In 1 John iii. 8, Ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν, ἐκ τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστίν· ὅτι ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς ὁ διάβολος ἁμαρτάνει, allusion is made to a most heinous sin committed by Satan at the first beginnings of the human race. But of such a sin there is no account, unless Satan be concealed behind the serpent.--In Rev. xii. 9 (comp. xx. 2), Satan is called the great dragon, and the _old serpent_; the last of which designations refers to the passage now under consideration. The agency of Satan in the fall of man has been controverted, on the plea that, had such been in operation, it ought to have been mentioned. But the absence of any such mention may be explained on the ground that it is not the intention of the holy writers to give any information respecting the existence of the devil, but rather to give an account of his _real_ manifestation, to which, afterwards, the doctrine connected itself. The judgment of the reader should not, as it were, be [Pg 21] anticipated. The simple fact is communicated to him, in order that, from it, he may form his own opinion. _Further_,--It has been asserted that, in the entire Old Testament, and until the time of the Babylonian captivity, no trace of an evil spirit is to be found, and that, hence, it cannot be conceived that his existence is here presupposed. But this assertion may now be regarded as obsolete and without foundation. Closely connected with the affirmation, to which allusion has just been made, is the opinion which assigns the Book of Job to the time of the captivity, an opinion which is now almost universally abandoned. This book must necessarily have been written before the time of the captivity, because Jeremiah refers to it, both in his Prophecies (_e.g._, Jer. xx. 15 sq., which passage evidently rests on Job iii.) and in his Lamentations. (Compare, for a fuller discussion of this subject, _Küper's_ "_Jeremias libror. Sacrorum interpres atque Vindex_") The reference in Amos iv. 3 to Job ix. 8, and several allusions occurring in the Prophecies of Isaiah (_e.g._, chap. xl. 2 and lxi. 7, which refer to the issue of Job's history, which is here viewed as a prophecy of the future fate of the Church; the peculiar use of צבא in xl. 2, which alludes to Job vii. 1; chap. li. 9, which rests on Job xxvi. 13), lead us still farther back. The assertion of those also who feel themselves compelled to acknowledge the pre-exilic origin of the book, but who maintain, at the same time, that the Satan of this book is not the Satan of the later books of the Old Testament, but rather a good angel who only holds an odious office, is more and more admitted to be futile; so that we must indeed wonder how even _Beck_ (_Lehrwissenschaft_ i. S. 249) could be carried away by it, and could make the attempt to support this pretended fact by the supposition, that the apostasy of part of the angels from God, and their kingdom of darkness, are ever advancing and progressing. The principal evil spirit is, in Zech. iii. 1, introduced