God creates good and evil, no Lucifer, we choose

When did the fall of Lucifer take place?

In the Judaism that I know ("observant" Hokmei Yisrael), there is no such thing as Lucifer the fallen angel, challenger of HaShem's authority.

Being raised in a Xian influenced culture we pick up certain concepts. When these concepts are seemingly derived from the "Bible" we may falsely attribute them to Judaism. We often hear the oxymoronic term Judeo-Xian. Judaism and Xianity are two belief sytems easily distinguishable in their differences.

Judaism vastly differs from the Xian belief systems in its concept of G-d who is One, unlike any other one. One who is not locked in a battle with another god who would challenge Him for supremacy. The concept of light and dark deities struggling for supremacy passed into western religious thought from the Persians (Iran).

Lucifer is derived from two Latin words, lux "light" and ferre "to bear or bring." These two words were combined inventing the name Lucifer and were used originally to refer to the planet Venus in its morning appearance as the dawn star. This is the name Jerome used in the Vulgate.

The Hebrew TN"K stood on its own being known as the Bible since the Greek translation the Septuagint. The Greek translation was lamented by the Assembly because many Hebrew concepts are insensible to the Greeks or in the Greek language.

When Xianity arose, it slapped its own new Greek Scriptures onto the already existing Hebrew TN"K and now attributed the term "Bible" to their contrived collection. After Rome officially adopted Xianity for the state religion, Jerome translated the TN"K and the Greek Scriptures into common Latin producing the Vulgate.

Lucifer as a name appears in the Vulgate as a translation of the Hebrew word "heylel" in Isaiah 14:12. In proper context the Hebrew has "heylel ben shahhar". It's not clear whether Jerome translated directly from the TN"K or just used the Septuagint. It is know that in the last of his three revisions he translated the Psalms directly from the Hebrew.

The Septuagint translated "heylel ben shahhar" as "eosphoros" the dawn star (as in Plato's work Timaeus or Hesiod's Theogony), a familiar Greek term associated with the vault of the heavens (astraios), the dawn (eos), and the sun (helios).

Who or what did Yashayahu haNabi (the prophet Isaiah) mean in his prophecy when he makes reference to the day star? We have to consider Isaiah 14:12 in its full context.

The passage starts at Isaiah 14:4; "...thou shalt take up this satire against the king of Babylon...". This identifies the subject to be Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon's ruler.

The ode begins by stating that HaShem has broken this king who had broke so many others without restraint. The entire planet rejoices in the king's downfall. The very cedars of Lebanon's forest taunt the dead king and the shades he has sent to the grave in his former years of conquest mock him.

Assuming astonishment, they jibe him for being as dead as they themselves are now. They rile him for being infested with worms and maggots; he who thought himself a denizen of heaven, the morning star as it were, in his vain aspiration of godly power imagining himself to be an immortal.

Those slain by his armies lying unburied on the battlefield also wag their tongues at the dead king. He too lies unburied. This final indignity struck upon the oh so haughty imperial majesty. The oppressive ruler that destroyed cities, left captives languishing in prisons, issued capital punishment for minor offences, exhorbitantly taxed and levied his own subjects. The passage concludes at Isaiah 14:21.

The fall of the morning star (Lucifer) is only a barb in part of a satire directed against the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. Whatever else any other belief system may have developed this name into, in Judaism, it only serves to designate the planet Venus. In a sense, the appearance of Heylel ben Shahhar marks when we can begin our shahhariyth hallel (morning praises) to our Creator.

There was a troop of "fallen angels" but not in the sense of being cast down for rebelling. Because of humankind's inherent potential to become godlike beings of an order surpassing angels, some angels are jealous of humanity. When HaShem decided to make humankind in His own ssellem, some angels were confused and asked: "What is man that You are mindful of him and the son of man that You think of him?" HaShem had shown the angels the destinies of humankind, our capabilities for both the lows and the highs, our susceptability to the evil impulse and our ability to overcome it by its antidote, Torah.

Some angels wanted the chance to prove that they were the more worthy to receive Torah. In their jealousy of humankind they professed never to be susceptable to women's wonders as was the man 'Adham in his love for Hhawah. However, as soon as they materialized they became so lustful for women that their action brought on the Flood.

Although the book B*reshiyth shows that Hebrews knew about angels, it was from the Persians that we learned the angels' names. In all the TN"K only Daniel names but two angels, Michael and Gabriel (unless one counts Azazel as in Torah).

The evil impulse was missing from the angels' character. HaShem designed the evil impulse for earthly manifestation as part of its role as a proving ground. So Isaiah 45:7

"I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and
create evil; I am the L-rd that does all these things."

This passage from Isaiah is like the passage with "Lucifer" in that it too is directed at a king of a non-Israelite people, the Persians, the people from whom we learned the names of the angels.

But the Persian's knowledge was corrupt. Remember it was their religion that introduced god Ahura Mazda of light and good and rebellious god Ahriman of dark and evil. In the first verse of Isaiah 45 we see that HaShem is addressing his messiah Cyrus, the Persian. By using the phraseology in Isaiah 45:7 HaShem is making clear to the Persian dualists of the influential Zoroastrian religion that He, the Gd of Israel is the Creator of everything, and that there is no war of gods in heaven, between one who created a misbalanced world of all good which could never test humanity, and one who rebelling introduced evil into the world, spoiling the perfection of a humanity not needing to show their love for Gd by taming the evil impulse and cultivating the good impulse.

Besides denying the world's creation to be the act of HaShem instead of the acts of two warring gods, this Persian concept of humankind's creation demotes humanity to a state where we are not godlike beings given the task to do and being able to chose between good and evil. It would reduce us in rank, placing us eternally between angels and apes, never having the potential to be the godlike beings the Psalmist declares us to be.

"I said: You are gods, and all of you are children of the most high."

This is humanity's task and purpose.

We have shown that two of Xianity's most basic concepts, an anti-Gd angel and his authorship of evil, are from non-Hebrew peoples. Xianity's error is using the Hebrew's pure TN"K, given by HaShem, as a foil for spreading an ideology extraneous to Jewish theology.