Doug,
Some of the twists of this story appear to be very linguistic. Maybe a year or more ago an acquaintance was telling me that the Pope and other clerics were engaged in a satanic rite. Why? Because they were singing the praises of Lucifer. I thought I'd check into it.
Sure enough there was an evangelical originated you tube segment of several high church officials in robes singing and "lucifer" could be made out in the song - which was latin and ancient enough to have been a gregorian chant. Which one of several possible songs it was I can't recall, but there are several likely suspects:
Perhaps it was ...
the Easter Proclamation prayer to God regarding the paschal
candle:
Flammas eius lucifer matutinus inveniat: ille, inquam,
lucifer, qui
nescit occasum.
Christus Filius tuus, qui, regressus ab inferis,
humano generi
serenus illuxit, et vivit
et regnat in saecula saeculorum
("May this flame
be found still burning by the Morning Star: the one Morning Star who never
sets, Christ your Son, who, coming back from death's domain, has shed his peaceful
light on humanity, and lives and reigns for ever and ever").
Since the Vulgate Latin translation of the Old Testament translates Isaiah 14 as Lucifer - which literally in Latin is' light bearer", the stage is set with the interpretations of descent, fall and satan, no matter what the Hebrew writer intended to convey about a bright morning star.
Circa 700 or 500 BC, I doubt very much that the scribes concerned with Isaiah knew that some of the bright evening and morning stars were the same object. And then Jerome himself might have had a "satanic" interpretation of the line. But elsewhere in the same latin translations, bearer of light denotes Jesus or John the Baptist. And consequently hymns of the church for centuries thereafter would speak in the same terms about Christ.
I tried to convince my acquaintance of as much with a latin dictionary and grammar, pointing out the noun and the verb, but it was a case of "No way!" -which was pretty much what the evangelistic you-tube propagandists were counting on.
While I believe that the accounts of the demonic in the Bible are mostly in the New Testament rather than the Old, I do believe that there is such a thing as evil and we face it every day. But in this controversy, who is tied closer in its orbit: you-tube propagandists who should know better or high church officials signing hymns?
Isaiah 14:12 -Quomodo
cecidisti de cælo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris ? corruisti in terram, qui
vulnerabas gentes ?
How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of
the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low
the nations! You said in...
OR
“How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the. NKJV
2 Peter 1:19 Et habemus
firmiorem propheticum sermonem : cui benefacitis attendentes quasi lucernæ
lucenti in caliginoso loco donec dies elucescat, et lucifer oriatur in cordibus
vestris :
So we have confirmation of the words of the prophets and you
will be right to pay attention to it as a to a lamp for lighting a way through
the dark until the dawn comes and the morning star rises in your minds.
But the most ironic commentary on this matter which I have found was that of Jean Calvin near 500 years ago. Calvin, like many before and after, for many books of both Old and New Testament, devoted a paragraph or two for every verse he encountered. Sometimes he sounded simply like a man of his time; other times he was profound.
12.How art thou fallen from heaven! Isaiah proceeds with the discourse which he had
formerly begun as personating the dead, and concludes that the tyrant differs
in no respect from other men, though his object was to lead men to believe that
he was some god. He employs an elegant metaphor, by comparing him to Lucifer,
and calls him the Son of the Dawn; (220) and that on account
of his splendor and brightness with which he shone above others. The exposition
of this passage, which some have given, as if it referred to Satan, has arisen
from ignorance;
[ Got that? Protestantism in its infancy 500 years ago!]
for the context
plainly shows that these statements must be understood in reference to the king
of the Babylonians. But when passages of Scripture are taken up at random,
and no attention is paid to the context, we need not wonder that mistakes of this
kind frequently arise. Yet it was an instance of very gross ignorance, to
imagine that Lucifer was the king of devils, and that the Prophet gave
him this name. But as these inventions have no probability whatever, let us
pass by them as useless fables.
Many of his Presbyterian successors, declaring their Calvinistic credentials on radio and podcasts, clearly have no idea of what he had said.
