we also get the English adjectives "lucid," meaning 'shining,' 'transparent,' 'easily understood,' 'intellectually bright,' and "translucent," meaning 'light-passing') and ferre, "to bring." The important question here is not whether Jerome did a good enough job translating the Hebrew word (Helel) as Lucifer (generally taken as a fair translation) but whether the name actually refers to the devil in this verse.

In its original context, the verse was part of a taunt against the king of Babylon; as is evident from the introduction to the taunt in 14:3-4:

On the day the Lord gives you relief from suffering and turmoil and cruel bondage, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended!

Commentators have speculated on a variety of different possible pagan backgrounds for Isaiah's use of the name for the arrogant and tyrannical king of Babylon. Whatever may have been the background, the fact remains that it is the king of Babylon that is being referred to here. "Inasmuch, then, as this passage describes a king's downfall and removal from the scene, it cannot apply to Satan" (E. J. Young, The Book of Isaiah, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965) I.441).

How then did Lucifer come to be associated with the devil?

The process seems to have started with the 2nd Cent theologian, Tertullian, who married the verse in Isaiah to Lk 10:18 where Jesus claimed, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." The exegetical basis for the association between the two verses is tenuous to say the least, but when the association was then repeated by prominent churchmen like Gregory the Great, the Bishop of Rome from 590, the identification of Lucifer with Satan gained easy acceptance and soon established itself as a cultural fixture in the West. How entrenched this tradition is can be illustrated by looking up 'Lucifer' in any Bible dictionary published in the West. Almost without exception we will be directed to look under 'Satan' or 'Devil.' And when we look up the article, invariably the discussion is about 'Satan/Devil' with little or nothing specific said about 'Lucifer.' This experiece is repeated with any Internet search for Lucifer.

Lucifer as a moniker for Satan was, therefore, a late tradition, with no biblical foundation. This is evidenced in the lack of taboo in the early Church using it as a personal name. Bishop Lucifer of Cagliari, e.g., was a strong and active supporter of Athanasius—and was sent into exile for it—in the fight against the Arian heresy in the early 4th Cent, when Jerome was still a juvenile. No Christian, much less a bishop, would have thought to retain such a name if it was a well-identified signature of the Church's arch-enemy.

Given the facts as they are, it is puzzling that the translators of the NKJ should opt—with all the theological burden that the name now carries as a result of the long tradition in the Western Church that the Hebrew text clearly does not share—to retain the name Lucifer in the verse.

Further Reading & Resources:

Robert L. Alden, "Lucifer, who or what," Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 11.1 (Winter 1968): 35-39.
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