Bible Study

I recently talked to my Mom about our doggy's name and found myself defending it as non-diabolical by reference to the Bible (which you'd think would work), but on the phone I did so off the top of my head, and Mom sounded dubious. Since, as a scholar, I hate making assertions without evidence, here is a short exposition of the two passages in the Bible that contain the word lucifer. I hope you find it interesting.

Passage 1: Isaiah 14:12

Here's the fifth-century translation from Hebrew into Latin made by Jerome when lucifer was just the Latin word for "morning star," before it had come to refer to Satan. It's the version that the church used for about 1000 years:

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

The most recognizable version of this passage, the King James Version translates the passage into English with the exception of lucifer, which it keeps in Latin and captalizes as if it is a name. This is roughly eleven centuries later, after the passage was taken by the popular imagination to refer to the fall of the angels (something the Bible never explicitly describes) and "Lucifer" was thought to be the name Satan had in heaven before he fell:

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

If we read the entirety of the chapter in Isaiah, we see that it is a hymn of rejoicing that the Babylonian king who kept Israel in captivity has fallen, and "morning star" is one of that king's poetic titles. The New Revised Standard Version, translated directly from Hebrew into English (and thus skipping the Latin step that inserts the word lucifer), reads:

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!

Passage 2: 2 Peter 1:19

As a further indication that the early church did not consider "Lucifer" (or, for that matter, the morning or day star) to be a name for the devil or even to have diabolical associations, consider 2 Peter 1:19. In the KJV the verse reads:

We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:

The "sure word of prophecy" here referred to is Numbers 24:17, which reads "there shall come a Star out of Jacob" (KJV). See also Revelation 22:16, where the returning Christ describes himself as "the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star" (KJV).

Now this wouldn't be terribly remarkable, except that when we look at Jerome's Latin text, the same text used to derive Lucifer as a name for Satan and not simply a heavenly body, we see that Christ's coming into our hearts is described with exactly the same Latin word:

et habemus firmiorem propheticum
sermonem
cui bene facitis adtendentes
quasi lucernae lucenti in calignoso
loco
donec dies inlucescat et lucifer oria-
tur in cordibus vestris

Incidentally, the story of the fall of the angels, like the name "Lucifer" for the unfallen Satan, was cobbled together over the centuries from several passages that are thought to imply it, particularly the Isaiah passage above and the defeat of Satan and his angels by Michael in Revelation 12, though since that's supposed to happen at the end of time, I don't see exactly how it could be thought to happen at the beginning. At any rate, the story is far more indebted to literary and poetic tradition than it is to the Bible. Milton's Paradise Lost makes that fall story into one of the greatest poems of all time, of course, and its influence has been pretty mighty since the seventeenth century, but most of the plot's details are Milton's own invention. And as I'm sure the Apostle Paul would agree, the idea of the fall of the angels is hardly central to the Christian faith.

My point is that the word lucifer (morning star) was originally innocent of all evil meanings and could potentially be used in holy contexts, to describe metaphorically what the New Testament repeatedly calls the "light shining in the darkness." My corollary point is, please do not scorn my dog for his name. It's quite a nice name and it fits him.